Are the Spurs potentially confused?

Like everyone else, I find today's Spurs trade confusing. Jackie Butler and the rights to Luis Scola to the Rockets for a Greek guard who will never play another NBA game, a second-round pick, and cash.

General reaction cuts two ways:

1. Say, "What the hell?" Then give Spurs management the benefit of the doubt because we just won the title.

2. Great vengeance and furious anger. Quoth one Spurs blogger: "From a fan's perspective, this is entirely inexcusable. Actually, it's more like a fucking travesty." He then wrapped up the post by calling the deal a "turd sandwich."

Kelly Dwyer, normally of SI.com but filling in at TrueHoop, also went just a bit overboard, saying the trade "looks on paper to be one of the more lopsided NBA deals in the last decade."

Okay. Everyone catch your breath for a second. We all wish the Spurs had gotten more, but let's not get too worked up over the hype we're telling ourselves about what these guys could be. At their best, they're role players. That's easily forgotten. The talk of potential comes without a ceiling, and we tend to envision the stratosphere. Just this summer I found myself daydreaming of Butler and James White as integral pieces when the team transitions to the Tony Parker Era. Butler, the dynamic lost-post threat, a brick of a body with hands like cotton; White, the flying, dunking, slashing scorer and shifty defender — a spindlier, black Ginobili — forever running alongside Parker's fast-break.

Coaches and GM's, on the other hand, just want a guy who rotates on defense. That's probably where the disconnect is. Management, appreciating the unique combination of freakish talents and basketball smarts it takes to compete at this level, is looking for someone who won't get eaten alive. When coaches are high on players who aren't born superstars, I think this is the ceiling in their mind, the hoped-for result.

Example: right now it appears White's actual game isn't even up to Summer League standards. And Butler is a young, offensively talented player who is also lost in the Spurs defensive scheme, showed up to camp last year 30 pounds overweight, plays Duncan's position, has a $2.4 million salary this season, and whose value will never be higher. Might be time to let him go.

My guess is that fans/media conflate the two ideas of potential, and that leads to this trade being casually compared to the debacle that was "Marko Jaric and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad contract extension for Sam Cassell AND a first."

But, really, the outrage here is mostly a residual of what we expected from Scola after Ginobili's rise. He's still widely regarded as the best player in Europe, mainly thanks to his tenacity, but he's also 27 and only 6-9. There isn't much potential left to reach, making it unlikely he'll morph into some wild, elbowy hybrid of Ginobili and Duncan. His trade value, simply, was down, thanks to his age. This year, we were in Chris Duhon territory. If the Rockets are lucky, he'll match the production of Oberto + Elson, and they'll be paying him about the same salary as those two guys combined, too.

In the end, with Houston's dirty oil money, the Spurs pocketed like $7 million and opened up a roster spot, possibly for Frenchie Mickael Pietrus. I could live with all this, if we hadn't just paid Matt Bonner $9 million for the next three years. So I guess all I'm left with is: In Pop we trust.