Compounding the Sin

I know, you've waited 48+ hours to get the FTT take on this and all, but here goes...

The Cleveland Cavaliers acquired former defensive player of the year Ben Wallace and swingman Joe Smith from the Chicago Bulls in an 11-player, three-team blockbuster deal on Thursday.

Cleveland also got forward Wally Szczerbiak and guard Delonte West from the Seattle SuperSonics, general manager Danny Ferry announced Thursday.

In exchange, the Cavaliers sent Larry Hughes, Drew Gooden, Cedric Simmons and Shannon Brown to the Bulls and Ira Newble and Donyell Marshall to Seattle.

Cleveland also received Chicago's 2009 second round draft selection and Seattle acquired Adrian Griffin from the Bulls.

In any Monster Deal, there's an awful lot of dross to sort through. The remarkable thing about this deal is that almost all of it left one team -- the Cavs.

When the dust settled, Cleveland now gets to start Wallace, Ilgauskas, Sczerbiak and West with LeBron, and bring Gibson, Varaejo and Smith off the bench. (And the starters may be wrong and all, but that's their top eight, and all will get time.)

Here's what that does for them. It means that they won't be wondering where Hughes and Gooden are when the chips are down. It means they won't have a 37% shooter who isn't a point guard... playing point guard. It should mean a whole lot less of Eric Snow, since with Wallace on the floor, you can only have one guy who absolutely can't score playing. It gives them a very good spot-up shooter in the Zerb, and a reasonable defensive presence in Wallace that can cover for the fact that Wally can't defend anyone. It also makes them, IMO, a much more dangerous team in the East, and might make them the favorites over the big three of Detroit, Boston and Orlando in a second-round playoff matchup... because it gives LeBron all of the proof he needs that his GM is watching the same games he's been playing in.

Now, that doesn't mean the Cavs are a shoo-in to make it back to the Finals as the Team That Should Lose, because they've only got 30 games to figure out how to play with each other, and that's probably not enough time. But it sure makes them a hell of a lot more interesting than they were on Wednesday, and for next year as well.

Seattle, on the other hand, cleared cap space from a guy that did them no good (Wally) and a reasonable guard that was in a logjam for minutes with Ridnour and Watson (West). It also probably gives them some nice wiggle room with expiring contracts, since no one in their right mind wants Donyell Marshall for the long run on their roster. The only problem with this plan is that freeing up cap space for a team that's moving to Oklahoma City is kind of like putting in a really nice wet bar in a bomb shelter; you're still not going to be attracting the really high-class snatch. But on principle at least, it's the right move, and it gives Seattle's front office personnel something nice to put on their resumes later, when they want to go to a real NBA franchise.

Now, what did Chicago get, other than clearing minutes for Ty Thomas and Yannick Noah? The previously mentioned 37% non-point point guard in Hughes. A power forward that has been part of every trade rumor for the past five years in the league -- I'm guessing there are reasons for that behind the boneheaded play on the court. (This assumes, of course, that they are actually going to play the guys they dealt for, rather than just bench them and completely poison the atmosphere around this team.)

How exactly does this fix the Bulls' problems -- which is to say, questionable low post presence and point guard play on offense, and worrisome team chemistry? Gooden and Hughes have been on a million teams in their time in the league. Those are the guys that you want to bring into a team of young and previously unselfish hustle players? I know that Big Ben wasn't working out for you, but was this really the price you had to pay to get rid of him?

For many years, the Bulls appeared to have A Plan. They were going to stockpile hustle guys, pressure teams into mistakes, and hope that one of their young players -- Deng or Gordon, primarily -- became the kind of guy that could carry them in crunch time in a playoff. It might not have been the most feasible way to a championship, but at least it made for entertaining ball, and made them the constant source of speculation whenever a team had a game-changing superstar that was thinking of forcing a trade.

Now? I have no idea what they are, or what they are trying to accomplish. And neither do they.

Two of three teams won this trade, and one of them did so by a lot. The last destroyed the team to rid themselves of one player and contract. But that's life in the NBA -- the bad signings destroy you.