I'm working back into blogging after finally getting over a month-long bronchitis bug. Hopefully, we'll be getting back to multiple posts a day going forward.
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Baseball's offseason trades and signings has the long-standing nickname of the Hot Stove League. Such a moniker doesn't work well for basketball, for its downtime is during the warm weather months where the AC-League would be more like it.
Except for this year, where the NBA finally got a deal with the players set over the weekend. That means that there will be a rush of activity in December between the start of training camp and free-agent signings on the 9th and the first games on Christmas Day. With our first serious snow coming this evening (only 1-3 inches, so it won't shut much down), we could use some old-school BTUs cranking as we look at things.
The Pistons have an interesting dilemma, where a one-time contract amnesty has been created with the new CBA; do you use it on Rip Hamilton, Ben Gordon or Charlie V?
Villanueva is overpayed for what he produces; he looked like a good fit as a replacement for Rasheed Wallace when he signed, but Charlie is 6-11 two-guard without a good defensive or rebounding game. That being said, a guy who can match up with opposing bigs off the bench and can play a stretch-four is worth having around.
That makes the first two of the troublesome troika most likely to mistakenly catching flak from conservatives ("Yes, I'm in favor of amnesty... Rip is badly overpayed"). With Rodney Stuckey better suited to the two, Detroit has three twos and time for 1.5 of them. Hamilton can play some small-ball 3, while Gordon isn't built for that double-duty. A Stuckey-Rip backcourt with rookie Brandon Knight getting about 25 minutes off the bench seems plausible; Stuckey can slide to the two with Knight in the game, and all three could go for a few minutes mid-halves.
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