I Hate The Bobcats! Do Something Exciting

by The Man No One Came To See

in NBA

14 Jul 2010

The Charlotte Bobcats completed a wild 24 hours of trade discussions with a deal yesterday that does include center Tyson Chandler after all.

He’s just not heading to the team he thought a day earlier.

After a potential trade with Toronto fell apart, the Bobcats sent Chandler and fellow center Alexis Ajinca to the Dallas Mavericks for center Erick Dampier, forward Eduardo Najera, shooting guard Matt Carroll and cash considerations.

While the Bobcats get financial flexibility with Dampier’s non-guaranteed $13 million contract, the injury-plagued Chandler is off to this third team in a year after being acquired from New Orleans last summer.

Bobcats general manager Rod Higgins said the Bobcats will either waive Dampier or make another trade with him. That would allow the Bobcats to clear about $7 million in salary-cap space because they dump Chandler’s $12.7 million contract and Ajinca’s $1.5 million deal and take in Carroll ($4.3 million) and Najera ($2.8 million).

Before the trade, the Bobcats were only about $3 million shy of the reaching the luxury tax threshold, a payroll figure owner Michael Jordan said they wouldn’t exceed.

Carroll, a graduate of Hatboro-Horsham High, is a jump-shooter Charlotte traded to Dallas just 19 months ago, one of eight deals involving 26 players the Bobcats have made since Larry Brown took over as coach at the start of the 2008-09 season. Najera will add depth to Charlotte’s frontcourt.

It’s a far different outcome for Charlotte than what was being discussed a day earlier. The Bobcats had been closing in on a deal that would’ve sent Chandler and Boris Diaw to Toronto for Jose Calderon and Reggie Evans. Calderon would have provided Charlotte with a needed replacement for point guard Raymond Felton, who signed with New York on Monday.

While Higgins insisted the deal wasn’t agreed upon, the Raptors seemed to think it was. Chandler wrote in an e-mail to the Associated Press on Monday night that his agent had told him the deal was done, while Evans thanked Raptors fans on his Twitter page.