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We know Houston’s trade deadline deal was very, very good. Few would argue that Carl Landry is a better fit than Kevin Martin and it’s not hard to understand the value of a 22-year-old big man with potential and future first-round picks, especially considering the track record of the man who has the power to use them.

It’s important to note, though, that Daryl Morey would have done the Landry-Martin swap even if he had not received all those goodies from the Knicks. If we’re to believe the reports that surfaced late last Tuesday night, the Rockets were prepared to receive Sergio Rodriguez and Kenny Thomas (and their expiring deals) from Sacramento to complete the trade if New York was not going to be involved.

Noam Schiller analyzed this version of the deal and came to the same conclusion as I did: it’s good for the Rockets. Martin is a better player than Landry and he fits better with their other core pieces. But here’s the thing: Martin makes way more money than Landry, at least until the end of next season. And while I prefer Martin overall, I wouldn’t argue he’s THAT much better than Landry. In fact, I agree with Tom Ziller when he says that Carl Landry is essentially the power forward version of Kevin Martin. They’re both extremely efficient scorers who play below-average D and don’t create for others often.

Here’s where it gets tricky. If you’re a GM, should you prefer the power forward version of Kevin Martin or the shooting guard version? Conventional wisdom in the NBA dictates that you never trade big for small. Yet the most revered GM around has done just that, with players who have similar strengths and weaknesses, and he reportedly would have done it even without getting other assets as sweetener.

Morey, as a guest on The B.S. Report, said the following about the deal: “We lost a lot with Carl, but we felt like between Jordan Hill, draft picks, and a good trading situation that we could address that situation a little bit easier than picking up a 2-guard like Kevin Martin.”

As I heard this, my mind immediately jumped to the scarcity of excellent 2’s in the NBA. I’d very briefly brought this up in a previous post, as a reason why Marco Belinelli’s below-average defense off the bench might not hurt the Raptors too much. This blockbuster trade just gives me an excuse to think about it again. To get an idea, here’s a table of the players who have a PER above 17.0 and play at least 20 minutes per game (sorry, DeJuan), sorted by position.

PER By Position

• First glance: Wow. That’s unbalanced, right? You have your mega-stars in Wade, Kobe, and Roy, and then there’s a drop-off. Only 7 shooting guards are in the table, compared to 20 power forwards and 18 point guards. We always hear about the lack of good centers, but they outnumber the SG’s. And as for the other wing position? Only 10 make the cut.
• Let’s get this out of the way, though: PER isn’t perfect. I think it overrates big men a little bit, it doesn’t account for defense (which is why you don’t see Varejao or Perk here), and it’s not meant to be a substitute for watching basketball games. It’s pretty good, though, as far as catch-all stats go. I’d go on, but I’d prefer to direct you to Matt Moore’s post from this morning.
• Kevin Martin, part of the inspiration for this post, doesn’t even make it. You should treat him as if he did, though, as he’s right there at 16.9. Martin is generally a standout in this metric – in the three seasons previous to this one, his PER sat at 19.2, 21.0, and 20.1, respectively. This season, he’s regressed in his free throw attempts and his shooting from distance. I expect his numbers will start to climb back up soon.
• I expect a similar improvement from Monta Ellis down the line, who is also at 16.9. He undoubtedly is a quality player, but is having one of the strangest seasons in recent memory. His inefficiency is dragging her PER down, but we know that he is capable of being an efficient scorer because we saw it in 2007-2008.
• I should mention that SG’s also suffer here because of down years from Vince Carter, Ray Allen, Ben Gordon, Jason Terry, and Rip Hamilton. At Ben Gordon’s age and considering the injury-plagued season he’s had, there’s a good chance he eventually gets back to the 17.0 mark he had last year in Chicago, but the others are questionable. We’ve seen very good and very bad performances from those veteran SG’s, so we can’t be sure if they are going to return to that 17+ mark. Also, it’s worth noting that there are good players at other positions who don’t make the cut: Lamar Odom, Rashard Lewis, Chris Kaman, Stephen Curry, Rudy Gay, Caron Butler, Jameer Nelson, Paul Millsap, Kenyon Martin, Andrea Bargnani, and Mehmet Okur come to mind.
• You can quibble with the positions if you like. I used the ones listed at hoopdata.com (which is also where I got the stats). The only player I switched was Marcus Camby, who is listed at power forward but is playing center now for the Blazers. You can argue that Tyreke Evans and Nate Robinson should be shooting guards, but I can just as easily argue that Andre Iguodala and Joe Johnson are small forwards. Positions are blurry now. Even though LeBron is listed as a SF, it’s obvious that his true position is simply “LeBron.”

With all those caveats, I think that the PER table does a pretty good job showing the scarcity of quality two guards in the NBA. To further illustrate this, take a look at who Kelly Dwyer would have chosen for the All-Star game this season.

The wild cards for the East reserves: Al Horford and Josh Smith. The snubs: David Lee and Paul Pierce. Oh, and he would have had Rajon Rondo starting in place of Allen Iverson. For the West’s wildcards, he chose Deron Williams and Zach Randolph. The snubs? The Gasols and Nene. He also mentions Greg Oden, Kevin Love, Carl Landry, and Carlos Boozer as playing All-Star quality basketball. None of these players are shooting guards.

Here’s the point: the league doesn’t have many two-guards who do two-guardy things at an All-Star level. If I’m a GM, I ideally want my starting 2 to be able to shoot, slash, and get to the line at a very high rate. Hopefully, he’d play good defense as well. There just aren’t a lot of players like that right now. I’m not arguing that a good two-guard is more important on the basketball court than a low-post scorer and I’m not saying Minnesota should dump Al Jefferson this summer for a wing.¹ I’m not arguing, either, that this is particularly different from other eras.² What I’m saying, though, is that because of the dearth of quality shooting guards around, they have more value. We should start thinking about overpaying good shooting guards the same way that we think about overpaying good centers.

All of this means that if your favourite team employs O.J. Mayo, Eric Gordon, or DeMar DeRozan, you should be rooting extra hard for him to become a star if only to make your GM’s job easier. It also means I’d happily take the shooting guard version of Kevin Martin over the power forward version of Kevin Martin.

From Clutchfans.net, obviously.

Trade deadline day! So much fun, so much to talk about. So Julian and I talked, for just under 57 minutes, about all of the madness that went on in the Association. Wagman earned another DNP-CD.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

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Different uniforms, now. (Ned Dishman/Getty Images)

• The Washington Wizards started a lineup of Randy Foye, Nick Young, Mike Miller, Andray Blatche, and JaVale McGee. Josh Howard came off the bench, wearing #55. Blatche scored 33 points and grabbed 13 rebounds. Washington beat Minnesota, 108-99.

• The Memphis Grizzlies scored 5 points in the last 37 seconds of the 4th quarter to force overtime in Toronto. In OT, Rudy Gay scored 8 of his team’s 12 points because the Raptors kept switching Jose Calderon onto him when they ran the same play over and over. Grizz win, 109-102.

• In that MEM/TOR game, Hedo Turkoglu scored 1 point on 0-5 shooting and added 1 rebound, 2 assists, 3 turnovers, and 3 fouls in over 29 minutes of action. Amir Johnson, in less than 18 minutes of action, scored 10 points on 5-5 shooting and added 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 blocks, and, yes, 3 fouls.

• Against Detroit, Dwight Howard had an insane night – 33 points on 16 shots, 17 rebounds, and 7 (!) blocks. Rip Hamilton turned back the clock for 36 points on 18 shots, 5 rebounds, and 3 assists, but it didn’t matter because Orlando outscored his Pistons by 19 in the 4th quarter and won 116-91.

• Tim Duncan shot 4-23 and only scored 8 points… but he had 26 rebounds (11 offensive), 5 assists, 2 steals, and 2 blocks. And his team beat the Pacers 90-87.

• Chicago beat the Knicks for the second night in a row, 115-109. Derrick Rose scored 27 points on only 19 shots because he  got to the free throw line!

• Dwyane Wade left the MIA/NJ game after 7 minutes because he hurt his calf. Still, his team beat the Nets, 87-84.

• Courtney Lee played 31 minutes against Miami and scored 2 points, shooting 0-9 from the field including 0-5 from downtown. He was -14 in that time. Chris Douglas-Roberts only had one more point than Lee, but played 12 fewer minutes and was +11.

• In New Orleans, Peja Stojakovic scored 24 points on 12 shots. Surely, this had something to do with his new look. Paul Millsap also scored 24, though, on 11-13 shooting, and his Jazz won 98-90.

• The Rockets outscored the Bucks 43-14 in the 3rd quarter and ended up winning 127-99 . Luc Richard Mbah a Moute somehow led Milwaukee in scoring.

• The new-look Mavs beat the Suns 107-97. Jason Kidd had 18 points (on 11 shots), 7 rebounds, 10 assists, and 7 steals. Despite the million trade rumours, Amar’e Stoudemire suited up for Phoenix and had 30 points, 14 rebounds, 3 assists, and 3 blocks.

• The Clippers lost their sixth straight and the first game of the Steve Blake era, falling 110-92 to the Hawks. Al Horford posted a career-high 31 points (on 15 shots) and Josh Smith, who should have been an All-Star, posted 20 points (on 12 shots), 9 rebounds, 7 assists, and 4 steals. The Clippers turned the ball over 22 times and shot 10-17 from the free throw line, with Baron Davis sitting out with a sore lower back.

• The Warriors annihilated the Kings, 130-98. C.J. Watson scored 40 points. 40! He did this on 16-23 shooting and added 7 rebounds, 6 assists, and 2 steals. This made Stephen Curry’s 24/6/15 seem less impressive than it should.

• Golden State scored 42 points in the second quarter and held Sacramento to just 16.

• Kevin Martin only played 19 minutes before being pulled because he is GETTING TRADED TO HOUSTON. Holy shit. Yeah. It looks like he’s being sent to the Rockets with Sergio Rodriguez, Hilton Armstrong, and Kenny Thomas. In return, the Kings will get the exceedingly awesome Carl Landry, as well as Tracy McGrady’s big expiring deal, Joey Dorsey, and cash. McGrady and Rodriguez might end up in New York before the 3:00 PM EST deadline, still.

• Quick analysis: The Kings got a fantastic scoring power forward in Landry and now have 16-17 million dollars of cap space in the summer. Not too shabby. And in Martin, the Rockets got the super-efficient backcourt scorer that they’ve coveted. This is exciting for both clubs.

• John Salmons didn’t play for Chicago last night because he’s going to be traded to Milwaukee. It might be for Kurt Thomas and Francisco Elson. It might be for Hakim Warrick and Joe Alexander.

• And finally, Antawn Jamison was, thankfully, traded to Cleveland. The Cavs also received Sebastian Telfair from the Clippers. The Clippers gave away Al Thornton to Washington and took back Drew Gooden, who never actually suited up for the Wiz. Zydrunas Ilgauskas went to Washington along with the Cavs’ 2010 first-round pick, but he will likely be bought out and he will hopefully return to Cleveland.

• On the subject of that Cavs trade, you should really read this piece by John Krolik and this piece by Kelly Dwyer.

• Oh yeah, almost forgot. Another great trade occurred.

I love the trade deadline. Podcast coming when it’s all over.

Fernando Medina/Getty Images

Tuesday night, Julian and I chatted about all things NBA. Or, more accurately, some things NBA. Like the Raptors, Nets, Hawks, Thunder, Warriors, Magic, Bulls, Bucks, and Bobcats. And Joe Johnson, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, Omri Casspi, Kevin Martin, Vince Carter, Courtney Lee, and Vinny Del Negro. And, y’know, a bunch of other stuff. Totally forgot to talk about Darko’s weird, expletive-laden interview, though. Next time.

And next time, Eric Wagman will join us. We were kidding about him hurting himself.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Layne Murdoch/Getty Images

This is the third OTN podcast and it’s just me and Julian this time. Stupid Wagman and his evening shifts. Anyway, here we start off discussing the two ROY frontrunners and their teams. Then, we spend a lot of time looking at the Western playoff picture, more specifically analyzing the Rockets, Jazz, Spurs, Thunder, and the post-Oden Blazers. Finally, we talk about the bottom half of the Eastern playoff picture and what we can expect out of the Sixers, Wizards, Bobcats, and Bulls moving forward. Oh, and we cover LeBron’s recent shenanigans on the sideline. This was recorded just before Wednesday evening’s games, so we don’t get to talk about John Wall’s insanity or Chris Paul’s game-winner, but I should point out that we both predict what Brandon Jennings did to the Raptors.

Click here to listen to the podcast.