We had to expose somebody, and the rest of the guys on our roster were pretty integral to our hopes of a championship. There was some talk about a Webber gambit - leaving Chris exposed and daring the Bobcats to take on his big contract - but that obviously never panned out (and would have been very risky).
I've come to realize that maybe Petrie's biggest blunder of all was made the offseason of 2003. Knowing that the expansion draft was upcoming the following summer, Geoff should have been looking at the roster and thinking about whom we had to protect. As it turned out, we had enough expiring contracts that we could have protected all of our players were it not for the rule that you have to expose at least one guy. We really didn't want to expose any of them, so why not sign Rodney Buford to a 2-year deal instead of a 1-year deal (he would have been basically at the minimum) with the intent of dangling him instead of our commodity players at the expansion draft. We could still have Wallace had he just done that. And hey, even if Buford knew the score, it's not like he'd turn down that second year on his contract.