With the NBA trade deadline coming up this Thursday afternoon, ESPN has added a trade machine to their website. This allows fans and analysts alike to project possible trades, which is a good way to waste time at work.
Unfortunately, while it's a lot of fun to play with, the machine only takes into consideration salary when deciding whether or not the trade would be successful. As long as your custom fantasy trade doesn't put a team further over the salary cap than they had previously been, you can do anything.
For example, let's take the whole idea of LeBron going to the Knicks this summer. I don't think he'll do it, but that's another article for another time. Say the Knicks want him right now and nothing else will do. According to the trade machine, LeBron James for former teammate Larry Hughes would go through.
That kind of move would be franchise suicide. James has a player efficiency rating (PER) of 31.6, while Hughes only scores a 12.5.
To make things fair, however, the trade machine does project how many wins or losses would be altered by each move. In this case, the Knicks would win 10 more games, while the Cavaliers would lo ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NBA
Article written by Ben Aikey
The ESPN NBA Trade Machine: Not Logical, but Still Fun
February 15th, 2010 by Ben Aikey Leave a reply »
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