Have we taken the crown away from the Kings? - Extremely shaky ownership - Lame duck GM - President bails on us - Fired GM - Aging star(s) - Awful defense going on like 10 years I mean this season has kind of spun out of control.
It’s either try and make a huge splash by completely gutting the entire core for other starting caliber players or tank and go with a youth movement.
There's nothing to gut for another star. If you want to make a "huge splash" and change, you have to put Lillard on the trading block. Every other player on the roster isn't getting you a (franchise) life-changing star. Note, I'm not suggesting it. I'm just saying that Lillard is the only player who can command a return that changes the direction of the franchise, barring some kind of genius move that we could not possibly predict and come around incredibly rarely.
at this point, is it better to trade Dame for a couple of legit starters? he wants that super stupid max next time and we'll probably do it and be yet again unable to plug any other holes in the leaking ship. as good as dame is, its 100% win or loss via him, he takes all the key possessions n shots and yes, he's made a lot of clutch shit, but in a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts thing, we literally sink or swim on his performance. he is carrying the place, cause thats the place he/us have built. and its pretty good, but also pretty limited. then we got nurk n roco rumors, nothing about CJ - ugh we just havent got him the help we need him to have to push thru, mostly as Neil was in love with CJ as his pick, and we're signed up to the eyeballs with him..... if we keep Dame, CJ needs to turn into a sabonis, turner, siakim etc hopefully the new GM can actually do something useful.
If you trade Dame, it's for an All-NBA player or for multiple lottery picks in the hopes you can identify, draft, and keep the next Lillard. Neither are likely options in my opinion, so I'm thinking you keep him.
I would hardly characterize us as a laughingstock. Did you catch how many times SVG repeated the stability of our franchise (prior to this season) on the TNT broadcast last night? This kinda turnover always is messy, but the key is to make the right decisions to not prolong this transitional phase. Just wash this season away and build on fundamentals for next year. Every team goes through it. Even the Warriors with all their success had a year like this.
I feel like this whole "everybody's laughing at us" thing is a side-effect of Trump in our national consciousness. It's a sign of narcissism and paranoia, or a sign that you want to appeal to people with persecution complexes (i.e., white Republican "Christians"). Fact is we're still nowhere near Kings status. We will be missing the playoffs for the first time in 9 seasons this year, while they will be missing them for the 9th time in 9 seasons. Plus, while we took Bowie over Jordan and Oden over KD, that's far longer ago than they took Bagley over Doncic.
