First off, I'm not a big fan of going through old threads to find out who supported what position and calling them out on it. You never know when someone's going to go through old threads and find out who was supporting what wild conspiracy theory...
Second off, those posters were probably right. Pau's 2011-2012 year was the beginning of a decline phase for him - he was getting older, he started playing outside a bit more (check the drop in free throw rate), his field goal percentage was down from dominant Pau, etc. There were tons of red flags there. And he was owed $38M for two more years of what could have been an even steeper decline phase in his career.
And guess what? It was. Some of this can probably be attributed to the addition of Dwight Howard in the post, but even that was only one year. Over the next two years, Gasol put up career worsts in just about everything: Games Played, FG%, eFG%, TS%, FT%, PPG, ORtg, PER, Free Throw Rate, WS, WS/48, BPM, VORP...at least all of those. Pau was not remotely worth $19M/year for those two years.
This year, Pau is a bit better. But he's still only back (or in most cases not quite back) to the level of his age-31 drop-off season - the one that certainly gave all those posters pause when considering whether to trade the #5 overall pick for him. He's not Dominant Pau anymore, and at age 34 now, he'll never be Dominant Pau again. He had a great game against us last night, but don't mistakenly assume that all season he has been like that.