nate33 wrote:FreeBalling wrote:To be fair here, shouldn't Ernie reap the rewards of success as a GM? The team is playing good defense and starting to gel together.
Lots of people including myself on this board have been very vocal calling for Ernie to be removed.
I have two current issues with Ernie.
1.) MAXING Wall before elite production. IMO - he's never going to be elite, all-star, yes.
Failure here will cause us to SUCK for years. Good reason to fire EG.
2.) Gortat - Ernie has to get him resigned or it's a bad trade. Good reason to fire EG.
Let's say we finish above .500 this year. I think our record will attract other FA's that might not come to a bottom feeder. That's good for our future.
No. Because Ernie has built an unsustainable roster that is good only because it pays big money to role players and it benefits from 2 no-brainer high picks who are temporarily outperforming their salary because they are on rookie deals.
The cracks will start to show next year when Wall starts being paid his max salary. We will be able to keep our core 6 players and Porter together, but the rest of the roster will have to be minimum salary guys, which means no depth. (Admittedly, this won't be a big change because we have no depth now thanks to the fact that Ernie's Kids all stink. We will merely be replacing Ernie's Kids with D-Leaguers and walk-ons.)
The spit really hits the fan in 2016 when Beal is up for an extension. Basically, we will lose Nene and we will have no way of replacing him.
The team you see right now is at it's peak. Maybe we win 50 games in a pathetic East. We will plateau as Nene and Gortat's decline offset any improvement out of Wall and Beal. We will never get better. We are pretty much the Atlanta Hawks now. Respectable, but never a threat to compete. Only we are pushing the luxtax just to maintain it.
We will see what happens when we see what happens. Lots here have been predicting wrong so I'm worried about tomorrow just yet. Getting some value draft picks would really help and to do that, they need to move EG into some other capacity and bring in someone else to run the draft.
Wall will always likely be overpaid some given other PGs production. But this year he is likely a bargain. Personally, I don't think the new CBA lends itself toward overpaying a PG. There are to many other pieces you need to be a great team. Question is, could they really get away with anything other than maxing Wall given where the franchise had been and where they wanted to go? If not, they were going have to eventually get to the boarder or over the cap to be a really good team. But that's not that unusual for a top contending team. I don't think Ted will have a problem going over the cap when the time comes.
As for EG, if they let him walk, EG will have compiled enough of a resume under Ted to separate what he did with Ted from what happened under Abe. If nothing else, he could get a gig as the guy you hire to tank and rebuild.
Right now the key thing to focus on for me is how to they turn Booker, Kevin S, Singleton and maybe Glen and Maynor into complimentary bench players. I think that group is a little stale.
They are young enough with Wall, Beal, Otto and Ves to go with vets of Trevor A, Nene, Gortat, Webster and maybe bringing back Oakafor to have a solid core. They just need the right bench and that mostly about adding a PF and the right SG/PG.
Gotta see what Otto has. That is key right now. Plus they need some luck on who wants to resign here and for what. Trevor A at near MLE would really help.
Lots is up in the air, but they do have Wall and Beal. They can always clear cap and reboot around them.
