Dell Demps Active Towards Trade Deadline, Jamison And Murphy Are Targets

I was wrong, again, about what the Hornets will be doing up until the trade deadline. Oh wait, no I wasn’t really because the Hornets still have not pulled off a trade. However there are several rumors inciting that General Manager Dell Demps is extremely active in looking for, and I quote, “scoring/rebounding help.” For those of you interested in where we could find scoring help, perhaps Dell could take a look at Marcus (now nicknamed “Friggin'”) Friggin’ Thornton!

I find it absurd that Demps and his staff are going around looking for scoring two-guards when he has one sitting on his bench. The criticism is that “he doesn’t play defense” yet the Hornets continue to start Willie Green, a mediocre defender at best. Criticize whether he works hard enough? Well stop going after J.R. Smith, a bum.

I can’t fathom how any trade will go down. I said it before and I’ll say it again. The Hornets have no trade chips, none. Even if Denver takes a shining to “Friggin” there is no way in hell that Smith complements this team better than Thornton.

Anyway, let’s head over the jump to see what Demps is trying to get, even if his hands are tied.

Antwan Jamison

There Hornets are in clear need of more of a scoring punch in the low post off of the bench. To me when you mention those combination of words and Antwan Jamison in the same sentence you have an oxymoron. If Demps in fact believe that the Cavaliers will buy-out Antwan’s contract (which is not happening by the way) you still have the problem of having a 34 year old, mediocre, jump-shooting big man who can’t actually play defense all that well (something you’d figure would be on the top of Dells check-list).

Don’t get me wrong, 5 years ago Jamison would have been great, for the right price of course. But we all saw what happened to the Cavaliers when they were fooled into thinking Antwan would be the Robin to Cleveland’s Batman.

J.R. Smith

We’ve already touched on what a travesty it would be to see Smith return to the Hornets. The great Earl is a toxic player waiting to turn a locker room apart. This isn’t even talking about his inefficient play, this is just off the court stuff. If we’d like to address what he’d bring on the court you can count a number of shots and not as many makes, ball hogging, lackadaisical defense among many other things. Sure he has some value, he can get hot and be a streaky shooter and he’s dynamite on the fast breaks, but have you seen Chris Paul on the fast break recently?

Marcus Camby/Joel Przybilla

These two candidates would be great players to back up Emeka Okafor. Only thing is we have nothing to offer them after they have our first round pick for this year’s draft. Goodness it sounds like Jeff Bower all over again, short-term results for long term questions.

Troy Murphy

Another candidate who I’d very much like to add to the team. He does offer some scoring value and some size and would be a great addition to the ball club. It appears the Nets might buy him out, but I wouldn’t be so sure. If indeed he was bought out the chances of him going to us would be around 15 percent. There are a number of suitors out there looking for his services, but only we can give him the playing time.

To summarize it appears that all efforts might be futile on Dells part. Some players I don’t like the sounds of, while others we have little chance of getting. If indeed a trade goes down we’d likely be trading off any of our last assets, effectively playing our entire hand for this season and probably the next. Demps knows there is a problem with our team, he recognizes that, but there’s not much he can do about it.