I didn’t feel the need to touch this but enough of you have asked me my thoughts that I figured I’d chime in. First, the source:
According to a league source, the Rockets had preliminary talks with the Nets last week about Omer Asik and Jeremy Lin. Talks never gained any steam, but the source said the Rockets were doing their due diligence and Williams’ name came up. The Nets balked because one of the main reasons Pierce and Garnett agreed to a trade to Brooklyn was to play with Williams, according to the source. Williams, who signed a five-year, $98 million extension in 2012, was playing well upon returning from an ankle injury, and the Nets were looking better.
Multiple other sources have since come out and confirmed the report, including former Times insider, Howard Beck.
My initial reaction is to think there’s no way Daryl Morey would want any part of the injury-prone Williams. He’s owed $21 million in 2016 and has an early termination option worth $22 million in 2017. And he hasn’t even been that good, sporting a PER of 17.1 on the year. By comparison, that’s a tad lower than Jeremy Lin. On the flip side, when healthy, there’s no denying that Williams is one of the most talented point men in the league. He can also shoot (39% on 3’s), nullifying the co-existence problems that would occur in an oft-discussed Rondo scenario. Harden, Williams, and Dwight Howard would be the most formidable ‘Big 3’ in the league. Here’s the thing. In a normal vacuum, there’d be no chance of this ever happening. If they got Williams, this would be their team through the Dwight era with no wiggle room financially for improvements. Forget about Kevin Love. The Rockets also don’t have any need for offense – the offense is doing quite well, thank you very much. But these aren’t normal times. In normal times, you’d just flip Omer Asik for his actual worth, say Thad Young and a pick or whatever, and keep on chugging along. Now, with the best offer for Asik amounting to a silver platter of horse dung (ie: Brandon Bass and Courtney Lee), the Turkish big man’s value is pretty much nonexistent. Trading for Williams would be the Morey equivalent of not only buying low on a bonafide superstar but also realizing the best possible scenario from a situation gone completely wrong (ie: Asik). And despite the numbers, Williams is far better than Lin, especially as a facilitator. Houston could really use a pure point guard to set up Dwight Howard closer to the hoop now that the big man has rounded into form. The report states a reluctance on Brooklyn’s part to part ways with Williams due to the ties with Pierce and Garnett. But Brooke Lopez’s injury would surely make the Nets more agreeable to shipping out Pierce and Garnett. Swapping Williams for Asik/Lin would be a great head start on starting over, financially, with those two latter players set to expire the summer after next. I don’t think this is a deal that would ever happen. But at the same time, I didn’t think Omer Asik’s value would plummet to ‘zero.’View this discussion from the forum.
