Chris Sheridan Blows (My Mind)

Officially, the NBA trading deadline is a little over a month away, but ESPN's Chris Sheridan is stoking the flames already. He's got a column about "superstars" who could be on the move, and I really have to disagree with his logic concerning the Sixers. At the very least, I think his information is spotty and his thought-process convoluted. Here's the bit about the Sixers, in its entirety...

Samuel Dalembert, 76ers
All the speculation surrounding Philadelphia's next trade has centered around Andre Miller -- though we hear that Gordan Giricek will actually be the next player the Sixers move. But if Philadelphia is going to make a hard run at Elton Brand on the free-agent market this coming summer (assuming he opts out of his contract), the Sixers will need to clear Dalembert's $10.25 salary for next season off their books. Dalembert, though, also has a 7.5 percent trade kicker, which makes him very tough to move.

First of all, thanks for calling Sammy a star, Chris. We appreciate it. Unfortunately, that's where the logic in this snippet ends. Apparently, Sheridan hears that Gordan Giricek will be the next Sixer moved. This makes zero sense. Actually, it makes less sense than that. The Sixers didn't acquire Giricek to contribute, quite the contrary, they acquired him to let him languish on the bench and come off the books at the end of the year. His warm body isn't the asset, it's his contract. The thing that makes the Giricek rumors even more unbelievable is that there's a restriction on trading him...

Trade/Claim: If a team is over the cap and receives a player in a trade or claims a player off of waivers, they cannot trade the player in combination with other players for 2 months. The player can be traded by himself. (The Korver trade was made official on December 30th, 2 months later is after the deadline.)

The only way the Sixers could trade him was if they traded him without including another player in the deal. So if Sheridan's sources are to be believed, Ed Stefanksi is either looking for an identical expiring contract to trade Giricek for, or he's looking to take back a longer deal, with a cap number for this season of at most $4.6M. Wouldn't that pretty much negate the Korver trade? I doubt they'd be able to get a player of Korver's caliber back in such a deal unless they included a pick from their end which would completely negate the Korver deal.

Giricek may be on his way out of town, but it isn't going to be in a trade. If anything, I think the Sixers may just buy him out. At this point, he's just taking up a bench spot that a younger guy (Herbert Hill) is going to need shortly. They're paying him to rot on the bench right now, may as well pay him a little less to do it somewhere else and still have the $4M come off the books at the end of the year.

As for the rest of Sheridan's piece, I don't really follow the logic. He starts out by saying the Sixers are more likely to move Giricek than Andre Miller (without giving a reason), then says that if the Sixers want to make a play for Elton Brand, they have to get Dalembert's $10.25M off the books for next season. I'm not sure I agree with any part of that statement. Why is it more important to move Dalembert's $10.25M than Andre Miller's $9.99M. Wouldn't Miller's contract create enough cap space to sign someone like Brand, or is Sheridan saying that the extra $226,000 would make all the difference in the world. He then goes on to mention the 7.5% trade kicker in Dalembert's contract. So, to sum up his "logic" the Sixers probably won't trade Miller for unknown reasons, they MUST trade Sammy, even though it'll be really tough to find a trade partner because of his trade kicker. I'm not holding my breath on these rumors, honestly the thought process behind them is just really sloppy.