Atta boy Matt, good post.

Maybe row-jah will begin a new era of non suckage Spurs benches (wishful thinking)

I’ve always felt that it was rather stupid to blame the players for their physical shortcomings. I mean, it’s not their fault they suck. They’re trying. (Except for Robert Horry, who almost never tries).

The point Matthew brought up about the back nine of our roster is interesting. Indeed they be among the worst in the NBA. What I think is more relevant though is that A) they’ve got to be among the cheapest as well, if you don’t count that huge balloon payment Cuban was paying Finley and B) they’re definitely the oldest.

The Spurs FO has done everything ass backward for a few years now. Your role players, your bench, these are supposed to be young guys, or at least a decent mix of young and old. Since they’re counted on to bring energy, it is implied that they have to be youthful. Your best players have to be veterans, guys who’ve been around and presumably, have experience playing with each other. For some time now, the youngest guys in the Spurs rotation have also been their best players. They’re still 30 and 31, but since they’re the youngest guys on the roster, it seems easy to think the carnival ride can go on for ever, because we don’t compare them to other guys in their prime, we compare them to their ancient teammates. 31 is young compared to 37, we think. What we don’t realize is that if Tim was 37 and Horry 31, Tim would still kick his ass whenever he wanted.

All the blame, ALL THE BLAME, has to go on Pop and the FO. Yes, the salary cap restricts them somewhat, but last I checked, Scola isn’t making a king’s ransom for the Rockets. Other teams are unearthing young cheap gems at power forward like Bass and Landry and Millsap or on the wings in Azuibuike and Ellis while we’ve treated the draft as an annoyance more than anything else.

Look at Pop’s background. First the military, then some shit-ass small college in Pomona-Pitzer. All the guy knows and understands is discipline and coaching untalented stiffs. He can watch guys miss shots all day and and all night and never create anything remotely resembling a scoring chance for themselves. All he cares about them is not blowing any mental assignments.

I think Pop feels incredibly uncomfortable having too many talented players – especially offensively – on his team. I think his view is talented players are selfish by nature and having too many of them is counterproductive. I think he just wants three guys who can create their own shot and a bunch of shooters who can defend first and don’t demand the ball. What doomed the Spurs in ‘07-08 was that the shooters stopped making shots, one of the shot makers/creators had a bum ankle and the age caught up with them in defense and rebounding.

The man clearly doesn’t feel comfortable with young players. Young players make mental mistakes. Young players don’t have the trust of the veterans. They don’t know how to handle the media, the pressure, slumps. They don’t know when they’re supposed to shoot and when they’re not. They have no clue what the hell they’re doing in his complex defensive schemes. They don’t know when he’s screaming at them that he’s trying to make them better.

He likes coaching the Europeans. They don’t talk back and they’re open to criticism and coaching. He likes coaching old veterans who’ve been around. He knows they came here to win championships and have checked their egos at the door (you don’t come to the Spurs for the money or the nightlife). The youngsters? He doesn’t know what to expect and more often than not, he’s not patient enough to find out.

Maybe, for all his defiance and bluster, Pop watched enough tape or got enough input from those around him he trusts to try something different this offseason. Barry is gone. It doesn’t appear that Horry or Finley will be back. Three American rookies were drafted and are being talked up. Mahinmi should be ready to join the rotation. A relatively young free agent wing player was signed. Supposedly, they’re still looking to add another piece.

Perhaps Pop didn’t want to change a thing and really meant it when he said that the team that won a title in ‘07 deserved a chance to defend it. After all, they did go 16-4 in the playoffs. Now that they didn’t win though, the pressure for status quo is gone and the expectations of the media and fans are different. Now if you don’t make changes it looks bad.

Pop relied too much on his big three last year, particularly Manu, and he knows it. He’ll need to get this group through the regular season healthy and he’ll need youthful legs and energy and enthusiasm to get through the dog days. Again, he won’t care about seedings, as long as everyone is healthy and playing well the last month. The team will suffer growing pains and lose a few it shouldn’t do to the big three not playing as many minutes in some nip and tuck contest as their counterparts on lesser teams.

It will be a gamble, as Matthew says, but the hardest part will be just making it into the playoffs healthy. If they can somehow manage that, they have as good a chance as anyone, regardless of home court. The big three are just that good when they’re on. There hasn’t been a third player on a team as good as Tony since the Celtics or Lakers in the 80’s. There hasn’t been a 2nd banana like Manu since Pip (uh, no, Pierce doesn’t count, KG is the second banana on that team).

Does it sound lucky? Unfair? Lazy? Spoiled? Yeah, sure, it’s all those things. But would you rather not have the guys on the team because they’re so good? We need to count our blessings there. I think the team has a great chance to be better next season just because Horry and Finley (and Elson) won’t be on it. Hill cannot be any worse than Vaughn, on either end of the floor. Mason will occasionally make a shot or dunk the basketball. Mahinmi will grab some boards and block some shots on his way to fouling out in 10 minutes.

My #1 concern isn’t the roster so much as it’s Pop’s potential inability to coach it. He’ll need to have patience and understanding and trust. You can’t bitch out Mason for taking a contested shot when you encouraged Finley to take them for three years. You can’t pull Hill for missing a ten footer because Vaughn misses lay-ups. You can’t sit Mahinmi for a loose ball over the back foul because Horry wouldn’t have even tried for the rebound in the first place. Let Tim, Manu, and Tony be the coaches on the floor and they will police and nurture the young guys. It’s time for Pop to channel his inner Phil Jax and sit down, shut the fuck up and let these guys play and figure things out. Make a rotation in pre-season and stick to it for 10, 12 game blocks, making adjustments only for injuries or foul trouble. Otherwise kick your feet back and save the coaching for practices and the month of May. Haphazardly screwing with rotations and destroying a young players’ confidence isn’t what I call “coaching” anyway.

I dont follow the Spurs as closely as you do, but I remember Horry being an integral part of a Spurs championship team. Steve Kerr, was also crucial in one of those championship at the end of his career, when he was nothing more than a three point shooter. What Im trying to say is that some of those players that they acquire for cheap and at the end of their careers some time have huge impacts. The problem is not to realize when to let go.

s

To say hes not that great of a coach b/c he lucked into Duncan, Manu and Tony is false, primarily b/c you can say that about any supposed great coach. Jackson lucked into Jordan, Pippen, Bryant and O’neal, or Auerbach lucked into Russell, Cousy, Jones, Havlicek etc. Great players and great coaches go hand in hand.

You have to give managment a huge amount of credit for getting Ginobili with the 57th pick and developing him into a top 15 player this year.

I do agree that, in some instances, the team values character over talent, sometimes to a fault, but that is what theyre lauded for. The fact that theyve done was well as they have the past nine years with such a poor supporting cast is a real testament to the big three and popovichs ability to assimilate lesser talents off the bench.

Im not terribly upset about the Scola situation, its mostly stings b/c we waited so long for him to be available, but the move was done to preserve that blessed ‘team chemistry” as Scola was an alpha dog his whole career and in SA he wouldnt have been a main low post option….at least that was the spin i read, i guess it wouldnt have been so bad if Spanoulis didnt return to Greece.

good post though, the front office does seem to rely too much on the formulas that produced success in the past, but the keystone that is the big three is aging.

The front office is so…... mediocre.

wow that is a great quote. There are certain people i know who clinically suffer from OCD in a strive for nothing less than perfection (myself included though i’ve never been formally diagnosed) Personally, i get easily overwhelmed by the amount of choice and variety in doing any task and sometimes just mentally curl up in a fetal position and end up not finishing or even starting. A simple decision unable to be decided on because the consequences of “What if…” are overwhelming. But i know that if i just pick one and run with it, everything will be okay because none of the choices are bad. And if one choice is worse than an other, the difference is negligible, and its not worth wasting your life over. Im just starting to learn this but its still tough. The whole manu foul thing is just like this. Being too much of a homer brings out the “perfectionist” in fans (OCD or not) but its like you say, we need to realize that there are a whole slew of other things that could go wrong. There are just too many variables.

I say we run with what we’ve got and make the best of it.

BTW, I totally recommend The Paradox of Choice: Why more is less. by Barry Schwatz

shut UP…. I’d like to think that the diagnostic manner in which we’re all complaining is something more than complaining. I’ve told people probably upwards of a million times, whether it be spoken word, in writing, or what have you, that winning a championship is as much dumb luck as it is skill and dedication… You HAVE to be in the right place at the right time, and have to have all of the little pieces fall into their slots, or it won’t happen….ever.

If PJ Brown hadn’t hit that jumper in the waning minutes of Game 7 against Cleveland, I can assure you with almost no hesitation that the Celtics would’ve lost. A bucket from a role player is a given during any teams championship run, and I don’t care if any team’s big two or three or five is scoring like hotcakes. Inevitably, Team X is going to run into a situation where a bucket is needed in the worst way, and the person who has the ball is the last goddamn person you’d want. Remember Gary Payton’s circus layup against the Mavs in Game 3? Of course you don’t, and that bucket all but turned the tide of the entire freaking series.

Complaining about how old our role players are is just as worthless an argument as saying that Manu was hurt. Either way, we lost. Nothing can change the fact that things didn’t go our way for the entire WCF. I’d argue that aside from the PHX series, NOTHING went our way. We simply turned up in the Finals, because we found a way to not lose, not because we found a way to win.

I would like all of this nitpicking and, dare I say, whining to stop immediately. Honestly, who cares anymore? It’s over. The ONLY thing we can do is suit up and go for it again next year, regardless of who actually suits up. To pontificate what would’ve happened if we would’ve been in a better set of circumstances, whether it be our roster, our coach, our GM, is a waste of time. Let me draw it out for you:

If the Spurs were better= We win it all

If Popovich were a better coach (not exactly possible…) =We win it all

If we had a different GM= No TP, No Gino, etc. = We’re the goddamn Clippers….

Sports is about luck. We lucked out getting Duncan. We lucked out with TP and Gino. We lucked out that the three have never had season ending, career threatening injuries.

The Mavs lucked out that Ginobili was retarded

The Heat lucked out that the officiating was horrible…in their favor…

The Lakers lucked out that .04 happened…

If all of these things didn’t happen, what would have happened? A ton of useless speculation about what could have been done instead to have won. In other words, a lot of people chasing their tails trying to figure out what would’ve been if anything from one to a million things would’ve gone their way.

If everything goes the Spurs way, we win.

If most things go the Spurs way, we win.

If only a few things go the Spurs way, we win.

Christ, other teams should be so lucky. Who else can say that their team has spent the better part of 12 years winning, even when their team plays like complete and utter shit?

Nobody…

Who else has the privilege of even being able to argue with all the detractors as to whether or not our team is a dynasty?

Nobody…

Does anyone have any idea what we sound like when we delve into all of these glorified excuses?

Fucking Suns fans, that’s what!

I said before in some post that there is a fine line between being experienced, and just being old. No where is that more true than with our team. We simply hung on to some guys for too long, and at different points throughout the season, they started giving out on us. It happens.

It will happen one day with Kobe.

It will happen one day with the last man on the bench of the worst team in the league.

My Point? It happens to everyone, even you and I, at some point. No sense wasting time complaining about inevitabilities.

To cite our problem as our age, and then start singling out players and leaving out others for nonexistent reasons is a waste of time, not to mention a sense of skewed loyalty.

Everyone is so quick to come after Robert Horry, saying that he does nothing, when he contributes far more than Michael Finley or Brent Barry does. To be fair, he seemed more broken down at the end than they did, but at least he wasn’t wasting possessions time and again like Finley.

Aside from the OT forcing three pointer against PHX, Finley contributed, AT BEST, an absolute minimum. He was good for us whenever Pop needed someone to come on the floor and shoot flat jumpers. Oh… wait….

Brent Barry. Not even bring up the fact that he didn’t play for the whole season, the guy wasn’t exactly a star player at all times. Sure, he hit some shots and was goodly enough to actually show up to the WCF, but in the big show you can’t hope to win when your players flicker on and off like some lightbulb in a dingy basement. Barry is just as guilty as anyone on the team because he’s on the team.

Singling out our bench players won’t get anything done. They’re all old, and most of them were woefully misused at different points throughout the season, but that isn’t Pop’s fault. He tried to make the best with what he had, and did a far better job misusing them than most other coaches would using them well. Doc Rivers? Give me a break. That guy was on autopilot the entire season. He isn’t even a coach. He just subscribed to the “They can’t pin anything on me if I don’t actually do anything” school of thought, and ran his superstars all game long.

They weren’t running up the scores, that was Doc Rivers having no fucking clue what was going on, and just leaving his starters out there to ensure a victory. It was very Phil Jackson of him.

I’ve been raning for so long I can’t even remember what I’m saying anymore, but lease stop. It’s pointless now.

Besides, we’ll all get the chance to do it again in a few months. For now, let’s just hope we get enough players who are fun to yell at if we DONT win a ring next season…

...but if you don’t think Pop is a great coach, you’re nuts. If you don’t think the front office is top-notch, you’re nuts. I think it’s wrong to say that Manu’s injury cost them the series. They still COULD have won the series with a healthy Manu, but things didn’t go their way and they didn’t. His injury made their margin for error much slimmer.

If you were to list the skill set of a coach, it would read something like:
1. Motivating your players to play hard on both ends within your system (and this is far and away the most important trait): Pop is awesome at this. I wonder if his stubbornness helps in this regard.

2. Using your substitutions to create advantageous matchups or minimize mismatches: Pop is pretty good, though it took him awhile to figure out Duncan on David West, or to play KT in the Lakers series.

3. Strategery and tactics (drawing up end-of-quarter plays, Hack-a-Shaq, limiting minutes etc.): Pop is recognized as far-and-away the best in the NBA at this (see Charley Rosen, some article I saw in Truehoop about professional gamblers)

4. Developing and improving (young) players: Pop is so-so: Manu and Tony have blossomed from mistake-prone athletes to borderline franchise guys; Devin Brown became useful; Beno hit the skids. We’ll see this year with Mahinmi, Gist, Hill, and Hairston (and Mason, to some extent).

As for the front office, I keep hearing “aside from drafting TD, Tony, and Manu, what else have you done?” That’s like dismissing Bill Gates because he didn’t do anything other than that Microsoft thing. I mean, honestly.

1. The Spurs had an offer from Seattle to trade rookie Duncan for Shawn Kemp. Many thought the Spurs should have taken that offer at the time. Good job, Front Office.

2. Those pesky Sonics then tried to trade Gary Payton for Tony Parker a couple of years later. Public opinion said go for it. Spurs say thanks, but no thanks. Good job, Front Office.

3. The Spurs signed Manu to a lucrative long-term extension. At the time, it seemed kind of expensive, but was a bargain in retrospect.

4. They found Jaren Jackson, Malik Rose, Devin Brown, Stephen Jackson, all of whom contributed to championships. They traded for Antonio Daniels, who helped win the first title. They signed an apparently washed-up Horry, who delivered the 2005 title. They traded for Nazr Mohammed, who despite his skillet hands, was integral for that title.

5. Just as importantly as finding the guys listed above, they didn’t kill their cap space and overpay them when they became too expensive. The biggest mistake a FO can make is not letting a good player go, it’s signing a player long-term for more money than they deserve.

6. OK, Scola was a mistake. But I’m positive the thinking went like this: we’ll return our championship team and let them defend the title. We like Splitter better than Scola, and he’s said he’ll sign with us. We need to clear some cash to sign Splitter, so we need to get rid of Jackie Butler. We can use Scola to do that, plus it would really piss Manu off if we told Scola to go F himself and stay in Europe for the rest of his career.

If they had known Splitter would spurn them, I’m sure they would have signed Scola in a heartbeat. They took a calculated risk, and it didn’t pay off. It happens.

I agree with scrappy, there is just so much luck involved in winning a championship. After a season ends, and the story of the championship is written, people act as though it could not have gone any other way. During the Spurs’ championship years:

1.1999: What if Rasheed Wallace hits a barely-contested 18-foot J in the closing moments of game 1? What if Sean Elliott steps out of bounds, or Wallace gets a piece of his three-ball in game 2?
2. 2003: What if Robert Horry’s potential game-winning three doesn’t rim out in Game 5?
3. 2005: What if RoHo doesn’t play the 20 minutes of his life to close out Game 5?

The Spurs aren’t alone, though. Even the mighty Bulls relied on luck:

After Jordan’s signature pushoff, John Stockton had a wide open three to win the game, but it rimmed out. What if that goes in? What if Steve Kerr or John Paxson miss their jumpers? You figure, no matter how great a shooter you are, you are not going to make 100%.

I agree that the FO and coaching staff made some mistakes, but I am absolutely not on board with any statement remotely resembling “they suck.” We should thank our lucky stars that we have the coaching staff and front office that we do. Shame on you, Powell!

Matt, you are right on. I have been preaching everything you are talking about. Amen!

Pop doesn’t want to deal with any young players
Pop has lost his will to win
Pop has become satisfied with what he has already done and mentally shut it down
Pop is what we call in the military a ROAD, Retired On Active Duty

Timmeh has lost his aggressiveness, his “feather” style layups are pathetic
Timmeh has started drifting away from the basket
Timmeh doesn’t call for the ball any more
Timmeh doesn’t want to fight for position in the post any more
The Spurs aren’t looking for Timmeh’s post game, outside jumpers are the norm now

Manu has lost a step
Manu can no longer elevate
Manu is not as mentally sharp as he once was
Manu goes into turnover funks that produce back to back to back turnovers
Manu has become injury prone, Pop reduced his minutes and he still was hurt

An old bench is ok, an old bench with short players who play the perimeter is not ok
Where is Kevin Wilis, Malik Rose, Will Perdue, Rasto and Nazi?
Going small ball is translation for “saving cash”
We have zero interior defense
Scoring a layup against the Spurs has now become routine
The Spurs have no hops
The Spurs have no athleticism
Do the Spurs even have a bench player that can dunk?

JV and Stoudamire couldn’t dribble, score or defend, but other than that were very reliable
Bonner makes Danny Ferry look like Kareem Abdul Jabbar
Horry is so slow, the Big Show just crossed him over
Fin Fin’s defense is so bad, he gets $1 million a year from being on so many players posters staring at them “skying” by him along the baseline

The stats

Our blocks per game are down from 6.4 in 2004-5 to 4.1 in 2007-2008
Points allowed per game up from 89.3 in 2004-2005 to 91.3 in 2007-2008
Our opponents points in the paint exploded this season, especialy in the playoffs

And for those of you who are trying to sell that we were so close to winning it all last year..
Regular season record against playoff teams 2004-2005: 43-18
Regular season record against playoff teams 2007-2008: 32-29

Ding ding ding ding!! Get it through your skulls that we were not close. We have slipped big time and some body needs to answer for it.

Now that we have established that fact, what can be done?

There are many teams that occasionaly have fire sales on the players, The Clippers, Warriors, Bucks, Hornets, Supersonics, Grizzlies, Hawks….

If you play your cards right (or introduce a mole like the Lakers did), you can make out like a bandit

That is how the Spurs became a power team in the ABA, they got a team owner that was hurting for cash and ripped all his good players away..hey, it’s only business (The Godfather)

Stay away from bringing in the “troubled” player
It often helps in the very near term (Sprewell and Artest), but just as often can have a half decade long fall out (see the Knicks)

Troll your lures into overlooked areas like the D, Euro and South America

Look for players with proven playoff pedigree, stay away from the regular season stat stuffers, while the Spurs were jerking around with Stoudamire, the Celtics brought in Cassell

If all else fails, go the 1998 route, let Timmeh appear to torque his knee, bring Manu along very slowly so he can “recover” from his many injuries and cut Tony’s minutes to about 15 a game under the guise that we are saving him for the playoffs. Play JV huge minutes and make him the primary scorer. Start Bonner in the post. Have Oberto play point gaurd for half the game. Bring in Finlay as the defensive “stopper”. When the playoffs start, Pop and RC can go to the Australian outback and blunt smoke themselves into Nirvana. Every Spur fan takes a nightly bath in tub filled with horse shoes, four leaf clovers and rabbits feet. Then, when the draft lottery comes along, Spur luck strikes again! It has worked twice, hey why not one more time.

I do believe this season will fall on Pop. I think the F.O. has done a fine job drafting and the best they could do in free agency. It’s not R.C.’s fault that Magette is content with losing.
Looks like Curious George Hill will reduce JVs minutes to zero and although Ian won’t start; he is of starting calliber. Going from Finley to Roger Mason (do we have a nickname for him yet?) is the biggest upgrade at one position we’ve had since I can remember. And Gist or Hariston could be a pleasant surprise. The only thing more the spurs front office could do at this point is find some way to ship out Bonner.
The players for a championship team are here. It’s up to pop to make efficient use out of them. I know we’re worried that pop hates playing young guys but pop also hates playing his studs more than 34 minutes a game durring the regular season. Somethings gotta give and I say if even by default our draft picks will be very good contributors.

i do like that idea. Limit manu’s minutes a little more than tim and tony, but i definately would like to see them together more often.

I can’t get as worked up as some of you have gotten, but I don’t agree with some of the moves Pop & RC Buford have made. JV shouldn’t in anybody’s top 8. Not trying get more athletic on the wings over the past 2 or 3 seasons has been a mistake as well. Yet, this team was always there competing for chips in the end. Getting a younger rotation doesn’t guarantee a championship. Now I don’t know why Pop was playing Horry during the playoffs or why he farts around with rotations during the season, but ultimately he isn’t going to change and he isn’t going anywhere for awhile. He’s stubborn and not exactly the most forward thinking guy in the game, but he’s still a great coach in my estimation. As Truth Squad mentioned, it could be a lot worse.

I understand your point, but it’s a shaky one.

1. If Stephen Jackson had taken the good deal the Spurs offered him in ‘04 you would have an athletic wing man. Not Pop or Buford’s fault that he took less money and went to Atlanta.

2. The WCF as well as the series against the Hornets came down to the Spurs missing open shots. Nobody was complaining in the Suns series when all the old “sucks” where hitting everything. Or at the 17-3 record the Spurs started out with last year. Or for that matter 20+ points up in Game 1 of the WCF. The players missed the open shots.

Do the Spurs need to better their team in order to keep up? Yes, no doubt. Pop made some mistakes, no question. Buford can do better, but it comes down to the whole team not doing as well as they could have.

Not true.

The WCF and every other series came down to our opponents dribbling the ball right down the middle of our defense for easy layups and giving up huge offensive rebounds game after game. Our lack of size killed us. Easy layups versus contested jump shots is a no contest. We got our butts kicked by anyone and everyone that was a playoff team during the regular season. Our record against playoff teams in the second half of the season was horrific.

We got by on our will to win against the Hornets and Suns. But, will power and guts (as Rudy T found out in Houston) can’t carry you all the way. You need some size and athletic talent. You can’t let guys rip every rebound. Lets don’t fall into Rudy T’s “Heart of a champion” trap. He kept that shtick going a long time after the Rockets had flamed out and people kept buying it.

I think you have to look at the picture a little larger. First, Matthew’s list:

1 Tim Duncan was less than 90%.
2 Manu Ginobili was less than 90%.
3 Tony Parker was less than 80%.
4 Bruce Bowen was less than 90%.

Matthew is really stating that going into any season, we are playing the odds above. I think that is only true in hindsight. I think the front office made a lot of decisions with last years roster that went poorly. Include in the above list:
1. Robert Horry would be a zero.
2. Michael Finley would drop precipitously from the year before.
3. Darius Washington would NOT turn out to be a viable back up point guard.
4. Matt Bonner would not improve.
5. Francisco Elson would not improve.
6. Marcus Williams would not give us anything.
7. Ian Mahinmi would not give us anything. (they weren’t expecting him to, but in the 1% chance it could happen it would have been nice)
8. Brent Barry would be hurt.

These are ALL things that contributed to us losing to the Lakers. They all went poorly for the Spurs and we still ended up a Manu injury from competing in the WCF.

This year, with some younger guys, we will still have a list of similar things.
1. Will Ian Mahinmi be able to contribute? He’ll be given a good chance.
2. Will Roger Mason help?
3. Will George Hill displace The JV?
4. Will either of the 2nd round picks give us anything?
5. Will Matt Bonner give us anything?
6. Will Manu get healthy (much less stay healthy)?
7. Will whoever we have yet to sign give us much?

I think the front office gambles every year. Some years it pays off, some it doesn’t. They’ve chased Jermaine O’Neal and Jason Kidd. They have tried to trade for JR Smith. They signed Jackie Butler and Elson. Traded for Kurt Thomas. Spent a year developing Stephen Jackson (do you remember that he was inactive the year before he broke out?). Signed Hedo. Brought in Horry. Brought in Finley. Signed Rasho. Re-signed Malik. Traded a first round pick for Speedy Claxton. Traded for Nazr mid-season. Signed Van Exel. Signed Stoudamire. Etc.

But, through all those deals, they kept us competitive and didn’t crush us with a killer contract. The worst of them all was probably Malik. Then maybe Rasho. But, they were able to make them disappear when they needed to.

My point, if I have one, is you can’t always take the individual deals out of the context of the whole. Including what were other options at the time. We can bash on them for not signing a big free agent, but who’s out there to be had. You can’t just dream up Rashard Lewis at $6 million per on your team. The crazy-ass Magic maxed that fool out. Sure, that created some buzz and they made the playoffs. But that’s not the crazy-ass kind of shit I want my team doing.

Yeah, a lot of the things the front office chose this year didn’t pan out. But that doesn’t make them bad decisions. Every decision the front office makes is a GAMBLE. There is always some percent chance it fails. But, despite a year in which none of their gambles paid off, we were right there chasing the ring. I think we will be right there this year. We have big question marks, but we also have our big 3.

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