As recently as this summer, most here were adamant that Minny's rebuild was a terribly flawed approach. It just goes to show how quickly things can change, and how badly people who are sure they know how things fit together can get it wrong. I'm not sure what that has to do with Dame and the article, other than we may not know until it's over if we got it right. That said, I'd like to think things are much more predictable (and preparable) than that...I felt Minny would be pretty good this year, and I've been predicting our mess the past two years. I can't really come up with a scenario that lets Olshey off the hook for letting us continue down this path.
Olshey's entire philosophy was flawed because it was based on the idea that people would want to come here if we had money. Pritchard made the same mistake with RLEC. It was silly that he hadn't looked at our past and adjusted accordingly. The only GM we've had who had a successful strategy in Portland was Trader Bob. His strategy was to accumulate assets, no matter what their history was and then use those assets to trade up for better assets (no matter their past). Portland isn't a destination. The only thing that will change that is either winning a championship or adding a generational star like LeBron. I love Dame but he's not a generational talent. Looking back at the summer of the 2015-2016 season, I think Olshey's plan was to tank. LMA left so he let Rolo, Wes, and Afflalo leave for nothing. He traded Batum for a 19 year old project big man. I don't think in Neil's wildest dreams that we were going to make the playoffs, let alone make it to the second round. CJ played above what I think we were expecting. If that team had actually played as badly as many people thought they would, we would have been in the running for the #1 pick and guess what.... Karl Anthony Towns. It doesn't really solve the problem of free agency that summer, but maybe this team would have been more appealing if we had Dame/CJ/KAT for a guy like Horford? Or maybe we move CJ to add a wing like Paul George? I think Neil's plan when LMA left was to #1 tank #2 develop young talent (Vonleh/CJ/Meyers/Harkless) #3 get a high draft pick #4 bring in another star through free agency I think that entire plan blew up when the team over performed. We lost our pick to Denver. We weren't really good enough to convince a star to come here. Everyone knew we realistically only got past LAC because of the injuries to Griffin and Paul. Still, I think that plan was flawed. Let's say we finished as badly as people thought we would, but only got the 4th pick because we had bad luck in the lottery. I guess we would have probably drafted Porzingis? So that's not a bad scenario. I think we still don't convince a tier 1 free agent to come here though. Almost all of the top free agents stayed home, with the exception of Durant and Horford. So if we want someone to blame for our current predicament, blame Dame. Fucker wouldn't let us tank.
Man, if we fell into a #1 pick in '15-16 with a big man (KAT) penciled in, that would have made a few people here pucker up... I don't think Porzingis was on many people's radar, was he? I feel like most NY fans felt he was a major reach and were calling for Phil Jackson's head early on as a result. As for Olshey, I agree with the gist of what you wrote, but here's why I've never felt his "plan" was anything more than a game of pin the tail on the donkey: He acquired duplication at every position (Dame/CJ, Moe/Aminu, Plumlee/Davis), all on the cheap and all pretty much at the same time, creating major roster issues going forward. I don't think he had any idea which players would pan out. He just went for value where he could find it. Hell, he did the same thing with this year's draft, bringing in two guys competing for backup minutes at the same spot.
There's nothing wrong with duplicating talent, so long as they can really play. If they're great, you can always move one in a trade and get value where you need it. If they suck or are "just okay" it's a lot muddier.
Shit. This is probably the best appraisel I've heard of the situation. Really shows how bad Olshey whiffed.
I think the timelines are off a bit here. LA, RoLo, Nico, Wes, AA all left in the summer of 2015. The 2015 draft did feature Kristaps and KAT but we were coming off of a 50+ win season which earned us the #23 overall pick. Had we tanked the 15-16 season, we would have been in line to draft the likes of Simmons, Ingram, Brown, Bender, Dunn, Hield, Murray, etc during the 2016 draft.
CJ and Dame are the only two that fit that category. The others were never going to be better than decent role players. At any rate, Olshey has shown little willingness to move any of the redundancies, only trading Plums before having to let him walk for nothing. You could put guys like Crabbe/Pat/Layman in the same mix. Gotta have that pipeline of mediocrity if you can't get difference makers...
