quote:
I disagree. I was on board but after seeing it in action I don't think there's any way to avoid getting to where we are now with a "young vets" strategy. It inherently requires you to use cap space and picks to end up with pretty much all young vets. This is a psychologically/leadership challenged roster that is missing useful seasoned veterans leading from the top of the roster and young guys pushing them to get better from the bottom.

I think it could work with the right mix of players. Tyreke doesn't fit that mold. I think it's a valid method if your goal is to attract a big name FA to play with your young superstar.

I think we'd all feel a lot better about our situation if we were as good as we thought we were gonna be (7-5 in the West) with AD taking another step or leap forward from last year (serious MVP candidate). That hasn't happened, so it's kind of blowing up in our face.

We'd be fine with letting guys like Ryno and Gordon walk because we'd be able to make a strong pitch to all the best FAs that we're legit and one superstar can turn us from legit to perennial contenders.

Gentryfication got off to a very rocky start. We are still constantly dealing with months long injuries for starting players and it looks like we'll be another first round exit team, but that's not where we thought we'd be 6 months ago.

I guess it's fair to fault management for employing a strategy that banks on future success and the allure of playing with a guy like AD landing a guy we couldn't ever land normally. Demps probably looked ahead to the 16 and 17 summers and said if we can just get good enough to be one piece away, the superstars that become available in those years will be clamoring to join us. I guess it's fair to say that's a very high risk strategy.

This post was edited on 2/2/16 at 10:20 pm

1 ...

Report Post

Posted by corndeaux

Member since Sep 2009

9634 posts

Posted on 2/3/16 at 6:36 am to JohnnyKilroy

quote:
it's a valid method if your goal is to attract a big name FA to play with your young superstar.

quote:
We'd be fine with letting guys like Ryno and Gordon walk because we'd be able to make a strong pitch to all the best FAs that we're legit and one superstar can turn us from legit to perennial contenders

How so? The inherent flaw with what they did is they sold off all of their depth and built a 6 man team of young vets on 2nd, more expensive contracts. Even if the Pels were closing in on 50 wins or whatever, in order to sign a big FA they have to move core pieces of that team to sign the guy. It's like the Kobe to the Bulls rumors from years ago- Chicago would give up everyone that made them attractive to Kobe just to get Kobe.

It would be great to be able to move Gordon, Anderson, Evans and have guys on the team ready to step up. The Pels dont have that. Durant is coming to a team with AD, Holiday, Gee,Cunningham, and Asik? Really?

I think you can argue for making the Holiday move or the Evans move or even the Asik move. But a combo of any two is not great and all three is just bad.

quote:
we were as good as we thought we were gonna be

Would have been nice to enjoy decent basketball but this core was never more than a 2nd round team, at best. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but disappointing when you have Davis and that's the best you can come up with. Getting a 5 seed wouldn't change any of that.

quote:
Demps probably looked ahead to the 16 and 17 summers

That's a little optimistic. If he was thinking long term, he thinks harder about keeping 3 firsts. Not all on Demps though; I feel ownership forced his hand to some degree and wanted to fast track the process. His moves have been largely poor and ill fitting, but I believe new owner syndrome hurt this team in a big way too

0 ...

Report Post

Pelicans Talk - Replies to Post

Return To Board

Page 1

Return To Board