King Of The Trade Machine

I Smell BS: How Can A Trade Machine Piccaso Only Get 66 Wins, Must Have Been His Blue, Not Green Period
The Pest is on vacation on beautiful Jeju Island, South Korea, and has not been posting many articles. I was however reading Bill Simmon's latest mailbag and happened upon this Q/A:

Q: Ever messed around with the NBA Trade Machine and tried to determine what trade would give the absolute highest possible increase in John Hollinger's projected wins to a team? Ultimately, I was able to add 58 projected wins to the Knicks by sacking Portland, Cleveland and the Lakers of their valuables. Please don't ask me how long that took. My challenge to you is simple: TOP THAT.
-- Jon, Edison, N.J.

SG: Jon, Jon, Jon, Jon, Jon … you made two ginormous mistakes here. First, you brazenly challenged the Picasso of the Trade Machine. Never a smart move. Second, you challenged someone whose profession allows him to waste copious amounts of time figuring out dumb things to, as you so foolishly put it, "TOP THAT." Your big mistake was not pillaging the Zombie Sonics; for my fake four-team deal, I used the Zombies, Cavaliers and Magic to "TOP THAT" and ended up adding 66 projected wins to the Knicks. Good news, Knicks fans: Not only did I get you LeBron James, Dwight Howard, Rashard Lewis, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Jeff Green, Mo Williams, Delonte West, J.J. Hickson, Jordan Hill and Wilson Chandler on next season's team, but you're projected to go 96 and minus-14. Things are looking up! As always, never challenge the Trade Machine Picasso.

A Real Life NBA GM Making A Selection At The 2009 Draft, Not To Be Confused With Donald Sutherland Playing One, Or A Body Snatcher, On TVSomething seems off... 66 wins out of 82 and one Sports Guy talking trash? Lots of teams have won more then 66 games so it must be possible, right? I've heard SG talk about his ESPN Trade Machine prowess on many occasions, so to the trade machine I went to try and "top" Piccasso himself. In about 5-10 minutes came up with this four team/15 player gem between the Knicks, Hornets, Heat and Cavs.








http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=ncecza

Here is my entry, Sports Guy, and random SG mailbag participant. A +75 win improvement making the Knicks the greatest team in history. It doesn't even matter that they're weak at center, they can play small with Beasley playing the 5 and dominate the competition as no one would possibly keep up with them.

Want to read the makings of such a master stroke? Okay... don't want to read it? Does not matter.

Step one... imagine that all the GM's in the league have been taken by aliens (Invasion Of The Body Snatchers/Simpsons aliens will do) and replaced with Isiah Thomas, Chris Wallace or a genetic FrankenGM clone of the two of them. Except the Knicks. Since they already employed Isiah they get to employ, ah, anyone. Lets say you reading this.

Then 'you' convince Cleveland to trade Lebron James, J.J. Hickson, Delonte West and Mo Williams for Cutino Mobley, Chris Duhon and Eddy Curry. 26 million. Check.

RRRAAARRRR!!! A Blood Thirsty, Meat Obsessed Member Of The Living Dead, Not To Be Confused With Cuttino Mobley In A Knicks UniformThen get on the horn with the Heat, maybe meet the Isiah Wallace splice-clone over a Scotch or two and let it drop that you think Dwayne Wade and Michael Beasley are about to bust their ACL's in a double career ending collision. Since you are good friends though (and New York will never fire a GM) you'll be happy to help him keep his job by giving him Al Harrington, Jarred Jefferies and Hinton Armstrong (who are about to blow up!!!!) in exchange for those woes. 16.4 million check.

Except those dang CBA agreements won't let this trade work. No worries. Just call up the Hornets and offer to trade Chris Paul straight up for Larry Hughes, you know, since their 13.5 and 13.6 million salaries match. Only if he agrees to send Hinton Armstrong to the Heat while giving you David West to make the whole deal work. Since New Orleans GM is actually a Zombie from Night Of The Living Dead you can win them over by throwing in a hunk of fresh meat and its all good. 13.6 million, check.

At Least You've Still Got A Virtual Crown Sports Guy... And Sexy White Nipple BumpsWhat does this tell us? The New York Knicks have nearly 60 million dollars worth of players on their team who can't play basketball all that well, or in Cutino Mobley's case can't play basketball at all. And that's before we get into Darko Milicic who's 7.5 million is not able to be traded due to CBA rules. The Knicks realistically are probably the worst run franchise in hoop and that's incredible considering that the NBA has a team named "The Clippers" on it.

It also tells us one more thing. The undisputed King Of The Trade Machine presently resides here, at fullcourtpest.com ... unless someone out there can 'top that'. +75 is getting pretty high, but can anyone push it higher? Is a perfect season possible? Take the belt below in the comments.