The Rebel wrote:NuggetsWY wrote:If Karnisovas made a difference, we can not blame him for previous mistakes. Plus, do not forget, he is just the GM and Connelly and Kroenke made it clear they were Barton fans. Perhaps Karnisovas finally convinced them to move Chandler, Arthur, Faried - which should have been done 2 or 3 or even 4 years ago. I don't mind the salary dumps. Paying the tax for a non-contending team is smart. They could finish very high but the Nuggets seem likely to have homecourt advantage in round 1 as their highest target (with a first round win).
So wait he gets a pass because his title changed? Sorry but Connelly and Karnisovas got different titles and raises last summer so AK would not take the Bucks job, but nothing in the chain of command has changed.
You can choose to give anybody you want credit for the salary dumps, but I do not give any of them credit for those dumps. In fact that is something I hold against all of them. They dumped contracts that they signed to avoid the luxury tax, not for some roster balancing crap like you and the Nuggets are trying to spin it. I would have been much happier if instead of dumping salary they got creative and dumped salary while picking up players we need to fill gaps. I would much rather have walked away this summer with George Hill than Isaiah thomas, but it would have cost some young players that don't play. I would have rather given up a pick to flip Plumlee for a guy like Koufos instead of paying to dump Arthur and Faried for cap space. Insted of signing Barton to a big deal, I would have rather signed a placeholder and used his cap space to get a guy who is a long term 6th man. We might not get all the way out of the luxury tax but it would have cleared the cap for next summer and given us real room to build the team around the young core.
NuggetsWY wrote:I have made it clear that I am in favor of playing our young players more. I do not object to adding Thomas. I have not objected to adding Miller and Jefferson - and most of the other veterans. My objection continues to be Malone's preference to overuse veterans at the cost of developing young players. My objection has been and will continue to be Malone's rotations and his unwillingness to use a Jokic-centric offense and his pathetic approach to defense.
Malone has developed Murray, Jokic, Harris, Lyles and Juancho have shown promise but Juancho was sick and Lyles defense was terrible. They drafted 2 more forwards, while neither are likely to play this year, they added 2 more forwards in the draft. They resigned Craig and started pushing the idea that he can play SG and signed Thomas. What that all tells me is that for one reason or another they do not like Beasley and Lyles at a minimum and possibly Juancho, whether it is lack of talent, work ethic, or attitude I do not know but their moves show their thinking.
Signing Thomas and Craig I would say that relates directly into how they feel about Beasley's long term prognosis with this team. Beasley was supposed to be a 2 way player that can score and be a capable defender. He has shown glimpses as both, yet they bring in a score 1st, 2nd, and 3rd PG and resign a defensive specialist to play at backup SG, while ignoring their chance to sign Morris who they are reportedly very high on. They must not be too high on Beasley right now.
I understand draft Porter JR, he would have been in the running for 1st overall without the injury, you have to take that risk unless you get a godfather offer. I could understand if Vanderbilt had fallen to them and they took him, but instead they moved up using 2 2nd round picks to draft the guy and then signed him to a 3 year deal as soon as they could. So what does that say about Lyles? We now have 2 young PFs well as Juancho on the depth chart behind Lyles, and a young Sf sitting behind Craig and Juancho while promising the starting job to Barton so what does that say about Juancho?
We gave up future picks to dump salary, yet we have at least 2 guys that they do not view as the long term answer for this team in Beasley and Lyles, so why the picks and not the 2 players? Lyles proved he could be very productive last year, reports said that he had much more value than we gave for him, Juancho would be fine backing up both forward spots for the likely 10 mpg at each. They have signed guys to ensure that Beasley is not really used, so why is he still here is he not even worth a 2nd round pick? The only answer that makes sense is that the front office has said screw the future we have to make the playoffs, and are doing it to the detriment to the long term health of this team. So sorry I am not going to praise any of them right now, everything they did was short sighted and has shown that they still have the same issues that they have since Connelly and Arturas were brought in 5 years ago.
