The Big Deal or Big Deal

I have had two reactions to the mega Cleveland-Seattle-Chicago deal:

1) People are way overplaying Ben Wallace's impact at this stage of his career.
2) How did Cleveland manage to get all the good players in the trade?

Honestly, I am not a huge fan of any player involved in the trade, so I do not know how much of an impact the deal will have ultimately. However, the trade creates a number of interesting questions?

1. Does Ben Wallace come off the bench for the Cavs?
2. Are the Bulls just going to let Ben Gordon walk?
3. By the time the Sonics draft all these players with the picks they have acquired, they will have to sign Kevin Durant to an extension. After playing his first 2-3 years on a team building for the future, will he want to wait for these youngsters, many of whom will be 19 when drafted, to develop?
4. Are the Sonics creating the same rebuilding project the Bulls are apparently trying to scrap? After all, the Bulls built through several drafts in a row, acquiring Hinrich, Gordon, Deng, Thomas, Duhon, Noah and Sefolosha. Now, is this deal, and the potential of allowing Gordon to leave, an admission that it was nice, but it did not work?

Cleveland
I think the most important player in the trades is Joe Smith. I like Smith. He's not what you imagine when you think of the #1 overall pick in an NBA Draft, but he is a consistent scorer, smart defender and good shooter. He alone is a big upgrade over Drew Gooden in the short term. Gooden is active and an aggressive rebounder, but he's not the #2 guy on a championship team and Anderson Vareajo is more active and probably better defensively.

Wally Szcerbiak is a great acquisition as the shooter LeBron has been missing, and Delonte West capably fills that role too. While neither adds anything defensively, they certainly make James' job easier on the offensive end.

The best news is that they really did not lose anything. Gooden is the biggest piece, and they got Wallace and Smith to take his spot. Hughes has the most potential, but he never developed into James' Robin.

It is amazing, however, that taking two players who have played the last two seasons for two of the worst teams in the NBA (last year's Celtics and this year's Sonics) can actually improve your team, but I have to believe Wally and Delonte make the Cavs a better team, especially when coupled with Smith and Wallace (even they hail from the league's second most disappointing team this year).

West, Wally, James, Wallace and Z with Gibson, Devin Brown, Aleksander Pavolvic, Vareajo, Smith might be the East's best roster. Is it enough to overcome Boston's Big Three + a bunch of guys who play hard or the Pistons' veteran savvy? I don't know. I still like Detroit's starting five too much. But, this Cavaliers team is better than last year's version which made it to the Finals, for whatever that's worth.

Chicago
Well, I said at the beginning of year that the Bulls had peaked as a team and the Bulls' fans came on this site and disagreed. I said trading Tyson Chandler to sign Ben Wallace was a huge mistake. Now, they have ridded themselves of Wallace's contract (kind of), but did they create even more issues? Basically, they traded Wallace's contract for Hughes' contract. However, Hughes is much like the departed Jamal Crawford and much like Ben Gordon, who wants a lot of money this summer. I cannot imagine a team trading for Hughes and then re-signing Gordon, so much of this deal's success or failure depends on what the Bulls can acquire in a sign-and-trade with Gordon this summer. Heck, Shannon Brown could be a less expensive Gordon if given the minutes to see if he can produce. Simmons is now a former lottery pick who has been traded twice in five months, which is never a good sign.

This trade can't make the Bulls much worse, as they were a disappointment already, and now the young guys have to play, meaning we'll see how good Noah and Thomas are. Losing Wallace does not hurt too much, as his skills and those of Noah overlapped, to a degree. Now, the Bulls are getting younger, but acquiring Hughes combined with the paydays looming for Gordon and Deng leaves them without too much flexibility. It will be interesting to see how Gooden and Hughes fit in the rest of the season and what the Bulls do in the off-season to make this work.

Seattle
They deal a couple good players and receive nothing but eventual cap space. Nothing much going on here. Despite Durant's presence, they are quickly becoming irrelevant, though Seattle fans, or Oklahoma City fans, should spend a lot of time watching high school and college basketball to see who will be on the roster three years from now.