It's three o'clock here on the east coast. I woke up to this chilling thought Our core roster in 2002 before Yao was picked Franchise -- out of the league Cat -- out except for his phantom salary Rice -- out, too old Mo -- out, China Cato -- out and Eddie Griffin -- dead Jason Collins -- dead Actually I think only Kenny Thomas is playing in the league, spotty minutes though. What were we think'in?
nextyear wasnt much better...only posey, KT and yao are still in the NBA. We still won 43 games though, not bad.
watching Grant HIll tonight,it reminded me how sad to see francis and cat not playing. also despite all the bad contracts CD did drafting Yao when everyone in the media was laughing was brilliant. most wanted butler,dunleavy,williams.
On a irrelevant note, just watched the last quarter against Spurs again. It's hilarious to hear Sean Idiot in his high pitch voice squeaking "that was a 4 point swing" on a Brook's made basket, pure gold.
Hey, do you also realize that outside of Yao and T-Mac, only Chuck Hayes is still left with the Rockets from that 2005-06 injury-plagued squad.
But that happens a lot of teams. Bulls had the worst record in that year, but they still had Crawford, Artest, Curry, Chandler, Brad Miller in the league. Warriors were equally bad, but Areanas, Dampier, Hugues, Murphy, J.Rish are proven to be NBA worthy. We had a massive failure in building the team with CD reigning and Rudy giving out checks like they are not his (but they were not his)
CP made a point the other day, on his afternoon show, how many teams can boast a roster of only ONE player drafter higher than 23? apparently, it's only the rockets... think about it
I am guessing not too many players on any team in the 2001 season is still in the league anyway in 2010. I remember NBA careers last an average of 5 years so its not all that surprisng that a team's roster from 8 seasons ago would be pretty much all gone from the league. Maybe some teams have a few more left (teams with big stars, team who were younger at that time) but I don't think this means CD was a failure. You don't assemble a team with 8 seasons in the future in mind.
that's true, but i think the point was how many of them simply left the league because they werent good enough or they had injuries/death.
^^^ The point is that we had an illusory core. Usually a team is built around one or two franchise players, one or two upcoming young studs, and other veteran/utility/journeyman type of role players. The last category is less important, but rarely do you see a team built around guys out of the league or dead (god forbid, RIP Eddie and Jason) in 5 seasons later ( I think all these guys were out two seasons ago already). I think we were lucky to get T-mac through trade and slowly shifted out our "losses". Imagine Rudy T and CD combo were still in charge in those 5 seasons, that's the nightmare I was having. :grin:
Also remember this, Weisbro, a former NHL manager, oaked the Francis/Tmac deal b/c he liked Francis stuck out for his teammates, a hockey player mentality. You need an idiot to help out other's mistakes. JVG said it once that he was so surprised that Weisbro took Francis just b/c of that, not anything basketball related. But of course, I imagine, JVG being a cunning seller laughed at it inside but put on a serious face during the deal.
Francis wasn't a bad player and Mobley more than held his own. It was a good trade for both teams at the time. We just lacked the role guys to go along with guys like mobley, francis, and yao. I dont think it would have worked out badly for us had we kept them, assuming they stayed healthy, but injuries screwed both sides. The biggest issue was blown drafts. We werent drafting any talent besides obvious picks like Francis and Yao. Mobley was the exception. There were also bad contracts like Taylor's. I think morey has done a good job, but when he came on a lot of the bad contracts were gone or almost gone and the talent in the draft got better, so luck was on his side as well.
I remember Suns had a competing offer on the table for Tmac including Matrix and Starbury. I think that was a better deal for the Orlando.
