Reply With Quote
*rolls eyes*
And the Rockets.
*rolls eyes*
You have tremendous fortune in the draft and do basically the bare minimum to improve the talent on the roster.
I shudder to think what it might be like to be a Spurs fan sans Robinson and Duncan.
What if they were ordinary #1 picks, even?
No, that was the pre-Duncan Spurs.You have tremendous fortune in the draft and do basically the bare minimum to improve the talent on the roster.
The Spurs were good and lucky enough to get their top three players through the draft and keep them together, and end up spending each year as much as can reasonably be expected of them, even a little more on occasion. It is not a bad thing.
Playing the "what if" game continues to be a useless exercise.
They weren't.
What if Michael Jordan had been some ordinary #3 pick, like Adam Morrison, Ben Gordon, Mike Dunleavy, Darius Miles, Raef LaFrentz, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Christian Laettner, Billy Owens, Chris Jackson, Charles Smith, Dennis Hopson, Chris Washburn, Benoit Benjamin, Rodney McCray, Bill Cartwright?
They probably would have had more opportunities to draft in the Lottery or trade high picks.What if they were ordinary #1 picks, even?
The Mavs wouldn't have gotten Dirk if they'd had the #28 pick in the 1998 Draft (or Nash, for that matter.)
How did Scottie Pippen, Bill Cartwright, John Paxson, Toni Kukoc and Dennis Rodman arrive to the Bulls?
Good talk.
Yeah, so the Spurs would be a perennial lottery team.
The kind of team that has its Manu and Parker, but not enough (a #1 draft pick like Duncan) to win it all.
And you wouldn't have become a fan without the Spurs drafting DRob, so there's a silver lining...
Dude, I'll admit it.
I am afraid for the future.
I know we are extremely lucky to have Duncan and I greedily want to put as much talent around him as possible before the great run is over.
So don't go overboard and ruin what is a proven championship team.
That's the nature of the beast. All things must pass.
The Spurs are a small market team in a league with a salary cap. You will have a rebuilding period. It's a fact of life. Even the Yankees, who have every conceivable advantage (history, huge fan base, license to print money, large market, etc.) in a league without a salary cap, have not been able to avoid rebuilding phases.
I want to gamble to assure another le.
And privately, I want to feel like our team can get things done after Duncan retires.
I offered that reality before and got shouted down.
Teams don't frequently win without dominant players like Tim Duncan. And it's unlikely (virtually impossible) that the Spurs will be able to get a player of Duncan's quality (or even David Robinson's quality) without landing a high lottery pick. That is going to take either an exceptionally fortunate trade for a future pick (a possibility that seems unlikely, as the Spurs are more likely to be selling #1 picks than buying them) or the complete end of the Duncan era.
By who?
No new ground there.
It's possible to stay good.
You have to take calculated risks and make sound moves, before your window closes completely, like the Jazz.
Or you get real bad and hope to land a lucky high draft pick, ala the Cavs.
The Jazz got pretty bad -- they were 26-56 in 2004-05; they had to get pretty bad to have a pick high enough to get Williams. They also missed the playoffs for 3 straight seasons.
Look at their last 20 years.
Understood, mostly because they managed to use 2 draft picks wisely to get Stockton and Malone and then filled in with reasonably-priced veterans who could play the game and stay within the team concept -- sounds frighteningly familiar to me.
And still, they had to go backwards -- and way backwards -- to get themselves back into position to compete for playoff spots in the West.
Their third stars at any given time were acquisitions -- Jeff Malone and Jeff Hornacek, as is Carlos Boozer today.
'Sup?
Most likely the time will come when it might appear attractive to move Duncan (say 2011) to get some package of young players and picks and start rebuilding. But you do have to weigh that against the loyalty he's shown the franchise and the fact that having him retire a Spur is no small thing. The Spurs encountered this same issue with DRob and then Ice before him. They kept DRob. They dealt Ice. Granted, those were somewhat different scenarios. But who here will say seeing DRob leave his last NBA game having won a championship was not one of the best moments in sports they've witnessed? I will say that attending that in person was awesome and I thought that entertaining the notion of letting DRob go to land Webber was compelling at the time. We all learn. Moving the face of the franchise sucks. And it's not always the golden path it appears to be on the surface.
Anyways, the Spurs will likely hit rebuilding at once instead of trying to parlay some of their big 3 into picks or young talent. Plus they will still have Parker, provided he doesn't opt to leave. Should they draft wisely then they should be able to put a good young group around Parker. This is why I don't think you just dump 1st round picks for marginal talent today. These drafts contain such a mix of early college entrants, experienced college players, and a rather deep pool of international talent that you can find NBA players late in the 1st round in most years. Plus it's not like Duncan is 36 years old today. The Big 3 have at probably 3 to 4 more years together. Drafting wisely today can help you supplement the supporting cast today and set the basis for future success. The Spurs are more likely to land star talent through the draft than to lure it through free agency. No biggie. That's just a fact of life for the Spurs.
Well said.
You were there for the le-clinching game in 2001?
That's awesome.
Quite frankly, I advocated Webber for Robinson and now I am very grateful that didn't happen. I also was prepared to send a second-year Tony Parker away for Gary Payton, because I wanted that second le. We got it anyway.
I guess I am of the midset to perpetually mortgage the future to win now.
I can't predict who s going to become a star or what pick is going to pan out, so I am more inclined to go for what are perceived sure things.
I'm not saying that is always the best approach.
I don't know if the Spurs would have won more or less with that "win now" mentality.
4 les is very good, regardless.
I just don't want the Spurs to fade into obscurity after Duncan is gone.
It's so easy to become like the Milwaukee Bucks.
My fear is that our second-tier stars of Parker and Ginobili will have us scraping for 8 seeds in the future. Good enough for the playoffs with no realistic shot at winning.
They traded Jeff Malone to get Jeff Hornacek. That's like saying that the Spurs should trade Parker/Ginobili to get a guy who's like Parker/Ginobili. Malone was in Utah as part of a three-team deal that netted the Bullets the guy who had been the #1 overall pick the year before (Pervis Ellison).
They got Boozer as a free agent because they had plenty of money to offer and Boozer was promised only the MLE by the Cavs.
'Sup indeed.
Yeah, um, so they made moves.
Had to be 2003.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions