Thoughts On The Proposed O.J. Mayo/Ray Allen Swap.

You may or may not have heard by now that the Grizzlies and Celtics were close to trading their shooting guards near the trade deadline.

I’ve seen many proposed deals on the table, but the heart of the deal was Mayo and a first round pick for Ray Allen.  However, Ray Allen makes more money than Mayo.  In fact, he makes a good bit more money than Juice, which means the Grizzlies would have had to throw in some more pieces to make it work under the cap.

Let’s be honest, Ray Allen is a great player, surefire hall-of-famer and a guy that would make just about any team better just by suiting up for them.  That said, anything other than O.J. for Allen would have meant that the Grizzlies were giving up way too much.

First of all, both guys are only signed through the end of the year.  The Grizzlies will probably see Mayo leave at the end of the year, assuming some team offers him the type of contract that he’s worth and the Grizzlies decide not to match.  Keeping that in mind, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for the Grizzlies to make a move for a guy that’s signed for at least one more year, sort of like the rumored Mayo-for-Anthony Morrow swap that was floated back in February.

Morrow isn’t as substantial a player as Mayo, but he can shoot the three-pointer and is signed through 2013.  The Grizzlies would have also obtained a valuable first-round pick in that trade.  Not a bad haul for a guy that’s leaving at the end of the year, right?

The Boston trade is much different.  First of all, you’re probably losing either guy at the end of the season, and the Celtics also wanted a first-round pick thrown in.  While the pick wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker for me, having to throw in Marreese Speights, or Dante Cunningham to make an Allen trade work, am I really better off at the end of the day? Neither guy is an all-star or anything, but they’ve been valuable and give Memphis insurance in case of an injury.  They have proven at this point in this season that they can play valuable minutes.

That’s an awful lot to give up.  I firmly believe that the Grizzlies’ goal for this season is to win a championship, and Ray Allen would absolutely help win that cause, but he’s not an enough of an upgrade to give up one of the Grizzlies’ young bigs and a first-round pick.

From Boston’s perspective, they would have been getting younger at the shooting guard spot and not necessarily sabotaging their shot at a championship this year.  Mayo proved he can play on the big stage in the playoffs last year and would have given the Celtics some much needed young legs off the bench and arguably the league’s best young back court with Rajon Rondo, Avery Bradley and O.J. Mayo.  On top of that, the Grizzlies pick would likely not be a lottery pick, but still valuable nonetheless.  Not a bad haul if you’re Danny Ainge and may lose Ray Allen after the season anyway.

My guess is that Chris Wallace walked away from the trade thinking the same thing.

The guy I feel bad for in this whole thing is O.J. Mayo.  It was a relatively quiet trade deadline for him and he was settling into his role, and now this report comes out today.  Mayo is a professional and I don’t expect this to affect him going forward, after all, he’s pretty used to trade rumors by now.