sometimes you just have to shake your head and chuckle

ladies and gents, we are experiencing one of the greatest basketball seasons of all time. no, i don't mean the superlative suns or marauding mavericks (alliteration: out of control). what i do mean is the cellar-dwelling grizz.

let's examine their situation for a quick second. before the draft, they had a roster that was maybe going somewhere, maybe stuck in neutral for the next few seasons. then, and here's where the genius of the logo starts, they trade shane battier for rudy gay + stromile swift. battier is a well known glue guy, one who puts up solid #s and provides hustle and all that weak shit. contrasted w/gay--who has the chance to become a truly thrilling and dynamic player--shane battier is approximately a doodie on the shoe of a dancing monkey. stro swift ain't all that, but whatever, he can dunk.

this trade had two immediate effects: it took some toughness out of the grizz organization and added a dynamic that will doubtlessly have a huge positive return down the road. sure, they suffered in the short term. their success last year was largely predicated on lockdown D, of which they lost the key to when battier departed. it's also worth noting that bobby jackson left the team, subtracting offense and some decent defense. he's shoot-first and injury-prone, but he's solid.

now that we've established that they sucked the defensive soul of a team that was severely reliant on that same D to carry them, we can also see that jerry west added one player who has tremendous potential to contribute and one player who can run the floor and block shots.

perhaps because of the subtraction of battier, or maybe the early absence of pau, the grizz started quite slowly. like as in worst team in the league slowly. pau comes back and it's kind of better, not much, so logo fires fratello. don't get me wrong, fratello is a fine coach and doubtlessly a terrific person to relate to, but he was not the man to lead them to the promised land. they bring in tony barone, who is italian, to push the tempo.

what does this do in terms of overall effectiveness? almost nothing. BUT, it makes the players happier because they get to get out and run, which means big stats. and big stats mean big contracts/vesting options/whatever. however, this doesn't make their disgruntled spanish mountain man any happier, so he requests a trade.

NORMALLY THIS WOULD BE A BAD THING. no team wants to trade their young star, esp. because he seems to be just coming into his own. but, and there's always a but when jerry west is involved, this gives them the perfect excuse for the grizz to flip him for some good bulls. now doesn't that sound appetizing.

factor in that they will still have a really terrible record, and then factor in the talent level in this year's draft.

now, picture with me something truly amazing. the grizz could be moving along with
PG: stoudamire
SG: jones
SF: battier
PF: pau
C: tsakalidas or whatever

OR, they probably will be entering next year with a lineup resembling
PG: stoudamire
SG: ben gordon
SF: luol deng
PF: hakim warrick (developed+ready to kill)
C: greg "motherfucking" oden

now picture that with rudy gay coming off the bench.