The trade:
Toronto Raptors agreed to trade center Jermaine O'Neal and swingman Jamario Moon (with a first round pick) to Miami Heat for ex-Suns Shawn Marion and guard Marcus Banks (and $3m cash).
For the Raptors:
Hailed as an up-n-coming team, the Raptors has been flat out horrible this season. Not only they failed to elevate to another level as expected, they are now second last in the East and can basically be ruled out of the playoffs even though there are still 30 games to play.
Apparently the management feels the same too. Yes, they were hit by injuries (Jose Calderon, Chris Bosh, JO). But even so, they shouldn't be that bad, ay? OK, they fired ex-COY Sam Mitchell (long due), but things didn't get any better with Canadian coach Jay Triano. With 2006 No.1 pick Andrea Bargnani finally coming to perform (yes, I traded him for JO early this season in my fantasy game, which looked good back then but obviously I gave him up too soon), they finally abandoned the JO experiment after just 50+ games.
As to why the JO trade failed, while there are many reasons, I believe the main problem is that both JO and Bosh are low post scorers who need the ball to be effective. Ideally, they should have turned JO into a role player, i.e. focusing on rebound, defense and facilitation while playing along with Bosh, and then taking the lead to score when Bosh sits. Somehow it never happened. At the same time, they saw Bargnani play extremely well after a horrible November. The problem is, even though he likes to shoot the 3s, Bargnani can't play at 3, since he can't catch up with the quick SF in the league. On the other hand, he did a passable job in blks and rebs. As such, the ideal frontcourt of Bargnani-Bosh-JO is not viable.
Given the age and the injury history, JO is obviously the odd-man out among the three. Matrix is quite ideal because they desperately need some scoring from the swingman position, because Anthony Parker or Jamario Moon are not scoring enough, while Jason Kapono only shoots 3s. Moreover, JO's contract is until 09-10 while Matrix's will expire after this season. So the Raptors can get some cost saving (10th highest in the league with $72m payroll this year) should they decide not to re-sign Matrix. Since they have all but given up this season, they can use the remaining 25-30 games to take a good look at Matrix.
For the Heat,
It's simple, size. Rookie Joel Anthony (6'9") is helplessly undersized at C, while Canadian Jamaal Magloire struggled mightily, start or not. With JO they have a legit C. WIth Dywane Wade shooting and slashing, JO has the entire paint for him to score. Udonis Haslem can now play at his natural position at PF. They don't need JO to be a 20-10 guy anymore, as they can settle him to be just 15-8. Matrix is expendable since he was never comfortable playing in Miami, as evidenced by his sharp drop in production (12.0 PPG 8.6 RPG this season vs. career avg of 17.9 PPG and 10.0 RPG).
Never underestimate the inclusion of Jamario Moon. Moon is an athletic player who is heavily underrated becaus he can't score much. However, he's a perfect role player, who plays hard and does all the dirty little works. He would be an ideal facilitator between Wade and JO. With Mario Chalmers running the game at PG and Haslem resume his old PF position, suddenly, the Heat have a complete lineup. While it will be a bit stretch to say they are contender now, but on paper they should be able to compete against any team not named Celtics or Cavaliers.
Furthermore, with JO manning the paint, Wade now needs not to take up all the scoring load and should see more open looks as a result of some double-teamming of JO. And we have seen how the Flash could single-handedly lift up the team to another level given a similar situation (2006 championship run).
What they give up is (1) salary flexibility. JO's $23m salary next year, which means they won't be able to make bid for any of this year's free agents (most notably Carlos Boozer); also without Matrix's expiring contracts, they will not be able to acquire talents from teams who want to dump salaries (Amare of Suns, for example); and (2) potential injury of JO, who's never played 82 games in any year and never played more than 70 games since, gasp, 03-04.
It's a calculated gamble for the Heat and even if it fails, they do not lose much and they still have the cap space for the 2010 mega free agency.
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