Empty the Bench

By Brian Spencer

It’s that time of the year again; actually has been for well over a month now, if not more. Time for “anonymous sources” and “sources close to X” to make things up, for NBA writers and bloggers to pick up on these myths and report them as news, for fans to argue back and forth about the merits of these mythical trade rumors.

It happens like clockwork, this slow grind of the NBA rumor mill, and after reaching its breathless peak 9 days from now on February 18 at 3pm, it stops only long enough for the playoffs to come and go before picking up where it left off as the summer sun shines on free agency and the draft. And at the end of the day, much more often than not, all this speculation and salary-matching and debate amounts to a big, steaming pile of horseshit.

And, honestly, that’s fine. It’s fun. We love to discuss these things just as much as the next fan. It’s something to talk about, it reels casual fans in and tasks them with evaluating their favorite team(s) and how it might look after Amare Stoudemire, Andre Iguodala, and/or Chris Bosh magically land on the roster in exchange for, oh, a future first-round pick and expiring contracts (since that’s all it takes these days, right?).

Perhaps the best thing to come of the unending speculation are in-depth player evaluations and discussions, like the ones we’re reading about guys like Stoudemire and Iguodala, that break down the pluses and minuses of the parties involved. You know, like the mindset of Stoudemire as it pertains to his player option next season: will he or won’t he opt out? Is he playing games with the Suns? Is he dogging it to force his way out? Is he a max-contract player?

For Iguodala, the uber-talented swingman in Philly who’s apparently not living up to expectations, it’s often about his value. Is he overpaid? Is his contract really that hard to swallow? Is he an upper-tier player still harboring the potential to become an elite one? Would he fit in better with the Suns or Cavs? (A great read on Iggie came courtesy of our man Kelly Dwyer over at Ball Don’t Lie.)

Love the analysis, the soul-searching, the number-crunching that goes into discussions about why these players’ names are popping up in the rumor mill. It gets people thinking, and careful thought is something we need more of.

So, no, don’t take this as admonishment of the rumor mill. It’s just… I don’t know, it seems to get sillier and sillier every year. Some of the rumors I’ve been reading over the past few days… look, I don’t understand why the journalistic integrity of bloggers (a term which, by the way, I don’t personally like to associate with–we’re all writers in my book, but whatever) is still constantly questioned and ridiculed when we have beat writers, guys and girls on the payroll of major, well-respected newspapers, floating made-up conjecture and passing it off as fact, or at least a rumor partially based on fact, when it most definitely is not. It’s shameless, and it’s ridiculous.

Not interested in naming names, because at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. There are gaggles of guilty parties. And, again, all this chatter is mostly harmless, except of course for the fact that it sometimes seems to severely distract those players and those teams most heavily involved in the rumors.

If you’re looking towards this year’s trade deadline and waiting for big names and big trades to shock and awe, history tells us you’re going to be disappointed. It’s rare. Sure, where there’s smoke there’s often fire, especially, I think, in the case of Stoudemire and Iguodala this year. Both of them have a fairly good chance of being moved, for various reasons.

But beyond that, in all likelihood we’re going to go from reading about all these big trades that are supposedly on the table to reading about why all these big trades didn’t happen. That, and be yawning at the low-level salary-cap clears and trades made for depth towards the middle of the bench. The big trades that do happen? It seems like they often come out of nowhere… or they don’t happen until the summer.

Keep the discussion going, by all means. Enjoy playing around with ESPN’s NBA Trade Machine and dreaming up make-believe scenarios you feel make sense for both parties involved (or at least for your team). Just don’t get too worked up about the rumors you’re going to hear over the next 9 days: there’s going to be more and more of them, they’re going to get more and more mythical, and almost none of them will actually come to pass.

Amare Stoudemire Photo Credit: Icon SMI

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