Being serious, whats deal with KT

[bajaden]

Your change of heart has nothing to do with anything except being a nhomer. If Webber were still here, and Geoff had been fired in '05, at this very moment you would be argbuing it the other way around.

If you want Webber here, I think he's available. I believe I saw him last night on TBS with the Chuckster. This is a ridiculous arguement. Webb was never the player he was before his injury. As I said, there was no easy answer to the situation. If we had kept him we would have been talking about a buyout at best, or sitting and waiting for his contract to expire. To my mind thats not an attractive senario. Petrie took a gamble and dealt him for smaller pieces. Unfortunately it didn't work out as everyone, or he would have hoped.

You made the statement that you don't ever trade away a player that was that important to your franchise. Bill Walsh said its better to trade a player one year too early than one year too late. Bill Walsh traded away Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott, and many others that were important to the 49'er franchise. And they could still play. Webber was fast approaching not being able to play, or, not being productive to the team when he did play. So if you think it was a bad trade, fine! I personally don't find that much fault with it. Not that I'm defending it, but that I simply don't think the results would be that much different. Having said that. It doesn't make me a homer, or a Petrie defender, or a Maloof defender etc. Your entitled to your opinion, and I'll always try and respect it even if I disagree with it. But opinion is subjective, and my opinion is just as good as your opinion. And both or our opinions are worth to everyone else on this fourm exactly what they had to pay for them.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Well, I should thank you at the very least for refraining from calling me ignorant, much as you danced around it.

Some refresher points:

1) Chris Webber played in 75gms and for 2892 minutes the next season, which is almost as much as the entire package of "flexible pieces" averaged together. He played in 61 games for 1892 mintes the next year, and many of those missed games were missed while waiting for his release to go to the Pistons. Webb's onerous contract ended after that season, meaning he missed probably less than 20 games over the remainder of that contract due to injury.

You're one year off here. Webber's 7-year contract was signed in the summer of 2001. That means that the final year of the contract was '07-08. He had three years (and a few months) left on his contract when traded to Philly and when they cut him during the '06-'07 season, he had a full year (in addition to the remaining half-season) left on his contract. They ate that money.

We can speculate on how many games he would have missed if the Sixers hadn't cut him, but out of a total of 3 years + 21 games on his contract (265 games), Philly got 124, which is less than half. They got 141 games of nothing. Even had they not cut him, for the remainder of his career including Philly he played 166. That means he missed 99 games over the time of the contract (though the some of them occurred after he was cut) with no more than 21 attributable to the pre-cut waiting period in Philly.

The extra year and ~$20M owed for the '07-'08 season (in which he played 9 games and 126 unproductive minutes for the Warriors) should factor in to reflection on the trade.

2) Matt Barnes was a throw in in that trade, and he's better than any one of those flexible pieces at this stage of his career.

Granted. We should consider that due to knee tendinitis (real or imaginary) Barnes never played a game for the Sixers under that contract. They subsequently waived him and the next offseason he was signed by the Knicks, who also waived him 6 games into the season, after which he was picked up by...the Sixers. Bizarre. Barnes didn't break through until he hit the uptempo offense in the '06-'07 season after signing yet another free agent contract. Before he established himself, Barnes was waived twice and picked up by three different teams. Can we honestly say that he would have stuck with the Kings all the way up until now had he not been included? Probably not.

3) as a consequence of making that trade we dumped ANOTHER long term contract on a declining Shareef Abdur-Rahim, and actually only have GOOD luck to thank for his having to medically retire before it hamstrung us further.

That was a bad signing. Red flags on the knee, New Jersey voids a contract, then we scoop him up. No question. Maybe if Webb is still around instead of in Philly we don't do that. Then again, Kenny did well for us as Webber's replacement that first half-season (2.3 win shares in Sac vs. the 0.0 win shares CWebb brought to Philly) and we didn't want to hand him the job. I'm not 100% sure an injured Webber wouldn't have resulted in us doing the same thing. Think of it this way: Webber's hurt, he's on the books for three more years and killing our cap space so we can't get a high-dollar free agent, and an all-star power forward (with knee questions) just became available for our MLE. We might do that anyway, because there's our chance to get some talent at PF despite our cap problems. I can't put that signing completely on the Webber trade.

4) at the point of Webb's contract running out in 2007 we still had some $14 million dollars on the books that were a direct result of that trade (KT + Shareef). We still, to this day have $8mil running against us while Webb has moved on to becomeing a TV analyst.

Again, did not run out in 2007. Would not have run out until summer of 2008.

5) I was serious when I offered you a chance to merely throw that move on the Maloofs and avoid trying to defend it.

Now see, THAT would make me a true apologist. If I thought Petrie screwed up big time in the Webber trade and hastened to take your opportunity to pretend he didn't do it, that would be a wussy move by me. Maybe you wanted me to make that wussy move. But I simply don't believe that trade was as bad as you do. And going through your refresher above wasn't particularly convincing to me, especially since two of the four points were contaminated by a one year, $20M miscalculation, and the other two were speculation on what might have gone differently...that might have happened exactly the same.

I simply don't believe it was the Webber trade that brought us to where we are now. I believe it was the Webber injury, in concert with his big contract. So no, I'm not about to push the Webber trade onto the Maloofs. Petrie did it. I'm OK with that.

 

[Superman]

If you want Webber here, I think he's available. I believe I saw him last night on TBS with the Chuckster. This is a ridiculous arguement. Webb was never the player he was before his injury. As I said, there was no easy answer to the situation. If we had kept him we would have been talking about a buyout at best, or sitting and waiting for his contract to expire. To my mind thats not an attractive senario. Petrie took a gamble and dealt him for smaller pieces. Unfortunately it didn't work out as everyone, or he would have hoped.

You made the statement that you don't ever trade away a player that was that important to your franchise. Bill Walsh said its better to trade a player one year too early than one year too late. Bill Walsh traded away Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott, and many others that were important to the 49'er franchise. And they could still play. Webber was fast approaching not being able to play, or, not being productive to the team when he did play. So if you think it was a bad trade, fine! I personally don't find that much fault with it. Not that I'm defending it, but that I simply don't think the results would be that much different. Having said that. It doesn't make me a homer, or a Petrie defender, or a Maloof defender etc. Your entitled to your opinion, and I'll always try and respect it even if I disagree with it. But opinion is subjective, and my opinion is just as good as your opinion. And both or our opinions are worth to everyone else on this fourm exactly what they had to pay for them.

What did we gain by trading Webber? Salary cap space? No. "Flexible pieces"? Well, considering the fact that we still have Kenny Thomas on the roster, I'd again say no. We'd have been better off cutting Webber than making that trade, because we didn't save any money, we didn't get any players that resulted in anything valuable for the franchise, and we didn't put ourselves in better position for the future.

The argument isn't really that we should have kept Webber because of what he meant to the franchise and the fan base (might be a small footnote to the argument, but it's not the crux of it). The argument is that the trade we made was a bad one. It looked bad at the time, and it looks even worse now. And if faced with the choice of either keeping a guy who meant a whole lot to the team or moving him for what we got back, we should have probably kept him. Could have saved some luxury tax money by using the amnesty clause if we had to. But we probably would have been better off not doing that particular trade. It was pretty awful, on the whole.

 

[Bricklayer]

You made the statement that you don't ever trade away a player that was that important to your franchise.

No I did NOT. Go back and reread and you'll catch an important distinction. Actually skip it, let me hgihlight:

You do not trade a away player that has been that important to your franchise -- arguably THE most important player in franchise history -- for middleaged middle contracted junk. EVER.

The **** we got back would have been a bad deal if we had been trying to unload a cancerous Stephon Marbury. It was a stupid move on its face. It would have been a stupid move if Chris Webber could never play another game.

I had my own terms for moving Chris Webber at that time. Forgotten them exactly, but it was something along the lines of young player (Nene maybe) + enders. And that may well not have been possible. That is not and never has been the argument for incompetence. The alternative to the deal not possible is NOT one of the worst packages you could possibly put together for anybody. The alternative is you do nothing at all.

 

[Superman]

Well, I should thank you at the very least for refraining from calling me ignorant, much as you danced around it.

We can speculate on how many games he would have missed if the Sixers hadn't cut him, but out of a total of 3 years + 21 games on his contract (265 games), Philly got 124, which is less than half. They got 141 games of nothing. Even had they not cut him, for the remainder of his career including Philly he played 166. That means he missed 99 games over the time of the contract (though the some of them occurred after he was cut) with no more than 21 attributable to the pre-cut waiting period in Philly.

The extra year and ~$20M owed for the '07-'08 season (in which he played 9 games and 126 unproductive minutes for the Warriors) should factor in to reflection on the trade.

How many games did Brian Skinner, Corliss Williamson, Kenny Thomas, Vitaly Potapenko (and whatever other faceless jersey hangers came in by way of that trade or residual trades) play for us? What kind of impact did any of them have for our team/franchise?

Granted. We should consider that due to knee tendinitis (real or imaginary) Barnes never played a game for the Sixers under that contract. They subsequently waived him and the next offseason he was signed by the Knicks, who also waived him 6 games into the season, after which he was picked up by...the Sixers. Bizarre. Barnes didn't break through until he hit the uptempo offense in the '06-'07 season after signing yet another free agent contract. Before he established himself, Barnes was waived twice and picked up by three different teams. Can we honestly say that he would have stuck with the Kings all the way up until now had he not been included? Probably not.

Probably not, but he was a useful player with us. Not an All-Star or a 6th Man candidate, but useful. A lot of board members commented at the time that they didn't like seeing him thrown in.

I simply don't believe it was the Webber trade that brought us to where we are now. I believe it was the Webber injury, in concert with his big contract. So no, I'm not about to push the Webber trade onto the Maloofs. Petrie did it. I'm OK with that.

I don't think the Webber trade did us in, but I do think it's hampered us up til now, and will continue to hamper us until free agency 2010 when Kenny Thomas comes off the books, or until we trade him for something else, which seems like a bad idea at this point, assuming we're not getting a really good player back.

I'm willing to push the Webber trade on the Maloofs and Petrie equally. If memory serves me correctly, it was their decision to part ways with Webber. Petrie may have put the ridiculously ridiculous deal together, but it was at their behest.

 

[bajaden]

What did we gain by trading Webber? Salary cap space? No. "Flexible pieces"? Well, considering the fact that we still have Kenny Thomas on the roster, I'd again say no. We'd have been better off cutting Webber than making that trade, because we didn't save any money, we didn't get any players that resulted in anything valuable for the franchise, and we didn't put ourselves in better position for the future.

The argument isn't really that we should have kept Webber because of what he meant to the franchise and the fan base (might be a small footnote to the argument, but it's not the crux of it). The argument is that the trade we made was a bad one. It looked bad at the time, and it looks even worse now. And if faced with the choice of either keeping a guy who meant a whole lot to the team or moving him for what we got back, we should have probably kept him. Could have saved some luxury tax money by using the amnesty clause if we had to. But we probably would have been better off not doing that particular trade. It was pretty awful, on the whole.

I'm fairly sure that when the trade was made Petrie didn't envision the outcome. And I'm sure that everyone thats critical of it now feels he should have. It seems I've put myself in the position of defending a trade that I really don't think makes much difference in the grand scheme of things. So be it. If we don't make the trade were stuck with Webb's contract through 2008, and it was a very large contract.

I suspose that some can envision fairytales and lollypops if Webb had stayed. I don't. This was his domain. He had a legacy here, and he would have wanted to continue doing what he was accustomed to. Even though he played a few more years, those that took the time to watch, would know he wasn't the Webb we were acustomed to. And I'm not going to go into his liabilities. I loved Webb as a player. And it pained me to see him play as less than what he was.

Now you or anyone can say it was a bad trade. But you tell me who you think we should have gotten back in return, and then you tell me, that based on the current situation at the time if you think thats realistic. You had a great PF with bad wheels that wasn't a spring chicken. What do you realisticly think we should have gotten for him?

You made the argument that we should have just kept him. Well, that was the only alternative. I can't argue against it, because I don't know what the outcome would be. You can say it would have been a better way to go. Maybe your right. Maybe not. Whats done is done. Thats why I'm not sure why people keep bringing this up. It won't change anything. The results will still be the same.

Unless of course you have a Vendeta. Not you personally. But some. If thats the case, then have at it. I really don't care about those things. None of this is personal with me. I only care about the ultimate outcome. Which I hope, if I live long enough, is a championship. I'll trade any player, and fire any General Manager if I think that will lead to the outcome I want. I have also learned to live in the here and now. Maybe getting old and actually being able to see your own mortaltiy will do that for you. But living in the past is for fools. You've already been there once. Never forget it. Learn from it. But don't relive it..

 

[bajaden]

No I did NOT. Go back and reread and you'll catch an important distinction. Actually skip it, let me hgihlight:



The **** we got back would have been a bad deal if we had been trying to unload a cancerous Stephon Marbury. It was a stupid move on its face. It would have been a stupid move if Chris Webber could never play another game.

I had my own terms for moving Chris Webber at that time. Forgotten them exactly, but it was something along the lines of young player (Nene maybe) + enders. And that may well not have been possible. That is not and never has been the argument for incompetence. The alternative to the deal not possible is NOT one of the worst packages you could possibly put together for anybody. The alternative is you do nothing at all.

With due respect. Whatever your alternative was, I'm sure Petrie would have jumped at it if it were possible. But, as you said, it may not have been possible. And doing nothing certainly was possible. What the outcome of that would have been is unknown.

At one point in my life I had two women that would have married me. I asked one of them.She said yes, but unfortunately the marrige ended badly. But I have two great children as a result. I've always wondered what would have happened if I had chosen the other woman. Maybe it would have ended up worse. Maybe better. I think its human nature to think that the other choice would have better based on the result of the first choice.

Bricky, the easist thing in the world to do is to criticize. To find fault. Your an attorney.So maybe thats what you do every day? I don't know. But the hardest thing to do is to retain credibility. I know your passionate, and I know deep down inside, restraint is difficult for you at times. Its difficult for me at times. Because you see things one way and I or someone else see's things the other way, doesn't mean your stupid, or that I'm stupid. It simply means the we, together, get the chance to make people see both sides of an issue. And in this case, an issue I think is much to do about nothing. Sorry! I couldn't resist..

 

[Superman]

I'm fairly sure that when the trade was made Petrie didn't envision the outcome. And I'm sure that everyone thats critical of it now feels he should have. It seems I've put myself in the position of defending a trade that I really don't think makes much difference in the grand scheme of things. So be it. If we don't make the trade were stuck with Webb's contract through 2008, and it was a very large contract.

I suspose that some can envision fairytales and lollypops if Webb had stayed. I don't. This was his domain. He had a legacy here, and he would have wanted to continue doing what he was accustomed to. Even though he played a few more years, those that took the time to watch, would know he wasn't the Webb we were acustomed to. And I'm not going to go into his liabilities. I loved Webb as a player. And it pained me to see him play as less than what he was.

Only thing I'd say is that I do think that the Webber trade made a difference. I'm critical of the trade because I think it was a deadline, desperation move that didn't have any chance at making us better. Sucks losing the face of the franchise, but that's not the worst part of it. The worst part is that it was a sucky trade.

Now you or anyone can say it was a bad trade. But you tell me who you think we should have gotten back in return, and then you tell me, that based on the current situation at the time if you think thats realistic. You had a great PF with bad wheels that wasn't a spring chicken. What do you realisticly think we should have gotten for him?

Just to be clear, I'd have preferred that we didn't make any trade rather than the one we made. That would have made more sense.

 

[bajaden]

[quote-Superman]Just to be clear, I'd have preferred that we didn't make any trade rather than the one we made. That would have made more sense.[/quote]

Fair enough. Point taken.....

 

[Capt. Factorial]

How many games did Brian Skinner, Corliss Williamson, Kenny Thomas, Vitaly Potapenko (and whatever other faceless jersey hangers came in by way of that trade or residual trades) play for us? What kind of impact did any of them have for our team/franchise?

Sergei Monia was the other player who came along with Potapenko in the Skinner trade, I believe. Sum total games for those 5 guys in purple is 410 games and counting. It's probably a bit unfair to look at games because some of those guys didn't get big minutes when they played - if you look at minutes it's 8239.

Add 48 games and 383 minutes for Michael Bradley to Webber's Philly total of 124/4139 to get 172 games and 4522 minutes for the players going the other way.

So those are the numbers. But I wouldn't argue that anybody outside of Thomas and perhaps Corliss had any type of impact at all on the floor for the Kings, and that only as average players and only in the first two seasons following the trade.

Probably not, but he was a useful player with us. Not an All-Star or a 6th Man candidate, but useful. A lot of board members commented at the time that they didn't like seeing him thrown in.

I agree. I didn't like seeing him thrown in either. But I do have a hard time convincing myself that if we hadn't, he'd still be with us, so Barnes doesn't color the trade much either way. Minor negative because I'd like to have kept him.

I don't think the Webber trade did us in, but I do think it's hampered us up til now, and will continue to hamper us until free agency 2010 when Kenny Thomas comes off the books, or until we trade him for something else, which seems like a bad idea at this point, assuming we're not getting a really good player back.

Again, I'm pretty much in agreement there. Thomas' contract was not pretty, but now that we've got a chance to be out from under it once and for all, we need to do so unless a great opportunity comes up.

The payback we got in return for Thomas' extended contract was reduction in luxury tax payments, though I don't have those numbers handy and I'm inclined to get some sleep rather than try to look them up. You did mention in another post a few up from this one that we could have used the Allan Houston rule on Webber. And yes, I'd say that would have been perfect. Unfortunately, the CBA that included the Allan Houston clause wasn't agreed upon until the summer after we traded Webber, and I have no idea if the NBA GMs had any inkling that they'd be able to get an amnesty like that inserted into the upcoming CBA. At the very least it doesn't strike me as something they could have counted on at the time the trade went down.

 

[Bricklayer]

Bricky, the easist thing in the world to do is to criticize.

Hindsight is 20/20?

Does not apply to me. I have been here for 9 years now, in a public forum, commenting on each and every move we have made not in hindsight, but at the very moment it was announced. I have judged moves smart or stupid, not later after they worked out or did not, but immediately on the merits of the move itself. I have been right more often than I have been wrong. By quite a bit I might add. Were this thread about me I would be happy to provide a move by move resume comparison wiht Geoff.

But this is not about me -- this is a Bottom 10 move on nearly everybody's list at this point except for apologists here in this fanbase. Some of those are nothing more than the remnants of the same foolish types who pushed for the move initially, still all these years later clinging to the hope that just through perserverence in their arguments they can redeem their foolishness. Some simply seek to justify or write off a painful interlude in Kings history. I get that. Its an open wound, and one that I do not like to pick at myself. You won't ever find me starting a thread about the mess, and I actively dislike these stupid arguments. But I also will not stand aside while some specious argument is advanced years later about how we actually weren't wounded at all. If you are what you eat in life, in sports a franchise is the moves it makes (or does not make). And we reached the bottom of the league by making some real crappers, with this one right at the top of the list. A sore that still has not healed nearly 5 years later. One nice thing about the imminent end of the Kenny Thomas era is that will kill one more reason to keep picking at it.

 

[bajaden]

Hindsight is 20/20?

Does not apply to me. I have been here for 9 years now, in a public forum, commenting on each and every move we have made not in hindsight, but at the very moment it was announced. I have judged moves smart or stupid, not later after they worked out or did not, but immediately on the merits of the move itself. I have been right more often than I have been wrong. By quite a bit I might add. Were this thread about me I would be happy to provide a move by move resume comparison wiht Geoff.

But this is not about me -- this is a Bottom 10 move on nearly everybody's list at this point except for apologists here in this fanbase. Some of those are nothing more than the remnants of the same foolish types who pushed for the move initially, still all these years later clinging to the hope that just through perserverence in their arguments they can redeem their foolishness. Some simply seek to justify or write off a painful interlude in Kings history. I get that. Its an open wound, and one that I do not like to pick at myself. You won't ever find me starting a thread about the mess, and I actively dislike these stupid arguments. But I also will not stand aside while some specious argument is advanced years later about how we actually weren't wounded at all. If you are what you eat in life, in sports a franchise is the moves it makes (or does not make). And we reached the bottom of the league by making some real crappers, with this one right at the top of the list. A sore that still has not healed nearly 5 years later. One nice thing about the imminent end of the Kenny Thomas era is that will kill one more reason to keep picking at it.

I'll say one final thing on this subject, because these type of arguments bore me. Not you, or anyone else involved. Just the argument itself. I simply don't care enough about it. But thats just me. The truth is that we didn't get where we are now by accident. Some of it was bad luck, like not getting lucky in the lottery. Or Webb going down with an injury. But some of it was bad decision making. As to who was actually responsible for the decisions, I don't know. And frankly, at this point, I don't care.

I guess one would hope that Petrie was totally responsible. Because you can replace him. You can't fire the owners. If that were possible, Al Davis would be gone right now. What I do care about right now is making the team better. If Petrie can do that, fine! If not, then find someone that can. He, or whomever he would be replaced by doesn't have an easy job. If you make a mistake while on the top of the heap, it can go by almost unnoticed. But when your at the bottom of the heap, everything you do is highlighted.

Back in the era of Webber and Vlade, the coming and going of Desmond Mason would have been a minor glich on the radar screen. Today it highlights his ineptitude. Probably not fair, but thats the reality of it. By the way, I don't think I ever said that your criticism came from hindsight. At least thats not what I intended.Of course hindsight is helpful when making a case. But I'll give you credit for voicing displeasure at the time of the trade.

I understand that people like to rehash these things over and over again. What I don't understand is why. Nothing changes. Its sort of like watching a movie with an ending you don't like, over and over again and expecting a different result. I guess that some new posters might learn something about the recent past. But it would be arrogant of us to think we know more than them simply because they haven't posted here before.. Anyway, I'm done with subject. Besides I've rambled on long enough..