| Wednesday, March 1
By Mitch Lawrence
Special to ESPN.com |
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NEW YORK -- Avery Johnson, whose game-winner in Game 5 of last June's
Finals against the Knicks helped the Spurs nail down their first-ever
NBA crown, came oh-so-close to being dealt out of the Alamo City last
week on trading deadline day.
Forget the talk about the Clippers, where Johnson was supposed to end up
in exchange for Derek Anderson or Maurice Taylor. Hornet sources insist
that Charlotte nearly came away with Johnson, with David Wesley heading
to San Antonio.
|  | | How close did Avery Johnson get to leaving San Antonio? Pretty close, Lawrence writes. |
The Spurs don't want to have to fork over big money to Johnson this
summer when he becomes a free agent. Scouts claim he's lost a step, and he does turn 35 next month. The Johnson-Wesley deal was kept on the hush, more
than any other potential trade, because Johnson still holds a lot of
sway in the defending champions' locker room.
"The Spurs wanted to do it," said one league source, with knowledge of
the deal. "And, (Hornet VP) Bob Bass wanted to do it."
But Hornets coach Paul Silas voiced his opposition and killed the deal.
From all accounts, Silas likes the makeup of his team and didn't want to
make such a major change. But perhaps Silas also knew that Johnson might
not have been a good mix in the Hornets' volatile locker room.
Players who know Johnson's leadership style think he can get away with
yelling at the Spurs' mild-mannered, Tim Duncan and David Robinson, but
that screaming at Derrick Coleman and Anthony Mason would have been
inviting first-rate disaster.
Rim Shots I
A new Grizzlies management team, headed by Dick Versace, has
already started working in anticipation of new owner Michael Heisley's
purchase being formally approved by the NBA's Board of Governors later
this spring.
At the recent All-Star Game, Versace acknowledged that he was helping
Heisley, a fellow Chicagoan, as a consultant. But the ex-Pacers head
coach said that his involvement didn't go any farther than that.
However, league sources insist that plans are for Versace, the former
Indiana coach, to be head coach and GM. Mitchell "J.J." Anderson will
be one assistant coach, while another ex-Bradley star, Jim Les, will
also be on the bench. Anderson already has started his scouting duties,
recently running into current Grizzly VP Stu Jackson's right-hand man,
Larry Riley, at a game.
That's when Riley found out that big changes
were imminent, no doubt a shock to Jackson, who personally scouted the
St. John's-Connecticut Big East showdown in New York only last week. But
in fact, Versace's hand-picked choice for player personnel director is
Tony Barone, his former chief assistant during his coaching days at
Bradley.
Rim Shots II
How much longer before David Falk and other agents start
screaming "collusion" -- rumblings we've picked up from other agents
after only one inconsequential deal was completed at the trading
deadline. As hard as he tried, Falk couldn't get trades or new
multi-million deals for Glen Rice or Maurice Taylor. David Stern, who
imposed the lockout to get just that kind of cost certainty, by putting
a ceiling on salaries, couldn't have scripted it any better. Should be
interesting this June to see if Rice or Taylor can get the maximum
dollars. Our guess in each case is no.
With Bryon Russell's play
leaving a lot to be desired, the Jazz tried up to the deadline to get
Chris Mullin, a perfect fit in Utah since he's old and slow and needs
screens to get his shot. Jazz can't be happy that they're still
employing Greg Ostertag. They shopped their center very hard, but no one
wants his contract, with four years to go at $30 mil.
When Anthony
Mason gets arrested at 5 a.m. the morning of a game at the Meadowlands,
just how committed to winning can he be? One eyewitness to Mason's
wee-hours scuffle in Harlem says that the Hornet wasn't acting as
peacemaker, as he told police. "He was cleaning house," he said.
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Although Larry Bird and others were scared that Miami would come away
with Isaiah Rider, the Heat never got close to a deal. And that was with
the Hawks trying to give Rider away. Hawks weren't receptive to Voshon
Lenard or anyone else on the Heat bench.
Pacers and Knicks were
both elated that John Starks didn't end up going down to play for Pat
Riley. "That's a guy who has lost a lot, but we didn't want to see him
in a seven-game series," said one New York official. "Starks would have
been perfect for that team."
No team called the Pistons looking to
swoop down and steal Grant Hill, which is just the way Detroit wanted
it. "I made it clear that I wasn't going to take any calls from people
about Grant," said Detroit VP Rick Sund. "When Alonzo Mourning and
Anfernee Hardaway and Damon Stoudamire all got traded, it was because they
had said they didn't want to be with their teams. So their old teams
took those kinds of calls. But I put out the word that we wouldn't. With
a player of Grant's abilities, you have to roll the dice that you can
re-sign him."
When the Knicks went after Glen Rice a few weeks
back, they tried to get Detroit to offer Bison Dele's rights before
cutting a deal for Rice with the Pistons. But discussions never got off
the ground when the Lakers refused Detroit's offer of Dele.
Before
deciding to keep Rice, the Lakers called Milwaukee about Danny Manning.
Lakers think that since Rice is looking for the $14 million max this
summer, he'll play great the rest of the way.
Rim Shots III
Well, you can't say that Michael Jordan didn't try to
unload Isaac Austin or Juwan Howard. The Wizards did everything they could
to unload their frontcourt players. One GM who had discussions with
Jordan about both players said that Austin was among the most
heavily-shopped players, including Rider, Ostertag and Taylor.
Looks like Jordan is stuck with Howard, mentioned in trade talks with the
Knicks, for Larry Johnson. Howard, who makes $15 mil this season and has
three years left at nearly $57 million, is the very reason teams don't
want to have to pay a luxury tax, when it kicks in in 2001.
"The major player was the luxury tax," said Jordan. "Everybody
is trying to put themselves in a position to lower the opportunity to
pay extra tax. No one was looking to make a questionable move."
True, there are few GM's who want to help Jordan. But the way we look at it
is, no one wants to bail him out from previous mega-mistakes made by Wes
Unseld and Abe Pollin.
Word around the league is that Lamar Odom purposely missed the first two
games after All-Star break to protest how the Clippers were dealing with
Taylor. Odom really was in L.A. having his injured shoulder
examined. But rest assured, he is angry with the way the Clips are going
to allow Taylor and Derek Anderson to walk out after the season. If not
for his own shaky track record before the draft, Odom would have pulled
a Steve Francis and forced his way out of Clipper-land before ever
getting involved in that mess.
Clubhouse spies say there's plenty of
tension in Charlotte dressing room between Eldridge Recasner and Derrick
Coleman. The two, of course, were involved in an early-season car wreck,
with Coleman at the wheel, and still are not talking.
Mitch Lawrence, who covers the NBA for the New York Daily News, writes a regular NBA column for ESPN.com.
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Lawrence: Latest on the trade front
