letsgosuns wrote:Frank Lee wrote:Can any of you rah rah-ers at least acknowledge this Front Office has screwed up in the handling of their players ? Do we need to list out all of McDuh (and the Babbler) 's transactions just so you can see that they are not collectively King Midas. Some critical mistakes/gambles have been made. I guess every talking head, outsider, and general boarder is completely wrong in their **** hitting the fan assessment of this team. Let alone me.
This is not how the Front Office envisioned things to be. Not even close.
The front office definitely screwed things up royally with quite a few moves. Even at the time it was done, I felt the Morris brother extensions were horrible moves and I loathed them. Signing Isaiah Thomas was a disaster. Drafting Tyler Ennis was pointless and redundant. I hate the dual point guard idea with a passion. I also would have traded Dragic far before he demanded a trade. I would have traded him after they re-signed Bledsoe and gone with a traditional shooting guard. I said all this stuff last offseason and I saw it coming.
Two point guards do not work. I will be honest. I want the Suns to do great and win a title but I have no expectations of the Suns making the playoffs. I also am expecting the same problems as last year where there are too many guards and only one ball. The Suns entered the season with two major holes in their lineup. Small forward and power forward. Tucker and Markieff are not starting caliber players. What have they done to fix that problem? Nothing. As of right now, Tucker and Markieff are the two starting forwards.
Basically I am just closing my eyes and wishing the Suns would be good. Although, the one thing I disagree with is this so called bad reputation around the league because of players wanting out. To hell with that. Screw those players. They all sucked anyway. Chandler and Knight and Teletovich all want to play here. However, If I had my choice, I would trade one of Knight or Bledsoe, give all the shooting guard minutes to Goodwin and Booker, start Warren, dump Tucker and Markieff, sign anyone with potential to be the new starting power forward, and then play Chandler and Len at center. That is just me though.
You may have a point about Ennis, but you can't ignore the net effect of getting Thomas. We ended up with 3 firsts for Dragic and Thomas. You tell me if, on this Suns team, you'd rather have just Dragic at his current overpriced deal, or else 3 future 1sts, including 2 without protection. The result was a positive. And I for one never thought we signed Thomas as a guy to keep long-term. We saw a market inefficiency with Thomas as being undervalued, we had cap space to burn, and instead of overpaying for many of the pedestrian PF's this site oggles over, we signed an admittedly redundant player to a bargain contract. I don't think anyone ever intended it to "cost" us Dragic, but you can't knock the FO for that without looking at the netted return for moving Goran. This team is better prepared for the future without him and with those picks. Even Goran was never a guy I saw helping us contend because the age of those around him was too young. By the time the rest of our cast was ready to contend, Goran would be on the decline.
Same with the Morri. They never had these issues before the extension, and there is no question the contracts (at least Kieff's) was a bargain. Marcus we got a 2nd for--so we replaced what the previous regime gave up to get him. At the same time, we don't know what we'll get for Kieff. I keep reading people b****ing about us getting Marcus in the first place and this being foreseeable, but Banks was the one who got Marcus--not McDonough. And once we had him, you tell me if we get Markieff at $8 mil without having Marcus here too. The net effect of those extensions were a 2nd rounder plus we get whatever we get for Markieff. Not sure that's a bad move. Also, it's not really foreseeable to anticipate the Morri were going to have all of these off the court issues at the time the extensions were signed. They weren't committing felonies before all of this.
It's not a smooth process, but I feel like people who actually see us over the past 2 years for what we are (a re-building team that happens to have better players than tank teams) instead of a team trying to contend, you have to live with the results of the moves. How can you say signing someone into our cap space and trading him 6 months later for a first is a loss? That's a manufactured asset. You trade Dragic, another asset, who is about to be an FA and get overpaid for 2 unprotected firsts? You sign 2 players who, despite what anybody on this board thinks, are solid on the court and for next to nothing right before a rising cap year--that's a win, even if you have to trade them and deal with this circus. If we get a first, that's another manufactured asset.
We have one of the best GM's in the league. I agree it's been dramatic and bumpy, but the idea that he hasn't produced results as far as our asset base (which is what matters for our team--I would rather keep getting firsts than sell out for vets who get us an 8 seed the past 2 years when we clearly couldn't win a title) is laughable. He's only failed if you're looking at short-term wins because you misunderstand where the team is, and therefore prefer to get the 8 seed or trade half our unlikable youngsters for crazy old vets.
