stevemcqueen1 wrote:DCZards wrote:TGW wrote:The "one of the oldest teams in the league" narrative is overplayed...and, imo, is just an effort to find a way to criticize the team that EG has put together. I prefer the Zards situation to having a team made up almost entirely of youngsters with "potential"...a la Philly.
Yeah the oldest team in the league criticism is pretty meaningless when the foundation players are young. Our old players are role players. Important season to season. But not the guys you expect to lead you to winning seasons for a decade. Every good team spends each of their offseasons working to maintain a quality supporting cast around their foundation players. They constantly bring in new vet talent on short term contracts to replace the older guys as the age out. That's how it works. And when you're winning and your foundation for success is sound, quality vet role players will constantly desire to play for you.
Most of the teams that actually win and go deep into the postseason have a lot of 30+ players. Saying a team is old isn't much of a criticism of their chance for success. Teams with too many young players, OTOH, usually lose and get broken up. And teams that successfully make that transition from young loser with potential to legit competitor almost always make some sort of trade of young talent/draft picks for older players with questionable future value but winning experience.
DCz and you wrapped it up, again.
This stuff has been pointed out over and over. Those that see this. See it. Those that don't appear they won't.
Only real question is, where do they go next. If they can sign KD, they could look like LAL regarding design and salaries. As of right now, they look move like a less established GSW with Wall making more the Curry
Again, once Wall and Beal have been tutored by vets an winning enough to lead on their own ( that should be complete after this year), they can bring in younger players then the vets like Miller, Rasual and Paul that they have placed around them now, though all 3 of them might be good for one more year after this. This is not really an issue. Sure, you add up the ages and they show to be an older team. But that ignore the young core which this was always mostly about.
I see a lot of similarities in design between GS and WAS. Wall, Beal and Otto... Curry, Klay and Barnes. Bigs up front. Expensive vet off the bench.. Iggy vs Nene ... But GS has support vets that are a little younger. Livingston, Barbosa, B Rush, Marreese Speights
My take, the KD2DC has been great for press clipping and to shows the progress in the teams reputation. So does Paul coming here. Thats good for a franchise like this that was a dysfunctional mess under Abe. But its not clear he is coming here. Its not even clear to me how that design would win a title. Not unless KD become more of a power player that can play PF/SF/PG which might happen. I see him getting stronger as he gets older. And like I see in OKC and LAC, not sure how you have a really expensive PG and make that work. It might. I guess CLE is trying a somewhat similar model. But in their case, they don't have a really expensive SG. What I saying is, if it is KD here, not sure Wall, Beal, KD gets it done. Beal might have to go. And if not KD here, Wall and Beal can be the core of a GS type team. Which would we prefer ?
Looks like they have two options depending on how things play out.
Bottom line. The franchise reputation have been transformed. They have some young pieces to build around and those young pieces are solid and will be playoff experienced. So the team should be in the mix for the foreseeable future. They now have lots of options. They can get the best coaches available. They can get the best GMs available. They can ride it out with what they have in place for both. They can bring in other vets and do a GS model. They can go after KD and do a OKC, CLE, LAL model.
EG with Ted has proved to be a lot better then EG with Abe. Under Ted, EG has done his job in turning this thing around and setting them up nicely for the future. Its a better designed team that is defense first, not offense first and EG got to chose his coach this time instead of the owner forcing one on him. This time, the front office is design properly.. Owner, GM, Coach.. Not Owner, Coach, GM. Ted doesn't do things like Abe or Synder. Ted is a good owner and that makes a world of difference.
The future looks bright. They have a nice 8 year window where I expect a lot of wins and lots of playoff appearances.
Tell that to the Spurs (Duncan, Ginobili, Parker). Or how about the Celtics with Garnett, Pierce and Allen. 
