Watching Sports Nation, and they are calling out Demps

Agree. It is a shame that we are wasting AD while an incompetent GM continues to funnel underachievers through the roster at high salary. He has failed completely in building a roster around AD.

Article from SBNation yesterday also seen in GMIB newsletter

Anthony Davis Deserves Better

Lede from the article

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Anthony Davis should protest.

In 2006, the same year he dropped 81 points on the Raptors, Kobe Bryant refused to shoot against the Suns in Game 7 of the first-round playoff series. He had been criticized for his shot selection and lack of teamwork in the previous game, so after scoring 23 points on 8-of-13 shooting in the first half, he only took three shots thereafter. The Lakers lost by 31. The next year, he demanded a trade.

Davis should protest in that same manner. Not out of spite or malice, because he’s not Bryant, but because the theme of him dominating and the rest of his team floundering is frustratingly repetitive.

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This is what happens when you make a 7-foot point guard who can run like John Wall, shoot like Stephen Curry,

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pump the brakes there, sbn

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because the theme of him dominating and the rest of his team floundering is frustratingly repetitive.

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This is like that frustrated poster in another thread that said the team should MAKE A MOVE TO GET A 2ND STAR! Even if AD walked into Loomis' office and said "I'm running things now and if you don't like it you can trade me.", there really isn't an available move that gets this team back on track this year. They have to hope Hill pans out, hope they can dump Asik + Ajinca and hope that the 2017 draft pick nets another starter, either via drafting or trade. It also would help if Pondexter's career wasn't over, which I'm starting to get a little worried about. I'm not saying don't fire Demps, I'm just not sure there are a whole lot of moves that are any better than bringing in Ferry. The GM talent pool has always been even thinner than the coaching ranks.

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This board is so toxic

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You realize we will have wasted the primes of Davis and Chris Paul with only, what...ONE PLAYOFF SERIES WIN TO SHOW FOR IT!? We lucked into players other franchises dream of.

Throw the level Brees has been playing at on top of the Pels frustration, and you just plain get tired of it.

its all reactionary BS...albeit based on past performance.

here's a more measured opinion:

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They’re a mess. Their roster is full of mismatched parts that wouldn’t be much good even in their ideal settings; it’s also, somehow, despite its dearth of talent beyond Davis and possibly eternally injured point guard Jrue Holiday, very expensive. If you pinned a printed-out list of every active player in the NBA to the wall, put on a blindfold, and threw a dozen darts at it, virtually any combination of names you hit would suit Davis as well or as badly as his current selection of teammates. Now that I think of it, that may very well be what the Pelicans’ front office has been doing these past four years.

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however:

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There’s no way around it: His 50-point opening night notwithstanding, the shine has come off Davis somewhat since he entered the NBA as the most hyped draftee since LeBron and seemed, if anything, to exceed those expectations through his first couple seasons. It’s a weird thing: He’s a fricking astonishing basketball player, possessing gifts and skills so extraordinary that even the most casual basketball fan will find, in any given quarter of watching him play, some reason to go “Whoa, that guy is a monster!”—and yet, somehow, his greatness has not managed to make his team all that good, and most of the time has not kept it from being pretty shitty. That means something! You can debate exactly what it means, or how definitively it means it, but it definitely means something.

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This is not football. Truly transcendent professional basketball players ... well, transcend. Their teams win. LeBron James not only took some bozo-arse teams full of incompetent mutants to the Finals in his first run in Cleveland; he took them to the Finals as top seeds. Carmelo Anthony, for all his supposedly terminal faults, didn’t miss the playoffs a single time in his first decade in the NBA. Dwyane Wade made the playoffs 11 times in 13 years in Miami. Tim Duncan literally never missed the playoffs. Anthony Davis, on the other hand, has been there once, in four seasons, and got swept. If this is a gauge of just how lousy his complementary parts and the organization around him have been (it is; they have been), fine, but still. Something’s missing. This is less than we were promised.

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team building has been a disaster, but the prevailing opinion that AD is the next KG/lebron/duncan/etc MIGHT not be valid. he's a remarkable talent, but i agree, something is missing

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teams win. LeBron James not only took some bozo-arse teams full of incompetent mutants to the Finals in his first run in Cleveland; he took them to the Finals as top seeds. Carmelo Anthony, for all his supposedly terminal faults, didn’t miss the playoffs a single time in his first decade in the NBA. Dwyane Wade made the playoffs 11 times in 13 years in Miami. Tim Duncan literally never missed the playoffs. Anthony Davis, on the other hand, has been there once, in four seasons, and got swept. If this is a gauge of just how lousy his complementary parts and the organization around him have been (it is; they have been), fine, but still. Something’s missing. This is less than we were promised.

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This is something I've been thinking about for awhile and it is truly perplexing to me.

Great players make the playoffs almost regardless of who their teammates are. I don't get why he doesn't make us better. That's just how it works in basketball, but its not working here.

carmelo's a good comp

just picking a random nuggets season, 05-06. they won 44 games; by minutes played:

carmelo anthony
andre miller
marcus camby
ruben patterson
kenyon martin
earl boykins
grep buckner
reggie evans

no question, but here it is:

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somehow, his greatness has not managed to make his team all that good, and most of the time has not kept it from being pretty shitty.

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the greats (the real greats) dont have 30 win seasons, they just dont. hopefully it never happens again because davis takes the leap, but the fact that it has happened is definitely meaningful

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but the fact that it has happened is definitely meaningful

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I think the AD we saw Wednesday is the guy who just made the leap into "greatness". The team shot 38% in the first half. The team on the floor was not "38% from the field" bad. I wonder how many nights Lebron's early Cavs teams or Melo's early Nuggets teams shot 38% for a half and won? I'm guessing it aint too many. They had a bad night for sure, but that was some bad luck mixed with bad shot selection combining for a big ol bowl of shite stew.

Fix a couple bad defensive rotations, have a few shots not clang off the rim and have a few rebounds go our way and they win that game. All are fixable.

AD's efforts that night would have won a bad game, but that game was other worldly bad for everyone else on the team. No "transcendent" player could overcome what we saw without help. Not one.