LoCo89 wrote:Jean Baptiste Étienne, of La Révolution de Vancouver (Memphis Branch) newspaper. One of the more fascinating nights this offseason was draft night. Take us back to the draft, you had prime position for a rebuild with 2 of the first 3 picks in the draft (and potentially the first two picks instead if the rumors were true), but the direction you've taken is a 180 from that stance. Was the plan always to take the picks and flip them into better assets (a great plan in its own right) or was there supposed to be something different?
I had no intentions of contending for at least 2-3 seasons. This was supposed to be a long rebuild the right way. I also was banking all of that on landing Pau Gasol. I had what I thought was a close to done deal with the 76ers GM for the #1 pick which would have guaranteed us Pau. But unfortunately when Philly has 2 deals to pick from it chooses the lesser of the two and doesn't like responding to phone calls and voicemails. Sooooo we had to settle with getting the #3 pick instead to go along with #2. We did NOT like Arenas. We did however think this draft was a top heavy draft, consisting of Pau and Gilbert. But Arenas was not someone we wanted to build our franchise around. Anyone who knows anything about my GMing style knows that I like a PG with D and good handles and court vision.
So we drafted Arenas and then took Randolph. I had another deal which was another "done" deal which involved us trading Arenas for the #6 pick and some very nice 1st rounders. We were going to stick with the long rebuild and go Z-Bo and Chandler. BUT ALAS.....that deal didn't happen either. So combined with our lack of love for Gilbert and feeling hopeless from failed trade after failed trade, we pulled the trigger on the Arenas/Camby deal. Once that happened the rest kinda started snowballing. We had the Celtics pick next year, and they contacted us, telling us about their wants to start rebuilding. Zo happened and then Jalen happened. We feel really good about the moves that we were able to make. No we weren't planning on contending for a while but it kinda just happened.
We never looked at the difficulty of the division when making these decisions. We'd rather win the toughest division in the league than any other. My goal is to bring the fans of Seattle the same elation I brought to the fans of Dallas. Too bad they'll never have that again in Dallas, but I digress. We plan on signing Jalen Rose to a super max contract after this year as well. Yes we will be strapped as far as cap goes but we'll figure it out. We always have. We will always make the best decisions for this franchise no matter how unpopular they may be. You will NEVER see us chained to a player's exorbitant contract while not producing. Needless to say we will be contending for at least the next 3 years.
