All along I planned to trade for a guard as I knew as the season went on, my low minutes high fppm guys would become less and less reliable.


There were only a few teams during the year with the abillity to trade a surplus guard.

First Shawn and I couldn't find a trade I liked.

TJT was a possibility I think but I never made a real offer since he'd need a guard who plays minutes back.

I really wanted to make a trade with LABeat for Sessions and Barea, but he kept barking at my offers and then traded Sessions away.

So looking at the landscape, Cenario was the only guy left and we were discussing Pierce and Hill for Javale, but Cenario wasn't comfortable with that based on Hill's recent rise. He then suggested adding Ibaka and Gortat, which actually makes sense for me since Gortat is FC which I would have needed after trading Javale. He's been all over the place this year (Gortat) but last year was high 1.2s and there's not much else in Phoenix so I was fine with adding them. Watson was a throw in, his numbers look great but I think Watson's going to have rotation problems going forward and I was more comfortable keeping Bayless over Watson.

The way I see this is yes Javale is the best player in the deal, but he's been in the teens for minutes some games, and I'm top 3 in wasted minutes this year. Pierce should be solid as my last forward to prevent wasting any minutes (which is the worst thing you can do in this league imo). Gortat and Ibaka to me is a wash, and Hill is a big upgrade and plays a ton of minutes which I desparately needed.

Summary- it's the kind of deal that rich teams have the luxury to make and other, more desperate teams have to make