leebigez, you said a lot of "who knows" but clearly you think very highly of Gay and believe that he would have been the missing piece we need to be a contender. This is your opinion, which is fine, but not everybody shares it, and it is certainly not a foregone conclusion like you think. I think you overestimate Gay's worth and underestimate guys like Scola and Battier. Last year's team could have been one of the better teams if Yao didn't go down. We couldn't have won 12 straight games without Yao if we didn't have Scola and Landry. In fact, I would even say that we couldn't have done that if we swapped Scola for Gay. But that's speculative opinion on my part. What I am saying is, our weakest link was not an athletic wingman (although it would certainly have helped). It was a solid PF. A Gay wouldn't have helped that much against Utah in 07. A Scola would probably have got us past the first round that year. (We had no chance in 08 because we didn't have Yao.)
In other words, the team we had the last two years, at full strength, was not much better then the 05/06 team at full strength. We did not improve the roster in any significant way, in your estimation. Despite the fact we have shown a far greater resilience against injuries to our stars in recent years then we did in that miserable season. Would you agree with that, or am I putting words in your mouth?
It's near general consensus that Daryl Morey, though not the GM at the time, was mostly responsible for the Battier trade, my friend.
All I know is that he liked Battier a lot as a player, and he felt that Battier would fit the team well. He had some numbers do back that up. But did he initiate trade talks for Battier with our draft pick? Was he the one negotiating the terms? I never read anything confirming that. I do recall Carroll Dawson mentioning shortly after the trade that he had many GMs from other teams calling him and basically congratulating him on the move. And he never referred to Morey as the guy pushing for the deal.
