The Give and Go: Best/Worst Transactions

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The Give and Go is a quick back and forth between Paul Mitchell and Chris St. Jean about a relevant subject in the NBA at that moment.

Paul: It was just a few weeks ago that we bemoaned the lack of trades in the 2014-15 NBA season. Since then we’ve had a few Celtics trades, a high-profile release that’s turned around the season of the Detroit Pistons, and a number of potential contenders who have upgraded their teams for the second half of the season (AKA the “Western Conference arms race”).

This week’s Give and Go question will be simple: Which team’s transaction(s) do you like the most and believe upgrades them for a playoff push? Alternately, which move still confounds you?


Chris: I’m going to double down on this question.  This move is my favorite probably because I’m so confounded by it.  Josh Smith gets released by the 5-23 hapless Pistons and immediately go on a 9-1 run over their next ten games including wins in San Antonio, Dallas, and Toronto.  Is Josh Smith really that bad?  

The numbers seem to back it up a bit.  According to basketball-reference.com, the Pistons had an Offensive Rating of 97.3 with Smith on the floor and 110.0 with him off the floor.  It was the same story defensively.  The Pistons had a 103.2 Defensive Rating with Smith on the floor and 108.8 with him off the floor.  Combine all those numbers and Smith was a -18.3 in net rating or points per 100 possessions.  That’s problematic when Smith had played in the second most amount of minutes on the roster on the day he was released (KCP was first).

Not only was Smith playing a lot of minutes for Stan Van, he was also taking a lot of shots, and that doesn’t bode well for any offense.  Smith was shooting 39% from the field and 24% from 3-point range (on 37 attempts!) when he was released.  That was a major contributor (although certainly not the only one) to the Pistons being the worst shooting team in the NBA at 41.3% (tied with the Sixers technically).  Since Smith was released, the Pistons have shot 46% over their 9-1 run which would place them at 11th in the league.  Those discrepancies are mirrored in the team’s 3-point shooting.  Before his release, the Pistons shot 33% from 3-point range (24th in the NBA) and since then they are shooting 37.8% (good for 8th in the NBA).

This is quickly becoming an indictment of Smith, but the addition of Jodie Meeks has raised the Pistons shooting both quantitatively (39% from 3 on the season) and qualitatively (better spacing for everyone).  Meeks returned to the Pistons on December 12th, nine days before Smith was released, and as I pointed out after only 5 games without Smith, their uptick in scoring was trending before his release:

Detroit has scored over 100 in 7 of their last 8 games. They started the season doing that only once over the first 18 games of the season.
— Christopher St. Jean (@CSaint3) January 5, 2015

Replacing Smith’s horrendous shooting with Jerebko (39% from 3 on the season) and Anthony Tolliver (8 of 34) has helped with the Pistons spacing and shooting numbers as well and Greg Monroe has gone from averaging 14.7 points and 8.8 rebounds on 48% shooting to 16.1 and 11.9 on 50.4% shooting since the move.  Overall, things just fit better in Detroit without Josh Smith, but does he really have that much of a negative impact on a team?

Somehow, the with the Rockets, Smith is a +1.6 net rating compared to -18.6 with the Pistons.  The Rockets are essentially the same defensively with or without Smith on the floor and get this, they are a full 2 points per 100 possessions better offensively with him on the floor.  It makes no sense right?  Smith has somehow taken more 3’s (2.0 per game compared to 1.3 in Detroit) and shot worse on them (23% on 22 attempts with Houston).  

But here’s the hitch, Houston was already a terrible shooting team (42.5% from the field which was 27th in the NBA and 34.2% from 3 which was 17th) prior to acquiring Smith. But they support that by doing two things in true Moreyball fashion.  First, they shoot more than six 3-point field goals than any other team in the league (33.9 to Phoenix’s 27.3).  The second, is getting to the free throw line (8th in the NBA).  The Rockets are better suited to absorb poor shooting from Josh Smith than Detroit was, it’s as simple as that.

So, Mitchell, I pose the same question to you: Which early trade season move tickled your fancy?

NBA.com

Mitchell: I’m glad you tackled the Josh Smith situation, because one of us had to. As crazy as it was at the time, in waiving a player outright and stretching Smith’s salary until 2020, it seems to get even stranger after Detroit revitalized its offense around Andre Drummond and four shooters. That the Houston Rockets thought Smoove was worth the investment, but then turned around him and benched him in favor of Donatas Montiejunas within two weeks is even more amazing. So good choice, but I’ll stick with a trade as for my most fascinating move.

Jeff Green will help the Memphis Grizzlies, and I have no idea why this concept is so divisive. He’s been an infuriating player in a potential-sense ever since his days at Georgetown, where he’d regularly attack out of the post or in transition while alternating between the small- and power-forward positions alongside Roy Hibbert. Even then he was more of a facilitator than a dominant scorer, lacking a go-to move or a pure jump shot that he could rely on. His NBA career has thus far been similar as far as position concerns and lack of offensive aggressiveness. On teams with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, or Paul Pierce as the primary offensive options, or when coming off the bench, those flaws aren’t as obvious, and Jeff can focus on getting out on the fast break, rebounding, playing sometimes decent defense, and spotting up from the corners. When he’s expected to carry a team’s offense or be a first or second option is when his passivity and offensive limitations become an issue.

Jeff Green’s time under Brad Stevens the last two years in Boston has helped him transition to the small forward full-time, after a career spent swapping between the 3 and 4. Green increased his volume from the perimeter and sacrificed some efficiency while leading a Celtics team in scoring that missed Rajon Rondo for much of 2013-14, and so far this season had slightly increased his scoring and usage numbers in 33 games.

Grizzlies fans fear that Jeff Green will come in and hijack the team’s offense while dominating the ball like Rudy Gay did once upon a time, but Celtics fans’ primary criticism of Green is that he wasn’t more selfish and assertive as the team’s leading scorer. He seemed almost reticent to take the most shots night in and night out, after years of coming off the bench behind Boston’s Big 3 (with Rondo) and in the nascent years of the Thunder’s Big 3 (probably 4 back then, with James Harden). After a trade to the Memphis Grizzlies for a future first-round pick and Tayshaun Prince, Jeff Green’s going to the perfect situation for him.

This has been a somewhat transitional year for the Grizzlies’ offense, with Marc Gasol boosting his point per game total and taking on a larger load in scoring the ball as Zach Randolph eases into the “veteran” stage of his career. Mike Conley has improved his offensive numbers over the last four seasons or so and is firmly the leader of a close-knit clubhouse and a tough-minded Western Conference contender. A healthy ZBo gives the Grizz perhaps their best (only?) isolation scorer, as complementary pieces like Tony Allen, Beno Udrih, and Jon Leuer/Kosta Koufos cut around them and find open spots on the floor. Jeff Green can be a complementary piece for two or three games out of the week, but for one game every so often he’ll win you one.



The Memphis Grizzlies have great continuity and have been a borderline top-10 offense all season, and Green should help in both of those areas. Like Courtney Lee, he’s a two-way player who isn’t able to sustain his success from game to game, but can catch and shoot off the ball or even run some plays in the pick-and-roll without disaster. Coach Dave Joerger can simply sit Jeff Green in the corner to spot up after the defense sags on Conley high screen-and-rolls or let him cut baseline as Marc Gasol goes to work in the high-post. After years of seeing Jeff Green cut backdoor or get out on the break by playing off of an incredible passer in Rajon Rondo, I’m excited to see the kinds of wide-open dunks Marc Gasol can get Green.

There’s a chance the future first-round pick Memphis sent to the Celtics will turn into the Darko Milicic pick (#2 in the iconic 2003 Draft, after trading it for Otis Thorpe many years earlier), but there’s also a chance Jeff pushes the Memphis Grizzlies to another level come this year’s Western Conference playoffs.

As for the move that I don’t quite get yet… that would be the Dion Waiters trade that we covered last week. For a player of Waiters’s nature, it’ll take him weeks to find opportunities to get his shots in and feel comfortable within the Oklahoma City Thunder pecking order, and the trade will be evaluated with more context after a year or so of Dion’s adjustment and after Cleveland Denver uses that draft pick. Thunder GM Sam Presti obviously values the extra year of team control on the rookie contract of Dion Waiters, but I still believe he could have received a better offer for his first-round pick than the Cavs/Knicks three-way deal. Given Oklahoma City’s injury-riddled start and the returns for effective (role) players like Jeff Green, Brandan Wright, and Rajon Rondo (or potentially other targets such as Arron Afflalo or Wilson Chandler), Presti missed a great chance to add rent talent for another potential NBA Finals run. Instead he surrendered his pick for a season and a half of Dion Waiters.