Marion Sign and Trade= Rudy Fernandez?

So now that our esteemed GM has decided that his reputation will save him with his latest acquisition. I have decided to take the high road, and save the fire and brimstone demise of the Raptor franchise for another day. Basically for all of you Raptor junkies the Turkoglu signing is a great thing, simply because there likely will be another set of smaller transactions happening in the near future.

Shawn Marion reportedly turned down a 4 year\30 Million contract according to various media outlets and websites. My problem with this is that Marion is delusional if he still thinks he’s a max player, and the reported 30 million the Raptors offered must be based on past reputation and the small sample of games played when the ENTIRE lineup was relatively healthy.

For the most part I feel that the pursuit of Marion by Dallas is also based on the Phoenix version of Marion and not the older slower version that is currently the apple of Mark Cuban’s eye. So how does Rudy Fernandez factor into all of this? Quite simple it is a well known fact that Marion is looking for the most money (please don’t buy into all of that I want to play for a contender garbage, he’s looking to get paid) and Cuban is an owner that will spend to get the best product on the floor. So logically while the Raptors could have offered him more, frankly the team must have felt he’s not worth it. So this leads to the natural conclusion of Portland in this whole transaction.

Portland has some of the most impressive collection of young talent in the NBA. The best part of this statement is that they have a vast collection of that young talent and the game of basketball is still five-on-five. Rumors have circulated that Rudy is not happy with how he’s being used and the Raptors have a HUGE opening at Shooting Guard. So how can Toronto acquire another international player and continue their transformation into Phoenix North?

Include Portland as the third team in the proposed Marion trade. Let’s quickly break this down: Marion gets whatever his agent decides to negotiate with Dallas, Portland gets two second-round draft picks or even a conditional first-rounder from Dallas and a second-rounder from Toronto; Toronto gets Rudy, Dallas gets Marion, Marion gets paid, Rudy gets to play more, and Kevin Prtichard (Portland GM) gets more leverage, and monopoly money for the drafts the acquired picks are for. Everyone is happy!  

Why? This trade would allow the Raptors to acquire a low-cost, high reward player in Fernandez, Marion ‘helps’ Dallas continue their never-ending march to the NBA finals, and Portland can continue to stock up young talent when some of the current players look for bigger paydays. As a side bar Turkoglu can come without a sign and trade with Orlando who have sold their only marketable ‘young player’ in Courtney Lee (Dwight Howard doesn’t count for hopefully obvious reasons).

While I DO NOT IN ANY WAY support the signing of Turkoglu (as reviewed in this article here) this trade would allow our soon-to-be-embattled GM to acquire an asset to continue the filling out of next year’s roster with talent. (Please keep in mind signing a non-drafted rookie free agent, or a re-tread like Mike Sweetney does not constitute an upgrade of talent). The question now is how can we turn Chris Bosh into the most coveted ‘big man’ in order to get some foolish GM (Chris Wallace anyone?) to overpay to acquire him.