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I was just thinking about this the other day. What if EG was fired and an actual, forward-thinking GM took over. Or maybe just a committee of RealGM members oversee EG's decisions with veto authority. Here's how I think it would have played out. This isn't a 20/20 hindsight pipe dream where we draft every quality player in every draft. This is just what I think the board consensus would have done over the past few years.

Leonsis took over in April of 2010. The team had just had its fire sale, dumping Jamison, Haywood and Butler and were in the process of tanking for the top pick. Our team was rebuilding around McGee, Blatche and Young at the time. Blatche had just had his best stretch of his career. Gungate had already taken place.

2010/11:
It's hard to know exactly what other deals were on the table at the time, so, for the purposes of this analysis, I'm mostly just revisiting decisions that were already on the table. I think most of EG's initial moves were pretty rational and I agreed with them. So let's assume we made all the moves just as Grunfeld did. So that would be:

• Draft Wall #1
• Draft day trade for the rights to Trevor Booker.
• Draft day trade to absorb Hinrich's salary for rights to Seraphin
• Dump Arenas' contract for Rashard Lewis.
• Extend Blatche. (A horrible decision in hindsight, but I'm trying to be realistic. Most except Nivek were on board with it.)

2011/12:
Here is the disastrous offseason that absolutely ruined the rebuild. I know my pick at the time was Kawhi Leonard and many on the board agreed. There was definite board consensus to take Faried when he was still on the board at #17. I won't be greedy and assume that we would have also taken Parsons in the 2nd round. I kinda liked Tyler Honeycutt at the time so let's assume we drafted that bust. I also liked the Hinrich for Crawford deal later in the season.

• Draft Kawhi Leonard at #6
• Draft Faried at #17
• Draft Honeycutt at #35

The season did not go well and I don't think the rookies Leonard and Faried would have made much difference. The problem was too many knuckleheads and a lack of leadership. Just like EG, I was in favor of the mid-season remedies to these problems:

• Trade Hinrich for Crawford
• Dump Nick Young
• Banish Blatche
• Trade McGee for Nene

2012/13:
With a little success late in the season, things are looking up. But let's also assume that our record was about the same and we still landed the #3 pick. I was in favor of Beal, but I would have handled the Rashard Lewis contract differently. Instead of trading it for Okafor and Ariza, I would have bought him out and used the cap room to absorb Ryan Anderson's S&T contract in a lopsided Trevor Booker swap. (Orlando traded Anderson for Quincy Acy so this is realistic, with Booker replacing Acy.) In the 2nd round, the board loved Crowder so I would have taken him. (I kinda liked Draymond Green too, but I won't be greedy.) So the offseason would have looked like this:

• Draft Beal at #3
• Buy out Rashard Lewis
• Trade Booker for Ryan Anderson
• Draft Jae Crowder
• Sign Webster (a great find for $1.75M)
• Sign A.J. Price
• Dump Crawford and his bad attitude mid-season

We would not have had Okafor and Ariza, but we would have had Leonard and Faried taking their place, which is roughly equivalent - perhaps a bit worse given their inexperience. Ryan Anderson would have helped quite a bit, at least on offense where his spacing would have helped with the development of Wall. Wall missed the first 33 games and Nene was hurt most of the year. I assume our record would have been the same due to a lack of a true center with Nene out. We had talent at forward, but it was inexperienced without Wall to hold it together.

2013/14:
I assume we ended up with the 8th pick and lucked out in the lottery to land the #3 pick. I would have drafted Noel (as would pretty much the entire board). We also would have had considerable cap room with Lewis' buyout coming off the books. Instead of trading Okafor's expiring contract and the 2014 1st for Gortat, we probably could have gotten Gortat for free just by absorbing his salary and those other expiring-contract bums. It would have made a ton of sense because even if he was only a 1-year rental, we knew Noel was going to miss his rookie season due to injury. In the second round, I would have stuck with Nate Walters instead of trading him for Rice. I would also be eyeing the contract situation going forward. Faried was playing well, but he's a bit superfluous on a front line with Gortat, Nene and Anderson (and Noel waiting in the wings) so I'd consider a trade for a future 1st or perhaps some backcourt help. I'd still be nervous about the perimeter shooting other than Beal, so I probably would have kept Webster. Let's assume the same contract, except a total team option on Year 4, not a 2.5M buyout. With Leonard on the roster, I think we would have had the leverage. So the moves would have been as follows:

• Draft Noel
• Trade cap space for Gortat
• Draft Nate Walters
• Resign Webster to 3-year MLE deal (TO on Year 4)
• Trade Faried for 1st, let's assume a pick in the teens in 2015 draft

I also liked the mid-season Andre Miller trade to give us a backcourt veteran.

2014/15:
I'd have resigned Gortat (still not knowing what we had in Noel) and extended Leonard for the max. With our pick, I'd be looking at backcourt help. Picking 20th or so, Jordan Adams is probably the guy I would have drafted. So our lineup would have looked like this:

PG Wall/Miller/Walters
SG Beal/Adams/Webster
SF Leonard/Crowder
PF Anderson/Nene/Seraphin
C Gortat/Noel


We'd also have our 2015 pick and the 2015 pick from the Faried trade as assets. I'd have jumped at the opportunity to grab Isaiah Thomas, giving up Miller and our 2015 pick. I'd have then pushed real hard to trade Gortat + Anderson for Kevin Love before they acquired Mozgov. That makes a ton of sense for both teams because it give us the ideal PF to play alongside Noel and Wall. From Cleveland's perspective, it looks like all Cleveland wants out of Love is for him to be Ryan Anderson, so why not trade him for the real Ryan Anderson and pick up a good two-way center in the process?

Now:
If I was running the show, our team right now would be:

PG Wall/Isaiah Thomas
SG Beal/Adams
SF Leonard/Crowder/Webster
PF Love/Nene
C Noel/Nene/Seraphin

Wall and Leonard are under max contracts that will look cheap in 2016. Isaiah Thomas is cheap. Adams and Noel are under rookie deals for a while. Nene is an expiring contract next year. Love gets a max contract in 2016. All-in-all, that's a very good young team that meshes well and the contracts are very reasonable. In 2016, we'd have Wall, Beal, Leonard, Noel, Thomas, Adams, the 2015 pick we got in the Faried trade, our 2016 pick, and about $45M in cap room and the ability to pay Love more than anybody else.

Good, well thought-out work there Nate, that was a good read and great idea for a fun what-if thread.

I'm going to patch-together something similar by reviewing the draft thread archives, I believe I was one of three board members who wanted Parsons.


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Yep, looks good, and looks about right (it's been a while but I remember a few people wondering what the rush was to commit to Blatchemo). Who's the coach at this point?

I was on my MKG kick in '2011. I wanted him alot more than I wanted Beal at the time (even tho I liked Beal but had him on same tier as Lillard, Drummond & Waiters ) and was willing to sacrifice assets to do so... those assets at the time being Jordan Crawford, Kevin Seraphin, Chris Singleton & Jan Vesely....

I didn't even know about the Harden deal until later on that summer. If the rumored Beal & Singleton for Harden deal was actually on the table, I would have taken that move in a heartbeat.

In 2012 I settled on Kemba Walker who I thought would be the perfect 3rd guard off the bench. Admittedly I missed on Kawhi Leonard & Klay Thompson. Was a big Kenneth Faried fan and would have given him the edge at the 18.

In 2013, Noel would have been the pick. I was happy with Glen Rice Jr in the 2nd but honestly Pierre Jackson was the guy I had locked on during the draft as my pick.

Oh let me not forget... I would not have done the Booker trade in 2010... I would have traded for Hassan Whiteside instead. Now whether he would have amounted to anything those first few years, who knows. But I damn sure would have babied & coddled him to see if he could grow up and play a bit.

Hell, if he just signed Whiteside last offseason - like I suggested - the team would be in far better shape. Then again, a lot of GM's f'd that up.

We can't really say the board would have picked Leonard, because there were only a couple of people here that would have picked him that high. Let's be honest, he was not a good offensive player in college. Yes, there were reports that he was doing well in individual workouts, but there's no way anyone could have predicted he'd be the player he is today. I probably would have done whatever was needed to trade up 1 to get Jonny V, and I'm guessing that would have required giving up the Singleton pick. Given Jonny V's poor +/-, that might not have worked out well, but I would have James Harden on the roster.

2010 I didn't have an opinion on Booker and Seraphin or what to do at those picks. Honestly, I was pretty confused by all of the trading we did. Even now it's hard to piece together. But I definitely would have taken Wall over Evan Turner. I did like Cousins that year but not at 1. I thought he was a steal at 5 and that he should have gone 2 or 3.

In 2011 I didn't have an opinion about who to draft when Williams, Kanter, and Valanciunas all went before our pick. I thought for sure one would make it to six and I didn't know who we should draft when they were gone. I didn't know anything about Vesely and didn't have much of a reaction when we drafted him. I liked Kawhi Leonard but not at six. The book on him at the time was that he couldn't shoot worth a damn and we needed a shooter at SG and SF. At 18 I wanted Klay Thompson but he went a lot earlier. I was fine with Singleton since I thought he could be a quality 3&D guy and brought a lot of speed to the team. But I also liked Marshon Brooks, Faried, and Donatas Montiejunas. I probably would have drafted Montiejunas.

In 2012 I loved Anthony Davis and was on that train early but I knew we had no shot. At our pick I was torn between Beal and TRob and was leaning towards TRob. I probably would have ruined that draft. But I was definitely happy with Beal. I liked MKG but not for us, his shot looked horrible, worse than Kawhi Leonard's ever did. I was ambivalent about Barnes. I thought he looked slow but I liked the mid range game and the shooting ability. I was actually a fan of Drummond but not at 3 and not for us. I didn't think a super raw big with questions about his competitiveness would work out for a dysfunctional team like ours. Lillard and Waiters weren't even on my radar. Waiters came out of nowhere to me and I would never have drafted a PG at three. Austin Rivers and Jeremy Lamb were both in the top five discussion early on in the process and I didn't like either of them. I loved Jared Sullinger and wanted us to buy a pick to get him. If that had been an option, I would have taken it.

2013 I was torn between Noel, Porter, and Zeller at three. I honestly don't know who I would have picked at the time. Most likely Noel or Porter. I actually liked Bennett too but if the choice was between him and Porter, I liked Porter more. I was probably more positive about Len than most but I wouldn't have picked him at three. I liked Shabazz Muhammad a heck of a lot more than most people did but no way I would have picked him at three either. I didn't like Oladipo as much as most, but I did think he was pretty good. No way I would have picked him if he'd been there, I didn't think he was any kind of fit for us. Ditto for McLemore, who I thought was a poor man's version of Beal. I was a lot lower on Trey Burke and Kelly Olynyk than most and I didn't think Steven Adams was anything but a body at that point. I definitely disagreed with the CP3 comparisons about Burke. Wouldn't have picked any at three and wouldn't have traded down to pick in their range. The only targets I had been considering for a trade down were Zeller and Bennett and both went early. I knew about Rudy Gobert from early in the process but his name didn't even register at three or even in talk of trading down to the late lottery. Giannis came out of nowhere for me. Wasn't really even on my radar. If I could go back, I would have paid a lot more attention to them and would obviously pick either of them or Alex Len if we got a mulligan.

Last year we didn't have a first so I didn't pay too much attention to the class. I liked Mitch McGary, Kyle Anderson, and Jordan Adams and would have definitely bought a pick to get them if anyone had been selling. Doesn't look like that would have been an option though.

Can we go back one more year to get Curry instead of Miller/Foye?

Edit: I just realized that doesn't fit the "When Ted took over" premise. But still.

benb331 wrote:Can we go back one more year to get Curry instead of Miller/Foye?

Edit: I just realized that doesn't fit the "When Ted took over" premise. But still.

If that would have happened, our entire timeline would have been different. We wouldn't have been bad enough to draft Wall, for instance. If you go down that road, you are just engaging in pure speculation. We have absolutely no idea what our team would have looked like.

nate33 wrote:

benb331 wrote:Can we go back one more year to get Curry instead of Miller/Foye?

Edit: I just realized that doesn't fit the "When Ted took over" premise. But still.

If that would have happened, our entire timeline would have been different. We wouldn't have been bad enough to draft Wall, for instance. If you go down that road, you are just engaging in pure speculation. We have absolutely no idea what our team would have looked like.

Maybe, hence the edit. But would rookie Steph have altered our record enough vs Miller/Foye to distort the sequence of events?

nate33 wrote:I was just thinking about this the other day. What if EG was fired and an actual, forward-thinking GM took over. Or maybe just a committee of RealGM members oversee EG's decisions with veto authority. Here's how I think it would have played out. This isn't a 20/20 hindsight pipe dream where we draft every quality player in every draft. This is just what I think the board consensus would have done over the past few years.
Leonsis took over in April of 2010. The team had just had its fire sale, dumping Jamison, Haywood and Butler and were in the process of tanking for the top pick. Our team was rebuilding around McGee, Blatche and Young at the time. Blatche had just had his best stretch of his career. Gungate had already taken place.

2010/11:
It's hard to know exactly what other deals were on the table at the time, so, for the purposes of this analysis, I'm mostly just revisiting decisions that were already on the table. I think most of EG's initial moves were pretty rational and I agreed with them. So let's assume we made all the moves just as Grunfeld did. So that would be:

• Draft Wall #1
• Draft day trade for the rights to Trevor Booker.
• Draft day trade to absorb Hinrich's salary for rights to Seraphin
• Dump Arenas' contract for Rashard Lewis.
• Extend Blatche. (A horrible decision in hindsight, but I'm trying to be realistic. Most except Nivek were on board with it.)

2011/12:
Here is the disastrous offseason that absolutely ruined the rebuild. I know my pick at the time was Kawhi Leonard and many on the board agreed. There was definite board consensus to take Faried when he was still on the board at #17. I won't be greedy and assume that we would have also taken Parsons in the 2nd round. I kinda liked Tyler Honeycutt at the time so let's assume we drafted that bust. I also liked the Hinrich for Crawford deal later in the season.

• Draft Kawhi Leonard at #6
• Draft Faried at #17
• Draft Honeycutt at #35

The season did not go well and I don't think the rookies Leonard and Faried would have made much difference. The problem was too many knuckleheads and a lack of leadership. Just like EG, I was in favor of the mid-season remedies to these problems:

• Trade Hinrich for Crawford
• Dump Nick Young
• Banish Blatche
• Trade McGee for Nene

2012/13:
With a little success late in the season, things are looking up. But let's also assume that our record was about the same and we still landed the #3 pick. I was in favor of Beal, but I would have handled the Rashard Lewis contract differently. Instead of trading it for Okafor and Ariza, I would have bought him out and used the cap room to absorb Ryan Anderson's S&T contract in a lopsided Trevor Booker swap. (Orlando traded Anderson for Quincy Acy so this is realistic, with Booker replacing Acy.) In the 2nd round, the board loved Crowder so I would have taken him. (I kinda liked Draymond Green too, but I won't be greedy.) So the offseason would have looked like this:

• Draft Beal at #3
• Buy out Rashard Lewis
• Trade Booker for Ryan Anderson
• Draft Jae Crowder
• Sign Webster (a great find for $1.75M)
• Sign A.J. Price
• Dump Crawford and his bad attitude mid-season

We would not have had Okafor and Ariza, but we would have had Leonard and Faried taking their place, which is roughly equivalent - perhaps a bit worse given their inexperience. Ryan Anderson would have helped quite a bit, at least on offense where his spacing would have helped with the development of Wall. Wall missed the first 33 games and Nene was hurt most of the year. I assume our record would have been the same due to a lack of a true center with Nene out. We had talent at forward, but it was inexperienced without Wall to hold it together.

2013/14:
I assume we ended up with the 8th pick and lucked out in the lottery to land the #3 pick. I would have drafted Noel (as would pretty much the entire board). We also would have had considerable cap room with Lewis' buyout coming off the books. Instead of trading Okafor's expiring contract and the 2014 1st for Gortat, we probably could have gotten Gortat for free just by absorbing his salary and those other expiring-contract bums. It would have made a ton of sense because even if he was only a 1-year rental, we knew Noel was going to miss his rookie season due to injury. In the second round, I would have stuck with Nate Walters instead of trading him for Rice. I would also be eyeing the contract situation going forward. Faried was playing well, but he's a bit superfluous on a front line with Gortat, Nene and Anderson (and Noel waiting in the wings) so I'd consider a trade for a future 1st or perhaps some backcourt help. I'd still be nervous about the perimeter shooting other than Beal, so I probably would have kept Webster. Let's assume the same contract, except a total team option on Year 4, not a 2.5M buyout. With Leonard on the roster, I think we would have had the leverage. So the moves would have been as follows:

• Draft Noel
• Trade cap space for Gortat
• Draft Nate Walters
• Resign Webster to 3-year MLE deal (TO on Year 4)
• Trade Faried for 1st, let's assume a pick in the teens in 2015 draft

I also liked the mid-season Andre Miller trade to give us a backcourt veteran.

2014/15:
I'd have resigned Gortat (still not knowing what we had in Noel) and extended Leonard for the max. With our pick, I'd be looking at backcourt help. Picking 20th or so, Jordan Adams is probably the guy I would have drafted. So our lineup would have looked like this:

PG Wall/Miller/Walters
SG Beal/Adams/Webster
SF Leonard/Crowder
PF Anderson/Nene/Seraphin
C Gortat/Noel


We'd also have our 2015 pick and the 2015 pick from the Faried trade as assets. I'd have jumped at the opportunity to grab Isaiah Thomas, giving up Miller and our 2015 pick. I'd have then pushed real hard to trade Gortat + Anderson for Kevin Love before they acquired Mozgov. That makes a ton of sense for both teams because it give us the ideal PF to play alongside Noel and Wall. From Cleveland's perspective, it looks like all Cleveland wants out of Love is for him to be Ryan Anderson, so why not trade him for the real Ryan Anderson and pick up a good two-way center in the process?

Now:
If I was running the show, our team right now would be:

PG Wall/Isaiah Thomas
SG Beal/Adams
SF Leonard/Crowder/Webster
PF Love/Nene
C Noel/Nene/Seraphin

Wall and Leonard are under max contracts that will look cheap in 2016. Isaiah Thomas is cheap. Adams and Noel are under rookie deals for a while. Nene is an expiring contract next year. Love gets a max contract in 2016. All-in-all, that's a very good young team that meshes well and the contracts are very reasonable. In 2016, we'd have Wall, Beal, Leonard, Noel, Thomas, Adams, the 2015 pick we got in the Faried trade, our 2016 pick, and about $45M in cap room and the ability to pay Love more than anybody else.

nate, make it movie.

Have a team of committed message board types. WE KNOW EACH OTHER WELL. Some of us 14/15 years now.....

No. Ted is a billionaire and he wants to do what billionaires do.

Ernie's been a GM since God made dirt. They have their thing. They continually do what they do.

Without reading your post well (yet) I know you have a tremendous, great, idea. They could instant message, take proxy votes, come up with some way to have a LOT of fan supported input on running the team.

Too smart and idea, nate. Too inclusive. The rich don't want that.

SHYT, I've been doing pretty well for years on scouting. For free .... Others have, too.

benb331 wrote:

nate33 wrote:

benb331 wrote:Can we go back one more year to get Curry instead of Miller/Foye?

Edit: I just realized that doesn't fit the "When Ted took over" premise. But still.

If that would have happened, our entire timeline would have been different. We wouldn't have been bad enough to draft Wall, for instance. If you go down that road, you are just engaging in pure speculation. We have absolutely no idea what our team would have looked like.

Maybe, hence the edit. But would rookie Steph have altered our record enough vs Miller/Foye to distort the sequence of events?

I think Curry was good enough in his rookie year to give us 3 or 4 additional wins. Remember, that was the year when we the intent was to rebuild around Arenas. We started the season with Jamison, Butler and Haywood still on the roster. The season went bad because Arenas never regained his old form and then Gungate happened. A guy like Curry could have filled the Arenas role and made a pretty big difference in the win/loss column. Just a few more wins and we would have been out of the running for the #1 overall pick and John Wall.