Originally Posted by Oldtimer
The Houston organization holds DeRo in great regard. In fact, there are pockets in Houston that would tell you they still want DeRo back. In Houston and in it's predecessor city San Jose he was part of 4 cups. Very often, in all sports and leagues, teams will do their star player who has put in his time, a "solid" by facilitating a trade to a home club that would not have the same monetary value than a trade elsewhere. They do this because they felt they had a suitable substitute in Holden and because DeRo would not have accepted a trade elsewhere, reducing the ability of the team to negotiate for a better deal.
James at the time WAS a highly rated prospect, he was young and cheap and DeRo did max out the cap at the time in the salary cap with Houston. It's not like this deal did not make financial sense for them. But be assured that it was a deal only available to Toronto as Houston would not have made this deal with anyone else.
Do not take the terms of this trade as some sort of indication of DeRo's reduced value. That is a narrow view of the trade that does not take into consideration the context. It's a similar mistake to those who point to no European experience as somehow being equivalent to reduced value. Obviously that is not the case since if he had reduced value, TFC would not have picked up his option at all.
