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Trading David Robinson could be one of the stupidest things that the Spurs could do. After a month of putting up reduced numbers for the Spurs Davids name is again being mentioned in trade talks for any player that can dribble a basketball or who can make a basket.
Recently team owners around the league have been licking their lips after hearing David's name mentioned as a player that the Spurs could be keen to off-load. The Spurs have been contacted by teams such as Portland and New Jersey who have been rumoured to offer players such as Arvydas Sabonis, Rasheed Wallace, Isiah Rider, Kendall Gill, Jason Williams and Chris Gatling as possible swaps. There is no doubt that these guys are quality players, but compared to Dave a trade just doesn't make sense.
After over a decade of being the 'backbone' (no pun intended) of the San Antonio Spurs franchise David deserves a lot more respect. He has a career average of 24.8 points, 11.6 rebounds, and 3.45 blocks a game. His output of 15.6, 9,6 and 2.82 after 17 games this season are well down on what we're used to seeing, but they're not bad numbers by anyones standards.
David isn't completely to blame for his reduced numbers so far this season. During the off-season Gregg Popovich came up with the stupid idea that David should concentrate on his defense and sacrifice some of his scoring. All this has done has drawn more double and triple teams onto Tim Duncan, caused more turn overs and made the Spurs offense look like something that I'd be embarrassed to see my under-sixteen boys side run.
David's minutes this season have dropped from an average of 37.3 to 30.8. If you're sitting on the bench you can't score, they don't count any rebounds that you grab and you get ejected and fined if you try and block a shot.
History shows that David doesn't like to use his injuries as an excuse for his quality of play. It is obvious that through the first month of the season that David was having trouble with his back. His defense was suffering because he couldn't move as he would like to and he was picking up cheap fouls because of that.
"My body is starting to feel a little bit better so I'm jumping a little bit better" said David recently. It was showing, in limited minutes he had three dunks in the game, two of them off Avery Johnson alley-oops.
"I'm not going to throw them to Dave if he's not jumping," Johnson said. "But now he's calling for them so I'll keep 'em coming."
It would be a grave mistake if the Spurs were to trade David for any player that has been mentioned so far. I'm not saying that David is untouchable for a trade, no one player should ever be. What I do believe though is that if David was ever to be shipped out of San Antonio we should get back his value. No team has been rumoured to offer that so David should stay.
Should the Spurs trade David?
Step on the Soapbox and have your say.
