Blazers writer about Barkley: "let's not praise him too much"

This is just a hunch, but I'll bet you could trace the difference between our say 94 & 95 playoff records to 96+ records (that someone attributed to Barkley presense) you could explain it by two other events. One, Hakeem got married and two, he went on heart medicine. More realistically than any of these 3 scenarios however, is that Hakeem gradually started slowing down due to age, after all even Hakeem is mortal.

Further what people are forgetting is that Seattle owned us big-time before Chuck got hear. And we had a reasonably together and confident team for the playoffs (Clyde was there, Hakeem was there, Horry was there, Brown was there, Bryant was there, Smith was there, Cassel was 1/3 there) coming off a championship season and we got obliterated in 1996. We had to do something. My personal opinion is the Barkley move was the right one--after all now we had Seattle's answer, unfortunately we made terrible judgement with the Price move. Instead of going after a full season and playoff tested PG (e.g., D. Harper, R. Harper or Porter) we went for a spot player who had a good 3% who we thought he would work out. That was the bad gamble, not the Barkley one. We took some gambles, they almost worked, but didn't quite. In hindsight I would still do the Barkley trade, but would not have left the PG situation so bleak. That is the story, although I doubt ya'll are ready to accept it.

[This message has been edited by sir scarvajal (edited December 15, 1999).]

 

Sir I respect your opinion but you mean to tell me you are blaming our failures on Brent Price???? On paper the trade was a huge sucess but in reality it was a failure, we brought in Charles to win a title today and relenquished all chances of a title tommarow.

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"We need to fockass".....Dream back in the day

 

TheFreak,

Well, the Drexler trade is different in the fact that Otis Thorpe and Clyde are exactly the same age. That makes it more of a straight up deal

The kinds of deals I'm talking about are trading futures for aging veterans.

As a matter of theory I don't like those moves. Every deal is different, but the idea doesn't sit well with me. As far as the Pippen trade is concerned, that is more of a free agent signing, but one I disagreed with because even if everything had worked out he still would have only given us a few good seasons.

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Rockets When? Rockets When?

 

Just for the heart Charles displayed when he was here I would retire his number.

People who think that Barkley being a Rocket was "a waste of time" sort of speak or thought that he didn't make us better is not looking at the total picture.

I was one of the people here in 1996 that cried about this trade to get Charles here. Now, looking back. there is no way that Horry would of given us what Barkley did. Cassell is debatable but in order to get quality, you have to give it up. I would do this trade 100 times again.

Yeah, we got older. But you have to remember that Dream was still in his "prime" or damn near it and we had to take a shot at the title during the next 3 years. It was the right move and if it wasn't for a fluke play, we would have probably spanked the Bulls like we have always done during Dreams reign in Houston for title number 3. And you can argue that the West was pretty damn scared when they saw us up by 2-1 in a best of 5 and up 12 points when Barkley tore his tricep.

Argue the point all you like. Charles brought us the fire that was fading away after title number 2. For that, I am grateful forever.

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Live Rocketball. Breathe Rocketball. Die with Rocketball.


[This message has been edited by Almu (edited December 16, 1999).]

 

I think the thing we are ignoring is that we probably could have traded those four players or at least Horry and Cassell for something else. So, arguing that Barkley is better than those four is one thing, but it doesn't address what we could have gotten for them elsewhere. I don't know what that is and I suppose none of us will ever really know. We are also forgeting the 10-12 points and 7-8 rebounds that Willis added from off the bench. Again, I'm not arguing that Barkley is not responsible for some of the success, but certainly not all of it.

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Rockets When? Rockets When?

 

In our best playoff run of that stretch (I think it was 97) Willis totally disappeared. He got some bad pub in the Sam Mitchell indecent and never seemed to regain his form. I am not taking anything away from him, he was especially valuable the next year, but Charles was the impetus for the improvement. But surely you can see the fact we signed Brent Price rather than doing a full court press (red carpet) towards a Harper or Porter was a mistake. Our frontline as a group were doing their job every year since Barkley arrived, it is the backcourt that let us down, again and again. I might add the year before Barkley arrived, Horry, Bryant and Brown (maybe Elie too) let themselves get destroyed by their Seattle counterparts, if I recall correctly. Seeing what Schrempf did to Horry I actually thought Schrempf was a good player. Then Pippen in the finals proved he wasn’t.

 

I am not blaming Brent Price the person, but yes I think the worst front office move during that period was expecting a guy with no playoff-proven toughness, a history of injury, and no sustained performance (for a year, or better yet a couple) as a starter to just walk in an be a rock for you at PG position was a bad miscalculation. I mentioned 3 other more seasoned guys that had we tried a hard sell with them might have fit the bill much better. I could be missing many others.

Further, think about what we gave up: Bryant, Horry, Cassell, and Brown. Except for Cassell, the rest haven't done anything. And though Charles has missed some games, Cassell has missed probably more in that span. Adding Charles to the front line along with Hakeem gave us a fighting chance for a couple of years, and we only had a couple of years left anyway as father time was catching up to Hakeem. That trade was a good gamble. Where we made our missteps was not ever getting a seasoned PG after the Barkley trade and having no seasoned guards at all last year. If you look at the positions where we haven't got the production at either end (not being able to score consistently nor stopping the opponents from scoring) against the elite teams over the last 4 years or so, this is painfully obvious where are problems were. It is just ludicrous to blame anyone on the front line (including Charles, and though I don’t like to say it probably Pippen too) for our weaknesses. We can go round and round on this but it takes extremely twisted logic not to mention ignoring statistics to say Barkley was the problem.