aq_ua wrote:I don't think you can possibly call what we're doing now a full rebuild with a 31 year old star on a max contract and basically nothing else.
Fast forward 12 months, the prospect of any combination of Melo, Carroll, Milsap, Matthews and Ellis eating up our entire cap is just sickening. We don't need an upgrade of role players now - we need an actual core first. The best option we have at finding that second star is the 4th pick we currently hold, but the primes of Melo's career and that pick's career will never coincide. We haven't reconciled that aspect of the strategy.
We've got circa $27mm in cap space, so this is not about signing ALL 4 guys. This is in all likelihood signing 2 out of those 4 guys. Any 2 of those 4 guys + Melo as the entirety of our space is a sickening thought, yes. By the way, there is a reason why the Hawks sent 4 guys to the all-star game - not any one or two of them were outstanding enough to be solely responsible for those 60 wins. Let's also not forget Carroll was not one of those 4 all-stars.
So then you agree, they won 60 games because they had a balanced team game without 2 stars? Then why do you want 2 stars and a bunch of scrubs rather than 1 star and a bunch of high quality role players until the cap shoots up?
Starting from the above, we now have a team of Melo + 2 out of those 4 guys. Add Mudiay or Porzingis to that. Throw in Galloway, Early, Thanasis, maybe we bring back Shved and Bargs. Is that really better than last year?
You don't? You'd be replacing Shumpert and J.R. with Milsap and Ellis - for arguments sake - that's lightyears better than those guys. Ellis is a much better J.R. than J.R. is, and Milsap is one of the most well rounded productive players in the NBA. Even if you replace Ellis with Carroll or Matthews it's still a major upgrade from two guys that couldn't lead a team if their life depended on it.
PG: Mudiay/Calderon
SG: Ellis/Shved/Galloway
SF: Melo/Early
PF: Milsap/Bargs
C: Amundson/Aldrich
doesn't it look better than?:
PG: Calderon/Larkin/Galloway
SG: J.R./Shved
SF: Shump/Early
PF: Melo/Bargs
C: Amundson/Aldrich/Stat
Besides the obvious answer is that Melo is not a 7 footer and it would be wrong to assume that a 6'9" small forward can extend his career the way a center can, it would be a tremendous leap of faith to assume that either Mudiay or Porzingis is going to turn out to be Duncan or Kawhi.
You know what I meant. And why would it be a leap of faith to take the two guys that are considered to have the highest risk but the highest ceiling to become a guy like Leonard? Let's not play into the hyperbole that the media tried to create with Leonard, he's not elite, except maybe on defense. We're talking 2-3 years from now, I don't see how you can worry that Melo can't "extend his career" into the age of 34, that's not that old especially considering that Melo's slowly brought his game out to the 3 point line anyway.
I don't fully follow your logic on this last point. I agree that there isn't one right way to win a championship, and there is so much luck involved that it's impossible to state unequivocally that there is a magic formula. Take your example of the 2011 championships - Spurs have the top seed in the regular season but get knocked out in the first round by the Grizzlies. If they get through, they likely end up playing and potentially beating Dallas in the conference finals.
So then you're in agreement with me, there is no formula, yet you don't believe any formula outside of scrapping the entire thing could get it done? I don't understand that. What team has started from nothing and succeeded? Heat already had Wade when they got Bosh and LeBron, Dallas already had Dirk and has attempted to fit random pieces in for years before getting it right, San Antonio stuck together and added only a few missing pieces, Lakers kept building and haven't started from the bottom in god knows how many years, etc. etc. Who has started with nothing, maybe 1 team in OKC? It's not exactly a sure fire method unless you hit big on many draft picks like OKC did with Durant, Westbrook, Harden, and Ibaka - that's not realistic.
Yes, ultimately we need depth to win, I don't think there's argument around that. The only question is the order in which and how that depth is accumulated. We need cap space flexibility, trade-able assets all the while having a core. If we lose all the first things in getting that core, then we won't have the ability to build depth around it. GS, Cleveland, Dallas are all examples of teams that built a core and kept flexibility to build depth. In fact, the Dallas example is exactly that - they drafted Dirk and weren't afraid to trade away established stars like Jason Kidd to create a core that eventually became the 2011 team.
"Eventually" is kind of a ridiculous statement here regarding Dallas. They traded Kidd in 1996, they won in 2011, it wasn't because of that trade. Cleveland only built a "core" because they had a guy in LeBron go back home after being terrible enough that they lucked into #1 picks, that's not possible to replicate. GS has 1 star and a bunch of very good players built around him and a system that works...which is what I want the Knicks to do and you say you don't want.
