What? Pritchard, marketing something he hoped to trade, tried to make it sound better than it was in actuality? That's outrageous.
How about this for a running lineup PG - whoever SG - Matthews SF - Batum PF - A. Randolph C - Aldridge Now, that team would have about a 0% chance of being a team that would go deep into the playoffs(well, unless the PG was CP3 or something), but it'd be a fun ass team to watch while hovering around .500 and being an 8th seed at best.
An empty team is a brighter one than the Blazers' team? That's way over the top. Phoenix is not only not a good team, but not even a YOUNG team. Robin Lopez is 22. Dragic is 24. No one else on the team is under 25. That's the future? Two borderline starters and some cap space? How often does that work out for teams? As for Nash: the guy is gonna be 37 in February. If he's a significant part of the future, then they're in real trouble. I'll take the Blazers' core (Aldridge, Batum, Matthews) and potential (Oden, Babbitt) any day... Roy or no Roy. Ed O.
I don't buy into the line of thinking that you need to toil around in the playoffs to get that experience to eventually grow from that and go farther in the playoffs. Its all about talent. Look at the Celtics a few years back. They were nobodies when they just had Pierce. Then bam, they're in the finals. Essentially what I'm getting at is: High lottery > 8th seed.
I don't buy that either. The Celtics traded high lottery picks and young players for extremely talented veteran players. They aren't a good example of building through "impact draft picks." They're a good example of keeping the talent you have (Pierce) and finding some way to augment it. The tear-it-down approach would have been to say "We have young players like Al Jefferson, Gerald Green and Sebastian Telfair and a high lottery pick...let's trade Paul Pierce for more draft picks and maybe a good young player or two and look forward to a bright future. After all, Pierce and kids aren't going to take us anywhere special."
My point is that I don't think playoff experience is as important as people think. If you have fire in your belly and you're good, than you will do good in the playoffs. Its definitely important, but just not as important as I think people make it out to be.
