Posted by islesfan:
Yawn. You think you're the first one to ask me this? I get asked it and answer it at least once a week it seems.
I'm not going to suggest specific moves and pretend that everything would have happened exactly like I planned. It's unreasonable to ask anybody that since nobody knows for sure what deals could have been made. All I can say is what I've said all along, I would have based everything on Houston's contract expiring. I would have concentrated on getting under the cap by then while collecting as many draft picks and young talent as I could.
Supposedly the Marbury trade was in its infancy stage when Layden was fired so I would have looked into it but I wouldn't have given up as many draft picks and young players as we did. If that killed the deal then so be it. Personally I think that the Suns would have taken less since they were just looking to clear cap space and ended up selling the draft pick later on.
As for this offseason and the next couple offseasons, I would have looked into young cheap players or stopgap veteran players who could help our young guys develop. Like I said, it's completely hypothetical so what trades I would have made during the season to dump McDyess and Ward would affect every move there after.
I know this won't be good enough for most of you but T.S. I don't really care. Stating an opinion on how a GM of your team is building the team is what fans do and I'm free to do it just like all of you. Why am I the only one asked to give a specific and detailed plan on what I would do when it's only being asked so that it can be criticized. Some like every move, I haven't. Deal with it.
Do me a favor and remind me where this post is so that I can just repost this next week.
yawn? wow. didn't mean to come off repetetive, wouldn't want to do that now, would we...
accumulating draft picks? how in the hell do you accumulate draft picks with our roster and bloated contracts? at best, we keep our own. so far, it's been 1 first round pick (2004) and a 2nd rounder next season that's been traded.
btw, please provide a link of your weekly "what i would've done posts" - i must've missed it. and no, i'm not the first, but i figure since you've only made it here recently, we might as well dedicate a post to you and your "plan" so we can refer back to it from time to time.
as simrud said, and if you go to hoopshype and look at the salaries, we ARE under the cap DURING and AFTER houston's last year of his deal. in fact, we're $15 mil (using today's cap #) under in 07/08. we have some young players - crawford (who's 10x the player frank is), sweetney, and ariza. (not to mention young veterans in marbury and tim) AND we still have next year's #1, and i'm pretty sure we have another one as well the following year or two. so it looks like we are working towards houston's last year WHILE accumulating a bunch of "structurally flawed" players that'll give us a chance to win in the meantime.
it's been said 1 MILLION times, and here goes 1,000,001 - anything isiah does, you're going to criticize and make snide remarks about. i guess we all know this but you have this knack that makes people want to reply. so kudos to you for that and i seriously think you get off on hoping the knicks fail so you can gloat which is EXACTLY what a fan should not be. i just hope you're didn't buy any merchandise or god forbid tickets to games b/c you would just be perpetuating and contributing to the people in charge that're so poorly running this team. i say you start a anti-isiah strike and give up watching them and talking about them till after we make the finals. how's that?
btw, the intent of starting this thread wasn't a place for people to come and bash you. i really wanted to know what you would've done. you may have mentioned it back at msg, but i don't remember anymore. reading you over and over making snide remarks about signing vin or getting a structurally flawed crawford...well back up those criticisms and give us names of players we should be going after instead of making fun of the ones we got after the fact.
also, our main problems during layden was an unbalanced and old roster. so far, after 1 trading deadline, and one offseason, the roster has the most balance in since 2000, and we're the youngest we've been since i can remember. have we accumulated more deals, yes, but not during or past the "houston last year" target. the only thing we really lost were a few draft picks which i agree are very important but we still have some.
[Edited by - djsunyc on 08/20/2004 01:56:58]