After the crap GM's we've had who've rushed into horrible trades/contracts over the last 10 years, how is this not a good thing? Monte not making moves just to make moves is exactly what we should be striving for. Had he followed your advice, Buddy/Barnes would have been gone for absolute peanuts and well below their value last season. If we do trade them, both should bring back a solid haul after their starts to the year.
Funny you should bring up 2nd round picks, because Monte is the only GM to actually build a farm system of good developmental prospects. Vlade and Pete ignored it. King, Ramsey, Queta, Woodard, Metu, Jones, and T. Davis along with Hali/Mitchell is as good as building for the future as this team has seen in a long long time. And basically got all of them for insanely cheap assets.
The TT trade we agree on. That's easily his worst move and wasn't at all necessary with the Len signing and Damian Jones still in tow. Otherwise, he's running things pretty damn close to what I consider ideal; up to this point at least.
Let’s review that point shall we?
If we had traded Barnes ( I didn’t advocate trading Buddy) we would have lost likely at least 1 additional game which would have made us 8th and picking Wagner. If we lost a couple more we could have been in Toronto’s spot and gotten Barnes
at 16 we could have picked Sengun, Murphy or Jalen Johnson. I would have taken Johnson but the analytics based Monte would likely have taken Sengun.
in addition we would have Nesmith and a trade exception.
so our roster would have been:
Center: Holmes, Len, Jones, Queeta
Power Foward: Sengun / Johnson, Metu, Bagley
Small Forward: Wagner or Barnes, Nesmith, Harkless, King
Shooting Guard: Haliburton, Hield, Davis
Point Guard: Fox, Delon Wright
sorry but I like the look of that roster much more than the unbalanced POS roster we currently have. we would have had 3 high IQ ball movers in Sengun, Wagner and Hali.
Not to mention what might have been brought in with a 20M trade exception at this upcoming trade deadline.