Most of those situations are reactionary to making bad decisions. Meeting minimum salary requirements isn't really an issue with our team. Most of what we did wasn't acquiring talent, but shipping it off. Shipping them off within a couple or so years on the team.
Richardson and Jones are perfect examples. We sign them to contracts, and then say whoops, bad move. Then shipped them off using picks. KT we acquired using picks, then we send him off for picks, and subsequently he lands on the Spurs.
Each step of the way they knew what was coming down the line. They knew how much they would have to dole out. If they were concerned about how much they were going to have to pay in luxury tax, that would have been something discussed and decided upon before going through with the transaction. So either $arver changed his mind, or erred in .
The problem with changing his mind in this case is like he took out mortgages on his property to do things, locking himself in by investing heavily in it, and then when the price of the house goes down decides to ditch that investment for something smaller, giving equity away to just to get out from under the obligation. Once he does, he takes out a mortgage on the newer smaller house, and the same thing happens. From 1.5 million, to 800,000, to 500,000. Still a good house, i.e. make the playoffs, but not the same thing.
If they didn't analyze the impact, then it might be called ineptness. Either way isn't good.
The suns have had a fire sale on their picks, each time there were good value players on the board, and many times the trades were announced when there was an assured perceived value available for that pick. I.E. 4 value players with the Suns pick only 3 slots away. In the case of KT and Jones, after we locked them in, then paid to get rid of them, we then missed what they brought to the team. In regards to these players, other gm's 'got us coming and going'.
The one with #7, the trade was announced around pick 4 if memory serves correct, and they thought neither deng, nor iggs would be there.
The Suns have a good track record in the draft. No pick is a sure shot, even if they look like one. However if you have a good scouting staff and you allow them to pick 5 players from those picks, we aren't going to miss on all of them, and where we were at the time talent wise you consolidate what you have. 2 decent picks that bring the value of barbosa to the team that are young at this point would do wonders for the team.
If things weren't so shoot from the hip, $arver could have saved money by ditching his scouts the last 4 years. Might as well have.
I agree that we had the misfortune of meeting up with the Spurs and some freak things over the years, however we had the tools to put ourselves completely over the top of the Spurs...and be younger outlasting their dynasty. Maybe so much so, that we prevent the word 'dynasty' from being associated with the Spurs.
I doubt with all the picks we gave away we couldn't have found 2 of such players on par with barbosa in terms of talent. Odds are we'd of found about 4 players that were either serviceable, barbosa like, or better. In such a case, that misfortune might not have been misfortune, and looking ahead we'd still be pretty stocked. These picks are cheap and any player can be the player that counts for dollar for dollar above the amount, it doesn't have to be the rookies. Hell if it makes us feel better we could've said that it was part of Nash's or Amare's contracts that put us over, and thus we were paying 20 million for nash because of the tax. But we out-psyched ourselves and said, no it's KT, or Jones, or Richardson, or it would have been JJ, etc, etc.
We had the control of our destiny, and we used that control to keep our costs low instead of win. Not one decision, but many over the years. Any edge we had, or lead in talent we had...eroded with every decision. Now I see teams stocked with young talent ready to emerge, and challenge us, and overtake us, and we've been content with spinning our wheels.
You let yourself get jobbed like that as a team, it's bad leadership from wherever it came from. But seeing how things were made for financial reasons time and time again, it can be pretty obvious where the direction came from.
There are 15-20 million dollar a year contracts floating around, but as you said when a need is some teams like to acquire such and give you picks if you have one....we've shown for financial reasons to PAY picks to offload an expiring contract. Why should any of us believe that $arver won't trade Shaq and our 2012 pick to get rid of him and save 5 or 10 mill + pick savings, just to get him off our books...instead of each of the following
a) let it expire, and keep your pick, try for one last playoff run with shaq
b)trade him, get picks or players, and obviously cap room is off
No again $arver has shown he'll do something like this
C) trade him, pay picks, to save money
I'm not saying he'll do this, I'm saying given precedent he's shown me no reason to think otherwise. He's done it before, and sold tons of picks which helps build a foundation for such precedent to be considered. (It adds weight to it)
Shaq should be a professional. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't. The problem is most players have no trade clauses. We didn't get KG because Marion said 'no', don't want to be traded there. Besides finding someone, and assuming you'll get the deal, you have to also account for the no trade clauses.
With Shaq, I doubt you could get him to waive his no trade clause to go to the likes of Memphis or Toronto. He'd only want to go to a contender, and a contender won't have the assets/cap space, nor the desire to come up with a way to take on a 20 million dollar contract. There might be a possibility, but it would be improbable, and unwise to assume that it would be possible to meet both O'Neal's desires, and our own.
Now if he is 'retired' it doesn't matter what team he is on. But at this point, if it doesn't work out next year, I can still see Shaq wanting to make one last run in 2010 whether it's here or elsewhere. If a team has no shot at it, he won't go there when there is still a chance here.
They traded for shaq as a knee jerk reaction coupled with Shaq actually being available, and us having a huge NEED created in the offseason.
We have KT, there is no Shaq trade. We didn't trade KT because we knew we could get Shaq, we traded KT for money, and then decided, whoops, we need another big person. So we give up an allstar player who can play another 7 years potentially at a pretty high level for Shaq who might have played the best he will in a Suns uniform.
Not saying he will do that, I think he has a shot at having a better season, and a better fit with us this year, but I can't really 'bank' on that being enough.
Marion might have stayed, but I highly doubt it. We could have waited and got a player of similar age, instead of an old O'Neal. Given the situation we were in, I don't mind the risk so much, but I'd be a fool to think O'Neal would have been our best offer. We had KG in our sights and the offer was there, and we could have gotten good value for Marion elsewhere, just not 'right then'...for last year.
Draft picks can contribute the first season, but generally years 2-4 will be the years they blossom. That said, this year, and each season we had guys we could have done without at the end of the bench in favor of a guy like Rondo, Deng/iggs, etc. As with those players it's clear that in years 2-4. Years those draft picks could have helped us is in the 2006, 2007, and 2008 playoffs. Rondo would have been good this year, in previous years, Deng would have had an impact, if it was iggs instead of Deng, he's already had years as well that could have helped us, and that's just a small portion of what we could have had, and at the time were players valued and known to be a good player to put a bet on by many around the league and its peers. Those are just from a couple of our 'picks' we didn't keep.
Going forward we still don't own our 2010 1st round pick, and we'll still be paying for these mistakes then. Some feel it's possible that it's a lottery pick. Given the Warriors, and we're in the west, it's not impossible we could be a 9th seed type that year and still with 45-47 games.
A team should always be building, even during their peak. Maybe they keep more slots open for vets, but still try to bring in young talent. We haven't. We haven't when there was clear valuable talent we could have added.
We said we don't want rooks for money reason more than impact reasons, even though they are cheap as hell, and then don't go out and pick up enough vets to really fill out the squad.
They get great deals on Jim Jackson, and Grant Hill, strike fire in Eddie House, etc. In the end, we weren't proactive enough to fill out our roster with vets we needed, and yet didn't use those roster spots on any of the number of picks we had, where talent we needed could be had. In a time where rosters actually increased by one.
You can't guarantee a draft pick, just like you can't necessarily guarantee people like Brian Grant will help us. Given where we were, and given one strength of this team has been our scouts ability to find good players, and you have numerous picks...you take your chances when you are a couple of good picks away from having a potential Dynasty.
Instead of building a team, we start dismantling it. We miss what we had, overcompensate, need to save money, make another move, miss what we had, make boneheaded draft/fa decisions need to save money, etc, etc.
All done for money reasons imo.
In the end, the savings are small because of the overcompensating. In fact the overcompensating was caused by trying to 'save'. For these mistakes we've given away what amounts to almost a decades worth of 1st round picks.
Given that the stated value of good franchises rises, some of these losses we tried not to take would have been wiped out by the increased value of the franchise.
Again 401 million $arver paid, it was worth 445 pre-shaq trade. Probably a bit more now. That's 44 million more, maybe more like 450-60 at this point from what he paid. If tried to sell it right now, no doubt they'd add a premium to that stated price.
To come full circle, the Suns were valued at I believe 325-350 million when Sarver bought them for 401 million. So if we used the more modest 350 million value of the franchise, the franchise has increased in value roughly 100 million dollars since $arver bought it, and if sold, he probably could get around 500 million, realizing that 100 million dollar increase.
This amount is far enough to wipe out any small peanuts few million dollars here or there, but we 'blinked' at each small amount, and dug to China to get out of a 6 foot hole rather than just suck it up and climb out.
What's the few million on JJ's contract
What's the few million on googs contract
etc, etc.
So many things like this, so many assets used to cover mistakes, allowing us to then make more mistakes, only to use assets to cover those mistakes.
Especially when then you turn around and make poor decisions overcompensating for everything. It shows lack of vision, lack of a plan, lack of ability to operate a franchise, and shortsightedness.
Lack of restraint to waste what we had. Lack of knowledge that there will always be needs, thus you'll always have an opportunity to overspend to make yourself better whether in fa or trade. Lack of knowledge that when you give up talent and assets, you make yourself worse.
Yet our owner/gm combo's decided to go down that route. Keep switching directions like that and nothing gets done. Imagine a captain of a ship saying sail north for 2 months, south for 2 months, north for 2 months, south for 2 months, wasting resources, wear and tear, and throwing cargo overboard because you keep scraping yourself against the same reef each time you pass. That's the sort of result he got from wanting to win, wanting to save, wanting to win, wanting to save. Each time being the one who 'needs' the transaction and being bent over in negotiations with other GM's/Owners each time because of it.
The main thing is, the catalyst, and the continuing downward pressure on our roster was caused by $$$. $$$ that in the end didn't save much. If you consider the lost endorsements, extra playoff games, apparel, and franchise worth increases from fielding a championship/multi-championship club and factor in the already 100 million dollar increase, where was the need to save a few million? Was it worth shredding our roster down to a few core pieces, two of which could have drop off season at any time? I doubt it. Our owner(s) squandered it. As I said before, sold a gold mine for the price of swamp land.
We wasted the accumulation of talent that some franchises have never seen ever collected on a team. Even for us it's rare. This was the best stocked Suns era in terms of young talent, and upcoming picks I've seen in my 22 years following the Suns when I was 8 and went to my first game.
These opportunities are rare for any club, even for us 'spoiled' suns fans with 50 win seasons every year. In the end, with the overcompensating, we wasted that gift for peanuts.
Can we still win a championship, sure, we could. But we don't have a team able to be locked into WC Finals for the next 7 or so years only needing to account for the eventual departure of Nash, combined with not having the talent that might have led to a championship or two ALREADY.
That's where we could have been, even if we bombed on half our picks. That amount saved over the past few years, much of which lost from overcompensating was not worth this. $arver's philosophy. 'A winning one'.
If there were basketball gods for how we treated such a loaded team, we as fans would be in trouble. lol
