Kurt Thomas effect even in 2010

[draft87]

This was my first poll. I didn't know the format before I wrote it so it's messed up. My apologies, if you don't like this mess, no hard feelings if you give up and don't want to vote or simply don't care. the options correspond to the #d questions in this body:

in 2008 we traded with Seattle Supersonics(Oklahoma City Thunder) for Kurt Thomas in an effort to match up our frontline with the Lakers.



The transaction looked like this:

San Antonio receives:
-Kurt Thomas(final season approx $8,000,000)

Seattle receives
-Brent Barry(final season approx $5,500,000)
-Francisco Elson(final season approx $3,000,000)
-2009 1st round draft pick

At the time the trade seemed good, not great. But good enough considering Elson's production had sharply dropped, Barry was injured, Barry could possibly re-sign for the veteran's minimum/return from injury, we're thinking of being the top team in the West who ends up with a late 20s draft pick that might not give us much, and holy crap the Lakers just got better quickly(what they gave up would need 2 complete seasons to be valued correctly). The trade was not great because we still were old if not even older and what the heck, the salaries matched up did we HAVE to give ol' pals Presti and Carlesimo a future draft pick?


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Now it's 2010. 2008 didn't work out-we made it to the WCF but couldn't get past the Lakers. 2009, we resigned Kurt Thomas for less money but that season was a mess of injuries and we got bounced in the first round. 2010, well we traded Thomas along with Oberto and Bowen for Richard Jefferson and things haven't worked out so well. ....but don't forget that 2009 first round pick that gave up. It turned out to be the 25th pick. Now we can spend a lot of time guessing how the team could have been better or worse had we not made the trade in 2008 but to start let's just say that we DID NOT make the trade and subsequently earned the 25th pick in the 2009 draft. We can discuss the other possibilities afterward.


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The question is:
Was 2008-2009 with Kurt Thomas worth giving up the 25th pick in 2009?

Possible answers are:

1. -Yes, Spurs were better with Thomas, 2008-2009 would have been unbearable disappointments without him. I'm happy with DeJuan Blair and don't care about the 25th overall pick in 2009

2. -NO, Spurs were better with Thomas for two seasons but we still got bounced in WCF in '08 and 1st RD in '09 so it wasn't worth the chance to have a future with somebody like Rodrigue Beaubois, especially if that means the division rival Mavericks don't have him.

3. -WHAT? trade .

4. -NO, Spurs were not better with Thomas, plus since we lost the WCF in 2008 I would have accepted a less successful season both years if it meant a deeper/younger bench this year. Imagine Beaubois and Hill behind or next to Parker. It's a utopia that includes Mason and Finley transformed into a shotblocker or bigger wing defender. Oh yeah, and Dallas wouldn't have Roddy B. Imagine Beaubois, Hill, Parker, Manu defending Kidd/Barea/Terry?
Ugh.

5. -YES, although I don't think Thomas made us better for two years, I enjoyed at least the level of success that we did have because as this year has taught us, playing even worse than 2009 really, really sucks so I'm ok with the result of 2008/2009 and losing the 2009 1st RD pick/ 'just' having DeJuan Blair

6. -Trade Parker

7. -YES, you can't really waste time arguing the "choose your own adventure" aspects of Kurt Thomas and the previous two seasons. It is what it is, but damn, I love the idea of Spurs gaining what Mavericks lose(Beaubois)

8. -NO, you can't really waste time arguing the results of 2008/2009 with/without Thomas but either way, since we didn't win a le, I would rather have the 2009 pick because it could have been one more piece to the "win one more for Timmy" puzzle.

9. -Bonner is white. He is pale white.

10. -No, you can't really waste time arguing the "choose your own adventure" aspects of Kurt Thomas and the previous two seasons. What if we had a 2009 first round pick? Would we too have said, "we're not using a 1st round pick on Blair" and then NOT gotten Blair before Denver or Houston or someone traded for his draft rights? I love Blair and I don't want to waste any time thinking about an alternate history that does not include him. He's part of the Spurs future. End of story.



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HOWEVER, if you have a lot of time to kill here's some inconsequential daydreams:


If we didn't get Kurt Thomas and we fell shorter in 2008, do we move up in the draft, get the wing we wanted in Nicolas Batum? Would that make us better even if Boston took Hill at #30 and we couldn't snag him in the 2nd round?

Do we still have Blair? Would NOT getting Kurt Thomas in 2008 mean that we made another move the following summer? ... in other words, if we had the 25th pick in 2009 do we take Blair right away and then someone else at #37? Jonas Jerebko? Would we be a stronger frontline team? Maybe we take Beaubois at #25 and still get Blair at #37 and suddenly we've got Hill/Beaubois rotating as off guard/Parker backup and we have solid motivation to get move Mason and turn him into a shotblocker or perimeter stopper?

Or is point moot because you think we wouldn't have even gotten to the WCF in 2008 without Kurt Thomas? Do you think his defense against Shaq in the first round was a strong factor in our dominance over that series?

none of that matters but we've all done our share of What-Ifs so I figured I'd do one that didn't involve the current roster but still impacted this season and those to come.
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Also, since we're talking Kurt Thomas trade value. This dude has been in some wild trades. First of all, holy did he get too much money from New York. His 4 year $30million was the beginning of the Isiah Thomas era, right? Because of his huge contract he was involved in these trades:


2005
Phoenix gets:
-Kurt Thomas($6,620,062)
-2005 54th overall (2nd round/24th) Dijon Thompson($398,762)

New York gets:
-Quentin Richardson($6,940,000)
-2005 21st pick-Nate Robinson($1,102,680)


Phoenix wanted to beef up in the middle to cover Duncan, right? Well it looks like New York actually got a team to give them something for taking a bad deal-Nate Robinson. Nate would have been great in the D'Antoni system! Wait.......

-------------------

2007 Phoenix still couldn't stop Duncan and the Spurs and they sure as don't want to pay the escalating final year in Thomas' contract

Phoenix gets:
-$8 million trade exception
-2009 conditional 2nd round pick #57 -Emir Preldzic

Seattle(Oklahoma City) gets:
-Kurt Thomas
-2008-First Round Pick #24 Serge Ibaka
-2010 First Round pick(Suns)



Remember how Van Gundy and the rest of the media were jumping on the irony bandwagon and talking about how the Suns ate a couple years of overpaying Kurt Thomas so they could stop Duncan, but COULDN'T stop Duncan and had to bail on his contract only to find that the team they sent Thomas to(Sonics) had traded Thomas to San Antonio where Thomas became a key rotation player in the effort to stop Shaq and eliminate them from the playoffs again? Well, there's more. The month after the Spurs eliminated the Suns again and effectly ended the D'Antoni/Nash era the Thunder(previously Sonics) took one of the TWO FIRST ROUND PICKS the Suns had to give them in order to get out of paying Thomas and selected Serge Ibaka, a big boy just about the same size as Thomas! Imagine if the Suns had just paid Thomas? They'd still have 2008 and 2010 first round picks, maybe never wasted money/years/players/fans on Shaq, and possibly gotten the Spurs monkey off their back. And this upcoming draft the Suns will again give their pick(which figures to be around #21) to the Thunder.

All in all they gave up, Quentin Richardson, Nate Robinson, Serge Ibaka, and #21 in this year's draft for Kurt Thomas

[Bartleby]

FWIW, Phoenix is the team that really got raped when it comes to Thomas trades.

[Lackluster]

spurs would have taken blair at #25 wouldn't they?

[TDMVPDPOY]

spurs wouldve still taken blair at 25....you dont give up on lottery pick that drops down to the lower picks......

[stéphane]

Amusing enough of a poll to read it and answer it.

[MarCowMar]

Anytime you can get a starting caliber player with a pick that far down you do it--especially a proven big like Kurt. Our teams success and luck in the draft has distorted some of our fans views of the value of those late picks. Most don't even make it in the league.

[5in10]

spurs wouldve still taken blair at 25....you dont give up on lottery pick that drops down to the lower picks......

this

[5in10]

although we could have gotten jerebeko or Marcus Thornton at 37 after we got dejuan blair at 25.

[Bartleby]

Our teams success and luck in the draft has distorted some of our fans views of the value of those late picks. Most don't even make it in the league.

And this

[baseline bum]

I'm pretty happy with the trade. The 2008 Suns with Shaq would have been a nightmare matchup with Oberto instead of Thomas as the main center, and having one less decent player might have been enough to swing that series with New Orleans out of the Spurs favor. Conditioning on getting Blair and signing him to a long-term deal anyways makes the trade a definite no-brainer.

[SenorSpur]

no. It was not worth the it at all. KT was at the end of his shelf life and was literally a s of his former self by the time he arrived. This is the problem I have with the Spurs brass. They have this tendency of placing too much too much value on end-of-career vets. To often, they fall in love with players who, while they may have had stellar careers, are well past their prime by the time they get here. Finley, Thomas, Stoudamire, Van Exel are all examples of that.

In the case of KT, while he managed to conjure a good game here and there, his skills had declined to the point where he was very limited and his production was affected. For what they got from him in return and despite flipping his contract in the RJ trade, still the idea of burning a pick on him, only compounded the issue and made no sense.

For a team that is older and badly needed a youth injection, I don't advocate burning picks in the first place. However, if they were going to burn a pick, they should have done so on a young, talented player that had some upside. A player that would still be producing for them now. The type of player that could be an important part of your future or one that could be flipped as an asset down the road. Burning a 1st round pick on a downside player means they lost in both the draft and with the player they acquired.

The saving grace for the Spurs was the that high second round pick and were able to nab DeJuan Blair at #37. However, imagine how the Spurs could've ugraded their roster had they kept that 1st round pick AND had the #37 pick of the second round? Imagine, perhaps, having both Blair and say, Rodrique Beaubois?

[baseline bum]

So winning two playoff series wasn't worth missing the chance to take McClinton @ 37 instead of 51?

[rascal]

Just too much speculation in all of this. Thomas was not worth a first round pick, its just that simple.

[rascal]

no. It was not worth the it at all. KT was at the end of his shelf life and was literally a s of his former self by the time he arrived. This is the problem I have with the Spurs brass. They have this tendency of placing too much too much value on end-of-career vets. To often, they fall in love with players who, while they may have had stellar careers, are well past their prime by the time they get here. Finley, Thomas, Stoudamire, Van Exel are all examples of that.

In the case of KT, while he managed to conjure a good game here and there, his skills had declined to the point where he was very limited and his production was affected. For what they got from him in return and despite flipping his contract in the RJ trade, still the idea of burning a pick on him, only compounded the issue and made no sense.

For a team that is older and badly needed a youth injection, I don't advocate burning picks in the first place. However, if they were going to burn a pick, they should have done so on a young, talented player that had some upside. A player that would still be producing for them now. The type of player that could be an important part of your future or one that could be flipped as an asset down the road. Burning a 1st round pick on a downside player means they lost in both the draft and with the player they acquired.

The saving grace for the Spurs was the that high second round pick and were able to nab DeJuan Blair at #37. However, imagine how the Spurs could've ugraded their roster had they kept that 1st round pick AND had the #37 pick of the second round? Imagine, perhaps, having both Blair and say, Rodrique Beaubois?

Agree. Thomas was finished

[baseline bum]

So Jack McClinton at 37 was worth 2 playoff series?

[baseline bum]

We would have still taken DeJuan Blair at 25. The 37th pick probably would not have been a player we gave minutes to. It might have even been McClinton.

Right after the draft RC said McClinton was who they were targeting at 37 until Blair fell in their laps.

[Mel_13]

[rascal]

So Jack McClinton at 37 was worth 2 playoff series?

K Thomas was not worth two playoff series.

[ChumpDumper]

We obviously needed to draft McClinton higher. By definition, he would have been a better player had we done so.

[iManu]

[exstatic]

It would have just meant one more player to cut or stash in Europe. We STILL had three picks in the 2009 draft, and had to cut McClinton for lack of an available roster spot, with 14 guaranteed deals in camp.

[baseline bum]

K Thomas was not worth two playoff series.

Because Oberto did such a great job on Shaq?

[Rogue]

this lad should have reviewed the 09 draft to check who were still available after 24 guys already drafted.

[Rogue]

none of the post-25 rookie that year was better than any given play on current spurs roster not to mention that not all the pre-25 guys are valuable pieces. Beaubois was quite a steal TBH but there wasn't any guarantee Spurs would have enough luck to get him. Except Beaubois none of the other non-lottery rookies would make an influence on Spurs. So basically the Spurs didn't lose anything bigger than a fringer who would have probably been exiled to Europe until Scola's age and got traded elsewhere.

[Rogue]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_NBA_Draft