ATL - Oladipo is Really Good (and Bledsoe dominant again)

[whatthe_buck!?]

Holy sh*t, MCW with 22 points on ten shots, 12 assists to 1 TO, 7 rebounds and NINE steals in 35 minutes against Miami??????? I'm sure u guys have already commented on this in this thread and I'm way late with this but what in gods name is that about u guys?!? God damn!

[paulpressey25]

Am I the only one here who doesn't give a **** when other players do well?

You might be.

We all want to lose big this year, so having Klay Thompson, Bledsoe, Turner, Teague, etc would thwart that to some extent.

That said, the fact we biffed on all those moves means that our front office (a term which includes Kohl as the head guy) is truly bottom three in the league.

Which means that even if we luck into Wiggins, we probably are going to ruin him.

[Mikeylikesit]

I love all of these people overreacting to one game these guys have played. Remember when Brandon Jennings was a savior after his 55pt explosion?? Remember those same people criticizing their GM's for not picking him that year? Remember when Tyreke Evans had a good rookie year? Settle down guys. What if GPO explodes and becomes a Durant like player? Very unlikely but not impossible. Lets worry about tanking and developing young guys. Only way to get better (as in championship caliber better) is to lose and hit on picks.

[Wooderson]

Am I the only one here who doesn't give a **** when other players do well?

You might be.

We all want to lose big this year, so having Klay Thompson, Bledsoe, Turner, Teague, etc would thwart that to some extent.

That said, the fact we biffed on all those moves means that our front office (a term which includes Kohl as the head guy) is truly bottom three in the league.

This is exactly the reason we need to suck, get lucky, and draft a stud in the high lotto. Teams can surely win in the long-term building the way Indiana has, but Kohl and our FO are too stupid, stubborn, and impatient to build a team that way. At this point, the front office is so awful that getting lucky and landing a top 5 player in the league is the only way this team is going to succeed.

[HurricaneKid]

Am I the only one here who doesn't give a **** when other players do well? Hell, I'm probably more encouraged when Bledsoe or Turner or Harris or Have It All do well and their teams win. Because duh.

This is the correct answer. But still, if we had landed bledsoe and traded for burks we wouldn't have to worry about tanking this season. Bledsoe-Burks-Gbo-Henson-Sanders in 2 years is a contending core. That's what's upsetting.

Someone show me something anywhere that Burks was available. Utah just maxed out a guy that they had played less than 1/3 of minutes (16min/) over his first 4 years and had always said they loved Burks' upside.

Yes, people here seem to be prety good at finding young players elsewhere that haven't had suitable opportunities but that doesn't mean those players are available.

[paulpressey25]

I love all of these people overreacting to one game these guys have played. What if GPO explodes and becomes a Durant like player? Very unlikely but not impossible. Lets worry about tanking and developing young guys. Only way to get better (as in championship caliber better) is to lose and hit on picks.

A couple thoughts.

-Everyone here is on board with the Giannis pick. But that doesn't mean our front office still doesn't suck.

-We know that Burks, Bledsoe, Turner may not turn into all-stars. However, they still have a chance to leap up into something. I know for a fact though that Delfino, Butler, ZaZa, Ridnour and Gary Neal aren't going to get any better. I also know the remaining shelf life of those guys in the league is two more years at most.

You sign Ridnour and ZaZa as your good guy "veterans" then you stop. You don't add all this other veteran crap like we did. Complete waste of payroll and will block playing time for the young guys.

[whatthe_buck!?]

Am I the only one here who doesn't give a **** when other players do well? Hell, I'm probably more encouraged when Bledsoe or Turner or Harris or Have It All do well and their teams win. Because duh.

This is the correct answer. But still, if we had landed bledsoe and traded for burks we wouldn't have to worry about tanking this season. Bledsoe-Burks-Gbo-Henson-Sanders in 2 years is a contending core. That's what's upsetting.

Someone show me something anywhere that Burks was available. Utah just maxed out a guy that they had played less than 1/3 of minutes (16min/) over his first 4 years and had always said they loved Burks' upside.

Yes, people here seem to be prety good at finding young players elsewhere that haven't had suitable opportunities but that doesn't mean those players are available.

Point conceded. Replace the "traded for" part of my post with "stayed put at pick 10 and drafted" and I feel like the point I'm making holds to a certain extent. Burks and Clay Thompson went 11 and 12 in that draft. Point being we easily could already have the most important pieces in place already for a long period of contention and yet here we are with all our hopes staked on pulling off the unintentional tank of the century. It didnt have to be like this!!!

[HurricaneKid]

This is the correct answer. But still, if we had landed bledsoe and traded for burks we wouldn't have to worry about tanking this season. Bledsoe-Burks-Gbo-Henson-Sanders in 2 years is a contending core. That's what's upsetting.

Someone show me something anywhere that Burks was available. Utah just maxed out a guy that they had played less than 1/3 of minutes (16min/) over his first 4 years and had always said they loved Burks' upside.

Yes, people here seem to be prety good at finding young players elsewhere that haven't had suitable opportunities but that doesn't mean those players are available.

Point conceded. Replace the "traded for" part of my post with "stayed put at pick 10 and drafted" and I feel like the point I'm making holds to a certain extent. Burks and Clay Thompson went 11 and 12 in that draft. Point being we easily could already have the most important pieces in place already for a long period of contention and yet here we are with all our hopes staked on pulling off the unintentional tank of the century. It didnt have to be like this!!!

My bad. I thought you meant we could have traded for him in the offseason. They still ended up with Tobias in that draft. But yeah, I'm obviously not defending the SJax acquisition.

[whatthe_buck!?]

Someone show me something anywhere that Burks was available. Utah just maxed out a guy that they had played less than 1/3 of minutes (16min/) over his first 4 years and had always said they loved Burks' upside.

Yes, people here seem to be prety good at finding young players elsewhere that haven't had suitable opportunities but that doesn't mean those players are available.

Point conceded. Replace the "traded for" part of my post with "stayed put at pick 10 and drafted" and I feel like the point I'm making holds to a certain extent. Burks and Clay Thompson went 11 and 12 in that draft. Point being we easily could already have the most important pieces in place already for a long period of contention and yet here we are with all our hopes staked on pulling off the unintentional tank of the century. It didnt have to be like this!!!

My bad. I thought you meant we could have traded for him in the offseason. They still ended up with Tobias in that draft. But yeah, I'm obviously not defending the SJax acquisition.

No, it's my bad not yours. I did say that originally, that's why I conceded the point. I appreciate u pointing out the weakness of the argument I originally made...

[Mikeylikesit]

I love all of these people overreacting to one game these guys have played. What if GPO explodes and becomes a Durant like player? Very unlikely but not impossible. Lets worry about tanking and developing young guys. Only way to get better (as in championship caliber better) is to lose and hit on picks.

A couple thoughts.

-Everyone here is on board with the Giannis pick. But that doesn't mean our front office still doesn't suck.

-We know that Burks, Bledsoe, Turner may not turn into all-stars. However, they still have a chance to leap up into something. I know for a fact though that Delfino, Butler, ZaZa, Ridnour and Gary Neal aren't going to get any better. I also know the remaining shelf life of those guys in the league is two more years at most.

You sign Ridnour and ZaZa as your good guy "veterans" then you stop. You don't add all this other veteran crap like we did. Complete waste of payroll and will block playing time for the young guys.

I completely agree that we shouldn't have added Neal, Mayo, Butler or Delfino. I think most people want to see what Hensen and Giannis can do and we aren't seeing it early. Once we are out of contention, which shouldn't be long, we SHOULD start seeing more of those guys. So I think we just need to have some patience and they will get the PT. At least we can hope so.

[ampd]

who are we kidding, its not like we couldn't have traded Klay Thompson for JJ Redick

Its like Hammond is a superhero whose power is to lose every trade

[HurricaneKid]

A couple thoughts.

-Everyone here is on board with the Giannis pick. But that doesn't mean our front office still doesn't suck.

-We know that Burks, Bledsoe, Turner may not turn into all-stars. However, they still have a chance to leap up into something. I know for a fact though that Delfino, Butler, ZaZa, Ridnour and Gary Neal aren't going to get any better. I also know the remaining shelf life of those guys in the league is two more years at most.

You sign Ridnour and ZaZa as your good guy "veterans" then you stop. You don't add all this other veteran crap like we did. Complete waste of payroll and will block playing time for the young guys.

Absolu****inglutely. I totally agree with everything here.

The problem is that everyone around here seems to believe that Burks, Bledsoe, and Turner were available to the Bucks. Turner is the oldest of the bunch and almost certainly had the smallest price tag. But what were we going to trade to the 76ers who are going through a blatant rebuild and only want picks and young talent? As for Burks, I read something that he was given assurances at the trade deadline he wasn't going to be moved, and that was when they were calling around everywhere trying to move Al Jeff and Millsap. And everyone who has any access to either side has said the Bucks never had a shot at Bledsoe.

[stellation]

AK47: Kobe and Durant are tough to guard. Bears also **** in woods.

[stellation]

Is Timmy faking an injury so he can get a chance to watch the Baynes train?

[paulpressey25]

The problem is that everyone around here seems to believe that Burks, Bledsoe, and Turner were available to the Bucks.

A couple thoughts.....

-I don't know how available those guys were. But my belief is that a creative GM, who was willing to part with assets and "overpay" could have gotten one of those guys.

-When I say overpay, I don't mean by giving up first round picks. But look what Golden State did to get the injured Bogut in March 2012. I think they "overpaid" from an asset standpoint enough so that Herb agreed to pull the trigger.

Now, the reality is that Bogut >>>> Udoh and they wanted the Monta asset out for tanking and chemistry purposes AND they also were willing to take on extra payroll for Stephen Jackson. So from Golden State's point of view, they were overpaying, but could afford to because it fit their long-term strategy.

In the case of this past summer, we had extra caproom to take back a bad contract, but we didn't want to use it in deals involving people like Bledsoe, Turner, etc because we wanted to hold onto it to sign Teague, and all the other second and third tier FA's we did sign. Additionally, Ersan is/was one heck of an asset. It made far more sense to dump him in a deal to get a "Bledsoe", "Burks" or "Turner" type.

It is my opinion that we did none of those deals because Hammond sucks at negotiating and Herb won't let him "overpay" on anything because Herb wants to "win now".

[ReasonablySober]

Am I the only one here who doesn't give a **** when other players do well?

You might be.

We all want to lose big this year, so having Klay Thompson, Bledsoe, Turner, Teague, etc would thwart that to some extent.

That said, the fact we biffed on all those moves means that our front office (a term which includes Kohl as the head guy) is truly bottom three in the league.

Which means that even if we luck into Wiggins, we probably are going to ruin him.

I just can't accept or understand this line of thinking.

So the Bucks signed a couple below average free agents to non-cap killing deals. It isn't something I would have done, but it isn't a death sentence, and really, it's something every team in the league does.

The Celtics and Spurs have handed out terrible deals in recent years. The Thunder didn't know what they had in Harden and traded him. The Knicks gave STAT a billion dollars. Few organizations bat 1000.00 and even the ones that are building the "right way" still screw things up. The Cavs have underwhelmed with most of their top picks, the Hornets gave Jefferson a huge deal and the Pelicans put a cast of question marks at guard around Davis when they could have been looking at a core of Davis, Noel and [Wiggins/Parker/Harrison/Exum].

The Bucks make mistakes too, Harris being the "big" one, but they also have to be credited with finding him where they did in the draft in the first place. They certainly deserve credit for developing him, just like they do for developing Sanders, Ilyasova and hopefully Henson.

As for young guys the Bucks may or may not have been able to acquire, I don't dwell on it. I never have, because it's pointless. You think the Bucks are the only team that could have landed Bledsoe? Or Thompson or even Curry? Of course not. The Bucks aren't unique with their mistakes.

[paulpressey25]

The Bucks aren't unique with their mistakes.

Nah, they are at an bottom five level of terrible with their moves. The statistics bear it out. Only one 50-win season in over 25-years now. Only one year of advancing in the playoffs in 25-years as well. Are the Bobcats and Kings making stupid moves also? Obviously yes. But that is the point, the Bucks are at that level of incomptence.

All the other teams you cited have margin for error with their bad moves because they make good moves to balance them out.

The other point is that all the moves the Bucks pass on are ones that 75% of this board wanted them to make real-time, so it is not like we are all doing this entirely in hindsight. It is frustrating month after month to see stuff that might make a lot more sense to do, but we don't do it.

[Baddy Chuck]

Kings decline option on Jimmer.

[stellation]

Kings decline option on Jimmer.

Would he not have even had some trade value on $3.1 million?

[bizarro]

Kings decline option on Jimmer.

Wow. There were some colossal mistakes in that 2011 draft. Lots o' teams screwed the pooch. Taking Jimmer w/ Leonard, Klay, and Burks on the board...ooops. I guess they'll always have the ability to grab Jon Salmons if need be.

Weren't there a lot of us fans opposed to picking up Klay at the time? I recall a lot of people in here worried about his lack of athleticism. Is this accurate?