Optimus_Steel wrote:OrlDave wrote:Optimus_Steel wrote:The franchise made a lot of poor decisions when Doc was coach. From giving away guys like Wallace to passing on guys like Tony Parker, Gilbert Arenas, Jamal Tinsley in favor of Jerryl Sasser when they were desperate for a PG to choosing Steven Hunter over Brendan Haywood when we had their rights at the same time. Doc pushed for a lot of dumb moves so I am not surprised he sucks as a GM.
From my understanding, the Magic had a choice of either sending Detroit Ben Wallace or John Ameachi......guess what we did. We helped Detroit win a title.
If our scouting team at the time was anything like during the Otis era (ie nonexistent) then it's not really surprising we end up with Sasser and Hunter. God we spent so much time on Steven, the guy was just dumb as a brick.
The Magic were looking at Tony Parker strongly, he was the best PG prospect in the draft and we had a major hole there. But Doc was enamored with the tall PG experiment he wanted to try. He always wanted to have a PG that was like 6'6 and he pushed hard for Sasser even though he had poor PG skills and was not quick athletic. Same reason they drafted Reece Gaines to try Doc's tall PG experiment again.
Hunter was chosen over Haywood because he was more athletic but damm it was obvious he was dumb as rocks and no instincts for bball.
I'll never understand why we left Verajao go, he was obviously a major find in the 2nd round, everyone know it, there was no need for that. Same with Zaza, we left him unprotected in the expansion draft for an unknown reason.
Despite the Grant Hill disaster, we had chances to make up for it by making good draft picks and give Tmac some legit help but we blew them, almost all of them.
Makes me sad to know we could have had Parker to pair with TMac, but Doc is a moron.
Another move I disliked greatly at the time was letting Zaza just be taken for free in the Charlotte expansion draft. He has had a long career of being an enforcer type that we could have used on those teams.
