The NBA Offseason is in Full Swing
Owner James Dolan is weighing the future of Phil Jackson as New York Knicks President, league sources tell @TheVertical. Story online soon.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojVerticalNBA) June 28, 2017
After Chris Paul agreed to opt-in on contract, Clippers are trading All-Star guard to the Houston Rockets, league sources tell @TheVertical
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojVerticalNBA) June 28, 2017
WOJ BOMBS! I love this guy so much. It’s getting to the point where I flinch every time I see a tweet from his account. Anyways, NBA free agency starts on Saturday, but some teams are already making waves.
Woj bomb number one for today is Phil Jackson and the Knicks agreeing to part ways. I can’t even imagine how happy Knicks fans were when this news broke early this morning. I almost felt happy for them. Melo is most likely still going to be gone, according to Woj, but this move probably means Kristaps Porzingas won’t be going anywhere. Jackson was the one who was advocating for the team to move him, so now that he’s gone I’d be shocked to see them let go of such a great young talent. The only reason he was going to be traded in the first place is that Phil Jackson is petty and got offended that ‘Staps didn’t show up to his exit interview. I probably wouldn’t have shown up either if I were Kristaps, the team showed no sense of direction and probably made you feel like the walls were crumbling down. Can’t say I blame him. This is a step in the right direction for New York, but they still have a lot of work to do. They have arguably the worst owner in NBA history still running the show, so it’s going to be hard to get anything productive done while he’s around. But getting rid of Jackson will help for sure.
Next on the list of Woj Bombs and probably the biggest news of the day is the trade that sent Chris Paul to Houston in exchange for basically the Rocket’s entire roster outside of James Harden. CP3 informed the Clippers that he was going to leave them in free agency for Houston so he opted into his contract, allowing them to trade him instead so they wouldn’t lose him for nothing, according to Woj. This breakup was destined to happen, as it was reported after the trade that CP3 and Doc Rivers’ relationship wasn’t great. Apparently, Doc refused to include his son Austin Rivers in a trade that would’ve landed them Melo, and Paul didn’t really like that. So now that CP3 is gone, Blake Griffin has to be next on the list of Clippers All-Stars to be departing from LA. I can’t see a reason for him to stay beside the money he could make with Paul gone. It’s a big reason, but I think he’ll make the right choice and give himself a better chance to win somewhere else.
For Houston, they are getting an all-star talent to pair with James Harden, but is it the right fit? Both of these guys are extremely ball-dominant, as they need the ball in their hands a lot to create for themselves, and as we all know, there’s only one ball. However, it was reported that a big reason CP3 was drawn to Houston is that he’s interested in playing off-ball of James Harden. Maybe we’ll see a different approach from both of these guys next year. It’ll be interesting to see how it works out, but I still think they don’t stand a chance against the Warriors.
At this point, I’d be surprised to see anything else happen until Saturday, so there probably won’t be any Woj bombs until then. But who knows, nobody was expecting what we saw today, anything can happen.
Written By: Nick Cherico (@NickCherico2)