Free Ballin’

ESPN’s Chris Sheridan just volunteered to illustrate my point from earlier today about reporters making dumb trade suggestions. If this one turns into a rumor, you’ll know where it started. In his article today he wrote:

“Just a thought, but doesn’t [Amare] Stoudemire and Atlanta’s No. 1 pick, which the Suns own from a prior trade, for Gasol and Hakim Warrick make some sense for both teams? If not that one, what about Stoudemire for Rasheed Wallace?”

No, it doesn’t make sense, not remotely. Stoudemire is one of the five or so most productive offensive players in the game. Gasol is very, very good, a legit all-star caliber player. But he’s a full step below Stoudemire on offense. They both have lousy defensive reputations (but I’d like to look into that further before I weigh in). Oh, and Gasol is two years older.

OK, so does the draft pick for Warrick make up the difference between Stoudemire and Gasol? Nope. Atlanta’s pick will probably be a high non-lottery pick, a valuable asset—cheap young talent for a team that refuses to pay for talent (more in next post). Warrick is in his third year and has yet to develop the perimeter skills to be a small-forward and will never have the strength to be a power-forward. If he were 20 with three years left on a rookie contract, that would be one thing, but he’s already 25 years old and will be a restricted free agent at the end of the ’08–’09 season. Yeah, that would be a really bad trade for Phoenix.

Stoudemire for Wallace? Too absurd to contemplate, so I’ll keep this brief. Stoudemire is vastly more productive, but since I don’t feel like wasting anyone’s time justifying that statement beyond the player-links above, let’s pretend that their production is identical. Wallace is 33; Stoudemire is 25. We’re done here.

What’s notable is that Sheridan is a good reporter. He should stick to reporting.