How do we know we let him bolt? Also that trade was MADE for that season, that is obvious we thought we had a shot at an NBA championship and we took it. Go look at the old Nuggets realgm forum and you will see how pissed off fans were on Denver thinking they got very little value in return for Affalo.
As for everyone getting mad at letting Barton go, he was fun to watch but he was a crazy out of control player who didn't know how to play within himself and couldn't not consistently shoot from anywhere on the court and he needed the ball in his hands to do anything offensively. He wasn't going to set good screens, he wasn't great at moving without the ball, he was more worried about his own shot then making the right play when he did get the ball.
It was a bad trade. One reason why I hate mid season moves if the team is playing well. A few of you now may say you wanted to keep Barton, but as I recall the question was would he have re-signed since at the time we had Wes and CJ ahead of him on the depth chart.
And the funny thing is, at the time of the trade, many more posters here were more pissed off about losing TRob than Barton. They all thought we gave up on Robinson too soon (just like the other 5 teams that have given up on him ). And yes, I'm including the Lakers in those five teams. Even though he's 100% healthy, TRob is racking up DNP-CDs for that crappy team. Since he was traded, all of PHI, BRK and LAL, three of the worst teams in the league, have given up on Robinson. When those teams don't want you, you know you're bad. BNM
You don't know that. If we all stayed healthy we were a contender. Afflalo came to be that missing piece and our 6th man.
Not sure why we have to beat a dead horse, but we got a 20 PPG scorer out of the deal. Had we not made the deal, CJ and Barton would both still be vying for minutes, and neither would be as good as they are now.
This is exactly what I was going to post. At the time, I was neutral on the Barton trade, trusting our GM knew more than we did.
We lost the first game after the Afflalo trade, a close battle with the Grizz. Then a 5 game win streak, including victories over the Spurs, Thunder, Clippers, & Mavs. We were looking like a contender until Wesley's heel (and our season) blew up. AA solidified what had been a shaky bench. Who knows how this trade would be viewed today had Wes stayed healthy & AA been able to continue his role as our 6th man? Besides, I'm still not convinced a successful team can rely on Fast Willie Barton even now. He puts up decent numbers in Denver, but is up and down like a yo-yo.
And to make matters worse, Afflalo suffered some kind of shoulder injury (or something like that) and played the rest of the year at less than 100%. Every time we get close, the wheels come off. Sigh.
Will Barton isn't even starting on a mediocre team....I like his hustle but seriously I think folks overestimate Will the way they overestimated TRob....remember how upset folks got when TRob got moved? Will is not fixing your defense anytime soon. He's a guy I like and adds to a bench, but he's not getting MIP or making an allstar team anytime soon either...when Wes went down we still had Rolo and Nico underwhelming...mailing it in...only CJ and Meyers showed any fire in that series
My all-time best "possible" Trail Blazers lineup would have been: Fat Lever - Michael Jordan - Clyde Drexler - Larry Bird - Moses Malone All were available for this team to draft or acquire (Malone).
Barton started 2 games ago and had 31/8/5. In his last game, he came off bench and had 17/7/7. We don't have anyone on our bench that can do this.
Semantics. We didn't want Chris Paul (or Deron Williams) because we already had our franchise cornerstone PG in Telfair. We wanted Webster, so we traded down and got Linas Kleiza & the Brittish Bulldog (following year) to go along with Webster.
Actually, the two picks we acquired in the trade got us Webster and Jarrett Jack. Jack got us Bayless who got us a pick which got us Gerald Wallace who got us a pick which got us Lillard. The Will Barton trade left us with nothing.
People leave logic out when they dont get the desired results. It's called looking like a fool. They'll learn eventually. Well, some of them. Some of them won't, because logic befalls them.
