Everyone is discussing potential Chris Paul trades, since of course this is the huge big news of the NBA right now, and even though they are all just for fun and not many actually want to trade him, it is worth discussing whether the team is better off going forward with the team’s future with CP3 or DC2 as its pg.

Yes, it would be great to have both but there are some glaring needs, i.e the SF position, and frontcourt depth, and trading one of the two looks to be the teams best option to gain some assets from other teams.
There are two ways to look at this I believe:

1)  Trading Chris Paul most likely means we are going to add okafor and his contract to get young potential pieces for the future

2)  Trade Dc with our expirings to get CP another all-star on the team.

The reason I believe a Chris Paul trade would only be for young talent rather than for another all-star and good players is that I do not think it would make sense for any team to trade for Chris if they give up their best players.  If a team did this such as the Charlotte rumors, they would likely give up gerald wallace and/or stephen jackson and then be left with no one surrounding Chris.  Essentially they would be giving their talent away to have chris stay 2 years and bail on them.  Becuase of this I really feel the only teams with legitimate “good” basketball strategies to trade for chris paul are ones already with an all-star with young pieces and or large expiring contracts.

So with all the ideas of trading CP3 for another star out of the way, we have to examine the idea of keeping DC, and building around him thornton and our younger guys.  Now if we get rid of paul we must move okafor with.  Even though i like him as a player, if you decide to build around young players you cant have that huge contract weighing team options down.  So with chris and meka gone the must positions for us to build with DC and MT is a good young center.  Ideal candidates: Brook Lopez, Marc Gasol, maybe Bynum, i dont trust his knees though, nor Odens.  A good young small forward would be nice, but finding a combo of center and sf on the same team would be tough (3 team trade possibly). Many picks will be neccesary, and probably a back-up pg and expirings as well.

Now the word “Rebuild” might sound scary but with a young core of say a lopez thornton collison and pondexter with a solid forward like west at a good cheap contract I really do not see us in that horrible of a situation.

However, I would really like to move off of the Paul trade topic and focus on what we should really do.  Move collison with our amazing expiring contract PEJA.  Expiring are never as valuable in the offseason as they are towards the deadline because teams want to see how players play together and if they will have a realistic shot at the playoffs.  We have heard of Granger possibilities and still I do not believe this to be as big of a stetch as many people might think.  The Pacers drafter george who is the same player as granger and they need a pg.  Yes they have alot of expiring contracts, but hey doesnt having an extra 15 mil off your books sound nice to?  Getting granger obviously depends on alot of things happening, such as the Pacers sucking again (still likely), george and stephenson showing lots of promise but dont play well with Granger, and maybe a PG injury happening so they are even more desperate for a PG.

Moving on from the Granger possibilities since I know many dont think this to be a possibility, it is apparent that if we trade Collison we package him with an expiring to make him that much more valuable and we need, need, need a scoring SF with a deadly 3 point shot who can run and pop in transition with paul.
With that said I believe the only untouchable is MT and D.West if we keep paul since if he is gone i dont think thatll make papa paul very happy.

Tell me what you think?