Well thats how you run a team unless youre lucky and get lebron creating super teams for you, or unless youre a genius like Greg Poppavic. In reality we had injuries, its was either push for 8th and stay mediocre. Or realize stuff isnt working, wipe the table clean and rebuild....again. we obviously werent going anywhere, the rudy injury changed the entire outlook for this team. Even though personally i think we played better without him. Im willing to give Vlade 2 more seasons after this to see what we end up with.
What if Richardson, willie, skal and buddy all blossom now? Wouldnt that be awesome? Instead of "oh give it to boogie cuz hes the best ever"
The problem you are missing in all this is that NBA is Superstar league. Always has been and always will be. That will NEVER change. I hear Vlade dribbling on about building for a championship, even if I believed him, I do not believe for a second that he has the ability to do that. He just let his superstar go for 20 cents of the dollar. He will soon find out just how ****ing hard it is to get a genuine superstar for a small market team, let alone a superstar who is loyal to the bone and doesn't want to be anywhere else. It will be a rude shock for him and everyone else in the organization.
Not to mention the deceiving, dishonest way he carried this whole thing out. Don't think for a moment that the most powerful player agent in the NBA will ever forget this. Don't for a moment think that stars and agents around the league will forget Vlade practically pointing a finger of blame at Cousins and stressing that culture matters while at the same time saying that the thing he learnt was not to trust agents. Well guess what Vlade?! You are going to have to deal with all those agents again. You are going to want to sign someone who matter at one point in time and in no way will you be given a fair chance to do it.
With all due respects to Skal, Willie, Malachi, Buddy and numerous other nothing that 3PT shooters that Vivek gets excited over, none of them and I mean NONE will be franchise level talent. Some will be out of the league, some will be good solid NBA players and some might even end up being all-star level players but NONE of them will be franchise players that you build genuine contenders around. NONE!
The problem this franchise faces, and it is clear to anyone that doesn't stick their head into the sand, even if you draft the next franchise level talent, that is as good, even better than Cousins, those same agents that you took a swing at will want to move those players away from laughing stock of a franchise into a larger market to maximize the earning capacity. That word of Vlade's that many believed until a few years ago is no longer worth a burnt crumpet. No agent trusts him. No player trusts him because just a couple of weeks ago he came out and publicly stated he is not trading DeMarcus and then he turns around and trades him for a very average package. He did not do his job in creating a market for Cousins, hell he didn't even pick up or returned calls to other teams that wanted a chance to better the NO offer. It's incompetence that is not forgotten easily in the industry. For as long as Vlade and Vivek are calling the shots here, this franchise is doomed. The only good things at the moment about this franchise is the coaching staff headed by coach Joerger, maybe Ken Catanella, and the business opertations staff headed by Granger.....but lets be honest even there, the franchise is cashing on on the genuine love of the fans for this team. Fans are holding up their end of the bargain and have for decades but the franchise is abusing that and making one **** up after another on the basketball operations side.
Cousins can't play on a winner they say. Lets see how he goes in NO. I am willing to bet that him and AD and Jrue will form one heck of a team and before you know it, the "trend" and the new "direction" that basketball is headed in will no longer be the small ball but the highly skilled twin towers that can do anything. Guess what?! We just gave away one of those twin towers for sweet **** all and we are rightly getting ridiculed for it world wide. Vlade is even being thought of as a fool back in Serbia for what he did. Anyone with some acumen can see that this is one monumental **** up for a franchise that could not afford to have any more of those yet they took it up a notch in how to **** up more. It's like the franchise is trying to outdo itself.