NBA: Breaking Down the Hornets, Pacers, Nets, Rockets Deal
The New Orleans Hornets, Indiana Pacers, New Jersey Nets, and Houston Rockets executed a four team deal on Wednesday.
The key particulars of the deal have Darren Collison going to Indiana, Trevor Ariza ends up a Hornet, Troy Murphy is moving to New Jersey and the Rockets are getting sharp-shooter Courtney Lee.
The Pacers are arguably getting the best player and the point guard they have been searching for to re-energize their offense for a couple of years now in Collison. Collison is coming off a strong rookie season in which he averaged 12.4 points and 5.7 assists. The caveat with Collison, though, is he averaged 18.8 points and 9.1 assists in 37 starts for the Hornets last season. Indiana has not gotten that kind of production from its point guard in several seasons.
The downside for the Pacers is they are giving up their leading rebounder and second best three-point shooter in Troy Murphy to get Collison. Murphy’s departure leaves the Pacers with a huge question mark when it comes to who is going to rebound the basketball for them. He was the only player to average more than 6 boards a game last season and Danny Granger (5.5) and Roy Hibbert (5.7) are the only two regulars to average more than five per game last season.
Tyler Hansbrough has the potential to be an 8 to 10 rebound per game guy, he averaged 4.8 boards in 17 minutes per game last season, but they need him to stay healthy enough to play more than 29 games and will need him to be able to play upwards of 30 minutes a night.
Murphy will be a nice addition to the Nets as top pick Derrick Favors learns the NBA game. Murphy is entering the last year of his deal and one begins to wonder whether Favors’ lackluster performance in the the Orlando Summer League has the Nets wondering whether Favors is going to be terribly productive this season. Murphy gives the Nets the additional rebounder they were looking for this summer and will be an upgrade over Yi Jianlin in terms of his perimeter shooting ability.
Giving up Lee for Murphy will not hurt the Nets too much as he became expendable once the Nets signed Anthony Morrow away from the Warriors this summer. Lee was a bit of a disappointment for the Nets and was likely going to lose his starting job to Morrow who has established himself as one of the best 3-point shooters in the league.
Swapping out Lee for Ariza was a chance for the Rockets to dump some salary while still getting a productive player in the process. The addition of Kevin Martin at the deadline last season made Ariza somewhat expendable this summer as the team was going with Ariza at shooting guard and Shane Battier at small forward and really prefers having Battier on the floor. Lee will likely be the Rockets scorer off the bench. They lost their best scoring option off the bench when they dealt Carl Landry to the Kings for Martin and Lee should fill that void quite nicely.
In landing Ariza the Hornets are hoping he will be the wing scorer that Peja Stojakovic is supposed to be for them. Ariza is not the pure shooter that Peja is but he is more athletic, a better defender, and better all around scorer. He should be the scorer Peja was supposed to be and the perimeter defender they thought they were getting when they signed James Posey away from the Celtics two summers ago.
In related news the Pacers agreed to take James Posey’s contract on as part of the price to get Collison and the Hornets are also reportedly nearing a deal to send Julian Wright to the Raptors for shooter Marco Belinelli. Belinelli would likely come off the bench and back up Marcus Thornton.
