It's Clobberin' Time!

So, people are always asking me how I feel about the TJ Ford-for-Charlie Villanueva trade, since I'm the only Bucks fan on the whole internet now that bucksview.blogspot.com has started talking about loans for people who don't pay their bills. The next paragraph summarizes my thoughts on the trade:

Thank you, God, for making this trade happen.

Sure, TJ Ford is a nice story, a dwarf coming back from near-decapitation and all. We all wish him all kind of well. But he's a tiny fragile point guard who can't shoot but feels like he has to monopolize the ball even though it grinds the offense to an annoying halt. Bucks coach Terry "Why am I still here?" Stotts kept leaving him in the game during the fourth quarter, only to be betrayed by the overdribbling midget that only he couldn't see. With this trade, the Bucks got to keep their two better point guards and get a young power forward to boot. A young power forward with range and length who potentially has 3 years left on his crappy rookie deal. Not only that, but also he looks like the Thing (see above). Now all the Bucks need to do is sign a really stretchy guy, a guy who can burst into flames, and a really hot blonde, and they can start the Fantastic Four. They wouldn't even need a fifth starter -- though Michael Redd would probably warrant some playing time off the bench.

But I think I've lost my point here. I was talking about TJ Ford and how he sucks, even though we love him. See, it's easy to fall in love with TJ's speed and think, "He's a real weapon even if he can't shoot or defend or run the offense. Let's put 'im in there and see what happens!" And then what happens is underachievement and heartbreak. At best, he could become a nice "change of pace" backup point guard like Spud Webb or Darrell Armstrong (the younger years). At worst, his head flies clean off the next time a thug like Mark Madsen gets his blood-red hands on him. He's never going to be anything but an overdribbler, no matter who coaches him. It is his way. I mean, the guy had a whole year off to work on his game with a personal coach, and somehow he came back worse. I can't believe Toronto traded for him. Did they not pay for a scouting department last year? Did they hire the old Clippers scouting department from the 80's? Did they just drink too much Labatt's Blue? The mind boggles.

The player the Bucks got for TJ certainly seems like a together dude. He has his own cool website, where I'm sure he spends his time dissing Doctor Doom's face and challenging the Hulk to a rematch. He has his own set of basketball-related problems (woefully inconsistent, shoots from the outside too much, doesn't defend terribly well), but he's a foot taller and did I mention he's a POWER FORWARD WITH RANGE WHO REBOUNDS WELL AND HAS A TON OF POTENTIAL. For the life of me, I can't understand why Toronto would make this trade. But don't take my word for it -- listen to the newly-crowned Leader of the 18-45-year-old male USA sports fan, The Sports Guy:

I just wanted to comment on the Villanueva-T.J. Ford trade. Disregard Ford's scary spinal cord problems, that he can't shoot to save his life, that he's a free agent two years earlier than Villanueva, even that he lost crunch-time minutes to Charlie Bell last season. Again, I want you to disregard everything in that sentence. From a pure basketball standpoint, since when is a young point guard worth as much as a young power forward who can rebound and shoot 3s? When has that EVER been the case? How fast did the Bucks' front office say yes to this trade? 0.79 seconds? 1.2 seconds? Did they say, "Hold on, we'll discuss this and call you back in a few hours," then hang up and start pouring champagne on one another? If somebody made this deal in my fantasy league, I would have protested it.

Then, later in the same column (as he discusses Michael Redd) he writes:

Did I mention that I can't get over that trade? I'm in an American League-only fantasy league in which the second-place team traded Single-A prospect Cameron Maybin to the 10th-place team for Justin Morneau last month, and that set off three weeks of vicious message board posts, angry phone calls and the resignation of our longtime commissioner, since he was the one who ended up with Morneau. And this was a FANTASY league. The Villanueva-Ford trade was the real-life equivalent -- so were there angry e-mails and phone calls between the GMs in the Central Division when they found out? Like, did Joe Dumars immediately flip out and leave nasty messages on Bryan Colangelo's machine? Or does this only happen in fantasy leagues when the owners don't have lives?

Our Leader has written, and I, the only Bucks fan still alive on the internet, like what he's writing.

P.S. -- Leader, sorry about the copying-and-pasting rather than linking. Wait -- no, I'm not.