As for players, I don’t know who would be available. This is the time last year where Casey Jacobsen, Dan Dickau and Sean Livingston were renounced. The Blazers could renounce someone like Kopponen (they’ve already renounced Frye). Projects, specialists and Euros are sort of what to look for here.

After a lunch break of trade machining,

Here’s what I got.

http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=mhtga3

Woah .. did that blow your mind or WHAT?

I know it’s crazy but here’s the stuff:

For New Orleans:
Lets them shed 4 mil of their cap for the coming year and a whopping 11.350 mil (Chandler’s contract) the year after that. That’s about as much salary shedding as they’re gonna get, seriously.
 
With this trade they’ll have 26 mil less on their payroll than they have now in just one year after the end of the coming season. If they don’t do anything they would have shed 15mil anyway though.

So practically this enables them to offer someone a max deal next summer and only go ofter the cap about 2 mil (they’re 8 mil over it right now) OR more probably offer 2 very good players a 7-8mil deal to round out the rotation.

Moreover, it let’s them keep their current core intact (except Chandler).

Here’s what their rotation would look like; keep in mind they could turn it around quickly with signing 2 players to a 7mil deal to fill the holes.

Paul/Bassy
Peterson/Posey/Toaster
Stojakovich/Posey/Toaster
West/Songalia/Smith
Etan Thoms/Songalia/Madsen

Would off course mean a big downgrade….

For us it’s obvious I think

Adds some veterans to our back court to keep us on track in Butler, Daniels and Brown.
Adds some very good young players in Wright and Armstrong

Chandler is only 26 so he could be our veteran guy when the rest of the core is maturing, if he gells with the rest he’s a keeper.

If Rubio doesn’t come over, Daniels can help bridge the gap at PG the coming year.
With the addition of Armstrong and Chandler, Jefferson and Love don’t have to be on the court together as much.

Rotation:

Flynn(25)/Daniels(23)
Ellington(25)/Butler(23)
Brewer(25)/Wright(23)
Love(28)/Jefferson(20)
Jefferson(13)/Chandler(17)/Armstrong(8)

With Butler as a reserve for SG
With Gomes as a reserve for SF and PF

Think that’d be a killer big-man rotation…
Armstrong is the weak link here so we should be looking to trade him for a decent SG (or combo) for when Butler goes away that would be great.

When Daniels goes away we hopefully have Rubio at the Point and the Combo mentioned above as backup..

Off course Hornets would have to be in totally cost cutting mode for this to happen BUT It’s okay to dream right?

…hurts a few teams. NOLA and Washington each got about $2 mil extra on top of what they had.