The Consiglieri wrote:New GM/New Coach. These guys will poison the well no matter how many assets they're given, do recall that EG had these assets to work with during the era of the rebuild:
1st, 3rd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 17th, 18th, 18th, 18th, 32nd, 32nd, 34th, 35th, 38th, 46th, and 49th overall picks across 7 drafts.
Of those 16 draft picks, a grand total of 4 are currently on the roster (Wall, Beal, Porter, Oubre). All those drafts which included 3 picks in the top 3 of drafts, and 5 in the top 6 overall resulted in these current assets on the team or held as a team asset:
John Wall
Bradley Beal
Otto Porter
Kelly Oubre
Marcin Gortat
Tomas Satoranksy (signed for several more years in Europe)
Aaron White (a body, possibly with potential in Europe)
You've got the number wrong; it's worse. We had 4 in 2010, 3 in 2011, 3 in 2012, 3 in 2013, 2 in 2014, 2 in 2015 and (going forward) 2 each in 2016 and 2017.
That's 21 in total. Our assets that we got by using or trading those picks are: Wall, Beal, Porter, Oubre, a 1-year rental of Gortat, Morris, the NBA rights to Satoransky (w/o any leverage from them), and the NBA rights to Aaron White.
IOW: 2 guys who've pretty much established they were good picks (Wall and Porter), 1 year of Gortat (whom in fact we *did not* acquire via throwing away the R1 pick for him but instead by signing him as an Unrestricted FA *after* throwing away the R1 pick for a 1-season rental of his services), 1 raw but talented (but awfully raw!) rookie (Oubre) who may or may not develop, and the big question mark named Brad Beal.
The other assets (Morris, nba rights of sato and white) are of very marginal value, wouldn't bring much back.
Basically from that enormous number of picks, many of which were very very high, our known benefit amounts to Wall, Porter & Oubre. Only a fool would see that as worthy work by a professional basketball executive.
What *should* we have. Well, obviously you don't hit a home run every time, but at least we should have:
John Wall
Kevin Booker (we let him go, and then trade a lottery pick for Morris? A guy who isn't as good as Booker?)
Kawhi Leonard
Kenneth Faried
Chandler Parsons or Shelvin MackBradley Beal (the big question mark)
Jae Crowder or Draymond GreenKyle O'Quinn (this pick was flushed in the okariza deal -- which also brought us absolutely nothing that built the team, btw)
Otto Porter
a player from R2 in 2013 -- our #38 pick (
or some asset for which that was partial payment)
a player from R2 in 2013 -- our #58 pick (
or some asset for which that was partial payment)
a player from R1 in 2014 -- (
Caboclo?, Capela? Bogdonavic? Anderson? or
some other asset we'd traded the pick to acquire)
Jordan ClarksonKelly Oubre
rights to Aaron White
The difference between what we *should* have and what we *do* have is obviously enormous! I've bolded the missing pieces. Ernie had the opportunity to build a team that could win the East. I've left out 2009, or else it'd be a team that *did* win an NBA title and looks to repeat!
In short, a disgusting record of failure. We're 38-41.