I agree. It made sense to stockpile young talent and evaluate as the team improved. They really have gone beyond what was anticipated this year. Now is the time to cull the herd, so to speak (no disrespect meant). What is great is that KP has stockpiled so much talent he can do a 2 or 3 for 1 package to get someone he really wants. And we don't have to worry about salary dumps like the Pistons did.
Blaze01- so if we add a jefferson, and i'm pretty sure batum was requested in any trade offer, where does that leave us? do we beat houston? do we beat LA in the next round? does that make us championship contenders? i still think that anyone we could have added at the deadline will be available in the offseason as well as some new guys. yea the 15 million could not be accurate but guys like ruffin and frye should be gone. add in that blake/outlaw and their 4 mill a piece and we are sitting pretty good. i'm convinced that we will add through a trade anyways and not through free agency. for the record with a vet like jefferson i think we probably beat houston but still don't have enough to take down the lakers. yea, houstons role players have stepped up and grossly outplayed our role players. blake looks horrible and outlaw can't pick his head from his ass. we have our third scorer but nate refuses to play him more than 24 minutes.
I love having KP as a GM but that doesn't mean he won't make mistakes. It's pretty hard to find a GM who has been around the block a few times who doesn't make a few mistakes. I will never know what we could or could not have had for RLEC. But my gut feeling tells me the Blazers blew that one.
Me thinks KP wanted to see/evaluate how this current team would perform in the playoffs before making any long-term commitments to _______. Granted, RLEC was a one-time shot. However, if acted upon, the end result would still have contractual obligations/ramifications on the Blazers' part. Therefore, his prudence may, or may not, have been a mistake.
From what I remember, Batum was the deal breaker with Charlotte over Gerald Wallace. The deal for Jefferson would've just been RLEC + Outlaw. Even that deal would've hurt our future though, I like our chances of getting a better player than Jefferson (and to be fair, he wasn't demonstrably better than Outlaw at the deadline) with the cap space. Andre Miller is looking good.
