^I sort of agree on the Ron comments and sort of don't. We're seeing what life is like with Ron as your best player and it ain't pretty. It's not that I don't think he's worth building around or that he can't be on a winning team (he was, after all, on a 61 win team), just that Ron can't be your alpha dog. He needs to be kept in check on offense and kept in the right mindset. So I think a big part of the "home run" strategy for an AI or KG is to get the alpha dog that everyone else can play off of and that, through force of personality, can keep Ron's bad instincts in check.
So I don't even think it's a matter of win now or rebuild. It's either find that alpha dog or waste Ron's best years and risk an implosion.
I think the best comments people have made is that this is a team full of second options. This team has been in dire, dire need of an actual, real, positive, honest-to-god leader ever since the Webber trade. I thought Ron might be that guy, but he's not. He's a tonesetter, but he's leading the team into jack-a-shot land.
So the home run/win now strategy, while not particularly good odds, seems to be the best option, in my opinion. Short of finding an alpha dog (or alpha coach -- Phil Jackson/Pat Riley/pre-Knick Larry Brown type and lol about Musselman being that guy), I'm just not sure rebuilding with Ron as your best player makes much sense. This needs to be someone else's team with Ron as second fiddle or it's going to be pretty ugly and possibly disastrous.
I would agree with virtually all of that, but with one extra conclusion and some points of emphasis:
1) what is needed is an alpha dog, absolutely. Ron needs to be the #2. As a #2 Ron and Jermaine (who isn't even a very strong #1) won 61 games and were a rising power. I was quite impressed with Ron's ability to turn around our season last year -- showed he was much closer to a #1 than a I thought he was. But always suspected it was a bit of a fluke/short term momentum thing that wasn't truly sustainable, and my suspicions have been largely confirmed.
2) the remark about the coach is also on point -- this is a real problem. In the absence of the alpha dog last year we had Mike Bibby, but also just as critically a veteran coach who, all appearances aside, was much much stronger than Muss has proven to be so far. Just a stronger presence. 700 wins, 8 straight playoff seasons, and with a system and definite principles that he insisted upon. As the new guy faced with the long history of proven success, Ron had to respect that. At least in the short term. Who knows how it would have eventually gone. But Rick had stature, and Mike as his long time star player had extra stature for that reason as well. Now take that away, replace it with new in town Muss, who is young, looks younger, has no history of success in the NBA, hired an even younger staff of assistants who look like they could be in college, throw in the early stature robbing drunk driving thing, and the power relationship has definitely shifted. Basically Ron thinks he knows better than this coach, and has now been questioning him on both sides of the ball. (heck, he might be right
). In the absence of an alpha dog player, at least a big experienced coach might have had a shot, but we have neither. Do not know how/if Muss can acheive that stature in Ron's eyes. And unfortunately its almost as hard to find a coach of that level as it is to find a player of that level. One or the other is needed though.
3) Where I draw the extra conclusion is this -- our "win now" strategy would almost of necessity involve a trade for a major star. But the flipside, the alternate rebuild strategy STILL has to net us a guy who is going to take over as the #1 from Ron. Hence the lose now, draft high, get stud strategy. If we can't steal somebody else's star, then we need to dive down and draft one. Hard to come by at #15, even in this draft. But at #8 or so, you might still get one. The trick/question there is if a young guy is going to have the force of personality/confidence/feel to gain Ron's respect as a superior option. Lebron could have. But he was pretty special.
So in the end I do not see a problem...well...an ABSOLUTE problem with rebuilding with Ron. The point of the rebuilding process is the same as the "win now" hail mary: make Ron Artest your second best player. Rebuilding AROUND Ron, with the idea that all you need to do is add secondary players with him as the #1? No. But rebuild, TRULY tear down and rebuild in search of a #1 to Ron's #2 and Kevin's #3 could work. The danger there is not on court, but off of it.
