As someone who supported the signing of the vets, I'll concede that the moves are looking bad.
In my defense, I'll say that my first preference was to rent our cap space for assets. Given that we failed to do it (I'm assuming, rather hoping, that Vlade tried it, but have no idea), I thought it was the next best move, since the kids need mentors. I didn't even mind the little overpay (particularly given our situation), as I was hoping for a better player and mentor, and the last year has a very low buyout. I thought he would be traded by next year's deadline, by which time, he would have helped Fox and Mason.
While I don't care about the wins this season, I think it's important for the team to be competitive in most games, and for the team to win at least some. Losing consistently tends to take a toll, develops bad habits, and retards development of kids. So, having vets who could still play was important in my book. The hope though was that the vets will buy into the idea that they will get their minutes, but they have to mentor the kids too, and not feed their ego, or live on past glories.
We don't seem to be getting much of the good, and a lot of the bad. I don't entirely blame Vlade. True, that ultimately he is responsible, but we don't know how much the ownership, market, new arena challenges, etc. guided his actions. Plus, apart from some bad moves in the beginning, his picks and draft day moves have largely been good. Moreover, apart from these large contracts to vets (which fortunately do not impact our long term moves at least), we are in decent financial shape.
This needs a fix though. The core of the future has to come from this group. We have one first round pick in the next two years. Even if we assume that we'll hit a home run, and get a future star, you need three excellent players, and a good supporting cast in the current NBA to be relevant. We need at least two folks from the current group (or at least one and several consistently good contributing players) to have a shot at anything meaningful. There is some potential, but that needs to be polished. Hopefully Dave and Vlade know what they are doing, and can fix it, but having whiny vets, loudly complaining, even while making tons of money, is not a good portent.