LOL sorry, I was under the impression he was talking about a scnario with Gasol on the team. ANyway, Nene wouldnt probably want to come here without Pau. Nets' with Dwill looks like a better place than our current team.
Les has shown his cards. He wants to sell tickets, not rebuild. I fully expect another band aid move before the season starts, and I fully expect the Rockets to still break the bank to get Nene. Sad but true. PS, K-Mart can get over it. He's a great player, but he hasn't earned the right to whine about being traded.
Go take a look at the history of nba champions. Every main player of the past teams that were champions (except of course the 2004 pistons) was drafted or a traded pick in the draft. Hell, Nowitzki and Kobe, the last two nba champions, are examples of traded picks on draft day. They both have stayed with their respective franchises their entire careers. Take a look at our very own Hakeem or the Chicago Bulls with the great Michael Jordan, all taken on draft day. Look how just having Lebron James changed the franchise of the Cavaliers when he was there. Like it or not, the draft is the key to a winning franchise, you just have to be incredibly smart about it. If you get the right player, you not only have your superstar, you also have the attention that he attracts to other players.
Two obvious things have resorted of this: 1. David Stern has exceeded his stay as the Commissioner of this league. 2. Leslie Alexander either needs to take a long vacation and put this team 100% in the hands of Morey, or he needs to sell it.
And lucky. That's my point. You guys are looking at all the success stories. I'm focusing on the failures. The teams that placed all of their eggs in the same basket, hoping to land a Jordan or Tim Duncan, and ended up with nothing to show for it except endless rebuilding projects. I'm telling you right now, there are considerably more failures than successes. From my perspective, right now we have the pieces to make moves. If those moves don't work out, we can still tank down the road. I feel like people are growing impatient with our current direction and just want to tank for the sake of change, and not necessarily because it's the smartest move given the current configuration of our roster.
You need incredible luck to get a player like Kobe/Duncan/Dirk etc. In a time where franchise players are rare and, when found, opt to choose to go to a big market city, we don't really have a choice but to do it via FA or trades.
Sure there have been some stupid teams and stupid gms who screwed themselves over. But if you want to win it all, the draft is the proven path. The rockets could go out and make moves but where will that bring them? The playoffs only to be ousted in the first or second round? The 9th seed? That's an even worse fate to me.
What is worse is years of mediocrity. Season ticket holders would rather have a team that loses deep in the playoffs than be miediocre fora long time and wait to get lucky. We need to do it the Boston way and trade our way to win.
It's not some stupid teams, it's the vast majority of them. That's what some of you guys don't seem to get. Eight franchises have won the last 28 championships. There are fates worse than what we've gone through the last two years. How many losing seasons will the pro-tanking crowd tolerate before you get fed up with that direction? Three? Five? Seven? Ten? What's an acceptable number of years to rebuild?
We aren't Boston. We aren't LA. Nor are we Miami, NY, or Chicago. We aren't a glamor city or a glamor franchise. Stars are not chatting with each other about forming a dream team in Houston. And notice how Gasol reacted to the news. He reacted the same way any top 15 player will react to finding out they just got traded to us. They do not want to play in Houston, not when more glamorous options are available. Our only real hope is to draft a talented player, hope they develop into a star, hope they want to stick around, and hope they can recruit other stars to come here. If that sounds like a long shot, that's because it is, but the odds are still better than the Morey method, which has not gotten us any closer to the Finals.
It doesn't HAVE to be that way though. Detroit proved that. We should exhaust every option before getting to that point because to put it plainly, a rebuild could easily take a decade or longer. Easily.
I'm not saying we are. However, with young assets in our team and a solid front office, we are completely capable of forming a team that could contend. The Pau + Nene front court alone wouldve atleast generated interest in some players who want to win. Pau's reaction is understandable but he's a grown man. He looks like he's a professional..unlike his other team mate.
Well, now that you've put a number to it I guess I'm okay with it. I should be alive 42 years from now as long as 2012 isn't the end of the world. Tank away.
The benefit for the GM of the statistics approach is its understandable to the owner and engages him. The problem with the statistics approach is the same thing....
If we happen to get the first pick in the draft....i am going to believe the sonspiracy thoerist...the league is riggged. Stern owns us something for knocking us 3 yrs back
I hate David Stern for costing us Pau and Nene but at least he stopped KB12/CP3/D12 from happening. He is still a douche tho.
Hell that would be something. If Stern told me that, I'd push my team the hardest to get the #14 pick just to show how BS the lottery is lol. Although I already feel it's rigged. Giving Cleveland the #1 pick last year seemed consolation for losing Lebron, but not only that he took the LOWER of their two picks (LAC's pick at #7) and made that #1 so they could keep their #4 also. Derrick Rose to hometown Chicago at #1. John Wall to Washington at #1 (hometown was Raleigh, NC and DC was the closest city besides Charlotte which had no chance at a lotto pick). And the biggest city crippling move ever: Yao Ming to Houston at #1 in a business decision because NONE of the other cities ranked above us had any semblance of a Chinese community that would allow fans abroad to attach to when they thought of Yao Ming's "home town". I won't lie, it's fun to be on the nice side of Stern. But underhanded tactics like this have gone too far.
