basketballRob wrote:I think there is still a point where you have to move on from players. By trading them, it could be a good thing at times. I remember Boston trading Pierce and KG, the Clippers trading Griffin, and Paul George traded to the Clippers, all good for the organization.
Moving on from players isn't always bad. Looking back if we kept Gortat and traded Dwight earlier to Brooklyn for the 5 picks that they were offering we might of built a championship team.
Paul Pierce was 36 and Kevin Garnett was 37 when Boston traded them.
The Clippers are based in Los Angeles, the undisputed most attractive NBA market on the planet. Cap space means something entirely different to an LA team than it does to an Orlando team. LA will ALWAYS attract free agents; Orlando has to be in contention (or right at edge of it) + have a solid infrastructural reputation before any top tier free agent even glances in this direction.
OKC didn't do it for the good of the franchise, they did it because PG forced his way out. They could either force a player to stay (which never works) or get what they could from forced situation. LAC made it easy because they sacrificed their next decade of drafts + Shai to get him, but unlike most other teams they had the luxury of doing that because their market is LA.
That Howard trade offer was in prior year before actual trade. The Magic did get several picks and young players. The scenario wouldn't have been much different. The Hennigan FO would have still been too inexperienced and reckless to handle it, they would have still failed to build the right infrastructure and a quality developmental context...that FO thought it could just game the system and skip steps; that's why they failed...having other picks wouldn't have fixed that.
