Which again brings us full circle to what happened. Needing those upgrades, we went for it and traded for KD. Here we go again. Now we have the team we have. This continual rehash does us all no good. The problem in front of us now, is how to get THIS squad to win?
Not saying he IS a super star now. Did I? He is in that process Nash had to go through with another team than the Suns to become a better player. He was obviously not making that next step with us. Now he seemingly is with NJ.
I agree but I'm not the one rehashing it. I try to stay out of that conversation but every now and then someone posts something that I disagree with and I address it.
And you would have bemoaned any trade just the same because if that team EVER wanted to level up with another superstar, it was going to take Bridges being traded to do it.
YES! No team halfway smart will trade a superstar player for a bunch of trash and no trade picks. Not gonna happen. They ALWAYS look at YOUR best player first. We would not trade Booker. Hmmm. Whose left?
No team halfway smart will trade a superstar player for a bunch of trash unless that player is old, oft-injured and on a gigantic contract. That's when the equation changes, or at least it's supposed to.
He's having the 2nd best season of his CAREER this year.
Yup. Truth is if they really wanted him, they’d he traded should have started with Bridges and a couple picks and if they balked, then by all means, sweeten with picks. But because they started with such a weak centerpiece, picks alone wouldn’t have gotten it done.
I would have given them the picks and filler or I would have given them Mikal/CamJ along with a couple of protected picks or I wouldn't have made a deal. The difference is that some of you see it as "trading a superstar" and some of us viewed it as "unloading an aging superstar on a negative value contract". To me, Brooklyn wanted and needed to dump that contract.
So how has Durant played? So far he IS earning his money. You can't trade for what "might" happen. What if we had traded for Ja Morant prior to his melt down? Or any younger guy that suffers career altering injuries you can't foresee. You trade based on current value.
When has a superstar been traded when his team is reaping maximum return? There's always a big contract. Hello? Superstar.
I disagree. He's putting up some monster numbers but he's not impacting the game the way he used to.
The plus/minus numbers beg to differ. Our numbers are abysmal when he's out of the game.
Hello? 35 years old. Oft-injured. Find me a similar return for a 35 year old with horrible injury history. You can't. Okay, that's unfair because let's face it, 35 year olds are rarely still superstars and KD is. But the point holds though when you and others talk about his value as if he we a mid-career superstar. You trade for a mid-career superstar and you expect to have his value for many years to come (either on the court or in trade a few years down the road).
WTF? When did I say he's not helping this team? When did I imply anything of the sort?
"I disagree. He's putting up some monster numbers but he's not impacting the game the way he used to."
I think schematically we could make more impact not switching as much on defense. Teams have figured out how to play the two man game to get the switch and thus the match up they want on offense. Our guys stray away from their shooters on the weak side too much. When the ball swings to the weak side either teams are getting wide open shots. Our guys play help defense off the hot hand on other teams. Even EJ points out, you cannot leave your guy if he is the hot shooter. These are basics we aren't doing. Can't our coaches see that?
I don't think that's true. His numbers are fine, but the leadership is lacking, and that's putting it gently. This board is fond of talking about "empty stats guys" who put up the numbers but don't help their team win, and that's exactly what Durant is right now.
We all knew KD is NOT a CP3. We knew that before the trade. KD has always lead by practice work ethic, not by being vocal. That's Book's role. Beal is like KD too. They got two superstars that would not overshadow Book. Seems like by design.
We heard that the year after the finals appearance. We heard that the year after. This team needed another Superstar to play with Book. All the other good teams in the league had reliable second guys on the team.
I agree we needed another star in order to win it all. And if we could have added Durant to that roster, I think that would have given us a good chance to succeed. But we didn't have enough talent on that roster to survive glutting it and we see that daily right now IMO. It's not a popular opinion here but I believe then and still do that we'd have been better off making incremental improvements. Our failures to draft wisely in the past left us with too little talent to warrant taking the big swing at KD.
We have had 50 plus years of tweaks, fun teams, reloading, etc. etc. What we have not done is a move like Durant. So, doing more of the same makes no sense. At least we can say we went for it even if it fails. I can be proud of the team at least taking a risk.
None of it is "the same". We've swung for the fences before. We've failed before. We swung for the fences again. We've failed again. But this time we've mortgaged much of our future and will have no choice but to go through a full rebuild IMO. It would be best if we started selling off assets this season but I highly doubt we'll be that proactive. We might not even do it in the offseason, instead we'll likely cling to the dim hope that bandaids will repair a roster that needs a more aggressive surgical approach.
