hands11 wrote:Ed Wood wrote:Evenin'. The pessimist in me wants to clarify that (speaking for myself) the disappointment that accompanies a move like this isn't a matter of believing that it torpedoed the team's future prospects or that an alternative could have elevated them, it's that these things so often seem to amount to the team making moves that don't have any real chance of making a difference nor demonstrating any apparent interest or flair in maximizing its return in marginal situations like this one.
I'm sure this isn't totally fair but the moves and the players that seem to annually fill out the roster makes me feel that the team adopts that same "back up point, does it matter all that much what we have there?" mentality and the result is players who make it very clear it doesn't.
Had to plus 1 that. And I liked DSong when healthy.
Ernie thinks the back half of the team roster is just fodder, doesn't matter that much the current year, all these guys are easily replaceable, etc. He has the same view of Round 2 draft picks: "how many R2 picks play even 3-4 years in the league?" he asked rhetorically at a press conference last year.
I believe you should use the back half of your roster to build your team's future. E.g. Round 2 -- In fact, looking back, the first 8 players taken in round 2 tend to have as good careers as the last 5 taken in Round 1. With the difference that their salaries aren't guaranteed, so you can dump the bad ones quicker than the R1 bad ones.
Of course there's no reason to credit my point of view; I'm an amateur. OTOH, Ernie Grunfield is a professional who has averaged 28 wins a year over a decade as the Wizards GM. You want to tell me why anyone should credit his strategies?
This is why I and so many others boil over so quickly when he makes a move like this. It's an incompetent making his incompetence clear for the umpteenth time.
Yes, sometimes it turns out ok -- see Webster for example. But so too for the blind squirrel as they say.... The proof is in the pudding (to continue my parade of cliches!). His record tells the story.
