- Apr 20, 2007
- 4,058
- 11
Agreed. Charles needs to break out the history text books. This team will not get good overnight, making trades and looking to get better rightaway, will what? MAYBE get us an 8 seed? Thats the same $$@* Layden and Isiah tried to do and look where they are at now. +@!% Lebron James, peep that DonnieWalsh quote i quoted a page or 2 back, we need to get under cap. Its not all about Bron, sure bron is the #1 pize but in order to rebuild your team you NEED toget under cap 1st end of story.
I always cite the 2004 Phoenix Suns when i talk about this. Right when D'Antoni became the coach the Suns had an aiiight team led by Marbury but in thatera the West was sooo strong they were a borderline 7-8 seed at best. Their GM at the the time was Jerry Colangelo and he traded Stephon Marbury to us for thelikes of Antonio McDyess, and Charlie Ward (who both had expiring contracts) and some other garbage and also got rid of Penny Hardaway in the process.Colangelo was even quoted saying that this move was simply for cap space to become a player in free agency and that he knew he did not get equal talent forMarbury (who at the time was a perrenial all-star and the only player other than Oscar Robertson with a carrer average of 20+ ppg and 8+ apg. In this tradePhoenix sheded$25 million in cap space fo the next summer's free agency and were looking to go for Kobe who was the Lebron at the time. D'Antoni wasquoted by saying "Are we probably going to take a little step backwards? Yeah, in the beginning. But with the cap room that we have now and with the draftpicks we are going to have, along with the core of young players that will get a lot of playing time, were excited about it. I think that in the long run thisis the way to get to a higher level of play. In the short term a little pain, but in the long term we hope thee's a big gain."
At that moment Isiah was the superhero who just landed NY their finest PG since Clyde Frazier who was a NY bred, and Colangelo was the moron who just tradedthat PG for the likes of Charlie Ward and Antonio Mcdyess, Majec Lampe, etc.
This is a large reason why i believe Donnie wanted Mike so badly. I mean he has a good rapore with the likes of Lebron/Wade and they would flourish in hissystem, but its also cause hes been in nearly the exact situation before that we are in now. That Marbury trade is VERY similar to the day we traded away Z Boand Jamal (our 2 top guns at the time) for next to nothing IMO. People need to realize this isnt some new radical philosophy that Donnie Walsh just thought of.And he isnt stupid enough to put all his eggs in one basket and think "Lebron James will sign here, so we will clear all this cap space and trade away allour best players, and not resign any of our other players... but if he doesnt were @@%$#+" Do people really have such little faith in one of the mostrespected GMs in the game to think that? Sure Lebron would be great but this isnt some new philosophy. Kobe resigned and the Suns were just fine after that. Itis an unwritten NBA rule that when rebuilding a torn fanchise there is no quick fix, you NEED to get under the cap... and fools like Charles Barkley and otherscan go ahead and diss what Donnie Walsh is doing as much as they want... But at the end of the day no team in the right mind will sign Barkley as a GM (thatsabout as likely as him becoming the governer of Alabama
</rant> I went off a bit there, sorry guys
