+1000
Some are so hung up on next year's draft. Some teams have been bottom dwellers for years and no championship to show for being in the lottery year after year.
I like Dudley but this is too good a trade to pass up and i do think it makes us better, just not good enough.
Now, If only McD can find a way to get rid of Beastley and Brown........
Not really. Had we not been 'trying to win', which is pretty laughable in the last week of the season, Cleveland wouldn't of gotten ahead of us.
Had Cleveland not of gotten ahead of us, I'm quite sure, nothing else about the process would have changed, and we would have won the 1st overall pick.
Now I have no problem, slightly lowering our chances by making smart moves for young talent that isn't hamstringing our future.
But I would have a problem if we try to do what we did last year and just go out and spend most of our cap for crap.
One of the reasons lottery teams are in the lottery year after year is because they DIDN'T tank.
They perennially signed their Beasely's, they played to win, a few were unlucky in the lottery, and overall many of them made horrible choices.
Without a star in the NBA you might as well be last place...if you want a championship. I'm sure we could with the right moves move back into the perennially 6th-8th seed land. We would have some good basketball to watch a decent portion of the time. But overall you need that star, and that star only comes if you have the top pick in the draft. If the draft is the one in a decade or two draft, perhaps top 2-3.
Sure there are exceptions. But they are blue moon rare.
I think we need to try to get better by position ourselves with young talent, draft picks, and setting up our cap space to where and when we need it.
But as we are doing that, we should not be making crazy moves that will only take us from 1-6th potential pick to 10-13th or so pick.
The key is to match up when you're at the top or near the top of the lottery, when the actual stars are there. The reason it doesn't happen much, is because there aren't many guys out there.
Consequently THAT is THE reason there have been what, 6 teams winning the championship in 25 seasons.
So unless you get those players, on those specific years, by tanking, you don't have a shot.
You know how to break into that 6 team group? Simple, Spurs held Robinson out for Duncan, and suddenly they were an elite team. Now they used their organizational smarts to maintain it...BUT..it all flowed around Duncan.
So people are right, tanking might not mean something, but it's also pretty much the ONLY way to get somewhere.
Which again brings us back to how horrible what $arver did, Colangelo basically almost single handedly broke this trend. We had a team right there with everyone else, and NOT by that way...and $arver pissed it all away. It took a couple of decades for Colangelo to do it, and he's not here anymore.
But the key point is, that supposedly, this next year is ONE of those years TO tank. It's one of those Lebron years. One of those Durant years. One of those Shaq years. So here we stand and we could ignore this, or actually try for it.
I say we go for it. Maybe we don't get it, but what does it matter if we don't? Either way we're a lottery bound team. But one way we actually have a shot of moving up.
