Your wrong the downfall actually began before the trade, and simply continued afterwards. Gatorsownthesec always has the best explanation for this topic, which seems to appear every week. So I will let him explain why it was best to trade Mobley.
Here is my original post about this.... You can ignore #5, cause I posted it a long time ago. <div class="quote_poster">Quoting GatorsowntheSEC:</div><div class="quote_post">Sorry this will be kinda a rant thread, since I'm getting so tired of everyone blaming Weis for ruining our season and that this season was a total waste because of this trade, etc. We did get more benefits out of this then you guys think. Injuries killed our season, not this trade. 1. Dwight Howard got more touches. After the trade, Dwight became the 3rd option instead of 4th or 5th he was with Mobley. He's not going to develop without touches. Honestly if we kept Mobley, I doubt Dwight woulda even been as close in the ROY voting as he was. 2. Johnny Davis got fired. Most of the older members here know how much I hate this guy. He's a moron. We were loaded with talent, which made it almost impossible for JD to screw it up(hence the fast start, he was trying to blow it though) With Mobley gone, JD showed how bad of a coach he was. He wasn't plagued with injuries and had talent like Dwight, Jameer, Hill, Francis, Hedo, Cato/Battie, and Stevenson and he couldn't get us wins. 3. Christie has an 8.2 expiring year deal this year. I am aware that we are way over the cap so it won't really help us out, but we could potentially be seeing a trade such as GSW getting Baron for 1 big expiring and a decent young guy. Also would you rather have gotten nothing in return for Mobley after he would have left this offseason? At least we got someone that could be potentially good trade bait to rebuilding teams. 4. Jameer and Stevenson got a chance. Jameer was amazing once we started starting him. If we had Mobley still do you think that he would have started? NO. Stevenson got a chance to show his talent when Jent took over. (Another reason that made JD look like the moron that he was, he was at the deepest corner of the bench with JD and avg 16 ppg, I could be wrong with that number, but I think that's what it was, when he was given a chance) Both of these guys are still continuing to develop. And if worse comes to worse, we can maybe trade Stevenson with Cato/Christie for a disgruntled superstar. 5. Draft lottery tonight. We will get a chance to see how magical(pun intended) Pat Williams and his luck is. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised at all, although we only have a 2.4% chance to get a top 3 pick(.8% chance to get #1). We have the luckiest team with Pat Williams winning the last 3 times he was at the lottery and don't forget Stevie Franchise being there when they got the #1 pick when they got Yao. 6. Basically to give the fans hope. Yes we didn't make the playoffs and choked at the end of they year because of injuries, but we see how good Dwight was at the end of the year with his touches, same with Stevenson and Jameer. We also have Hedo, so we are very young. We do have nice veteran leadership though in Cato, Battie, Hill, Francis. We are a solid all around team and depending on the new coach, we could become a playoff team next year and a playoff contender the following year. So stop complaining about how the MObley for Christie trade hurt us. I would be willing to sacrifice a season(in which we woulda had to play against Shaq more than likely in the playoffs) to let the young guys develop and give us hope. Dwight, Jameer, Hedo are going to be around for a long time(knock on wood) and will be the core of this team in the near future, once Hill retires.</div> http://www.justbball.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37479 Honestly I would say that we might have made the playoffs, but I don't think there's anyway that we would have done better than the Nets against the Heat as the 8th seed. I would be happy to sacrifice one more year in the lottery to let Jameer and Dwight and the core come together, because that's how we will win. Here is a Coranor post explaining the downfall before the trade(hope he doesn't mind, if you do mind, let me know, I will take it out) <div class="quote_poster">Quoting Coranor:</div><div class="quote_post">Yep, we were on a downhill. Firstly, we were 18-14 when the deal was completed, Mobley didn't play in that loss against Boston because it was just an hour before that game that our great GM announced the deal. Also, have you forgotten that we were 13-6 after the first 19 games. Everyone around here was full of hope, okay you haven't been around here at that time so do a little research on the board and you'll see what we were talking about at that time and how well everything went until the other teams figured out our game and our coach didn't have a plan B. So after that we went 5-8, if that isn't a downhill, I don't know what a downhill is. As I said, our coach didn't have a plan B our defense sucked and our GM wanted to split the duo of Francis/Mobley and get the team more involved (just have a look at the top scorers during that stretch which were mainly Francis or Mobley), in addition he wanted that Hedo gets more playing time. Okay, we just won three in a row against Seattle, Charlotte and NJ before the deal was completed but I believe at that time our GM was already trying to deal Cuttino.</div>
Thanks for quoting me on this issue This topic comes up all the time and we've discussed it nearly endlessly, still I've got a few things to add: 1. I don't think we could've made the playoffs. The other teams were just plain better and our coach unable to change plans in the middle of a season and the interim coach didn't make it much better. 2. Getting in the playoffs, aven as the 8th seed and then going down against Shaq & co would have been a great experience for our young team. So they learn as early as possible how it is to play in the postseason. 3. The trade looks horrible and onesided not only now but looked like this already at the time of the trade. Our hockey GM made the right decision in trading Mobley, just the way he did it and who he brought in screwed everything up. <font size="1">btw. my nick is Coranor not Coranar, my very first ever nickname on the net in a roleplaying related messageboard</font>
