people spend a lot of time bashing KP for the things he does not do. how about some credit for his positive draft day moves. we have third string players who are playing significant minutes and who are beating other teams first string players. as long as I am at it, i think nate deserves some credit for his game plans as well......
I like KP's philosophy of drafting guys with 3 or 4 years in college (when possible). Pendegraph and Cunningham are both ready to play some minutes in the NBA without embarrassing themselves or hurting the team. Another draft of lunchpail guys like them, and we will have the right balance of fancy offensive players and down & dirty pick-setters/rebounders.
Jeff and Dante have been impressive in terms of doing the things that NBA vets often do. I also credit Howard, Nate was quick to mention that Howard has done a great job teaching the young guys how to play in the NBA.
I've never had a problem with KP's ability to identify and draft talent, my only complaint is that he doesn't appear to know how to balance a roster. Great work by Jeff and Dante ... and this team still will have the same chemistry issues they had at the start of training camp until he thins the herd.
He's using the Intel model. Drop the bottom 2 players each year, and in three years, you'll have the best roster in the league. As far as balancing said roster, if some GM would just take Outlaw and Blake off our hands, and give us a backup Center in return, we'd be balanced. Regardless, both those guys are expiring, so really all KP has to do to balance the roster is wait and save Paul Allen some bucks.
That's a great way to build a fantasy basketball team. Well, if you believe that teams usually get about 80% of their production from 20% of their roster (ie their stars) then I tend to think that if Roy and Aldridge were still healthy the team might not be dominant, but they'd still be performing at a somewhat high level. If the 20% go down for an extended period it doesn't matter how much depth you have, you're going to struggle. Think of it this way, when fully healthy, we sort of have a bench full of sixth men and what is it that sixth men are usually best suited to doing? Scoring right. Well now that we have guys like Blake, Pendergraph and Cunningham filling our 7th, 8th and 9th spots, hustling, defending (some better than others), rebounding and filling the gaps on offense the team is playing loose and free because roles are well defined. I think people have been suckered into thinking that having 12 rotation quality players is a great way to immunize yourself against injury, that might be true in this extraordinary circumstance, but if you build your roster planning for this kind of event rather than building it to surround your core 2 or 3 stars with complimentary players then you don't really have your eye on the prize anyway -- that's raising your floor, not raising your ceiling (so to speak).
Here's your answer: Wow. Were we THAT desperate to get rid of Sergio? Our old GM really gouged our new GM.
