theBigLip wrote:Snakebites wrote:theBigLip wrote:
It's funny, I always thought that the Billups/AI trade made a lot of sense. DWill and CP3 just got in the league, Billups was looking slower, we were looking like our window had closed, so after making this trade, we had both Sheed and AI expiring at 20M each. That season might not have ended well with AI basically not playing, but we had a **** of cap space to work with. I forget who we signed (I think that is a bad sign right there), but we didn't retool like we should have.
I'm amazed you have forgotten the tragedy that is Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva.
The chief problem with the trade was that those actually WERE the best free agents available. No, I'm not kidding.
Ah, I had blocked them out of my mind
Yes, THAT was the problem. We had a ton of cap space, and like a drunken sailor, Dumars went out and spent all of it on those two. So the trade I think was okay, even if AI was on his last legs. Unfortunately, as you point out, it wasn't a great summer for free agents. SO maybe we should have kept the cap space, or used it in trades. But not for BG and CV.
Kept the cap space? It would have gone away due to increasing salaries, draft picks, etc. Or at least it would have gone down significantly.
I think its pretty clear it was the wrong year to go all in on cap space. Those were the best free agents and no salary space was used by any team to leverage any substantial trades in that offseason either.
Furthermore, even if you disagree with the above, we could have gotten that cap space by simply letting Hamilton expire rather than giving him that absurd extension. Could have had cap space, Chauncey for the last few years of his usefulness, and avoided the nightmare of Iverson, Gordon, and CV altogether.
