David Aldridge reports:
Wednesday marks the official start of the trade season, with players who signed free agent deals last summers eligible as of Dec. 15 to be traded. Some GMs around the league believe that Milwaukee, which made substantial commitments this offseason to the likes of Drew Gooden (five years, $32 million) and John Salmons (five years, $39 million), may look to shed some salaries, but GM John Hammond insisted last week that the Bucks just needed to get healthy.
Right now, teams are making their due diligence calls, but no signficant offers. But one mame that is eminently available is Memphis’ Hasheem Thabeet, who isn’t one of the ’10 free agent signees but is getting shopped hard by the Grizzlies, who have their center of the future in Marc Gasol. So the Grizz are looking to cut bait with the second pick in the ’09 Draft, who’s already had an NBA D-League stint, as soon as possible.
The lone instance I recall watching Thabeet comes to mind, from the March 18th meeting with the Grizzlies:
The box score shows Hasheem Thabeet as having only 4 blocks, but it seemed as if he had 10. The big man was everywhere, establishing his presence from the very start. I’m not ready to don him the next Dikembe Mutombo quite yet, but I definitely feel he will be an impact player in this league, at least at some point in the future. The sooner we erase this stigma associated with the D-league, the sooner more organizations can glean benefit from its existence.
An ESPN Insider report today speculated on a hypothetical swap of Thabeet for Sebastian Telfair. The Grizzlies center will likely amount to nothing, but if the hypothetical is any indication of what it may take to land the former #2 overall pick, the Rockets should put in a call. With their championship hopes in doubt, Houston needs to be looking to the future, and stockpiling low-risk/high-reward young players is the way to do it.
