One of these days, I'd love to get the backstory on why we had such a hard on for Turkuglu. KP has shown to be a deft touch at identifying guys that fit into a specific system, but Hedo boggled me then and boggles me now. That guy has so many character red flags in terms of being a teammate, I'd love to know what we saw in him.
The best guess I have is, we could get a better PG via Trade for a package that includes, Outlaw, Batum or Webster, than we could have gotten for some form of Blake, or Bayless.
A. that is really hard to read 2. that surprises me since orlando went so far III. I really like this
The real issue is would you rather have Hedo with his monster contract or Andre with his very reasonable contract. In that sense, Portland really did well all things considered. And I expect big things from Batum. I've been championing him forever (at least a year before he was drafted).
Out of curiosity, I added up the players PER from last season. 1) Blake - Roy - Batum - LMA - Oden = 88.6 2) Miller - Roy - Batum - LMA - Oden = 92.7 3) Blake - Roy - Turkoglu - LMA - Oden = 90.5 So, by this simplistic method, getting Miller instead of Turkoglu was the better choice. AND he was a lot cheaper. Also, I expect big things from Batum this year, so lineup 2) should have an even larger advantage, since Batum would not have gotten the minutes had we acquired Turkoglu. ***Disclaimer: I am aware that simply adding PER doesn't really mean much, but it is interesting anyway.
If we had acquired Miller at the trade deadline, we would have at least gone to the second round and maybe beaten the Lakers. Not saying we should have traded for Miller, but just saying he would have made that much of a difference.
I think its possible that we were looking at adding Miller regardless of adding Turkoglu. What would the combined PER be with Miller, Roy, Turk, LMA, Oden???? He (Miller) could have been traded for - I'm pretty sure!
same line of thought andre + roy + batum + aldridge + oden = 18.71+24.08+12.92+19.13+18.13 =92.97 blake + fernandez + webster + outlaw + pryzbilla = 14.49+15.50+11.97+15.15+15.46 =72.57 or blake roy batum aldridge pryzbilla = 86.08 andre fernandez webster outlaw oden = 79.46 both teams mediocre, or one team great?
the Laker's new PER adds up to 94.59 and the Kings starting line adds up to 72.74. So our worst line could almost beat the worst team!