The Mayo Trade
Posted by GreekHouse on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I haven't read too many people's takes on the Wolves trade from late last night, so it's hard for me to gauge exactly what people are thinking about this right now. I know many people are going to have an overtly negative reaction to the trade. McHale has a reputation for making bad draft day deals and the memory of the Foye/Roy trade is still fresh in most people's minds. When I first heard about the trade, I wasn't sure what to think. I knew McHale wanted Love, so I wasn't that surprised. At the same time, it seems like he could have just done the safe thing and kept the third best player in the draft. It seems like he just likes making things harder than they need to be.
Mayo's stock seemed to rise quite rapidly in the months preceding the draft. There were some character concerns about him, but it seems like these really weren't as big an issue as people originally thought. He's a hard worker and did and said all the right things just prior to the draft. Miami was allegedly considering taking him with the 2nd pick and the way his stock was rising, it wouldn't have surprised me had.
Love is the kind of guy McHale drools over. He's a big man with great hands and a high basketball IQ. He's had some conditioning issues, but has lost a bit of weight. He's still quite young and as a big, he's probably going to take some time to develop, but could also have a pretty big upside.
In a nutshell, the blockbuster trade consisted of three main things:
- Trading Mayo for Love
- Trading Walker for Miller
- Trading Jaric's horrible contract for Cardinal's less horrible contract
The other two players were mostly throw ins (although Collins may get a bit of PT on this squad). Clearly the Wolves are getting the better of the last two while the Grizz are getting the better of the first. Miller will immediately become the second best player on the team and dumping Jaric means that the last of the Wolves terrible contracts will end the season after next.
When the Wolves traded KG before last season, Glen Taylor (allegedly) had a plan to become competitive again in 3 years. What this trade means to me is that they still think they can do it. As a three point shooter, Miller rates to have a lengthy NBA career, but his contract is only two more seasons. If the Wolves aren't competitive the year after next, there's a good chance the Miller will walk. So I would suspect that the Wolves think they can do at least a little something the year after next.
On the other hand Miller--a South Dakota native--might be happy to be close to home and could decide to stay with the team for a while. If Love develops into a star, that would give the Wolves a very nice trio of core players. They could make the playoffs the year after next and after filling a couple holes, they could potentially become a championship contender again.
Draft day deals are typically the hardest to analyze because the players are young and have no NBA experience. Most people tend to wait until the players become developed and then analyze them using hindsight. You can say stuff like "This deal will be OK unless Mayo becomes a superstar" because the GMs don't know what will happen at the time they make the trade. The trade is either good or it's bad. Determining which one it is depends on analyzing the possible outcomes and accurately weighing the possibilities that either will happen.
This trade could be a disaster or it could be amazing. All in all, I'd say this is a good (but not great) trade for the Wolves. Mayo was the 3rd best player in the draft, but he certainly wasn't a sure thing. Love probably doesn't have the same upside as Mayo, but he's still one of the top players in the draft. Given the other things the Wolves gained in the trade, I'd say it's enough to make up for this difference in potential.
Loading ...
When the Wolves traded KG before last season, Glen Taylor (allegedly) had a plan
Wait, you lost me.
/The only basketball I follow is the stuff posted here, so all I've got is snark.
Mayo was the 3rd best player in the draft, but he certainly wasn't a sure thing. Love probably doesn't have the same upside as Mayo, but he's still one of the top players in the draft.
I'd agree with this statement, but in a situation like the Wolves are in, I'd say I'd rather have the higher upside player. Given that they won't really compete for the next two years at least, Miller's additional contributions during that time won't be worth much, which is why I don't think that the extra additions make up for the lower ceiling. Clearing Jarik's contract is obviously nice, and they have more flexibility a year earlier, but I'm not confident in their ability to make use of that. In a league like the NBA, you need high upside stars, and I don't see that in Love.
Plus, we lost Jaric's fiance.
Plus, we lost Jaric's fiance.
Yeah, this part of the deal was especially devastating to the franchise.
I'd agree with this statement, but in a situation like the Wolves are in, I'd say I'd rather have the higher upside player. Given that they won't really compete for the next two years at least, Miller's additional contributions during that time won't be worth much, which is why I don't think that the extra additions make up for the lower ceiling.
It would have been easy for me to make an argument like this to say it was a bad trade too. Really, I think it's pretty close. I think McHale is banking somewhat on Miller being a (somewhat) local boy and him wanting to resign with the Wolves. His contributions in the next 2 years should make the Wolves quite a bit better though and should help ticket sales a bit. I dunno, maybe I'm banking too much on that too.
Clearing Jarik's contract is obviously nice, and they have more flexibility a year earlier, but I'm not confident in their ability to make use of that.
It kind of sucks that arguments like this can even be made against the Wolves. At some point you just have to assume that they'll do something good with their options and work from there. If you assume they're going to keep sucking forever, then it doesn't really matter what they do because they'll suck no matter what. In that case, drafting Mayo is only a minor upgrade over drafting me.
Almost everything I've read has graded the Wolves highly for this trade. I'm not sure about that. I wasn't against trading down, but I wanted another 1st round pick.
I certainly wouldn't grade it highly. It's say it's good, but only marginally so.
The weird thing about this trade is that it seems like McHale could have just drafted Mayo and been done with it. With all the heat he's taken, he wouldn't get any for that move. Then he goes and pulls a weird trade out of his ass. It's almost like he enjoys making life difficult for himself. Now he needs to make sure that a lot of things go right for the Wolves so that this trade works out. You really get the impression that he thinks he's some kind of genius and is making elaborate moves in order to outsmart everyone else.
That's the problem I have with this trade. It was the same one I had with the Roy/Foye trade. McHale finally does the smart, conventional thing and then he goes and messes with it.
Someone once said (Klostermann, Gladwell? I'm not sure who) he'd be a better GM than a lot of the GM's in the NBA. Not because he'd know better but because he'd realize he didn't know better and would just go with consensus.
The only prayer for this trade is that it was made with the other GM that contributed to the NBA finals this year. Maybe McHale has found a GM he can outsmart.
I should also mention that the same can be said for the Chalmers deal. It's as if every time you start to think McHale is going to do the smart, predictable thing he has to mess it up.
Pretty sure it was Klosterman.
I've always preferred mustard anyway, so it's no big deal to me.
When I heard the Wolves traded Mayo, my initial reaction was that they must have screwed themselves over somehow, but I was pleasantly surprised when I read the details. Maybe I like it because of low expectations, I don't know, but I'm pleased with it. Mayo was a great player in a great conference, but he really didn't set himself apart from the other great guards in the Pac-10. I don't think Love will become a star, but he should be an excellent complement to Jefferson and I doubt Love will have a problem deferring to Al. My one reservation is that Love was clearly not the best player on his team and I would take Darren Collison (when healthy) over Russell Westbrook, who was drafted ahead of Love.
I think the Wolves will be clearly better next year with this trade and this will help them with cap room for 2010, so if they are willing to spend that for another cornerstone player, they can get back to contender status pretty quickly.
Love's nickname: "Miracle Whip"
GH, SBG, et al.,
With Love and Jefferson on the court, do you see the Wolves' defensive problems down low continuing?
Also, what would the J.R. Rider Attitude Problems index have been with Mayo in MN?
As for other aspects of the trade, I think it's a good idea to get a good player any time you can get a good or even decent player, and it sounds like Mike Miller is a pretty decent player and Antoine Walker was giving us nothing. It seems like if you keep saying that the plan is to win in "the future," all too often "the future" never comes.
It's tough for me to like the Wolves taking a foreign player with their second pick since that has worked approximately never for them and every now and then you can find a somewhat valuable guy at the beginning of the second round.
if they kept OJ, imagine the cross-marketing possibilities. He could have put on "Mayo Clinics" across the state during the offseason.
pffft - now we gots The Love Guru putting on clinics
Imagine if the Grizzlies had kept Love with Rudy Gay on the roster. They could have had "Gay/Love Night" and attracted all 20 of the openly gay people in Tennessee to come to their games.
No more WNBA jokes, please.
Miller's PERs the last 4 seasons have been between 16.1 and 17.2. For comparison, Knickerblogger has him at 16.34 this year (slightly lower than basketball-reference), ranking 88th. Ben Gordon was 81st at 16.65; Ray Allen 82nd (16.59), Kevin Durant 94th (16.01), Ryan Gomes 97th (15.89).
That's pretty good, no? Who was higher on the Wolves last year? BAJ, I would guess, but anyone else who played significant minutes?
here's the link
BAJ was at 22.98 (studly)
Craig Smith next at 16.92
Gomes, 15.89.
A "good" team should have 2-3 guys north of 20. Obviously, the Wolves were not "good".
A great team has three guys north of 20.
For example, one team, oh, we'll call them a team with a big three, had this combo:
Tim Duncan, 24.41
Manu Ginobili, 24.34
Tony Parker, 20.04
Then there was this team, that had a stud and a couple of nice players around him:
KG, 25.30
Pierce, 19.68
Allen, 16.45
the Lakers had Kobe at 24.55, Gasol 24.26/Bynum 22.83 and Odom at 17.09.
New Orleans had Paul, 28.67; West, 20.13; Chandler, 17.73
Phoenix: Amare, 27.91; Nash, 21.37; Shaq, 16.68
so, yea, "great" teams have 3. Good teams generally have 2 at or above 20. I think the Boston numbers reflect the difficulty of measuring defensive contributions. Detroit presents a similar conundrum.
You don't see the even-when-he-went-to-Boston-Duncan's-supporting-cast-was-better line I was going with there?
heh.
You missed Leon Powe's 21.18
ubes:
I guess I would say yes, defensive problems will continue. I haven't seen Love play, so we'll see. But, Collins is supposed to be a superior defender and a legitimate 7 footer, so we may see him horning in on Love's playing time until K-Luv figures out how to defend.
I guess that's probably where I would expect the scouts' valuation of Love to deviate from, say, Hollinger's valuation. It's probably even more difficult to measure individual defense in the NBA than it is to measure individual defense in MLB, and looking back, that was definitely the biggest weakness of Bill James' pioneering work in sabermetrics. So I hope that Love can play defense, but I'm skeptical.
as for the 2nd round, I would have thought that Mbah a Moute would have been a good addition. Somebody with a real chance to make the roster and even contribute 10-15 min/g as a rookie.
DeAndre Jordan also was available both times they picked in the 2nd round. He's got more than a little Andrew Bynum in him. Hoopshype compares him to Dwight Howard. I think that's a bit much, but....
Not that we really needed a SG/SF combo, but I think Chris Douglas-Roberts of Memphis was a steal in the mid second round--NJ got him. A 6-7, left-handed slasher who can defend.
DeAndre Jordan also was available both times they picked in the 2nd round. He's got more than a little Andrew Bynum in him. Hoopshype compares him to Dwight Howard. I think that's a bit much, but....
Wow, really? I would like to have seen the Wolves draft him. He was looking like a top 10 pick for a while, I'm not sure how his stock dropped so much. He apparently has major FT shooting problems, but has enough skill in other areas to make up for it.
Here's what the Dallas Morning News guy had to say Wednesday night/Thursday morning (pre-draft, obviously).
[deleted on account of not paying enough attention -- note to self, next time look at the draft list and don't trust Chad Ford's recap when figuring out who the Wolves took]
No, they gave up Chalmers for cash + a pair of 2nd rounders from the Heat in 2009. Not sure how much cash, or who the other 2nd rounder originally belonged to. They could have had both Euro man + Super Mario.
Shoot, I thought I managed to edit that before my ignorance was revealed. I was looking at Chad Ford's recap which sort of made it look like the Wolves had just picked at 5 and 31, so I was at least a little confused. Anyway, as noted below, I'm not really sure that I like giving up two future 2nd rounders (in the same draft nonetheless) for Chalmers.
I've said it before, but when they selected him I was thinking why take another guard, you have Mayo, go big! Then, the trade and I'm like, really, you have so much talent at the one that you can't even contemplate bringing him to camp on a non-guaranteed contract? And then the trade for Love and I'm thinking, Tilt. It does not compute.
I mean, obviously there are exceptions, but in general, I would guess that it is a good idea to keep a second round pick if I have (as a casual fan) actually heard of the guy before draft day.
Okay, so now I see that the Wolves picked Chalmers but then traded him for two future second rounders and some cash. That doesn't seem like a very good deal to me, especially if Chalmers can actually stick at PG in the NBA.
I am still disappointed that McHale traded away Chalmers for a future 2nd round pick and cash as he appeared to be one of the top guards in the draft and it is very unlikely that we'll get a similar player of his caliber in his future. Even if they do get lucky, you are losing the time value of having a player now as opposed to later.
However, Pekovic, the C looks to be an absolute stud in the future. His numbers translate to 18.3 pts and 12.0 rbs per 40 in the NBA based on his Euroleague numbers. John Hollinger, the basketball equivalent of a sabermatrician, had him as the 3rd most talented prospect in the draft.
Additionally, I still think that Love will be a better player than Mayo and was Hollinger's 2nd best player. He was much more productive than Mayo last year and is two years younger. The Pac 10 had the most draft picks this year so it wasn't as if Love was facing worse competition. He's seemingly out of shape (though some of that has to be attributed to the fact that he had to be played C) which doesn't normally equate to a superstar in the NBA but his production was ridiculous for a freshman on a team that was focused on defense. He scored at a higher rate, rebounded at three times the rate, had nearly the same assist production, and had a 33% higher point per shot taken. Hollinger has him with a higher expected PER in year 3 than Durant. Jeffery Ma of protrade, also a consultant to the Blazers, said Love will be the best player in the draft.
Chalmers' trade tempers my enthusiasm but McHale did some great work in this draft.
Yep, if Love is a player, this is a great move. But if he's not, whoa boy, what a fiasco. They could have stuck with Mayo, the consensus #3. The other thing is that Love is a 4, right? I mean, he'll play out of position here. The best player on the team is a 4.
But that assumes the consensus is right. Morrison was the consensus number 3 a couple years ago. Darko Milicic was the consensus #2 of #3 guy in 2003. Very few argued that teams were making a mistake drafting Dunleavy ahead of Stoudamire and Butler. Mayo was the age of a college junior and he couldn't average five rebounds or four assists per 40 while having a lower scoring rate than Love and, what appears to be, a lower true shooting % against almost identical competition.
Hollinger's system has been much more accurate than any other pundit's track record and even the failed projections were apparent with some scouting (Sweeney's and Love's weights are going the opposite direction being the most pertinent). Love seems to be the basketball equivalent of Nick Swisher in a number of respects. He doesn't look like a superstar in the making but his production is off the charts.
You bring up a valid point that there will be a height issue with the team if the Wolves have to shift BAJ to the 5 and Love to the 4 but the NBA is trending smaller by the minute so I am not too worried about it. Plus, the positional redundancies existed with Mayo as well so there isn't a marginal improvement or weakening by that metric. Hopefully the wolves are able to target a very talented defensive SG and SF this offseason. Collins is the worst player in the league according to PER but he is one of the best defensive C's in the game which should prove to be valuable.
The only thing that will keep Love from being a player is an injury. Meanwhile, the player many so-called experts say OJ Mayo will be most like is Chauncey Billups. A nice player, but hardly a super-star.
Plus, how happy do you think our boy OJ would've been up here in the Tundra? Bill Simmons' had plenty to say in his draft diary piece today about Mayo's body language and the reaction of his posse last night--which he likened to mourners at a funeral. Sure, Sports Guy traffics in hyperbole from time to time, but I'm willing to agree with him on this matter.
And Chauncey was younger, had a better scoring rate, assist rate, rebounding rate, Assist-to-Turnover ratio, and steal rate than Mayo.
A few things about the trade:
1- The Wolves got the BPA at 3 with Love. Love was one of the most efficient players in college ball. His Poss% to ORtg (pts/100 possession) ratio was outstanding and in a completely other league than Mayo. In other words: he had the ball on a lot of his team's possessions and he ended them in a positive way more efficiently than pretty much every other player in the country. He doesn't turn it over a lot, he gets to the line, he shoots a high percentage from the field, and he gets a ton of rebounds. Those are the four factors of winning basketball and he will make the Wolves better at all 4.
2- 6'4"ish guards who can shoot and dribble aren't hard to find. Next year, Draft Express projects the following prospects in the top 20: Ricky Rubio, Demar Derozan, Brendan Jennings, Tyreke Evans, James Harden, Darren Collison, Gerald Henderson, Stephen Curry, and Nick Calathes. All of the players are around 6'4" and with similar attributes to Mayo. There's not a single big man in the entire draft that has the skill set of Love. To compare them to some of their high-end projections: there are far fewer Wes Unselds in the history of the league than there are D Wades.
3- Cap space, cap space, cap space. 2010 is going to be the best free agent season in NBA history. The 2005 draft will be unrestricted and the 2006 draft will be restricted. Meanwhile, players like Lebron and Kobe have player options and Chris Paul, Tyson Chandler, Deron Williams, and Amare Stoudemire are all on the open market. The Wolves could have about $20 mil to spend on a max deal. Screw the cold weather, they may be one of the only teams that could pay some of these guys.
This deal is highway robbery. The Grizz traded one of the biggest perimeter threats in the league (who also rebounds and is 28) and their top pick for a type of player you can get in nearly each and every single draft. They also took on some amazingly bad contracts of useless players while giving back contracts for somewhat useful players with less years. To me, this deal is more lopsided than the Gasol deal. Memphis cleared an amazing amount of money with the Gasol deal while getting back a young point and a pick that was turned into Darrel Arthur. They'll bring over Marc Gasol and run out a starting lineup of Conley, Mayo, Gay, Arthur, and Gasol. That's not bad and the Gasol trade is what put them in position to do some of those things. With the Wolves deal, they gave away their biggest movable asset while getting a player that they could have gotten in either CDR or Chalmers in the 2nd. There's no way they couldn't have received more in return during the middle of next season when a team on the verge of the playoffs comes asking for Miller. Miller is a huge asset. 6'8" and 40% from 3...that's a nice combo.
All in all the Wolves had a great day. They completely cleaned out the pre-KG mistakes (excluding the Foye and Brewer picks which were made with KG in mind) and they went from a team of KG, malcontents, bad contracts, no draft picks (owed to Celts and Clips) to one with young players on 5 year slotted contracts, big time cap space in 2010, a solid wing in his prime, 2 big time frontcourt talents, and its future draft assets in place....and they did so in the space of a single year. Quite simply, that's amazing.
Going forward, the Wolves will have 2-3 1st rounders next year with a few young assets that can be moved for a single stud like Derozan or Evans or a player down the list like Curry or Calathes. They can then run a year more with that squad and then make a big run at a player like D-Will who can be brought in at the same time Pekovic comes over. Outside of failing to move Ratliff's deal, this FO has been on point since the trade...oh, and the Chalmers thing may be kind of an issue, but they've set themselves up nicely.
Nice comment.
The more time goes on, the more I start to like this deal. The only main problem is that it leaves the Wolves a bit weak defensively in the front court, but with a line of Jefferson/Love/Miller, they should be able to clean up on the boards.
There are a few things to take heart in defensively:
1- Love at the 4 > Gomes at the 4. It's not just that Jefferson had trouble with guys like Chandler and Howard, it's that Gomes had just a hard of time with West and Turkolu. Love was a man on an island last year in the frontcourt.
2- The Wolves were 27th in the league in offensive/defensive efficiency last year. That's bad. That's really bad. Hopefully Foye will be back up to snuff on the defensive end of the court, Brewer will be stronger, and the team's perimeter d will improve over last year's atrocity.
3- Jefferson plays better at the 5. From overall efficiency to pts/40, he's a post scorer. I know this is at the offensive end, but having a frontcourt presence like Love to play next to him should ease some of the 2 way burden.
4- Rebounding, rebounding, rebounding. You hit this one on the head.
The biggest problem the Wolves had last year on d was that their guards would get blown by and there was no one there to help. Getting blown by is no bueno. You're much better off simply letting your opponent shoot a jumper than you are playing them too tight. If the Wolves can keep their butts between their opponents and the basket, they'll be alright, as they should have a pretty damn efficient offense with 2 post players and 3 guys who can hit 40% from 3. Their goal should be an even split on off/def efficiency somewhere in the neighborhood of 108-109 points given and taken per 100 possessions. If they could do that, they could call the season a success...especially when you consider that they would have done it with a very young core and a lead guard with his 1st full year at the position. It would make them competitive each and every single night as well as put them in the same league as Cleveland, Philly, Atlanta, Indiana, Sacramento, and Portland; basically, the rung of teams right below your Utahs and Mavs. Even if they don't win a fair chunk of those games, if they can keep the efficiency numbers in that range, they'll have a successful year.
To me, this deal is more lopsided than the Gasol deal.
so, you are saying you like this deal?
Indeed. It's a fantastic deal. They got an upper-level type perimeter player in Miller and Kevin Love for a 6'4" combo guard while being able to dump salary and locker room nuts. I don't know baseball nearly as much as I do basketball but this deal seems like the reverse of the Garza/Young deal. While Young is the ultra-hyped guy with some potential issues, Garza does some things that will help the team he is going to more than what Young, a type of player that is duplicated more than a potential #1 starter and can be found much, much easier. I may be off, but this is how I, a very casual baseball fan, view the Garza/Young trade.
Mayo has been hyped since the 7th grade. I have no idea how this came to be but he's an average player. He played on an average team and took a ton of shots and ended a lot of possessions, but he didn't raise his game enough to make you think that has a player like Rose, CDR, or Chalmers couldn't have done exactly the same thing in an offense where they would have been given the keys to the car to the extent of what Mayo had given to him at USC. Had Rose carried a 30% or more Poss% at Memphis, and had he taken as many shots as Mayo...well, there are a lot of players that could be plugged into Mayo's usage stats and put up similar numbers (or better ones; look at Stephen Curry). This deal should be listed as a felony...especially when the Wolves draft a shooting guard in next year's draft who will end up with just as good of a career as Mayo.
For one final analogy, Kevin Durant won the Rookie of the Year because he was given the keys to the Seattle offense. He was allowed to be a chucker. He scored a lot of points but he also carried a 15.8 PER (average), -3.80 ppr (bad), 0.83 a/to (bad), 0.94 pts/poss (incredibly inefficient for his chuckiness), a 33 FTRate, and a 15 3pRate. Mayo was allowed to be a similar player at USC. He got more 3s, but after that, they were essentially the same type of player: a jump shooting perimeter player who doesn't rebound his position well, doesn't get to the line as much as he should, turns the ball over quite a bit, and who is a very inefficient scorer. Unfortunately for him, he should have an even tougher time putting up numbers in Memphis as he would have had in Minny. Conley and Gay are going to take too many perimeter opportunities from the guy and he'll have a tough time finding a rhythm in that offense above and beyond what was already provided by the guy Memphis traded away: Mike Miller.
Memphis = teh stoopid.
I'm not sure that Delmon Young makes for a good analogy with OJ Mayo. There's the positional thing, where Mayo is a combo guard (which I assume is because he probably doesn't have the skills to play the point?) and Young is a corner OF who can be pressed into CF duties but is not very good at it. But beyond that, when Delmon was younger, his statistical record was really pretty great and the stats guys absolutely loved his performance. It sounds like you can't really make a case for OJ Mayo having a similarly great performance record at a similar juncture in his career.
I think the driving force behind the Garza/Young trade was value today vs. value tomorrow. Garza was the safer player because he was closer to being a productive guy right now (and the Rays wanted to compete right now) and Delmon potentially has a better ceiling (though I am certainly on record of being skeptical of this ceiling) that will take longer to reach (and the Twins were aiming more for 2009/2010 than they were for 2008.) Since Memphis and Minnesota are both in long-term building modes, it seems like a different type of trade in principle.
Well that goes to show you how much I pay attention to baseball these days. I didn't know Delmon was that highly regarded.
The point I was trying to make is that solid hitting corner outfielders and nice shooting 6'4" guards are easy finds compared to top of the rotation starters and big men with skills. Again, I'm not sure if Garza is that type of pitcher (and I clearly didn't know about Young's pedigree), but basketball-wise, players like Mayo come out almost every year. Next year Tyreke Evans and Nick Calathes will be the combo guards of note, with Evans maybe getting the chance to do at Memphis what Mayo did at USC in terms of usage rate and %shots. Everything Mayo could have brought to the team outside of the chance of him being a decent perimeter defender was already in place or was put in place by the trade. He'll have a tough time matching Foye's production, let alone Miller's. It's a baffling trade and the only reason there is a discussion about it working out in Memphis' favor is because Mayo was in Sports Illustrated in the 7th grade. I'll never get the amount of hype associated with the guy. It's like getting worked up over a Toyota Camry.