Brown didn’t like Okafor so we dealt him. No argument there.
Jordan/Brown got Chandler for him. I’ll give you that one too.
Over the course of his career Chandler has smoked his 2009/10 stats all the way across the board. He had nothing show up on his physical to indicate a tangible reason to expect a substandard performance, although he’s been boo-boo prone in the past. He just plain hasn’t produced. The deal should have been for a better player, but the team was looking at the long-term dollar signs. We had Okafor for 5 years more in a $72 million contract and by trading him we got a player that constricts the budget for just 2 seasons. We’re actually stuck for less time and money by far with the Chandler deal than we would have been holding Okafor. With Chandler we got height and, on paper at least, a better overall defensive center. The deal wasn’t exactly epic in its wisdom, but it wasn’t the toilet paper you make it out to be either. It helped the long-term positioning of the team.

UNFORTUNATELY, the reality is that Chandler isn’t holding up his end of the deal on any level. If he were just equalling his career stats we’d have some cause to grumble until we can open up the pocketbooks at the end of next season. But it wouldn’t be the howling bad situation we currently have. The decision to bring him here was made with the pocketbook as the main concern. I wasn’t in the room when the trigger got pulled on the deal so I can’t say there wasn’t a better option. It was a seller’s market when it came to Chandler and I think we could have gotten more for him – cash or draft considerations at least – than we did. It wasn’t a great deal, but as I said, it didn’t suck out loud either.

So we’re stuck. Buy him out or sit him until he decides to play smarter. Maybe he just doesn’t like it in Charlotte or he’s sick of playing ball. In that case, buying him out might get easier by the day.

If you REALLY want to see a great example of a suck-out-loud move from management, talk to me next season if Johnson and Co. decide to RENEW the contract!

As a matter of fact I do blame one primary problem. Do we suck because we’re at our ceiling? No. If we were getting value for our players we could excell at our payroll ceiling – or well below it. I don’t need to list examples of the salary cap positions of the top tiers of the NBA to make my point, do I? Money has nothing to do with it. It’s value received for the talent paid. That pertains to the bad contracts. We have some, to be sure. They’ll make personel changes difficult for a couple of years unless we buy them out. I’ve stated that before. That’s a problem, but not a reason for the performance level of the team.

Augustin is not performing up to the standards we know from experience that he’s capable of. Chandler isn’t even providing us with numbers in his career range. Wallace himself is openly admitting he can’t hit the broad side of a barn at present and is struggling to help the team in other ways. Felton is trying to be everything in the face of the collapse of those around him and he just doesn’t have the chops for it. At any given point up to 80% of those on the court for Charlotte aren’t playing to expected levels. That’s not a money problem, it’s a human resources problem. The money problem is what’s choking off our options for solutions. The powers that be aren’t willing to dump out the garbage because of the removal costs.

Since the NBA is on all levels a business, let’s look at it coldly from that perspective.

In large companies, the manager of the department would be called on the carpet and potentially canned in favor of someone better qualified to reorganize and maximize the production levels. This may happen – it happens all the time in professional sports. In this case we have one of the best “department managers” on the market. A hall of famer in fact. It’s going to be tricky to find someone else that will make the trains run on time for more than a very temporary period.

In lieu of that, with management realizing that the problem isn’t with the dept. head, each of the employees is reevaluated until decisions can be made that wreak the least havoc while paying the highest dividend. Let’s look at the primary staff:

You mention that Felton has never been a shooter. Fair enough. He plays POINT GUARD. He doesn’t HAVE to be a shooter. He’s trying to be a shooter right now because nobody else is doing the job with any consistency. If you look at when he’s taking his shots, he isn’t letting them rip without calling plays. He isn’t launching with 10 or more seconds on the clock either. In the vast majority of situations it goes like this… Felton brings it into the frontcourt and signals the play. He then sets the ball into motion. With 8 or less seconds on the clock, the ball comes back return to sender because the play wasn’t executed. He looks for another option and then fires so we don’t end up with a clock turnover. Since he isn’t a shooter, his percentage is nothing to scream about to begin with, but with the clock under 5 the added pressure adds up to supreme suckage. The problem isn’t that he’s doing his job poorly at point. It’s that he isn’t getting the chance to succeed or fail. It’s doubtful he’s ever going to excell in his role, but he should be at the very least adequate if given the chance. He’s not guilty of being a ball hog, he’s guilty of being the last – and arguably one of the worst – shooting option.

Shooting Guard – Raja Bell was supposed to be out for four months. He’s still playing at less than 100% and it shows. So this position is somewhat of a revolving door with an out of playing shape Flip Murray still not at 100% either. That leaves us with the healthy option of Gerald Henderson and you can’t expect a rookie to carry that kind of weight well even if LB WAS giving him the minutes. Many here, myself included, think we should be fast-tracking Henderson’s development, but Coach has a crap hand to play at this position so I’m cutting him a small break at the team’s weakest link.

In our forward positions we stare down the barrel of Wallace and Diaw. Even in a self-admitted slump, the latest stat sheet shows Wallace still averaging almost 14 points a game and 11.8 rebound. Well, by golly that’s a double-double average. HE IS NOT THE PROBLEM. Diaw has been erratic, and he is definitely part of what’s going wrong in Charlotte. But he isn’t the biggest reason.

Tyson Chandler – center and foul king of the NBA. He isn’t producing, he isn’t running the plays, he isn’t defending, hell, he isn’t even managing to stay on the court most nights long enough to get his uniform sweaty enough to wash. Since he isn’t executing the called plays that makes him a major reason for ridiculous shot selections coming from Felton and Augustin. Augustin is a second year player and he IS competent. But he’s also young and the cage gets rattled pretty easily. Felton forces shots – Augustin panics and makes stupid passes or shoots as last option and please see the previous supreme suckage comments about what happens in those conditions. Diaw and Wallace are left as the only viable “shooters” on the court and are getting doubled every time they enter the paint because guess what – the rest of the league isn’t stupid. When doubled, you have two options – make contact and take a shot hoping to get to the line, or find the open man. In almost every case the open man is the point guard, so please see the Felton/Augustin situation above. Wallace tries for the shot. Diaw gets frustrated and just plain stops stepping into the passing lanes so he can avoid the whole icky-poo situation. If, as he does every other game or so, Chandler gets into rapid-fire foul trouble and has to sit, Diaw and Wallace have to rely on Mohammed, or Ajinca, or Radman to take up the slack. Do I really need to get into details about that fiasco?

BOTTOM LINE

I’ve outlined every single problem our starting 5 is having on the court and every single one of them has a direct causal effect named Tyson Chandler. Oh, and while I’m at it, he’s eating up a full 20% of the “ceiling” salary you were talking about while giving us a tiny fraction of our offensive output. He IS providing us with 20% of our fouls. But that’s just amongst the starting 5. When you factor in all players, that number drops to 18% of personal fouls for THE ENTIRE TEAM. His salary is $3 million more this season than Wallace’s. From which player do YOU think we’re getting our money’s worth?

So no, I’m not being absolutely ridiculous. We could buy out Chandler and rotate 10 day contract players into our system until we found someone that shows promise and then sign them for the league minimum and be no worse off than we are now.

It’s either that or someone finds the way to get Chandler playing up to his career stats. Thus far this season his fg% is off by 14%, his ppg is down almost 40%, his down 20% in rebounding and his fouls are up (HEY, he did go up in something!) by 20% Right now he’s averaging 1.4 ppg more than Nazr Mohammed – and he’s played more than twice as many minutes. Nazr has almost exactly half as many blocks which is in line with the minutes played. Chandler’s shooting at 46.9% while Nazr is shooting at 51.3. The only stat where Chandler has a clear advantage is with his free throw percentage. When your $11 million starter is posting worse numbers than a scrub making half as much coin, something is insanely wrong.

The man is dragging the entire team down with him. He either starts to play or I say it’s time to bench him and give the starting slot to Mohammed. It’s the best way to guarantee the we’ll reach the 2nd half without Chandler being halfway to fouling out. If we piss him off enough for benching him, maybe he’ll let us buy out his contract for $5 million or so and loosen up the bank account a little for us.

We can’t get better through trades because we have nothing anybody wants, not even expiring contracts.