I would rather be a rebuilding team with a year off than a championship contender with a year off. You can practice and train in the offseason but you can't win a championship. I agree that the lack of game-time opportunity to improve will hurt us though. But it will hurt everyone with young players. The only people it won't hurt are banged up guys who need more time to rest and rehab. Roy, Oden...Yao! So maybe it will help us relative to the league after all.
I would love to take on Rashard Lewis and the #2 pick. I wouldn't trade Martin though; you're just robbing Peter to pay Paul (Easter analogies yea!). Morey's proven to be a good negotiator over the years. Show Washington how crappy this draft is with your advanced analytics; tell them that Derrick Williams will be the #1 pick and they won't want Irving since they have Wall already, and show them how close they are to competing if only they had Scola, Courtney Lee (who was a starter before the Rockets), and any combination of Budinger, Hill, Thabeet, and some of our other first round picks. Is it a tall order? Sure, but the point is that you've gotta keep the core of Lowry, Martin, and Patterson or else you're just running in place.
