Teams get their cornerstone stars from the draft. Period. The exceptions are so rare and so easily distinguished as to prove the rule. And the reasons are very clear and very simple -- anybody who has one, a true one, isn't going to give them away for basically anything. You might get 3 or 4 superstar players moving a decade, and almost always the flawed ones. In any case, enough of that. People who continue to argue that point are like the Flat Earth Society. Just wanting something to be some way does not make it so.
As to the intial question, are we on the right track? Dunno. But we COULD be. And there is the scary and frustrating part. We are balancing on an edge here -- continued front office incompetence and we do exactly what the doomsayers say. We fall off and spiral into eternal rebuilding. But the pieces are actually there to do this right. If we could import Portland's front office for a ocuple of years I woiuld almost guarnatee we would be headed back towrd being a good team, although maybe not a great one unless osmebody in this upcoming draft really blossoms. But hell, let's just look at the factors from Geoff's perspective:
'98-'99 (the year Geoff suddenly got famous):
1) new coach (Ademan)
2) almost all veteran contracts purged,
3) result = capspace and sign Vlade
4) midrange lottery pick (#7 -- Jason Wiliams)
5) previous lottery picks fill out lineup and future (Peja, Corliss, Wahad)
6) megatrade of aging star for young superstar (Webb)
Of all of those, the only one that we have no obvious path to is #6.
Let's say I am made GM, and this season/offseason just wanted to ape how Geoff did it 10 years ago:
1) new coach (Saunders -- chosen because most similar in demeanor and style to Adelman, been close to the top, experienced hand)
2) trade Brad and Salmons midseason this year for enders/kids/picks; release Mikki and get half his contract money; during offseason see if Kenny can possibly bring back anything of value as an ender, or package him wiht Brad for an ender this year;
3) if you cleared the money for this offseason, the target would not be the megastar pipedream, but rather a lesser player. Like Vlade was a lesser player and yet meant everything. And so here: Hedo Turkoglu. Take advantage of the Magic's giant Rashard blunder, and just outbid them.
4) lottery pick -- at this pace our lottery pick could very well end up being better than midrange, with a little luck very high indeed. Weaker draft, but better pick. And we have Houston's #1 as well. And even potentially more booty if we did in fact trade Brad and Salmons.
5) previous picks to fill out the roster = Spencer, Thompson, Martin and Cisco. Greene as well. That's a considerably stronger crew than the Peja/Corliss/Wahad group of '99. May also be the solution to #6 -- if there is anybody available, start gathering up youth and picks, of which we have many, looking for that impact guy.
6) the hole, the mystery. Who is "the man" going to be? How do we trade for him. As I suggested, I think the answer is through our kids and youth. Let's renew the Amare pipedream for a moment -- not buying into the new system in Phoenix. So, you bundle Salmons, Thompson, Beno (Nash backup/replacement) and maybe even Green if necessary, and you offer the package to Kerr. this was merely an example of the sorts of packages ou can put otgether with accumulated assets.
Now just doing that, speculating and slavishly following the Petrie formula form '98-'99 (which alas he seems to have forgotten about), I could produce this:
C- Hawes
PF-Amare
SF-Hedo
OG-Martin
PG-#1 pick
6th- Cisco
Coach: Flip Saunders
And gee, we are winning again.
And the odds of that being the exact deal are extraordinarily low of course -- in particular the lack of superstar requires the highly speculative Amare deal and wil plague this team until we finally resolve it somehow. But when people say oh, we are so far away, oh we are doomed forever...not necessarily. We have assets and opportunity if somebody would just start planning to take advantage of them.
