The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

A very quiet trade passed through last week: New Orleans traded Cedric Simmons to Cleveland for David Wesley and cash. Why is this deal of interest to Bucks fans? It closes the book on the Magloire-Mason trade, and the winner by a nose is Milwaukee.

Lets look back on that deal. The Bucks thought they were getting a solid player in Magloire, but were pretty much wrong. However the trade was necessary for them; Bogut was a rookie and the Bucks truly couldn’t assume they knew what he could deliver, so adding a center (for a player whose role would have been diminished with the addition of Bobby Simmons) made sense. Magloire pretty much sucked in every way but one — he could really rebound. The combination of him and Bogut at power forward (who is a good rebounder for a forward but only an okay one for a center) had Milwaukee actually leading the league in rebound margin for a while and helped propel them to the playoffs.

It can be argued that having Magloire around hurt Bogut’s development, but that can’t really be proven. It certainly didn’t keep Bogut off the floor, and his high-post role in the offense remained pretty much the same last year.

The Hornets thought they were getting a solid player in Mason who would help them sell tickets in their temporary Oklahoma City home. They were also wrong on both counts. If Bucks fans thought Magloire was bad in Milwaukee try Mason’s contribution — career lows in points, awful shooting percentages, more turnovers, playing his way out of the starting lineup by midseason …. and this was with Chris Paul passing to him! Meanwhile, the fan support was so good in Oklahoma City that they didn’t need the former Cowboy to help sell tickets.

Last season the Bucks flipped Magloire into Brian Skinner, Steve Blake, Ha Seung Jin, and later Earl Boykins. Mason had another lousy season and both teams underachieved badly.

But the real problem for Bucks fans was the fact that they included their 2006 first round pick in the deal, which turned into Cedric Simmons (that’s not to say that the Bucks wouldn’t have taken someone else, but I’m just talking about what has actually happened). Should Simmons have become a solid player then this trade would have been a big win for New Orleans, but Simmons was awful.

It’s not really that big a deal that a 21 year old rookie doesn’t play much and has a poor start to his career, but the two stats I like to use to judge young players who haven’t played much scream “bust” in Simmons’ case: rebound rate and free throw percentage. I feel that rebounders are born, not made, and if you shoot free throws well then you have the ability to improve on your shooting overall. Well, Simmons averaged 8 rebounds per 40 minutes (pretty blah) and shot 48% on free throws (yikes!). And now New Orleans has dumped him for a player who is going to retire.

The biggest thing here, though, is that Simmons only had one more guaranteed season on his contract — if the Hornets thought he had any potential then they could have just stashed him on the bench (or in the NBDL) to see what they have or if he could be a part of a better trade later on. But instead they literally dumped him for nothing! A team getting rid of a young player that fast says one thing to me … bad attitude. That’s not just accepting that he was a bad pick, that is separating him from your locker room (that’s just speculation on my part, by the way).

So the final score of the Mason-Magloire trade is:

Bucks - 1 playoff appearance, no players

Hornets - 0 playoff appearances, no players

Your winner: Milwaukee (but just barely)

UPDATE: I looked around on the internet for references to Cedric Simmons’ attitude and couldn’t find anything but positive stories. DraftExpress.com listed his attitude and work ethic as a strength, and other stories mentioned him being a no-nonsense guy. There must be some reason why the Hornets dumped him, but immediately thinking he was a head case may be a rather unpleasant leap on my part.