clipperlover wrote:esqtvd wrote:clipperlover wrote:
That trade was the worst trade in the Doc era and spawned many bad future moves. We were coming off a post season where we definitely needed to have a backup and potential long term replacement behind DeAndre. Doc drafts Bullock over Gobert, so we enter free agency with a need at backup big, Rather than get the Suns to include Gortat in the trade, Doc listens to Gentry and gets Stay-Puft. Not only did Doc move Bledsoe without ever having him pay a game for Doc, he picked up Stay-Puft when we could have just moved Caron Butler to the Bucks ourselves for Redick (who was a career backup that Doc felt needed to be a starter). After the trade, the Suns moved Butler to the Bucks and ended up moving Gortat to the Wizards where he had several good years. The solution to our back-up big issue was Byron Mullens who never played another game in the NBA after us. From there, it was just a bunch of other bad moves to try to recover.
Had we drafted Gobert, received Gortat in the trade instead of Stay-Puft or just let Bledsoe play out the year and become a restricted FA or trade him mid-year, we stood a much better chance of making the NBA Finals.
Shoulda-wouldas are not very helpful. The Jazz got the Gobert pick in trade for garbage---a second-rounder and cash. In essence, the WHOLE LEAGUE passed on Gobert. He was a foreign longshot that came in. In that same draft, the same Jazz geniuses took Trey Burke at #9, and he was a bust. So it goes.
And I hate Dudley as much as the next guy and was a hater from the very first preseason game. Yes, his acquisition did start a snowball of unfortunate trades and deals, but he WAS hurt for the Clippers, and bravely played hurt while Barnes was out. When he got healthy the next year and the year after, he was pretty much the player Doc thought he was getting.
That said, I still hate him. I do think it was his mouth, not his play, that made it necessary to dump him. We had no Lee Jenkins at the time to warn us off him in the first place, LOL. The dude never shuts up.
Sorry, but we had a need for a back-up big man that could help us. We didn't do it in the 2013 draft. In the 2014 draft, we were already coming off the Mullens debacle and DeAndre was becoming a free agent the following summer, so we needed a big. We also had just lived through the horrible Stay_Puft debacle. So, logically we go out and draft C.J. Wilcox over the bigger Kyle Anderson which was questionable when it happened and it didn't solve our backup big issue. The next true big man available in that draft was Jokic. Jokic didn't come over that first year, but when he did come over he ended up starting nearly as many games his 1st season as Wilcox played in his entire 3 yr career.
This isn't a shoulda, woulda, coulda. The decisions made were poor and that poor decision making ultimately led to us not having the overall roster talent to make the NBA Finals and Doc losing that decision making role.
We experienced several years of bad decision making and never seeing the obvious holes in the roster (i.e. back up big, defense) addressed.
NOBODY knew whether Gobert could play. He was drafted on his physical measurements alone. Total pig in a poke, which is why the whole league passed on him. And people forget that Sterling's Clippers had the smallest and cheapest scouting staff in the league. There is no way they could have been up on some longshot in France. If Doc only acquired players he was familiar with--and he did--that's why. In fact, Doc was still PoBO when the entire scouting staff was fired and replaced under Ballmer in 2016.
As for missing out on the great Kyle Anderson, oh well, LOL. The whole league passed on him, too. And Doc had only been made PoBO on June 16. The draft was held June 26. You can hardly pin that one on Doc.
Spent that year in G-League except 30 games with the Spurs where he averaged 2 points a game. Yes, Doc should have drafted him over Wilcox. But even if he had, it still wouldn't have moved the meter. Nothing worth keening about here.
