sunsbg wrote:Biff wrote:My tune hasn't changed all season. I called out the KD trade and I called out the Beal trade. I knew this **** would end with disaster and I was right. Sucks to be right sometimes. Maybe I'll have a team worth cheering for again sometime before I croak. That'll take Ishbia learning that buying a championship rarely works. Hopefully he's a quick study and learns from his mistakes.
I was about to post something similar before seeing this post. I still see Ishbia as a positive for this franchise and hope he'll learn quickly from this experience that overpaying for players who are past their prime will not bring a championship.
Ishbias' been great! And I'm glad to have an owner that's willing to spend and aggressively wants to win! That being said, I agree with everything in your post man that you just can't buy a championship! (at least not in basketball anymore) Especially not with the corresponding exponentially punitive and crippling assessed penalties the lague has constructed going forward. The biggest and most soon to be reflected upon mistake in this strategy that you so eloquently pointed out is simply the EXCESSIVE IMPLIED RISK attached to players (stars or otherwise) that have well documented injury histories, and are occupying a huge majority of a teams' cap flexibilty on gigantic salaries. These factors (outside of overtly eager and excitable new ownership situations) normally result in diminished percievable value. Meaning when negotiating in consideration of these implied risks and the resulting diminished value exchange, you usually can negotiate a relative bargain reduction based off the implied or assumed risks involved for the recieving party.
However, due to the interest of new and excitable ownership to make a buig splashy move, and our mediocre inexperienced GM not being a strong or established negotiator, We significantly mortgaged our imminent future sustainability in a rash and somewhat reckless hasty move. And in this lack of patience, we basically bid against ourselves in a situation wherein we actually held the vast majority of leverage. One of this front offices' worst habitual weaknesses is dealing frrom a position of weakness and taking an "End justifys the means" perspective. Then reactively trying to fix the issues absent of any diligent planning or contingencies in place.
- We have to stop being reactive and instead be proactive.
- Stop being careless and instead be cautious.
- Stop overlooking the obvious and start looking clearly and with objectivity at both short term/ long term projectable outcomes.
- Stop minimizing accountability (through lame rationalizations) and start maximizing ALL AVAILABLE AVENUES OF SUSTAINABILITY responsibly.
- Quit being spectators and instead become assertive participators.
- No more "after the fact" situational analysis. But rather proactive objective premised objective planning.
Durant Trade
We bid against ourselves as we held almost complete leverage. And Durant easily had the clout to dictate his outcome. But aside rrom overpaying, The trade was the right move for us mostly.
Beal trade
Was a clear overpay even if not by a significant margin (due to the first swap) BECAUSE OF the multiple obvious leverage factors in our favor beyond Washingtons' control as well as Beals' significantly troubling durability concerns and attached albatross cap crippling contract salary and "No Trade Clause."
O'neale trade
Although he was a solid acquisition and I'm pleased to have him as a depth piece, it still was a slight and unecessary overpay, but an overpay just the same when reflecting upon what caliber of other players were traded/acquired by teams for similar or evn less 2nds at the trade deadline by comparison over utilizing those last remaining assets for more diversified depth throughout key areas of need on our roster.
Overall, Would I do these three trades again myself IF I had been in charge? Most likely! However, I wouldn't have given up nearly as much value as our front office casually and hastily did to end up at ultimately a similar or possibly even lesser trajectory outcome just off the allure of name recognition given the clear implied risks and established overlooked/intentionally ignored factors involved that are now ironically coming back to bite us big time.