I had this discussion before the season on a Pistons blog (guy who wrote for Hoops World and covered the Pistons):
1. POB's option was declined by the Warriors, so he's an RFA. That 2.2M was the salary of a #9 lottery pick, status he hasn't justified yet. Given that he's proven nothing at the NBA level, I can't see the market for him being too hot. Amir Johnson and Andray Blatche got only around $3M annually, and they might have been even shinier prospects.
Getting him to agree to a deal might be a problem, though, as he doesn't have much incentive to help us...but a change of scenery might be welcome. We could always threaten to match any deal we can (up to the $2.2M he woudl have made in the 3rd year option). I don't see anyone throwing half the MLE at him unless they're nuts.
2.
Harrington shot slightly better than
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/playe...r?playerId=883 this year, whether you use straight FG% (FG/FGA) or TS%, which includes the value FTA's and 3's. All the offensive numbers are remarkably similar.
While 'Sheed, as you said, has the ability to punish someone downlow, he really, really doesn't do it much (whether it's due to fatigue or preference or just age). He takes four 3P's per game and rarely gets to the line (only about 2FTA's). The rebounding has also declined quite a bit as well from his glory days
3. Al did play in the East. For the Pacers. The 61-21, First Place Pacers. That's 79 games, averaging 30MPG for the 61-21, First Place Pacers that went to the ECF in '03-04. The prior season, he also played 82 games for a 48-win Pacer team. It's not like he was sucking on a bad team, he was a productive part of good teams (could you really hold him responsible for the H awks sucking?). No one's saying he's special, but he is certainly capable of starting for a good team (Warriors won 42 and 48 games respectively with him as starting PF). Billups, Prince, and Hamilton would still be around, and they were already planning to give Maxiel and Amir Johnson bigger roles in the rotation anyways.
4. The picks would spaced out every other year and probably need to be lotto protected. Perhaps a better solution would be to do what Chicago did and give the Pistons the option to swap picks, which means the W's give up draft spots instead of the picks entirely.
5. There's few teams with cap space and no teams with cap space who would pay Baron anything close to $17M, or even $12M annually.