Money, Money, Money

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

Utah trades Carlos Boozer (1 yr 12.5 mil) to Miami and Matt Harpring (1 yr 6.5 mil) to OKC. Miami trades James Jones (1 yr 4. mil) to Utah and Udonis Haslem (1 yr 7.1 mil) to OKC. OKC trades Damian Wilkins (1 yr 3.3 mil) to Miami and Nick Collison (2 yrs 12.5 mil) to Utah.

The driving force behind a trade like this is money. Utah is close to the luxury tax and Paul Millsap just signed a big offer sheet with the Blazers. To further complicate matters the Blazers have front loaded the contract so that Utah would have to pay him over 11 million this year to keep him. If they can't find a way to trade salary, they probably can not match the offer. This trade would allow the Jazz to dump 8 million and match the offer for Millsap. Once a team would get past this coming year in the contract offered to Millsap the salaries are not so bad because it is so heavily front loaded. Nick Collison is a hard worker who gets the most out of his talent and he would fit well in Utah. James Jones replicates what Kyle Korver does (shoot) but he is a productive player. Not really a fair trade talent wise for Boozer but both players that they would recieve are productive and it gives them the finanical flexibility to retain Millsap.

Oklahoma City essentially pays just over 3 million to move Collison's 6.75 cap number for 2010. They do replace him with a capable player in Udonis Haslem. Matt Harpring will most likely not play this year so his salary is wasted but Damien Wilkins wasn't going to play either so talent wise this works out fine for OKC. Most likely they will be involved for Utah to save significant money because the only other team with cap room left is the Blazers. Alternatively Utah could find a team with a large trade exception that was willing to take on salary.

Miami would get a real post presence that they have been desperately missing since Shaq was traded. They take the largest salary hit of more than 5 million (10 million with the luxury tax). This might be too much for Miami to consider the deal. However if it would cause Dwayne Wade to sign and extension then it would definitely be worth it. Boozer, Wade and the lure of South Beach could cause free agents to flock to Miami. Even if Wade re-signed and Boozer took a deal starting at 12 million, they would have only 40 million committed in 2010 (although they would have only 4 players under contract). The downside of this trade for Miami is that Boozer is not a center and with Michael Beasley at the 3 the Heat would be very weak defensively. Miami also could send a combination of players with small salaries back to OKC in order to lessen their financial burden although it would make the trade less attractive for OKC.