Ultimately, we lost a guy who could have possibly contributed to our playoff run. Nearly everyone in PDX thought the Blazers would be fighting with OKC for that top spot in the NW this year, and we figured that this would be a good year for us in the playoffs as well. Teams like ours should not trade potentially productive players for draft picks. It was Cho's first move, but a dumb one.
The Bayless trade kind of came out of nowhere, and it was based on three assumptions - which have all turned out to be wrong. Those assumptions were:
1) Armon Johnson, after a decent summer league and training camp was ready to assume the back-up PG role.
2) The team would be healthy, and therefore, there wouldn't be enough minutes to go around. Based on 1, this left Bayless the odd man out.
3) New Orleans would be worse than they are, likely a late lottery team, or at best a 7th or 8th seed. That would have resulted in the pick being in the 11 - 15 range.
I suppose there was a 4th factor, but I don't think it justifies giving away a young, fairly productive player - moving Bayless freed up more minutes for Rudy, which made him happy. If Roy had been healthy, the plan was Roy and Miller starting and getting the bulk of the minutes at the guard positions. Johnson would back up the PG spot, Matthews and Rudy would split the back-up SG minutes, with Matthews getting the bulk of his minutes at the back-up SF spot. And, that would have left Bayless and Mills fighting for garbage time minutes - something that would not have made Bayless happy.
Well, with Johnson clearly not ready, and Roy injured, that whole scenario goes out the window. There would have more PT for Bayless. At the very least, he would be getting Patty's minutes, and probably a few of Rudy's. too. And, if it comes down to Mills or Bayless, I'd rather have Bayless. They are both chuckers that are undersized SGs, but Bayless is less undersized than Mills and in addition to hoisting jumpers at a high rate, Bayless also drives the lane and gets to the foul line.
Neither player really shoots well enough to justify their volume of shot attempts, but Bayless shoots both better and less often than Mills. Although he plays on an extremely slow paced team, Mills averages 15.0 FGA/36 minutes. That makes him second on the Blazers, trailing only LaMarcus Aldridge, in FGA/36. Do you really want a guy with a 0.394 FG% and 0.291 3FG% jacking up that many shots? I don't. Bayless' numbers aren't great, but they are certainly better than Patty's. Even though he plays on a team with a much faster paced offense, Bayless attempts fewer GFA/36 than Mills (13.1 FGA/36 for Toronto, 12.9 FGA/36 for the season). And, he shoots a higher percentage (0.427 FG% and 0.342 3FG% for Toronto, 0.414 FG% and 0.322 3FG% total).
Given the choice, I'd much rather have Bayless than Mills. Bayless is a better player who can provide back-up minutes at both guard positions. Mills is strictly an sub-miniature SG in an undersized PG body. But that's a bit of 20/20 hindsight. I didn't know Roy was going to be injured at the time Bayless was traded? Did Cho? If he did, it was a bad trade. If he didn't, than why not? Isn't that part of his job, too?
BNM
