Looks like Simmons was reading what you guys were saying and wants to reply. Here is what he wrote to me in an email.
Hey, just found out about your site this week, good luck with it!
Kindly remind the people on your message boards the value of cap flexibility -- all the trades I suggested were for players with cheap or expiring contracts (Van Exel, Walker, Spree, etc.) that enabled us to dump the salaries of Raef, Ricky, Blount or even Paul. Just look at what the Suns did with the Marbury-Penny trade, they turned their entire franchise around. I don't think this team, as constituted, can compete for a title, and they have way too much money committed to a nucleus of four players (Ricky, Blount, PP and Raef) that isn't so hot. I would rather see them start over and build around the young guys and some cap space. Everyone points to Atlanta as a "See, there's a team that didn't benefit from cap space!" team, but Utah got Boozer, Denver got K-Mart, Washington got Arenas, Phoenix got Nash and Detroit was able to trade for Rasheed at the deadline - just in the last 2 years - by using expiring contracts or clearing cap space to change the direction of their team.
Just look at what happened with the Bobcats this summer - they never would have been dumb enough to take Ricky's contract, or LaFrentz's contract, in the expansion draft. Why would you when you can just plug in guys who are 75% as good and make 1/10th the money? Anyway, I want to see this team compete for a title and it's not happening with the group they have now. In my opinion, we have two keepers (Big Al and Allen) and two possible keepers (West and Perkins) as well as two cheap rotation guys (Welsch and McCarty). Everyone else is expendable. Even Pierce.
Best of luck with the blog.
--SIMMONS