nate33 wrote:payitforward wrote:Aside from that, the idea that you give up 2 R2 picks to move up 4 spots & pick a guy, & then you trade him for essentially nothing 3.5 years later, & then someone calls that a "good pick by Ernie" is kind of mind-blowing.
Don't get me wrong: I supported the move at the time. But, I was altogether mistaken. Now, if he'd traded down & picked Larry Nance Junior & Kevon Looney... that would have been good work!
It was a good pick. Drafting a guy good enough to earn a 7-figure-a-year 2nd contract is a good thing. Oubre was a useful rotation player while he was here, and has become a useful starter. That's a good pick.
Oubre is better than Looney or Nance - or certainly the market thinks he is more valuable based on the contract they gave him last summer. The only reason one might like Nance or Looney more is because they signed much cheaper 2nd contracts. That has nothing to do with Ernie's draft day decision. Surely you're not arguing that EG should have drafted a worse player so that he'd be cheaper on his 2nd contract.
The only problem with Oubre is that he happened to hit free agency during a year when there was a lot of money floating around and their was a high demand for wings. If we could have ultimately retained him for $12M a year or so, I'd have been happy to do so. But at $15M per year, I can understand letting him go.
All that said, I'd rather have Oubre at $15M than Ish + CJ + $3M in spare luxtax room. If we had played our cards right, there would have been just enough money to retain him. I would have really enjoyed a starting 5 of Brown, Beal, Oubre, Hachimura and Bryant, with Bertans as 6th man. That's a rock solid team.
Well, right now it's kinda hard to argue against Kelly Oubre, since he's playing great! & my first sentence above wasn't about him as a player, it was about the work "...by Ernie."
I agree that we might have made the $$ work to keep him. But, don't forget that $5.3m of Miles's salary was locked in as a guarantee to Howard, so it would have been pretty complicated. If we don't sign Ish & don't trade for Miles, that frees up $9.4m, putting us at @$118m. Add Oubre, & it's $133m, just over the tax -- but... that's for 14 guys (unless we'd kept Howard, of course).