That's a load of hooey. The team was playing championship contenders before Kevin's return. And playing them right to the wire. Not sleepwalking around getting blownout by the league's dregs.
Throwing a player under the bus sucks. Throwing the rest of the team under the bus to defend said player is 100 times worse.
lets not kid ourselves... the lakers and cavs were underestimating us and gave us a shot that very few teams get. that wont happen next time. though hawes had to go for 30 to keep us in the 2nd lakers game...
what other contenders were we playing? we lost to philly with and without martin. we lost to the wizards, whom we barely beat the first time. had to come back from 35 down to beat the bulls who are 3 games under .500... the nuggets are the only team that we've beaten twice this season. the 1st game we need 4-5 3pt shooting from nocioni and 2nd game was without carmelo.
lets look at our wins without martin....
jazz
warriors
thunder
rockets
knicks
nets
hornets
pacers
twolves
wizards
bucks
bulls
nuggets
nuggets
even the close losses are against unimpressive teams...
bulls
mavs
rockets
grizz
suns
heat
hornets
spurs
blazers
twolves
cavs
lakers
sixers
lakers
mavs
suns
warriors
magic
we've played 5 contenders and lost to all of them except for the nuggets... vy the end of the season, everyone will know what we have on our roster and they'll be ready... its not martin's fault that thompson is a scrub...(19 pts one game 7 the next) hawes is weak... casspi is in a shooting slump and greene is inconsistent. its the coaches and front office's fault for putting all of this on the backs of a bunch of rookies and 2nd year players... they know the teams weakness a lot better than we do and they chose to do nothing. they knew that martin and evans wouldnt work together, if they didnt then they should all be fired. we havent dominated a single team this season that wasnt a bottom feeder. the contenders that we did play, played down to our level. they werent playing championship caliber basketball. the lakers played us like we were the clippers, we werent a threat to them. lets not try to convice ourselves that we are better than we are.
losing to sub .500 teams is inexcusable, we shouldnt have lost to the sixers, definitely not twice... we shouldnt have lost to the wizards... or the twolves and warriors... we shouldve won our last 3 games martin or not. its not martins fault that this team would win 4 games then lose 4 games...
how is it martins fault that we were held to 86 points against the sixers and wizards? we have outscored our opponents in the 4th quater only three times this month and only won one game, against the nuggets...
martin has been here for a while, we know what we have with him and he isnt the reason why this team lost or why they have been losing. unfortunately for him the only way that he can help us is to be traded for someone who can help us.