NBA shakeup: Kidd, Crawford, Odom and Roy find new teams
There is a whirlwind of activity in the league; players being swapped and thrown about left, right and center. Here are some prominent moves and the impact they will have.
https://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/07/05/beware-the-purple-and-gold-steve-nash-to-the-la-lakers/
Jason Kidd to the Knicks:
Jason Kidd to the Knicks
Seems like a quick fix-itJust like the Lakers got hold of Steve Nash. Throwing Nash into the Lakers is akin to throwing a sheep among wolves. But the wolves won’t be eating the sheep, they will be directed by it. Jason Kidd brings a lot of solidity to the Knicks back-court. A play-making guard with decades of experience playing at the highest level and having reached the NBA Finals multiple times, Kidd is well-suited to spread the ball around Carmelo and Stoudemire and keep the offense flowing.
The Knicks have become synonymous with dysfunction; also with ‘blowing up and rebuilding’. Jason Kidd has been synonymous with calm, steady, veteran, triple double, and so on. The Kincks had a great guard in Jermey Lin but Kidd brings more of the intangibles and less of the scoring that Lin brings which should be just fine with his new ball-hogging teammates.
Jamaal Crawford and Lamar Odom to the Clippers
The Clippers are my favourite team. Actually any team Blake Griffin plays for will be my favourite team. The Clippers though, give me a feeling of watching a kid (Donald Sterling) blowing a balloon which keeps getting bigger and bigger. And you whoop with glee and clap and jump up and down, but there’s the thought in the back of your mind that “Ok, this is gonna burst and it won’t be pretty when it does.”
Let’s have a look at their depth:
In the front-court, they got Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, Kenyon Martin and Reggie Evans. DeAndre is the second wheel behind Blake for the future but he pouted a little when he was benched in favour of Reggie/Martin.
At small-forward the Clippers now have Lamar Odom and Caron Butler. Odom should be comfortable slipping back into his role of the sixth man. But back with the Lakers, their bench was a lot thinner than the Clippers’ bench; it was easier for Odom to find minutes there than it will be here.
Moving down to shooting-guard, here, there’s a quagmire of quality guards. Chauncey Billups has extended his stay, Mo Williams came in all happy and bouncing before Billups and Paul paraded in and bumped him off the starting spot; and now the Clips have added Jamaal Crawford and Nick Young.
Adding Crawford to this mix makes me salivate. He’s one of the pure conscious less gunners around. One of the few gunners who give him competition in terms of trigger happiness is Nick Young; and they are both on the same team.
I’ve no idea how minutes will be juggled on this squad unless someone is released/traded. It’s pretty clear that this super exciting team just got a whole lot more exciting.
Brandon Roy to the Wolves
Roy gave the league a sad and an inspiring tale about redemption: sad because he won’t probably recapture the form he had; inspiring because he is still plowing ahead and will make something great of the Wolves who could use some experience with their young squad.
Ricky Rubio had a field day feeding the ball to his athletic teammates like Tolliver, but Roy brings a lot of smarts to the player-spacing on court and will make the job easier on offense just by being on court, with his range and play-making ability and quick eye for getting to the rim.