You're right, all this does is set us back a full year and waste 10-15% of Cousins' remaining prime years. No prob. We should do it again next year and make it an even 10 years for symetry's sake, There are certain set stages every single NBA team goes through, and they eat up the seasons of your career. Become a playoff contender/just miss is one of them. So is "first run past the first roudn but lose due to inexperience". Barring a superteam construction we're a bare mibinun 3 years out from true contention, and there are 10 or so possible years of Cousins as title carrying team left.. if we let this year fall apart, then next year we'll still be 3 years left, wih 9 years of Cuz remaining. And that's 3 years minimum, if you don't get stalled out somewhere as normally happens. You have been out of th3e decades for a decade, and you are balse as your window for success with the best player you ever drafted gets narrower and narrower.
In life there are always just a certain number of golden opportunities you either seize or miss. Mostly miss and maybe not even recognize what you missed until later. In the NBA you time things out by seasons and years in a guy's career. This was an absolutely golden, scrap that, platinum, opportunity for this franchise,. Best one they've had in a decade, to take a giant step. If this goes on too much longer, it fades back into just a small step, with most of the work still to come. guys get older, other accideents happen, people get impatient, owners get poor. Carpe diem is a great motto for the NBA. When you see your oppportunity you damn well better seize it, and when you miss one you damn well better regret it. Your best case is that you've lose something critical in a sport measured in the short span of a superstar's career. Your worst case is you blow the opportunity altogether. You certainly put yorself in terrible danger. One more bad break, just one next season, and all this "inevitable" future becomes cloudy, full of stress and fear. You're the team that can never get over the hump with the star who's contract is ending on the horizon. There is/was a chance to end that storyline right here, right now. To change everything.