I'm not tailgating, I'm drafting

Thu Feb 1 06:25:16 CST 2007

Yup. He is that guy for all you mention below, but I'll ask again - how
confident are you that we'll get anyone better?  

I steadfastly remain unable to forget what came before him because even
though we "made the playoffs" we also had zero future. The OB/Harter system
was easily and often exploited in the playoffs - even the ECF year - or is
it now ancient history how simple it was for NJ to tear us apart by just
tripling Pierce and letting Walker shoot us out of any chance while at the
same time getting his lunch eaten by Martin?  Add to that four or five (I
lost count) consecutive not just bad, but 100% bust drafts.  Walker would've
been signed to another MAX deal - meaning we would now have Pierce, Walker
and Baker taking up 80% of our cap AND no draft picks worth a damn to help
balance that with rookie scale. 

Listen, I agree with Egg and you that if we could have Ainge as the head
scout and someone else running everything else I think we'd be in pretty
good shape - EXCEPT we'd still have bottom line owners (the opposite of the
Krafts and Cubans of the world) meaning no flexibility in trying to go well
into luxury tax land to sign marquee free agents.  

That to me has been the biggest constant over the course of not just Ainge's
tenure but Pitino and Wallace before him - owners unwilling to truly invest
in the basketball product. I don't care who you put into such situation -
under these salary cap rules, and with such limited ways in the draft
(meaning only a couple to four or five players in each draft good enough to
make the whole team better) to truly improve your team, and you've got a
recipe for success so narrow that it would take one thing, and one thing
only to make your team a contender - LUCK. 

I'm not saying that you have to spend spend spend as the only solution
either, (Hello New York Knicks) - I'm saying you have to have flexibility to
manipulate the system in place IN FULL or else you'll always be playing from
behind.  

So to me personally I'd rather have a good drafter (like Ainge) as a
starting point with penny pinching owners then guys who can't draft
(Pitino/Wallace) and penny pinching owners.  At least that way I CAN have
hope for the future - the other way I can't.

------
Why is blaming Ainge the "easy" answer? Isn't Ainge
the guy in charge of basketball operations? Hasn't he
assembled the roster? Hired the coach? Kept defending
the coach?

Didn't he send off Walker and Payton with no plan for
how to replace them? Didn't he give a 5-year contract
to Brian Scalabrine? Didn't he unload the bad LaFrentz
contract that HE traded for, for the almost-as-bad
contract of a guy who wasn't healthy?

Why blame the owners or luxury tax for Ainge's
decision to pass up Roy (or, for that matter, Rudy
Gay) and instead trade the 7th pick for a kid who had
been chosen 13th two years before and done nothing but
get benched?

Look, I give credit to Ainge and Wyc for cleaning up
the Vin Baker mess, but Baker rolls off the cap after
this season, and his cap hit this year is less than
half of Ratliff's or Szerbiak's - another Ainge
acquisition who for the past two months has averaged
12 ppg and shot a sparkling 34% from the floor. - PD