Webber's Departure

So far this season, Billy King has traded the face of the franchise for the last 10 years, brought back the coach that coached them to their last Finals appearance, and now paid Chris Webber almost 30 million dollars not to play for our team anymore. I'm not ok with the terrible landslide that Billy King orchestrated to get the team into this position, but I am ok with the AI trade and bringing Brown back as an assistant VP to the GM or whatever the hell his title is. I wouldn't be opposed to him coaching again here down the road, either. I also believe Andre Miller will get traded before the trade deadline, and possibly a few other players. The only players I can't see being traded are Iggy, Korver, Green, Williams (whom Brown drafted out of high school), Carney and possibly Dalembart (and Joe Smith's contract). No one else would surprise me.

More on Webber:
I hate buyouts. It's paying something (in this case a lot) for nothing. Every basketball GM could tell Webber was declining on Sacramento, so Billy King has no excuse for not seeing this coming.

The funny thing is, while Webber has essentially no value to this franchise this season, being a young rebuilding team, he will have value next season as an expiring contract. He's essentially last season's Joe Smith with 3 times the contract.

Let's look at the facts:
The Sixers save about 5 Mil with the buyout, and King claims that figure, along with Iverson's departure, will get them under the luxury tax threshold. So adjust that for the tax they don't pay, and I don't know the specifics, but possibly add the money they get back, and we'll take a stab and say it saves $6.5 Mil. The other positive is the obvious removal of a distraction, and the increased playing time for the younger guys.

The question, however, will be would keeping Webber until next year, and trading his expiring contract, net more value to the Sixers than the proposed $6.5 Mil and other benefits? If this were baseball, the Sixers could pay 3/4 of his contract (essentially the buyout) and trade him to a contender for a 2nd round pick and a young backup player or something similar. Instead he gets to sign with Detroit for a veteran's exception or something. If the Sixers could have gotten under the salary cap this offseason (not impossible, even with Webber if they traded Miller, Ollie, etc.), then they could have acted as the third team facilitator in next year's superstar trade (like this year's Iverson trade, possibly Garnett next year), and provided a team under the cap (a requirement so salaries don't have to line up), a 20+ Million dollar expiring contract (almost matches Garnett exactly, but one year shorter), and they could have gotten a pick or a young player in the process. Webber would also be ENTIRELY off the books from the moment of the trade (even at the trade deadline, it would save them 5 Mil +). I'm not sure how feasible this whole thing would be (I'm no expert on the NBA's detailed trading rules), but I just wanted to illustrate the value of an expiring contract.

So what does this mean in the end? The jury is still out. Holding onto Webber may have brought a extra pick in the '08 draft or maybe a young player and still saving a few million though trading his contract, but getting rid of him now gives you instant savings as well as changing the culture of the team. I just hate to see him helping the Pistons in the playoffs this year while collecting a huge paycheck from the Sixers.

In the end, the Sixers are still dismantling and will not even begin to rebuild a team until the draft and then once Webber's contract comes off the books. We'll check back in around the trade deadline, but no one's expecting anything until at least '09 (even if they landed Oden).

In other NBA news, I received a random text message last week stating, "Saw you got 29 last night- move over Arenas! Congrats from all of us. Say hi to your pop. Kevin, Mona, & crew." After being really confused, I realized with the points and Arenas reference that my number was being confused with that off a Wizards player. I checked the box score to find out that the player is Caron Butler. So if Kevin, Mona, or crew happen to be reading, Caron did not receive your congratulations, and you should double check his number in your phone. My basketball career ended with senior year of CYO basketball, though I think I may have had 29 once in my life.