Mark WiedmerThe nutty stuff – and the genius stuff – of the NBA offseason was supposed to begin at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
That’s when franchises and players can reach agreement on new contracts. Five days later, those contracts can be signed and termed official.
But two bombshell stories have significantly sped up the what-just-happened-here process. We’ll start with the second one first, both because the Los Angeles Clippers trading Chris Paul to the Houston Rockets is actually the bigger, better story and because the first news of the day – the New York Knicks parting company with team president Phil Jackson – was on the wire before most of you cursed your alarm clocks Wednesday morning.
But Paul to Houston is one of those franchise statements that basically says, “We may not be good enough to knock out Golden State in the Western Conference, but if not, we’re going to go down swinging.” Or at least shooting a gazillion 3-pointers.
And while the Rockets basically gave up half their roster to land Paul – including the underrated Patrick Beverly, the occasionally microwave-hot Lou Williams and the physically imposing Montrezl Harrell – placing Paul and Harden in the same backcourt theoretically gives them no worse than the third-most potent pair of guards in the league, and that’s only if the Warriors’ Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson both are knocking down a ridiculous number of treys on the same night and Washington’s John Wall and Bradley Beal are similarly hot, because they also can do the best job defending.