Ben Gordon might not, but Richard Hamilton would
I’m not much for trade rumors and trade mongering. You could sit around all day and say, “OK, how about 2012′s unprotected first rounder, the rights to DeVon Hardin and Chucky Atkins’ expiring contract for Chris Paul. Come on, the Hornets would have to do this.” It kind of gets old. It’s just hypothesizing about trades that will almost never, ever, ever happen. But sometimes it’s fun. And sometimes, it makes complete sense.
So with the word on the street being that the Pistons want to break up their trio of Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince and Rasheed Wallace, I think you’ve got to look at options. I mentioned back in - heck, I don’t know when I mentioned it – but I mentioned sometime how much I like Hamilton’s game for this team (I also said I sort of liked Grant Hill, but to a lesser degree). Quality defender, smart offensive player, great veteran leader that still has some gas in the tank and most importantly, fills the dead body slot at two-guard.
The Pistons just recently signed Hamilton to a five-year, $55 million contract. I don’t really like how big that number is and I definitely don’t like the length of the contract considering Rip is 31 with nine years and 742 games on his odometer. I think at some point within the next five years, Hamilton will have one, maybe two seasons of where he misses 20-30 games with some nagging injuries. The most he’s missed during his career was 15 this year. But the fact is, RIGHT NOW, Hamilton is still an excellent shooting guard. He’s 6-7 and has averaged at least 17 points a game since his second season. And while I wrote about Ben Gordon’s gunner mentality and how that doesn’t work because he’s a 16 shot a game guy and at least 1,000 shots a season, Hamilton does almost the exact same thing averaging 15.6 shots a game and took 1,043 this season.
So what makes him work? Read more…
