Posted by martin:
on the flip side of it, how do you lure a LeBron with a coach with no experience (opposite of D'antoni) who keeps losing? LeBron ain't going to the Clips or the Hawks of old.
That's a good point. Free Agents would not be pining to play for Hanners, Porter, Jackson, etc... in 2 years on a rebuilding team that might only be on the threshold of just making the playoffs.
We also might not have a good coaching pool to choose from in 1 or 2 or 3 years when we'd be "ready" to add that marquee coach to a "solid" team on the up.
I do fear that hiring DAntoni means a repeated attempt to recycle contracts - and we've seen for several years now that fail because the core is pretty bad to begin with. I think they do go hand in hand - marquee coach signing - need to recycle contracts and assets into "proven" veterans whereas a hiring of a Hanners, Porter, Jackson type would signal a commitment to tearing down the dead wood, waiting out the deals, building with picks and kids in the meantime.
Yet we don't know the plan but if it is to rebuild and a coach like DAntoni could stomach a season or two of sub .350 play - but be here for the long haul to help the process without getting aggravated by the losing - knowing that years 3 or 4 and 5 will be good.... Then it's all good from the start.
If the plan is to recycle then I really hope they do it carefully. In the 90s we recycled but we kept adding to a solid proven contending core of players. We also acquired truly solid players. Out: Oakley, Starks, Mason --- In: Camby, Spree, LJ. All added to a solid core. That's why it worked.
Dolan/Layden/Isiah kept doing that - but they acquired crappy players - and added them to a crappy core.
Even though Walsh/DAntoni might be able to trade for solid players - the fact remains you're adding them to a crappy core. It would take several waves of recycling to get it right. Unfortunately with recycling you're against a deadline each time: The expiring date of those contracts you wish to recycle. So it forces you to rush to make deals. It even forces you to do things like Isiah did in swapping AD's expiring for Jalen's expiring (+ balkman) just so you didn't lose that expiring.
It put a world of hurt on us for 4.75 long years under Isiah and the damage is done through another 3 full seasons (2011 of Curry, Crawford, Zach, Jeffries).
Nobody wants to repeat that. So this is why some wanted to go for a lesser coach - for it would have signaled an end to the continued path of destruction.
....Since it's now been done, that Walsh and DAntoni are hired, now we have no choice but to give them time to prove they can do it right. For me, as stressed, I'm picking somewhere in early 2010 before the Feb 2010 deadline to at the very least see a very good plan unfolding. We don't have to be spectacular by then but we better be decent and it better be apparent we're going to be good shortly thereafter. Otherwise...the chants will rise again.
