Posted by bitty41:
Posted by JohnWallace44:
Celtics
- Keep the faith that somehow Isiah's plan works, and we are able to trade a mix of junk and potential for two superstar players in their primes and the rest of the pieces just fall into place.
Warriors
- We trade away all of the slowfooted fatties for disgruntled speedsters to go with Nate and Balkman
Blazers
- Allow the team to flounder, build through the lottery, get rid of the malcontents, let sit and wait a few seasons to gel.
Hornets
- Just wait for an all league point to fall to you in the draft.
Suns
- Trade away all the fatties and Steph and build through international scouting.
Spurs
- Umm... that'll never happen
Pistons
- Build the team around physical playing retreads and find a silky smooth shooter in the draft.
I have a problem with the teams you listed. B/c some of them haven't even had a strong playoff performance let alone shown themselves to be contenders. NO, Portland, Warriors (highly suspect), and even the Celtics. With the exception of GS most of these teams haven't even been a playoff series for awhile so I think its a bit presumptious to call them contenders.
The warrior were lucky- they picked up a disgruntled Baron when he was chronically injured and like McDyess- who screwed the Knicks sitting on the bench collecting paycheck after paycheck for YEARS- till he went to Detroit healthy and became a better player- the Knicks were the best HMO money could buy-ask Allan Houston amongst others. In addition- Larry Bird lost all sense of perspective - when he traded the most consistent piece of the Pacers- Stephen Jackson and threw in Harrington- those kind of lopsided trades rarely happen.
The blazers since 2003/2004 have been rebuilding in earnest with the Rasheed walace trade which netted them: Atlanta Hawks General Manager Billy Knight announced Monday night that the club has obtained the services of forward/center Rasheed Wallace and guard Wesley Person from the Portland Trail Blazers for forward Shareef Abdur-Rahim, center Theo Ratliff and guard Dan Dickau. Sharif expired in 2005, Ratliffe was traded for Brandon Roy. Theo Ratiffe, etc got them Brandon Roy. http://www.nba.com/blazers/news/Trail_Blazers_Land_Brandon_Roy-183312-1177.html
Anyway - the point is they did a combinatino of trades, high draft picks and most importantly some support from other NBA teams. I was in Portland from 2005-2007 and I can tell you until Paul Allen and the Blazers got the number one pick - most of Oregon was like take your publicly financed team and the corrupt deals involving the rose garden and go-- it really was that bad- and so followed the traditional 'miracles' in the NBa of teams in severe trouble beating the lottery and getting number one picks -Orlando, Philadelphia and San Antonio. Anyway - the point is no one had any inkling that this would be the yer they jelled- and it brings into question - if their gigantor 7'1" plodder will disrupt the play they have going on now.
NOH won like 16 games in the PG derby called the draft and the moves on that team were anything but stellar the first few years in terms of trades. anyway - they had a true superstar (all-star) in Davis and traded him to get salary cap space. Again a bunch of trades for cap space- and then some luck in the draft of 2003 with David West 'finally' developing as the all round PF with a jumper.
Anyway -a lot of these teams were built or destroyed with trades. You can hardly find a team that didn't us trades to accelerate the process and in addition - they all suffered really bad losing seasons for around 3 years- and those were the teams that did it the quickest.
[Edited by - iyamwutiam on 01-30-2008 4:28 PM]