This piece pretty much goes over everything that has already been hashed an rehashed in here. He does cite some examples from Chicago and Dallas, FWIW............... From: Brian Hendrickson - The Columbian
Totally disagree with this statement. Perimeter defense, a reliable scorer behind Brandon Roy, some battle-tested leadership ... those are just a few. -Pop
The Good is the enemy of The Best. 33 wins is great. If you can set yourself up for something much bigger, you do it.
Yeah, LA last year said "hey, we have a minor hole in the middle here, but we're on pace for 52 wins and a playoff spot, let's just ride it out". Wait, they didn't. They said "let's trade our 11th man, a 9M expiring contract, an overseas 2nd rounder, and 2 late 1st draft picks for an All-Star." Voila, Finals. I didn't hear until afterwards the questions of "how does Bynum develop if Pau's here"?
Problem is we didnt get an offer like that. Teams didnt want our 11th man or our draft picks... they wanted Rudy, Bayless, and Batum.
Why, again, is 50 wins some magic number? Why not want 54? Or HCA? Or winning the division? As KP said, we're "overachieving". Fine (I disagree, but that's a different matter entirely). If we're "overachieving", who's doing it? Roy's an All-Star, just like last year. LMA's about the same, as is Joel and Blake. Bayless is the 3rd PG, people in here thing Sergio's horrible, and Batum gets 15mpg. Ike and Frye were disappointing. Webster's been injured. Oden's been up and down. Are Outlaw and Rudy what's causing this team to "overachieve"? Statistically and observationally I can't see it. So how are we overachieving? Sure, we're the 2nd-youngest team in the league. I get it. We're also one of the most talented 1-15 teams in the league. We're also one of the more dominant home teams in the league, except when we're playing scrub teams, it seems. We still haven't won a road game against a >.500 WC team, iirc. We don't play good team defense, and that's not going to change with Blake and Outlaw getting 30mpg each. We're only "overachieving" if you bought into low expectations (of course, you could turn that around and say we're only underachieving if I had ridiculous expectations). Why, other than we tanked at the end last year, would you not think we should be a mid-tier playoff team this year? If we hadn't tanked last year and ended up with 45-46 games, would you guys be predicting 47/48/50? Or would you be looking at our team and saying "we have a Top 10 player in Roy, 3 really good bigs in Oden, Joel and LMA, with Rudy and Outlaw off the bench" and look around for which teams in the league could compare with that? Not many. But we're scrambling around, 4-3 in February and not looking anything like the team we were in December and early January. Our rotations don't reflect the "let it bake" philosophy our team is espousing (Batum and Bayless) and they aren't improving very much in our weak areas (consistent effort, wing rebounding, perimeter defense, P&R offensively and defensively), and playing poorly against teams that are well below .500. "Overachieving" was the excuse for why we ended up 8 games out of the playoffs last year, when at one point we were the 5th seed. Now I'm hearing it again, and don't like it compared to our recent history that many don't seem to want to look at.
Amen, brother. Too many fans and members of the organization are looking at the fact we are currently 4th in the West without looking at many of the signs that point to some recent slippage. Couple that with the fact that our competition for a playoff spot are suddenly upping their game, and I don't think making the playoffs this year is a foregone conclusion like many on here do. -Pop
Of course no one knows but I believe that Batum will be the best of the three you mentioned. I do not remember, except for Roy who was a four year college guy, any that have as much poise as this kid. I would never have given him up except for a younger outstanding player in return. We did not have that if reports are accurate.
I agree. Go big or go home. This was probably the only time we were able to make a big move to add talent without losing something valuable in return. But somehow we feel good with this core group...I guess this is what its going to be.
I agree that if we decide this is the team we want now and in the future we might as well put our future out on the court together.
