Posted by NineMike2Whiskey:
But to compare ourselves to them is really scraping the bottom because you cannot aim lower IMO than taking the Bulls and the Wizs as a benchmark, they were pretty much as worst as it can get and here we are comparing ourselves to them?? also remember that mistakes made at Chicago and Washington cost ppl in the organisation their jobs, something Isiah should consider as well.
PS: Incidentally, it's ironic that Isiah would quote the Bulls and Wizs cos we actually inherited some of their mistakes. JJ2, Curry and Crawford. I pray they'd prove me wrong, but if they dont we can look forward for another few years of garbage before we turn things around, just like the 9 so years it took the Bulls and the Wiz
Those are valid points. I would add tho that there are other teams which he didn't mention that are still trying to get it done. Atlanta, until just this year Boston. It's not that surprising, considering we've really seen only a few teams pull things together very quickly and in those cases they usually has someone good to base their rebuild or retooling off of. The thing is that we're still only talking about 3.5 completed seasons. You can throw out the 1st 1.5 yrs as something you can hold against him, since I don't know of anyone who could've successfully turned things around in that short a period of time. He did give it a good try tho, but without H2O it wasn't going to work.
After that we're talking about the construction of this current team. 2005, 2006 & 2007 drafts, MLE's, FA's and trades are the majority of the players on this team. So that's 2 years, in which the players he brought in actually played. We had something like 11 new players in the 2006 season. LB and Steph fought and the team generally flopped, but then no expected that we'd have a winnning record. We HOPED that the team would catch on and pick up speed as the season went along. What we wanted most was to establish a solid base and style of play.
This tho is the one truly wasted season and what set this team back and off course. We gained very little from this season. That was the rookie year for Frye, Lee, Nate and Curry's 1st year. Part of the blame can go to Isiah, but not all of it. Not when your coach submarines you.
2007 we pretty much started again from scratch with Isiah as coach and grafted in more players. No playoffs again, but the team was showing signs of coming together. Now when you closely look at the seasons rather than just looking at the final results it gives you a better picture of why there should be some patience shown with Isiah and this team. It really hasn't been that long. This is a pivitol season and Isiah must show even more progress and success with this team. I just don't think it's fair to characterize his tenure as being a big failure. He appears to be right on track in terms of building this team up. It's only the LB season and NY impatience that makes it seem like he's more of a failure than he's really been. Success this season would go a long way toward changing perceptions about what he's been doing.
My main point is that you can't go from saying that he had a nearly impossible situation to turn around to then saying that 3.5 years is way too long for him to have turned the team around from losers to winners. Especially when looking at last year and how the injuries may have ruined what could've been a .500 season and maybe the playoffs. Had the team reamained healthy and won more of the last 19 games, there might be a totally different view of things right now.
11/2/2007 8:31 AM
