TGW wrote:Chocolate City Jordanaire wrote:At this point I would trade Wall for the rights to Kris Dunn, expiring deals and a future first.
I'm sure you would. You also said you'd trade Wall for Marcus Smart and a pick.
At least we know there's someone out there who would do a worse job than Grunfeld.
*edit* and yes, I'm putting you on ignore. No need to even say it.
Let's be fair here though, yes CCJ has never liked Wall, but I also know that his 2010-2011 draft day haul would have included Cousins, and Faried (front court issues solved), and then he'd have a 17th overall pick, and 35th from '10, the 6th and 34th from '11 (Dont remember who he wanted with those picks), the third in '12 (cant remember if he would have grabbed Beal, Drummond or Robinson), I am fairly certain his wish list was either Crowder or Barton with that 32nd pick, both of which would have been steals, the third pick in '13 and our second rounder (he wouldn't have thrown that away), wouldn't have dealt away the clarkson pick in '14 (don't remember if he would have taken Clarkson,but I know he wouldn't have traded the pick) and both picks in '15 (I think he was in line with the consensus to go with Portis).
CCJ's track record with picks is quite strong, with the occasional head scratcher, his Wall distaste has always been a bit odd, but somewhat understandable, he saw Cousins as a transformative elite big man, as did I, and preferred him, as almost did I (the knucklehead issues made him unavailable to me). He was right about Cousins, kind of wrong about Wall, and is sticking with that a bit. He also absolutely nailed Faried.
If nothing else, the team would fundamentally be better with picks made by CCJ from '09-'15 just as it would be by most of us.
My picks good and bad:
'09: Curry or Rubio (i leaned Rubio, but probably would have gone Curry because Curry wasn't a strict PG only type) and Blair.
'10: Wall, Seraphin and Lawal
'11: Leonard (i preferred to trade up for kantner), Faried (i kept flipping between Faried, Harris, Butler, Motiejunas, Mirotic and Singleton, Faried impressed me in the tourney)
'12: Drummond or Beal (charlotte saved me from Kidd-Gilchrist, who had above both of them), Miller, Barton, Crowder, D. Lamb, and Denmon were my 2nd round guys, and I stupidly had Q Miller above crowder and Barton
'13: Noel (i had anthony bennett #3 after Noel and Oladipo, dodged a bullet there like in '12, and I had Mitchell, Wolters, Withey and Muscala as the target at 2nd round slot. Probably go Wolters
'14: Was against the Gortat deal so protested this draft, paying zero attention whatsoever.
'15: Portis was my pick until I found out about the Oubre option. He was a top 8-10 recruit from the '14 class, and I was perfectly fine with aiming high with him, though I would have preferred moving up for Winslow, Turner or Lyles.
For sure, what's interesting is how the core would evolve, Rubio or Curry would have changed the '10 pick to Cousins, with Leonard Faried, Cousins, and Curry, would not take Drummond in '12, would go with Beal, in '13, with Cousins, and Faried up front, no need for Noel, and then I catastrophically make the Bennett pick (which is funny because just as I had the biggest bust up so high, I also had Gobert, and Giannis higher than virtually anybody, very much hit and miss).
Its impossible to predict how things evolve because different selections push forward different future slots, but it's clear that both CCJ, myself, and virtually everyone here would have built a better team than what we actually have if for no other reason than virtually none of us (there are exceptions, but not many) would have screwed the pooch so thoroughly with the '09, and '11 drafts. That was where the roots of the current debacle lay, two top 6 picks, this board collectively: about 90-95% of us wanted players vastly superior to what we got, particularly in '11 where the consensus seemed to be Leonard, Faried, Harris, Walker, (there was at least one poster who was as crazy as I was with Bennett, liking Marcus Morris), Vucevic,Mirotic, basically the board would have hit big with the 2nd first rounder, and probably with the first as well since I think Leonard had a majority of support with the 6 slot.
Add in that the board would have likely gone Curry (with some posters going another direction due to having more faith in Arenas coming back again from injury) with that '09 pick and it's truly horrifying to think about.
As a west coast Wiz fan/victim from the bay its incredibly fascinating to see the parallel's with both teams falling apart around the same time, both teams bottling rebuilds in the mid-nineties and early aughts with horrible trades and draft picks, both experiencing tiny blips of success in the mid-aughts, only to both crater by '09, and then you see that with virtually identical records in '09, you can see where Golden State got there rebuild so right, even while totally bollocking up picks and never landing a truly top pick, while we landed 3 top 3 picks (5 total top 6 picks), and ended up blowing things badly in every way possible (terrible selections, terrible trades, terrible usage of assets and team building). We could have been the warriors now, actually better because we had better assets to work with in terms of picks, and yet the Warriors did a better job of it with virtually every asset they had. Very depressing.
