NBA Free Agency Winners and Losers

Winners:

 San Antonio Spurs: Are you kidding me? Adding Richard Jefferson and Antonio McDyess makes these guys the number 1 contender in the West in my opinion. Yes, I’m aware that the Lakers play in the West. We’ll get to them in a bit. The addition of Dejuan Blair was a nice gamble with little risk.

 Boston Celtics: Adding Rasheed Wallace significantly upgrades this team’s depth. Sheed can spell KG or Pierce and don’t be surprised to see Wallace on the floor at the end of games. Love that move. Looks as if Leon Powe could return as well. The Celtics are back to being ahead in the East arms race.

 Vince Carter: Vin-sanity gets one last look at a possible ring after this trade. Personally, I think the Nets got the better of the Lee for Carter deal, but Carter had to be giddy to return to a contender at this point in his career.

 New Jersey Nets: Their future nucleus of Devin Harris, Courtney Lee, and Brooke Lopez is a scary one. We like Tony Battie and Rafer Alston off the bench as well.

 Losers:

 Los Angeles Lakers: Few will agree with me here, but I look at it this way: Would you trade Lamar Odom and Trevor Ariza for Ron Artest? Didn’t think so. They added nothing else either. It was a good start to an off-season that faded quickly.

 Cleveland Cavaliers: What do you do when your frontcourt gets exposed for being old and unable to defend on the perimeter? Why bring in Shaquille O’Neil of course.

Portland Trailblazers: Lost out on Hedo and Paul Milsap. They did sign Andre Miller. This is more relative to the buzz surrounding this team with the cap space that they had at season’s end. They really didn’t add that one more gun that would get them over the hump.

 Detroit: We all loved Ben Gordan in the Celtics series. Anyone else remember the ball hogging malcontent that Gordan was in the regular season? Charlie Villanueva’s a soft four that had his numbers inflated due to his team’s injuries. This was not a good use of the team’s ample cap space.