AnubisADL wrote:What kills me is all this complaining when Walsh has pretty much did nothing the last 2 years and struck out this summer. Isiah signed guys to deals they didnt deserve. Other than that he wasnt that bad. Now I can only hope he has learned to not to overpay for guys with talent and zero heart.
IT's main flaw was that he absolutely could not build a cohesive team- look, he tried having a backcourt of Marbury and Steve Francis, who are essentially the same player- how the heck could that have remotely worked? Then he tried a front court of Eddy Curry and Zach Randolph- both are front court players who don't play defense and just got in each others way on offense. He was incapable of forming a clear plan and following it through- every time he announced one plan, he suddenly saw some new opportunity and went chasing after it instead. To make matters worse every move he made was a gamble and he had no exit startagy for any move that didn't work- they all involved getting huge contracts that ran for many years. What happened then, was we were either stuck with the cap clogging contract (Jerome james, Jared Jeffries), or we moved them for an even longer contract for an equally dubious aquisition (Steve Francis for Zach Randolph). I appreciate you have to gamble as GM and if it works out you look great and if it doesn't you look like a moron (as Walsh's Lebron gamble demonstrated), but you need some sort of exit strategy or back up plan or way out in case the gamble fails.
Walsh's strength is that he CAN build a cohesive team (hopefully we'll see this, this season!) with players that fit together and play defense, and he CAN stick to plan regardless of any temptations along the way AND he has exit strategies and contingency plans, as this off season showed when we failed to get Lebron or Wade or Bosh. Walsh isn't perfect, his draft record is only average, he wanted to make Chris Mullen our new GM and he wanted to sign Joe Johnson to a ridiculous contract this offseason, which we were only spared because Atlanta offered an even more ridiculous contract.
Even if IT came back having learnt to protect picks, not sign players to ridiculous contracts etc etc, he has no credibility with other GMs or agents- they will all look to screw him and only make unfair offers because they think he'll bite- you can't be a GM once the rest of the league thinks you're a fool.
What worries me is having him as an advisor means he's going to want to prove himself, to justify a promotion. Carmelo would probably come to us regardless, however IT is close to CP, so thats what he's going to focus on this year. What's bad about this is that New Orleans is in a strong bargaining position, so expect IT to broker an IT style trade in which we give up all our young talent galore to get CP (which some of you will be pleased about no doubt)- probably including Gallo, Randolph, Chandler etc.
