One Last Thought on the Chris Paul Trade (and a couple other thoughts)

I've been developing this tool for a while now, which I originally intended to find a player's three year "peak" - the best three season stretch of a player's career. Incidentally, this can be used to identify the value of any three season stretch of a player's career. Of course, I've only been using this to evaluate (mostly) elite players and compare them to other elite players so far, so, it may need tweaking to accurately rate role players. But I think it works well for the greats right now. Anyway, I'm going to use this to analyze the value of the two Chris Paul trades, and see which one actually would be more beneficial for the Hornets.

Winners and Losers of the Chris Paul Non-Trade

In the wake of the ridiculous blocking of the trade that would have sent Chris Paul to the Lakers, I'm going to try to assess who actually came out ahead on this, and who has gotten hurt the most.

The Trade That Wasn't

Hey, remember when the Lakers, Rockets, and Hornets were involved in a three-team deal that sent Chris Paul to Los Angeles, Pau Gasol to the Rockets, and Lamar Odom/Kevin Martin/a few other players to the Hornets? No? Well, I can't blame you. It happened, and then un-happened in the span of about two hours. "How can a trade un-happen?" you ask. Good question.

Labor Deal Done

Well the new labor deal is "officially" done. I have it in quotes because there aren't any official details released yet. Sources are just reporting that the deal is in place, all sides have agreed to everything, and the season is set to go Christmas Day. Huzzah! I'll put up the details of the deal as soon as I hear the "official" news of what exactly is in it.


In other, sadder news, Caron Butler has signed a deal to play with Clippers next year. R.I.P. Caron. You had a lot of potential and it just never happened.

The List of Greatness - Active Players

In anticipation of the return of the NBA as well as the (probably to a much lesser extent) my List of Greatness posts, I thought I'd let everyone take a sneak peak at how the active players stack up so everyone can kind of keep track of them throughout the year. I was thinking about putting up who the closest candidates were for making it in 2012, but that'd give too much away for the future 2000 onward posts of who gets in and who doesn't. (Although you can probably guess, anyway.) Also, as a side note, the "Ultimate Season" will happen, it's just slow going figuring out how to make it work in this format. Anyway, on to the rankings.

Pre-1951 All-Stars

I've been on a kick lately of figuring out awards that never got handed out. I'm not sure why. But it's fun. So let's just keep on rolling with it. Here's the All-Stars from before the first All-Star Game in 1951.

The Pre-1956 MVPs

As many of you probably know (and for those of you that don't), the NBA's most valuable player award was first given out in 1956 to Bob Pettit. However, that leaves us with nine seasons where there was no MVP named. So, I thought, just for kicks, I'd go back through the record books and see who would/should have been named MVP in each of those years. This won't be quite as in-depth as the 1999 All-Star Selection process was, but it should still be fun.

The 1999 NBA All-Stars

One of the worst things about the 1998-99 NBA lockout (for me, at least) was the cancellation of the All-Star game. As a kid, I always looked forward to the ridiculous athleticism on display and sheer amount of fun that game always is - despite its ultimate irrelevance and the fact that it can only loosely be called a "basketball game." As an adult, I still look forward to those same things, but even more than that, I look forward to seeing who gets the honor of being named to the team. Furthermore, those All-Star selections add up and can be an excellent indicator for historical relevance. The 32 games that were missed during the 1999 season really aren't that big of a deal in terms of career totals - they can basically be written off as an extended injury. But you'll never get those All-Star selections back. (This was my biggest worry about losing the 2012 season - not getting the awards and the stats to accurately reflect a player's historical significance/greatness. Well, the biggest worry about besides not getting to watch basketball.) Anyway, with that in mind, this is a one-time one-off project I've been wanting to do for quite some time but finally have the means to do so: figuring out who would/should have made the 1999 All-Star Game.