rsavaj wrote:That's basically everything. Great summary man. I'll listen to it again today and see if I can add anything, but here's what I remember from last night.
Warning, this is going to be an insanely long post
-Dragic has been unhappy the whole season
-FO and Horny knew that, but didn't recognize the severity of his unhappiness; thought that he would be the last guy to rock the boat
-IT was injury insurance for Bledsoe. Amin says he thinks they told IT that Bledsoe was leaving and that he would start with Goran. Dave and Jim say that if you listen to what IT said at his press conference, it's clear that the FO told him he was brought in to be a backup, but that IT is just the kind of competitive dude who's going to compete for a starting position no matter what. Dude thinks he is a starter, and if the team is playing well, he's fine coming off the bench. When the team isn't playing well, he's gonna be vocal about wanting to start. Guys agree that IT probably wasn't in the long-term plans, and was just brought in to be Super Ish Smith for a year until they could think of something better next offseason.
-Dragic seemed mostly okay with Bledsoe last year, but still isn't fully content playing off-ball. IT signing that forced him almost exclusively off-ball was the major tipping point, but nobody really knows how Dragic would have A)reacted and B)played if Bledsoe was healthy the whole season last year. By the time Eric returned from injury, this was "Goran's team", and Bledsoe played a much more complementary role. Things could have gone differently if the two of them had to share the backcourt for the whole season; there's some speculation as to whether or not Goran would have felt as "okay" with the arrangement if they weren't making a strong playoff push last season, and if he didn't have that long stretch where he thrived by himself.
To summarize that long paragraph: Goran likes being the man. Goran may or may not have been okay sharing the backcourt with Bledsoe for the whole year, but it worked out since Bledsoe missed half the season and when he came back everybody was on board for the playoff push. Once IT came on board, Goran didn't even get to split PG duties...he was left in the corner, and that (very obviously and understandably) completely alienated him.
-Dave says Horny has brushed off this issue every time Dave asked him about it through the season, but Amin points out that it doesn't do Horny any good to readily admit to the media that there's a problem, and that we shouldn't assume that he wasn't aware of it/just trying to keep it in-house.
-Drafting Ennis made no sense after you signed IT, because if the Hydra worked out, when was Ennis EVER going to play here? Speculation that it was an asset grab by McDonough who wasn't able to make the deal with Toronto(who really wanted Ennis) go through. Now, with Dragic and maybe even IT gone by tomorrow, Ennis becomes an important piece moving forward
-Losing Channing hurt Goran's game, hurt Eric's game, and hurt us in the lockerroom
-Coro says Dragic is the very nicest guy in the entire league. Amin says that by publicly saying "I don't trust the Suns FO", he's damaged our reputation with players around the league. Given the way Grant Hill left the Suns with a sour taste in his mouth, this whole encounter amounts to a stain on the Suns' reputation
-Young dudes may or may not get minutes depending on what the Suns get back in the trade. Dave speculated that since we're still technically in the playoff hunt, the young dudes won't be getting much PT until we start losing a lot of games, maybe next month. Said that the guys on the team really do want to make the playoffs
-Amin says Suns failed to maintain a pulse on the lockerroom/team dynamic
-Amin says when Dragic is the only PG on the floor, he's a top 5 PG who is worth the money. Coro says he's not sure he'd want to sign Goran to a deal that pays him $20 million when he's 33.
-All 4 parties agreed that there's no chance Dragic re-signs this summer unless you give him $100 million over 5 years
-Dave says that better communication could have prevented this. Must have been a series of misunderstandings between the FO and Dragic(as far as the "broken promises" Goran is referring to)
-Dave says you have to give the Suns FO credit for one thing: they've never wavered on their desire and agenda to keep Dragic longterm. Ever.
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If you want my take on it...let's talk about the FO first.
They made a few moves in a vacuum that you could defend when you looked at them alone: was Channing worth 8 million a year x 4 years? No. But he's worth more to us than anybody else. You know his value on and off the court, but you made a calculated risk that you could let him go and replace him with Tolliver. Didn't work.
Was IT a value grab at his production/price, and great insurance in case Bledsoe left/got injured? Sure. But when you want your three best players on the court at the end of the game, how are you going to do that when they all play the same position? You're forcing your coach to play an offensive system that makes no damn sense. And this is particularly egregious because IT has a reputation for being a fierce competitor; no matter whether or not you told him that he was being brought in to be Jason Terry, you KNOW that the guy is going to want to start, no matter what.
McDonough and Babby have reversed our trajectory from the team's darkest day in the past 10 years. The day that I'm referring to is when they fired Gentry and promoted Lindsey Hunter. Majerle resigned. Turner resigned. The team was in the middle of the worst season in franchise history. Absolutely rudderless. Do you guys remember how we felt on that day? That was the most miserable I've felt as a Suns fan in a really, really long time.
McDonough came on board, turned things around, stocked our coffers with assets and young talent. Dudley for Bledsoe, amazing move that singlehandedly changed the franchise's direction. Drafting Len, amazing move. Drafting Goodwin? Looks like they grabbed the guy with the most upside remaining, so no fault there. Getting Miles, Green and a first for Scola, great move. Trading Gortat for a first was a push...guy didn't want to be on a rebuilding team, and we got a first for it, but maybe we could have gotten more. Drafting Warren? Hopefully a great move. Drafting Ennis(via Gortat trade)? Really confused by that one, but at least it was worth the college try.
McD has played the asset game very, very well, and he has changed the direction of our franchise because of it.
But here's the thing about the asset game....when you accumulate asset after asset after asset, some of your assets grow stale. Some of your players start feeling like commodities instead of people. You're in a race against time to cash in your assets before your assets start to feel fed up, and we're seeing that right now. This is basically the reason players don't like playing for Daryl Morey, SO MUCH SO that Woj said Goran doesn't want to go to Houston because he's afraid Morey will trade him. No joke.
This is McDonough's first misstep after a series of excellent moves, and what a misstep it is.
Do I think that this means McD is an incompetent GM? No. I think he's a very good GM. I think he rescued this franchise from a much darker place two seasons ago. Despite how all of this is going down, we still have one of the best PGs in the league locked up long-term(Bledsoe), and funnily enough...we do have PG "insurance"...it's just not for the guy we thought it was going to be. We still have cap flexibility. We still literally have more young talent than we know what to do with.
But this IS a misstep. An enormous one, borne from McDonough's inexperience. And how we rebound from this will dictate the franchise's future prospects in a big way.
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Now let's talk about how Goran's handling this.
Goran has every right to demand a max contract.
Goran has every right to not want to share a backcourt with another point guard anymore, be it Bledsoe or Thomas.
Goran has every right to feel slighted by this front office.
But he made things so much uglier than they needed to be. By going public with his trade demand 48 hours before the deadline, he's handicapped this franchise and cut them off at the knees. The FO has no leverage. No bargaining power. No time to find a deal.
There really doesn't seem to be any reason for Dragic(and his agent, that douchebag Bill Duffy) to time his request the way he did(instead, say, at the beginning of the break) other than to stick it to the FO.
Not only is the timing of the request messed up, but so is the actual request itself. He wants to be traded to where? LA? New York? Miami?
WHAT THE F***.
He wants to have the offense go through him, so he wants to go play with Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade? How the hell does that make any lick of sense?
It doesn't make sense. And in this way, Dragic has made the most steroetypical, most diva-esque trade demand ever. Cue Tom Ziller's article this morning:Tom Ziller wrote:Goran Dragic is one of the two best players on a team in position to potentially make the playoffs. He has asked to be traded specifically to one of three teams, all of which are much worse than his current team. One of those teams is the worst squad in the entire league.
The targeted cities -- Miami, New York and L.A. -- have the nation's best nightlife and the teams based there have traditionally been open to spending huge sums on payroll. The teams also offer an opportunity for Dragic, named one of the league's top six guards last season, to have a massive role as he wraps up a contract year.
So, Dragic is requesting to be traded from a rather good team to one of three rather bad teams for some combination of money, spotlight and nightlife. This is the most stereotypical NBA trade demand of all time. And it's coming from Goran Dragic.
Compare this move to the last "stereotypical NBA trade demand," when Carmelo Anthony requested a move to the Knicks in 2010 and 2011. Melo had picked one city, and that was in part based on his wife's career. Otherwise, it was a similar deal. Melo wanted to leave a good team for a historically poor one, primarily due to a combination of money* and location, with wins and championships a far lower priority. And Melo got killed for it in the media.
By my count, Dragic's request is even more brash, especially coming just days before the deadline. Melo's simmered for months, well in advance of his free agency.
Dragic's list of acceptable destinations is a combined 45-113 this season. At least the Knicks in 2010-11 had floated to a respectable .500ish level with Amare Stoudemire as Melo pushed. At least there had been talk about adding a third star (like Chris Paul) and creating a superteam. There's none of that with Dragic. And he can't honestly believe he'll be better off playing with Nick Young and Wes Johnson than with Eric Bledsoe and Markieff Morris.
It'll be interesting to see how the media treats Dragic, especially if he lands on a preferred team. My overriding position is that we shouldn't really care that certain people have different career and life priorities than others or ourselves. But if there was ever reason to ridicule an NBA diva for his blatant embodiment of the stereotypes of the modern NBA star, it's Dragic and it's now.
http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2015/2/19/8 ... stereotype
Goran's not saying, "please send me to a team where I can win the title." No. He's saying, "please send me to a team where I can be in the bright lights, enjoy the nightlife, and get paid. I don't care how bad it is."
And in that way, he's not the guy I thought he was. He's not the guy a lot of us thought he was, I suspect.
Also, by publicly saying that he doesn't trust the Suns front office, he's damaging our reputation around the entire league. Despite his differences with the FO, this really was a crappy move. It's badmouthing the entire organization because he's not happy with his own situation.
I place most of my blame on the FO, but Dragic is digging in the knife in a way he shouldn't, and doesn't need to. As detailed above, if it was any other player than Goran, he would be roasted in the media for it. This was one of the ugliest divorces I've ever seen in sports. I don't see any way the two sides can make up at this point. It's really sad that we got to this point.
I remember the day Dragic came back in 2012. Somehow we went from this:
to "I don't trust the Suns."
What a shame. What a damn shame.
We'll get through it. I'll get through it. I survived Charles, Shawn, Amare, and Steve. Those guys were Hall of Famers who almost led us to the mountaintop. If I can survive their departures, I can survive the Dragon's. Again.
Fin.
What an awesome post! I agree with everything you just said. Those photos with Goran and the smile on his face break my heart. Though I understand that this is a business it really doesn't make this easier. I have not agreed with Sarver in the past but getting Dragic back makes me think that he really loves the game. He understands that player relationships are important and I cannot imagine how he feels after Dragic made those statements and then was subsequently traded.
Horrible day not matter what trade went down. I hope Dragic finds what he is looking for because Miami has basically already committed to signing him for 5yrs/$100M.
