I was thinking about this yesterday... In 2004-2005 we fired Cheeks mid season. The rosters are eerily similar.... Shareef / Gerald Wallace Derek Anderson / Matthews Nick Van Exel / Crawford Felton / Damon Theo Ratliff / Camby ZBO / Aldridge (only in that they both put up All-Star numbers on a losing team) Obviously the players are different, but you've got the All-Star forward that isn't performing in Reef/GWall, you've got the veteran 6th man gunner that's unhappy in Van Exel/Crawford, the point guard that can't hit the side of a barn in Damon/Felton, and the aging defensive center in Theo/Camby. History repeating?
well if it turns out the same lets not trade the third pick (Andre drummond) to move down for one of the explosive scorers (Harrison Barnes, Micheal Kidd)
There's also a loose comparison between Darius Miles and Batum..... super athletic wings that are fairly inconsistent.... fortunately Batum has a way better head on his shoulders than Miles.
It is similar and the team seems to be similarly tuning its coach out (or at least some of them are), but I'll take Aldridge, Batum over Z-Bo, Darius any day of the week. On the plus side at least this team isn't hopelessly over the cap and in need of the same kind of purge that the 2004 team needed ... they need a purge, but their expiring contracts are going to handle a lot of that. If this team can actually hire a competent talent evaluator well enough in advance of the draft that he can get a chance to do some homework and make a good pick ... and if that GM can find a young up and coming coach he believes in ... and if Paul Allen can stop acting like the cliche' "eccentric billionaire" and empower basketball people to make basketball decisions with a clearly defined linear power structure ... and if they can make some trades or find some competent free agents to surround Aldridge and Batum (and maybe Williams?) then maybe, just maybe, this team is a year or two away from getting back to respectability or even god-forbid contention ... maybe.
Well similar except we aren't having arrests, players aren't flipping off fans and Aldridge isn't throwing a towel in a players face during games. We need Felton gone. I see him the cancer of this team. We need a pg to guide our team.
I was a huge Damon "hater", constantly ragging on his, err, shortcommings as a PG. And yet, Damon never sucked this bad for so long. Felton is in a class only populated by the disaster that was Sebastian Telfair. The Blazers should have a Hall of Shame. Let's induct Felton right away.
It is a bit creepy how there are some similarities. Camby was playing pretty well for a while, but seems to be falling into a Ratliff like season. The key differences though are that our current roster is populated with MUCH better defenders (in theory and based on past history). The 2004 team was chocked full of appallingly bad defenders. That team as constructed had no shot. No shot at all. Now, we have players who have played good defense in their careers. Wes, Batum, Wallace, Aldridge, Camby. The lack of quality defense being played lends credence to the story from Canzano/Quick that some players are underming Nate. And it lends credence to the idea that Nate has "lost" the team. There is no excuse for the team with this much defensive talent to be playing crap defense game after game after game.
One difference is that back then, a spoiled fanbase and media were angry that we weren't in the Finals every year. Since then, they have learned some humility.
Chad B's short tenure makes me wish for the John Nash era. This team and that '04 squad is eerily similar. At least we had the comedy of Vlad Stepania to look forward to.
