TeamMan wrote:Doug, for many, many, many years I have been reading you posts, and before I always thought that you were excellent in the things that you posted.
But, for the last year or two, I get this feeling that you are the boy with his finger in the dike - more interested in damage control than in a more cerebral approach to the game of basketball.
What damage is there to control? I called it a losing situation in either way, but the loss in both cases is due to poor decisions not related to Butler. I mean it's still blaming the org for stupidity in either way. I'm just saying the stupidity came in the form of areas other than what people are focusing on in this move. My view, in some ways, is fundamentally more negative than yours. I'm saying we put ourselves in such a hole that we were screwed no matter what we did.
Most of what you post I agree with, but some of it, like the whole subject of Butler, I feel like you are not accepting that he is just an outstanding NBA player that just happens to have played for the Bulls.
I do think that, he probably peaked as a top 10 player and is probably now a top 15-20 player. However, he's also a player with zero tolerance for losing / rebuilding / any person that doesn't share his exact ethos. Those things would have caused him to not be a good player based on where our organization was (already clashed with head coach and teammates, and we didn't have the ability to move the team forward in a good direction based on previous screw ups in the draft, a lack of talent on the upswing, a lack of good draft choices, and a lack of cap room).
In fact, Butler is one of the best players in the NBA at the moment, and it's unfortunate that he's an ex Bull, but that is the reality.
That really isn't true though, except that he's probably a top 15-20 player. People have begun to overrate Butler due to the Heat's great playoff run. He's still a very good player, legit all-star caliber player, but he's not a superstar player. That doesn't mean he wasn't a good guy to keep of course. You need legit all-star players. He'd still trivially be the best player on this team if he were here.
Hopefully, with the new FO, we can get the train back on the tracks, but Butler is our past, and we have to accept that letting him go was a mistake.
I think we would be screwed either way, and I think we're screwed now because the org made bad decisions. I think those bad decisions are different ones than you do, but they were still bad decisions. I don't think there was a good "keep Butler" plan after the McDermott trade and signing Wade to a two year deal.
Also hopefully, our new FO will not make these same mistakes in the future.
Agreed.