Reports: Cleveland Cavaliers Very Interested In Amare Stoudemire Trade

What happens when you take a whole bunch of owners and GMs, lots of agents and players, all the NBA media, drop down a record amount of snow to keep them off the streets and mix in a dash of Nancy Lieberman playing basketball with Terrell Owens all just days before the NBA trade deadline?

TRADE RUMORS GALORE!!!

And the first up for the Suns anyway, of course, involves Amare Stoudemire.

Both Woj from Yahoo! Sports and Cleveland.com's Brain Windhorst are reporting increased interest from the Cavs in trading for Amare.

The newest twist from Windhorst is the notion that the Cavs might also be willing to take on Jason Richardson's salary.

Since we've already broken down a straight up Amare to the Cavs for J.J. Hickson and Ilgauskas trade, let us waste some of our less precious time on how the deal would look if expanded to include Jason.

The Dolla Billz Yo

Sorry about that. I will now return to being a slightly overweight barely-under-40 white guy with a background in business and finance.

Straight up, a package of Amare and Jason is $29m in salary. Big Z and JJ Hickson are $13m. That leaves a gap of $16m but I believe when you allow for the 125% rule the Cavs would only need to cover a $9m gap. Don't worry if that doesn't make sense because it's about to get even nuttier.

I am pretty up to speed on the various machinations of trade rules under the current CBA but apparently there's a way that the Cavs could sign the basketball player formerly known as Wally Szczerbiak (PFKAWZ) and then promptly trade him to the Suns who would then keep him for the rest of this season (presumably he could at least carry towels) and then waive him this summer.

We last saw this little trick used to complete the deal that sent Devin Harris to the Nets for Jason Kidd. In that case it was Keith Van Horn who was yanked out of his slumber, paid something like $4m to go to New Jersey where he never played. Here's more on how that actually works - if you care. And if you care you might want to consider doing something about that. Like getting a life.

So let's just assume that all works somehow and David Stern approves this kind of chicanery to get the deal done.

That would leave the Suns with no Amare and no J-Rich but they would get sophomore PF J.J. Hickson, the ability to waive Big Z, and the PFKAWZ.

Once the Suns waived the remaining two years on PFKAWZ's contract and they would be left with a TON of cap space which (finally) is the point to all this madness.

The total roster (assuming Frye and Hill pick up their options) would be about $34m with 9 players under contract. With the salary cap estimated to be at $53m that leaves $19m under the cap to spend on 4 players and that means it's time for a....

SHOPPING SPREE!!!!

How would you feel about trying to get Joe Johnson back in Phoenix? Or what about a combination of David Lee and Rudy Gay? Maybe your preference leans towards the sublime in which case can I interest you in a Brian Scalabrine, Linus Kleiza, Travis Outlaw trio?

You get the point. With $19m in cap space suddenly the world is the Suns oyster and the gems are a-plenty.

You can write off the rest of this season, of course. You might as well just limit Nash to 20 minutes per game and start giving Earl Clark some serious run. But who cares, right? If you do this deal it's all about the re-build and you've given Steve Kerr and David Griffin the check book to do it.

But why would the Cavs agree?

Unfortunately, the Cavs would have to be both desperate and kind of foolish to do this. They might just be foolish, but they have no reason to be desperate given how well they are playing right now.

As I said before, the issue for the Cavs isn't the Amare-Shaq pairing from an offensive or chemistry perspective. They got along just fine. The problem is you can't put them on the court together and play good defense no matter how incredible LeBron James is. If you add J-Rich to the line up, you might as well completely give up on the Cavs being who they are - a great defensive team - and suddenly try and change them into something else all within the span of about two months before the playoffs. That's a HUGE risk.

You've basically taken 3/5ths of last year's Suns line up and replaced Steve Nash with Mo Williams and then added King James.

The only saving grace is Varejao.

One would assume that he would still play big minutes but he's already horrible on the floor with Shaq and if you put him together with Amare you've got a pretty awesome small ball front court, but you can't beat the Magic with that. John over at Cavs: The Blog broke this down pretty well.

Then consider the salary implications for Cleveland. Assuming Amare picks up his final year or agrees to a similar sized deal to stay in Cleveland they are sitting at about $63m without LeBron. Does he stay to play with Amare and Jason and Andy V? You damn well better be sure that he would before you pull the trigger.

In fact, let's just cut to the chase. The one guy that needs to approve this deal from the Cavs side is #23. This deal doesn't happen without the King's blessing.

But who cares about them anyway. It could be FREE AGENT SHOPPING TIME for the Suns!!! Yippie!!