O-Sen LINK
A must read for tanker's and anti-tankers alike.
OS: Was it a mistake to keep the team’s nucleus intact heading into the season?
Weltman: The goal coming into this season was to understand what we have: how our players play together, who we felt were more dominant personalities, dominant players, where people were on their different curves because every guy is at a different point in his career and understand the journey of each one of our players and understand how that all fits together. So I don’t think it’s a strategy to say “keep our team together.” It’s just we enter when we do and we try to understand what we have.
This reads as if there is no-way-in-heck the roster stays the same. There is no nucleus per se. This is basically a season long training camp.
Weltman: I don’t know if there are things that you don’t see before. It’s just a matter of getting to know people. For example, I know we interviewed Elfrid and we came away thinking “that’s a really neat kid.” It so happens that he ends up on another team and now I’m a part of that team. But I remember thinking “that’s a really neat kid.”
Sounds like Payton is staying.
For the anti-tankers:
OS: There’s almost a perverse reasoning when it comes to evaluating an NBA team’s rebuilding path. It’s said the worst thing an NBA team can be is mediocre, because it’s on a so-called hamster wheel. The way this season has transpired, with the injuries, could it be that this team is actually better off having higher lottery odds than scrapping and clawing to finish ninth or 10th in the East?
Weltman: The implication being that then you’re going to try to say, “OK, let’s not try to compete the rest of the way?” I don’t believe in that. I believe that you never stop competing.
And for the pro-tankers:
OS: Judging by that answer, I assume the word “tank” is a dirty word to you.
Weltman: I’d never say “dirty word.” I just feel when you enter into any long-range plan, you have to have an exit strategy in how you come out of that. Oftentimes I think when you adopt a strategy like that, you’re kind of entering into a very perilous state where you’re not exactly sure always how you’re going to come out, when you’re going to come out, if you’re going to come out. Look, there’s never a strategy that you can’t say, “This didn’t work somewhere.” And you just have to calculate those odds and figure out how much medicine you want to take. But one truth is that whatever medicine a team needs to take has to be taken.
A great, honest interview.
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