IYAM, Cousins, Evans and Gay could have been the core of a title contender, no question. Have Thomas doing his thing off the bench... Get those guys a shot blocker, and watch the rest of the western conference bow down.
I will need heavy duty censoring if I take part in where this conversation could go. Here goes anyway.
Perhaps great athletes can find there way in the NBA when not being sabotaged by there coach and FO. I start with the 20-5-5 fiasco that cost Tyreke a year and the two years of Smart who thought investing his energy in a 5'9" pizza guy was more important than investing that same energy in a 6'6" mega athlete.
Perhaps what seems to be a bad decision can be salvaged but those who have until this moment smugly felt our FO was wise in not keeping a guy who had no jump shot and had many injuries may take some time and think twice.
I will not say all is lost but in my world, to win requires a very decent defensive big man acquired in the draft, the emergence of Ray as a moderately OK
starting PG who can play defense (all we need, really), and the wishful thinking that the joyous celebration by our front office in the picking of young Ben was not totally misguided. I have not given up that the team can recover from this decision. I don't know if a back court of Ben and Reke would have worked better than a back court of Ben and IT but I think so. This is especially true if you value the improvement in the percentage of wins more than achieving 20-20-20. I also wonder seriously how a back court of Reke and Ray would have performed if not now but in the future. There are no clear cut answers, I admit, but the negative side of me is winning the war of the half empty/half full battle.
The NO fans have had almost a full year to watch Reke and he hasn't been a glowing beam of success from the beginning but they are getting happier.
I DO think if we had kept Reke, we would NOT have a 1st round pick this year and all this fussing about ping pong balls would be moot. The reluctance to sign Reke at all could have been handled differently if he had been approached properly. For instance, they could have treated him decently before the time to sign came. It needn't have cost us $11 mil but that is speculation. Once upon a time we had two great athletes and we decided it was best to go forward with one.
Great athletes do not grow on trees. I am happy for Tyreke. Maybe he has found a team and a fan base that appreciates him.
The point of $11 mil vs $19 mil is well taken.