Better To Be Known as a Sinner Than a Hypocrite

Circumstances do not make the man; they reveal him

I’ve been meaning to write this piece for about a week now but I’m just now getting to it.

Prior to their game against Boston last Thursday, Lakers Head Coach Phil Jackson made a few comments about the Cavaliers’ recent trade and expressed his disapproval for such a “scam.”  He was at it again on Friday evening in an interview with FanHouse’s Chris Tommasson.  In the interview Jackson said:

“It’s a sham of sorts to make that kind of trade. You’re not really trading a player. You’re just trading a money situation. It’s a sham, and I think it’s a disrespect for the league and the players to be involved in this type of a thing.”

Okay, now let’s take a trip back to 2008 when the Los Angeles Lakers (the same Lakers that Phil Jackson coaches today) made one of the most one-sided trades in NBA history by sending Kwame Brown, Hot Shot Javaris Crittenton (no pun intended) and a completely unknown Marc Gasol to the Memphis Grizzlies for a franchise player in Pau Gasol.  Anyone and everyone involved with the NBA (with the exception of the Lakers, of course) was appalled by such a move but the trade went through and the Lakers went on to win the NBA Championship just a year later.

But Phil Jackson was okay with taking advantage of a team’s need for financial relief then. Why isn’t it okay now?

Cleveland was searching for a power forward that could stretch the floor for a guy like Shaquille O’Neal to work in the paint.  A la Antawn Jamison.  The Wizards are looking to rebuild their entire franchise and were in dire need of cap relief.  A la a buyout of Zydrunas Ilgauskas’s contract, a first round pick and the rights to 2009 seconf-round pick Emir Preldzic.

Now that Marc Gasol is on his way to becoming an absolute stud in the NBA, Lakers fans want to say that the trade was even.  Right. It’s still a one-sided deal; it’s just not quite as one-sided as we first expected.

So who’s to say that Emir Preldzic won’t become a surprisingly good basketball player and the Wizards won’t pick up the next Anderson Varejao, who undoubtedly changes the game every time he steps on the floor, with their late first round pick?

Though the two trades are very different in structure, they are very similar in the concept. It doesn’t matter that Kwame Brown or Marc Gasol did not resign with LA and that Zydrunas Ilgauskas will.  Both trades are equally uneven.  But they provided both the Memphis Grizzlies and Washington Wizards with the cap relief that they needed at the time of the deal. 

Jackson just doesn’t particularly care for the deal because it made the Cleveland Cavaliers a much better team.  But he didn’t mind when his team was the one making the “unfair” deal.  Seems hypocritical to me.