re: Tom Ziller's top 100 free agents of 2016

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2014 Pelicans pick = #10

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Forgot about that. Got my years confused with the pick we gave up for Asik.

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Do you honestly think we can trade our way into a contender or get top tier free agents to come here?

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I think the strategy we used was not a bad one. I think the execution has been bad. If instead of tyreke we got a young vet C or SG/SF that could move to SG if/when we acquired our big name SF then it could have worked. I think the strategy to build a strong, young core to attract FAs to play with AD was a perfectly fine strategy that was executed poorly by trading away too much for Asik and Evans.

Given the information that was available at the time of those drafts, I don't think we would have gotten anyone who has or will blossom into a superstar.

The only guy I see that we could have gotten that has that potential is Giannis, and he'd have been a hell of a reach at 6. He is still a project and he's in his third year. Maybe he'll be an all star caliber player in a couple more years, but he isn't there yet.

Perhaps we could have taken Giannis and packaged him with other assets down the road for a more polished and complete player. I guess that could have been a possibility.

Idk what exactly is the direction we should take going forward. On one hand I understand blowing it up and building back around Jrue and AD. But at the end of the day, that method is just as, if not much more likely, to land us no one of note and AD opting out before his last year because we still suck 3 years after blowing it up.

I just don't want to be in a place where I can't blame AD for leaving 4 years from now.