We should have traded RLEC. Portland management was too scared to do so though to save this cap space they were building up. And they didn't "land" miller, he only fell into our lap because the original target didn't like the nightlife here.
Just because the Blazers went hard for Hedo and then panicked into signing Miller so they could say they got something doesn't mean that maintaining cap flexibility is a flawed strategy for all teams and front offices.
Easy to claim they should have made trades that you make up in your head. The actual facts are that they got a very good player with the RLEC cap space. Imaginary trades! :MARIS61:
2 years of clearing cap space, promises of multiple max players....and we get Andre Miller. yay. no getting past first round of playoffs. glad it worked out.
pain and tolerance? throw away 2 years of basketball to get an aging veteran PG that wouldn't put us over the top?
A high level point guard is a lot more than you're likely to get for a player who possesses no more value than an expiring contract. If you bought the hype that RLEC was going to mean "multiple superstars" and now feel silly for thinking that, I guess I can see your anger.
that's what people were selling. and it wasn't just RLEC, it was the ZBO trade that started the whole imaginary cap space scenario. just that whole train of thought was ridiculous. and people want to put their eggs in that basket again? we have the cap space now and young assets/lotto picks and what can we do with it? getting more draft picks and "saving cap space" (probably going to have less than we have now) is going to be another waste of time, we'll be at the same spot in a year.
The Randolph trade wasn't entirely about cap flexibility. Unfortunately, a big chunk of that seemed to be about "character," which I didn't like. They indirectly got Rudy Fernandez out of it (which seemed good at the time) and cap flexibility was supposed to be an ancillary benefit. I don't really agree that Pritchard's main plan was to open up cap space. I think his main plan was to build through the draft, with the right "character" guys. So I don't agree that he basically punted on two years of team-building for the sake of cap space.
The cap plan was all orchestrated by Tom Penn, Cap Genius and they were trying to sell it as something to put us over the top with some great first tier players.
That's the trouble with KP when I look back. He and his management team were great at the sell to fans, but didn't seem to have much of a vision for how to execute the tricky parts after tearing things down. Ultimately though, the failures of that regime have much less to do with messing up RLEC, and Miller and how they managed the cap and pivots on the failures of Oden and Roy to stay healthy.
Yes, we got Miller for Raef, but we should have gotten so much more. Pritchard turned down trades at the midseason trade deadline, expecting GMs to crawl back, begging to give him more. The Pritchslap method was a monumental failure. We paid LaFrentz many more millions than a different player holding his 15th spot would have made, intending to invest in the trade Pritchard proved too arrogant to pull off. When people criticize RLEC, it is no defense to answer that we got 1 year of Andre Miller. We should have gotten many years of someone better, or a full career from a high draft pick.
