Today was MLB's trade deadline, but the biggest trade of the day was Kevin Garnett moving to Boston. More on that later. First, lets analyze the MLB trades. The biggest winner were the Atlanta Braves who acquired Stud Mark Teixeira from the Rangers for Jarrod Saltalamacchia. ATL gave up some of their best prospects for Teixeira but he might be worth it since he is a pure power machine. Jarrod is expected to be real good and I can't believe Atlanta traded away the best name in baseball! Texas did well too as they loaded up on young talent. They also traded away Eric Gagne to Boston for some second tier prospects. Great pickup for Boston as Gagne will setup for Papelbon. I am sure the baseball crazy Bostonians are more excited about this trade than even Kevin Garnett! The other trades were not major in nature. San Diego got slightly better. They picked up Morgan Ensberg, who was shockingly waived by the Astros few days back. This dude was a MVP candidate just 2 years back. For some reason the Pirates helped the Giants dump Matt Morris's salary on them. Why Pirates are taking on an old pitcher's salary, I have no idea! I guess thats why they are the Pirates.
Now to the BIG trade in the NBA. The BIG ticket, KG finally ends up in Boston in a trade that sends forwards Al Jefferson and Ryan Gomes, swingman Gerald Green, guard Sebastian Telfair, center Theo Ratliff, two future first-round picks and cash considerations to the Timberwolves. This is apparently the biggest trade in terms for 7 pieces going one way for just one guy. The previous record was the Rockets sending 6 guys to Chicago for Scottie. This is great for the Celts (and TWolves too). They got one of the best big-3's in the entire league and they will be formidable in the L-East. All 3 are above 30 and considered a little old, but KG and Paul Pierce easily have another 4 solid years left. Even Ray allen, the oldest and the most injured of the big-3, has another 2 or 3 good years left and Boston might have enough to compete for a while. They do have nothing around the 3 since they traded their young roster away. The biggest problem is probably the lack of a good point. I wish they had retained Delonte West. That guy might have been the perfect fit for a loaded team like this. They'll also have a weak bench, but you can't have everything. You got 3 future hall-of-famers in their prime and you got to make it work.
I am happy for Danny Ainge. I like him because of his Suns connections and he is also a clean-cut, good guy. He has taken a lot of crap for his moves and I have been critical of him too. He did make some good moves, but my problem was, some of those moves looked disjointed. They all were decent on their own, but they failed to convey a cogent vision. He went young and collected talent and even openly said one year how he would like his team to miss the playoffs so he can get a lottery pick. But then he would get a Gary Payton and a Wally Szerbiak for no reason. He traded away Antoine Walker, then got him back, then let him go again. All along he held on to Paul Pierce for some reason. Even the Ray Allen trade didn't make sense to me since he gave up a high pick to get him and he was not the perfect compliment to Paul Pierce. But if he had gotten him to just lure KG, thats genius. Part of that trade was also to convince Paul Pierce to stay and it sure looked like a panic move. But at the end of the day, Ainge is smiling. He recovered big from that disaster on the lottery night.
The problem these days is, no fan base will accept a 5 year re-building plan. It's an instant gratification society these days and you can't blame the fans either. They pay 200 bucks for 2 mediocre seats and it's really not fair to ask them to do that for 5 straight years so that they can see a winner eventually. Those days are gone. No GM can even hold on to a job for 5 years with such a rebuilding plan. So Ainge had to do some crazy moves just to keep a competitive team on the floor at times. Also with free agency and the modern superstar culture, stars want out if the team struggles for a couple of years. Given all these compulsions, Ainge did do well to pull this off at the end. If you really think about it, it was no rocket science. Ainge was collecting some real young talent and you either wait for them to develop, or parlay them to get proven stars. He ended up doing the later as the patience of the fans was running out. But he did draft some studs, especially Al Jefferson and he deserves credit for that. If they didn't have Al Jefferson, no Kevin Garnett today for the Celts.
As for the T-Wolves, this is a great trade. They have a really young team right now with a lot of hope for the future. Al Jefferson is a stud and I'll pay money to watch this guy any day. They got Gerald Green and Corey Brewer (5-Th pick in this year's draft) to go with him and they got 2 picks in this trade as well. Those are some solid assets. They also got an expiring contract in Theo Ratliff and he is the only guy older than 25 they acquired in this trade. On the day of the MLB trade deadline, the T-Wolves did the NBA equivalent of a baseball team stockpiling talented minor league prospects.
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