Joe Johnson to Dallas

[The Miles]

This Joe Johnson/Atlanta ownership mess had me thinking about a way to backdoor the whole situation and get Johnson here.

The Mavs make two trades with the Hawks and then two with the Suns:

A. Trade Keith Van Horn to the Atlanta Hawks for Boris Diaw thus creating a $14,566,970 Trade Exception.

B. Trade Devin Harris for Tony Delk and those two 1sts.

C. Trade $12,375,000 of that TE w/the two 1sts to the Sun's for Joe Johnson in a sign and trade.

D. Trade Boris Diaw to the Suns for part of that TE.

-Atlanta gets a young PG that was the 5th pick just last year and an expiring Van Horn to use as trade bait. They have to fill a minimum salary anyways, this works for that. Devin Harris, Josh Childress, Josh Smith, and Marvin Williams is a very talented set of youngsters. Van Horn/Harrington expire allowing them to attack the FA market again next year for a big man.

-Phoenix gets what they were going to get all along.

-Dallas can then not worry about Finley nearly as much, basically trading what they would trade for Pierce minus having to take back Raef's contract:

-We start Jet and Joe in the backcourt, Joe is the playmaking type of SG that allows Jet to play SG at times. Josh and Dirk at F, Damp at C.

-Use the MLE wisely to fill the backup PF and C spot. Songaila and Hunter works for me, Dallas can use DA as the backup PG and give minutes to Joe and Marquis there. Delk is simple expiring salary filler, expiring and perhaps they just buy him out immediately.

PG-Jason Terry | Darrell Armstrong | Joe/Quis/Christie
SG-Joe Johnson | Jerry Stackhouse | Doug Christie
SF-Josh Howard | Marquis Daniels | Rawle Marshall
PF-Dirk Nowitzki | Darius Songaila | Josh Powell
CT-Erick Dampier | Steven Hunter | DJ Mbenga | Pavel Podkolzin

That would be your 15 man rotation. If you could get lucky enough to trade Fin for expirers, do it and immediately cut whoever it is. You are going to have to pay it anyways. Doing that, and using amnesty on Bradley, would save the Mavericks around $85,000,000 which covers Joe's contract and $15,000,000 of the LT payment.


You lose Devin but Joe is 24, versatile, and makes us better right now. You don't have to take back all the crap you would with a Pierce trade (Blount/Raef contracts).