1) Two reasons: a) Because he has not been allowed to show what he can do. We all know (at least those who are being objective) that he's shown something positive when given the opportunity to play with one exception; where's allowed to play more than a minute and not put in the last seconds when the game is on the line, after not playing at all for an extended period of time and b) He was not extended for a paltry 2 Million. If you go to the trade board, the biggest reason that no one will trade for him is that he is a free agent next season and they don't want to invest in a guy who has the ability to walk next season or they are interested in him, they can sign him next season without having to give the Warriors a thing.
If you are a young team (like Minnesota, for example) and you have the chance to audition a young guy for 30 games and it costs you basically nothing to do so (ie Gerald Green) then why would you not go for it? You can learn a lot more about the kid over that time span than you would in a few workouts and meetings in the offseason.
So to me, the fact that nobody is grabbing him for a very cheap price (assumed) it falls more on the side of him not garnering interest rather than teams deciding they'd rather not give up an EC or a 2nd rd pick for the kid to get a three month audition.
2) This should be obvious. a) Nelson doesn't like POB as a player. b) Nelson believes that "Webber is a better Center than Biedrens (if not, why does he now choose to start him over Andris?) so we know for darn sure he must feel that he's a better Center than POB.
That doesn't really answer my question. Maybe Nelson prefers Webber over AB (doubtful) but that doesn't explain why POB can't get 5 minutes per game. There'd be 5 mpg for POB if he was so talented.
So most likely, POB didn't get the nod over Webber, or over Croshere, or over Mbenga...is because he's not any good. Doesn't have to be a Webber- Nellie thing.
3) Because we're stupid imo. Seriously though, two reasons again: a) See 2a above (Nellie did not want him to be part of the teams long range plans). b) Cohan was trying to save money as a number of posters implied, although I doubt that this was the most significant factor.
So the guy that is stupid nails his player evaluation to the point that he is able to
1) trade our most bloated contracts
2) cut off all of our dead weight
3) draft Brandan Wright
4) Lead this team to a huge turnaround in one season
But he's stupid because he doesn't see the same thing that you do in POB in your 15 minutes of watching POB in garbage time and in SL Games?
That's a tough one to pull off, Turk. Really tough. Odds are highly stacked against you on that argument.
4) "Is it because our front office is a bunch of idiots that hate incredibly talented and skilled 7 footers or is it because...(he sucks)?"
I don't think it's the front office being a "bunch of idiots" necessarily and the truth is that I don't even think of Nellie as an "idiot" for being the driving force behind the "POB fiasco" but I will say that I disagree with his judgment on this because I don't think there is enough "data" to come to the apparent conclusions that he has come to on POB. I also believe that this data could have easily been accumulated as there was plenty of opportunities to obtain it had Nellie just been willing to play him more.
This just reiterates what we've already covered. But again, you and most people agree with our player evaluation in almost every other situation but you think we completely missed the boat on POB. That's inconsistent, no?
The thing that I really object to was the FO's decision to not extend him (once it was decided not to include him in their long range plans). There were three things that they could/should have done once they came to this conclusion that would have been better than the path they chose: a) extend him which would have made him more tradeable b) if they didn't extend him at least play him some which likely would have helped to increase his trade value (similar to what they've done with Pietrus) or c) traded him immediately once they determined that they weren't going extend him.
By taking the path they chose, they have essentially dropped his trade value to practically nil, and essentialy threw away a lottery pick. Now he becomes basically filler in any other deal we may do if we're lucky. Very poor choices by the FO here which is why many of us are up in arms.
You could say the same thing for every other bench riding bust that's come along through the years. Why didn't Orlando build up Redick's value by giving him more minutes? Why didn't the Clippers trade Korolev as soon as they decided to not exercise his option? Same goes for a ton of other guys that have crapped out in the league.
The truth is:
1) These guys wouldn't fetch much of anything in a trade
2) Playing them in order to raise their value causes much more harm than good a vast majority of the time. Think about us throwing POB on the court for 10 mpg in order to get a mid-2nd rd pick for him instead of a late 2nd rd pick. Would that really be worth it?
Sure, it would be nice if Nellie put the kid on the court for the final minutes of blow outs, but there's probably a reason why he doesn't do that. Maybe he doesn't practice hard. Who knows? But its not exactly something that bothers me that much when looking at Don Nelson and looking at the job our franchise has done to bring a winning team back to Golden State.
The obsession with POB and the way it paints people's opinion of Nellie is a joke.
