lewdog wrote:urinesane wrote:frankenwolf wrote:I think all of you "Trade KAT, trade Gobert" people are nuts. Let's trash the experiment basically 1/2 way through the season. Time is a great healer and remedy. Yup, this team looks bad right now and the excuses are numerous, but let's let the rest of this season go and focus on what next year may look like.
TBH - I don't see Connelly trading anybody. He will roll with what he has and pray that the health issues are behind us. I would, at this point.
You don't think 31 games is a big enough sample size?
Why are you trying to be logical?
The knee jerks around here are why I post like 5% the amount I used to.
You’re probably right. But it is so incredibly painful knowing what we gave up (for Gobert) and watching this product ALL season (remember the early San Antonio & late Portland games). You’ve got to admit, this product and the results are not what any of us we were expecting when the season started.
Oh no doubt, it was absolutely brutal at times... but anyone that has learned something new or attempted something they weren't naturally good at with the intention of becoming great, has had to deal with massive failure and extremely uncomfortable experiences. The difference between success and failure is usually based on those willing to push through the failure and discomfort, regardless of a lack of gratification in the interim.
We saw a team trying to not only adapt to a massive style shift, but also to their top guy being out for 52 games.
Most of us were expecting a 50+ win team and one that could make at least the 2nd round of the playoffs. The thing is, those expectations were based on the assumption that A.) they would adapt to Gobert relatively quickly. B.) That they wouldn't have major injury issues. C.) They would take what they learned from PatBev and keep the spark they had from last season and build it into a fire.
With those assumptions proving to be false, and how incredibly inconsistent this team was (shown by beating some of the best teams in the NBA on the road and losing to some of the worst at home)... based on the fact that it's taken a LONG time for most of the roster to adapt to Gobert's style of play AND their best player coming into the season missed 52 games... 42 wins sort of feels like a miracle (in hindsight).
Just think back, if you'd known those two factors going into it, what would our expectations have been? A playoff appearance and winning season would have seemed like quite the feat. It's just that they never really gave us much time to enjoy ourselves, because every winning streak was followed by a mind numbing losing streak, rinse and repeat. This was a very uncomfortable season for everyone involved.
The thing is... if we are upset/disappointed by this team, it's because we set expectations that were not based in reality. Then when reality showed us the truth, the level of pain/frustration is proportional to the difference between what you expected and what was (and how quickly you were able to reconcile the difference between the two).
If you didn't allow yourself to get too high or too low, it's a bit of a wash of a season, but all things considered it's been positive (mainly for the development of Ant, McDaniels, and Naz). The people crying the hardest for Finch's head, KAT/Gobert to be traded, Connelly to be ran out of town etc, also tend to be the people that had the highest expectations for this team (which as we have seen were based in hope, not reality) and rather than adapting to reality, are stuck trying to reconcile those expectations that were never met.
The thing that doesn't seem to get mentioned... I'm pretty sure if they had just run it back again this year (like many have wished for at times during the season) and KAT still misses 52 games, they are not in the playoffs right now. Which means they would probably be sh*tting on Connelly either way (though I don't think getting Gobert was a mistake, the overpay certainly was).
