Paradise wrote:So, let me get this straight.
Building a deep team of quality hard working role players is not a good idea and chasing the likes of Love, Durant, Howard and Horford will result into a failure. So, what's the plan? It's either one or the other.
Um, I clearly said that going after the likes of Love, Durant, and Howard (how was Horford put in that class?) was the best way to go. I just don't think we'd ever convince a player like that to come here in 2016. And Howard in 2016 will be 30 years old and he's already past his prime and starting to rack up the injuries, he might not even be a franchise-caliber player at that point.
What I do think is that overpaying for lesser talent with max contracts (Al Horford is a good example here...he's a very good player, but I wouldn't pay 20 million a year for him) is the same way we got ourselves into this bind. Those end up being the toxic contracts that everyone wants to dump, because it gets us into that "not quite bad enough to tank, not quite good enough to contend" level, aka the treadmill. Or in a case like this year, it ends up getting us into that "bad enough to tank, but no draft picks" level, which is even worse.
In terms of building a deep team with a bunch of solid, but not great players, I'm all for that if we strike out on Durant and possibly Love. It's a great compensation plan. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be the first choice, because that's not going to lead to any more success than what we have now. It'll just be much more enjoyable to watch, and we won't be nearly as cap-strapped, assuming we don't overpay for those solid, but not great players.
Paradise wrote:He was let go because of his poor relationship with the front office on roster decisions. It had nothing to do with on-court performance. He developed a culture and a style that Memphis to this day was reluctant to change and we are on pace to finish with the best defensive efficiency since 2005. He IS the best coach we've had in years.
He's the best coach we've had in years, because we've had terrible coaches for years, not because Hollins is all that good. He's anti-analytics, his offense is a joke, and he preaches defense and toughness, but this whole "culture" thing is so overblown. When you have a good team, it's easy to build "culture". What happened to building that "culture" here? We're the same soft, passive, indifferent team we've always been.
Memphis is exactly the same now, if not better than they were with Hollins. And they have a much more enjoyable team to watch, with an offense that doesn't put you to sleep.
Paradise wrote:Phoenix, Toronto, Atlanta, Memphis were all mainly built through free agency and trades. So, It's a doable. Building a competitive team that is also financially responsible isn't hard as some on here try to make it seem. I just don't see alot of great GMs available to execute a proper vision.
They had draft picks and good players on cheap contracts! I don't understand why people keep overlooking how important that stuff is when it comes to team building. It's not just about how much money you have. Stuff like that is what I call "assets", and they're important for unloading bad contracts, putting together an appealing offer for a certain player that's worth it, or to have some young talent on a team that can slowly develop into something better. We're stuck in the situation we're in precisely because we can't do anything like that right now. The only legit asset we have is Plumlee, since he's a productive player that's still on his rookie contract...but he's been branded as pretty much untouchable, and for good reason. BECAUSE he's the only real asset we have. If we had a few guys like him (productive players on rookie deals, or just cheap deals in general), then we could have parted with one of them and Deron's contract would be Sacramento's problem right now.
