First, we would've decided upon a direction for the franchise. And as it happens, that direction would be the same one we advocated eight months ago: rebuilding, with an eye towards competing in 2011-12. There is, and was, no reason to believe that the Warriors could contend for a playoff spot in the upcoming season, so why waste resources trying? Moreover, NBA armageddon looms next summer, as a lockout and extensive re-jiggering of the salary cap structure are more than likely. If you don't have a good team when the mushroom cloud hits, you're best off getting yourself cheap, young and flexible, so you can nab talent from those teams that need to dump salary in a hurry.
A rebuilding mindset would've led to the following moves. (Note: we're not changing the Udoh pick, because that's too easy.)
1) A dump of Corey Maggette's contract, much like the one that actually happened.
2) A dump of Monta Ellis's contract.
3) Matches of the Nets' offer to Anthony Morrow and the Bulls' offer to C.J. Watson.
4) Firing the living shit out of Don Nelson.
The only move here that should merit even a moment's debate is the dumping of Monta, and a close observer won't need more than a moment. We Worriers love the guy, but he's now two years removed from his last effective season, and it's no longer reasonable to expect the heights we dreamed about in 2008. In the cold light of objectivity, four years and $44 million for an undersized two with effectiveness issues screams "money poorly spent". Sorry, Dub fans... this isn't the building block we're looking for.
Let's say we pull the trigger on the Milwaukee Maggette deal, and that we get the Grizzlies to agree to the same Monta-for-Mayo-and-Thabeet deal they offered us at the deadline. Our roster would then look like this:
PG: Stephen Curry, C.J. Watson
SG: Anthony Morrow, O.J. Mayo, Charlie Bell
SF: Kelenna Azubuike, Reggie Williams
PF: Anthony Randolph, Brandan Wright, Ekpe Udoh, Vladimir Radmanovic
C: Andris Biedrins, Ronny Turiaf, Hasheem Thabeet, Dan Gadzuric
Is this team as good as the current version? Probably not (we also denied ourselves the tempting cheat of aping the Dorell Wright signing), but it's not a totally laughable proposition. The defense wouldn't have been any worse -- the departed Anthonys weren't nearly as brutal on that end as Monta and Lee were last season -- and Anthony Morrow's been a much bigger offensive asset than Monta the past two years. CJ, Mayo, Ronny and Thabeet make ours the superior bench by a mile. Barring a massive regresson by Anthony Randolph, there's just not a lot to separate the two rosters on production, and if Randolph takes a step forward, we just might have the better one.
More to the point, we're not making the playoffs this season anyway. Our goal isn't to maximize our win potential... our goal is to maximize the attractiveness of our assets. And with the singular exception of Charlie Bell, every single player on the roster above is either an expiring contract, a cheap and useful role player, an intriguing young talent or some combination of the three.
The above roster puts us squarely in the middle of the conversation every time a star is on the market: we can offer help and value at every single position, with frontcourt depth to spare, in particular. In the meantime, we're evaluating talent, and possibly moving pieces for draft picks when opportunities arise (the salary situations of Turiaf, BWright, and Azubuike make them good candidates to be dealt, and we'd try to re-trade O.J. Mayo, because fuck O.J. Mayo). Nobody is untouchable here... not Curry, not Randolph, not anybody. Nothing about a crappy team is sacred. But we're not moving upside guys under team control for anything less than maximum value. If a good deadline deal arises, great. If not, we sail into next summer with
- Stephen Curry
- C.J. Watson
- Anthony Morrow
- Anthony Randolph
- Ekpe Udoh
- Andris Biedrins
- Hasheem Thabeet
- the expiring contract of Charlie Bell
...at a total cost just south of $35 million, plus our 2011 draft pick(s) and whatever future picks we may have netted along the way. We've got three high-upside guys in Curry, Randolph and Thabeet (who's put up Mutombo-esque numbers in his limited NBA minutes), plus useful role players in Biedrins, Morrow, CJ and (hopefully) Udoh. We need a small forward, but we've got the space to add a max guy via signing or trade, so we're not exactly hurting for options.
Guaranteed success? By no means... you can't assure that out of the pieces at hand. You need a great player to have a shot. But you need to give yourself a shot at a great player. And by whittling our roster down to Curry, Randolph, Thabeet, tradeable assets and cap space, we've done that as well as we possibly can.
Stupid teams panic and pay through the nose for non-superstars. Smart teams grab value on the cheap and wait for a target worth pulling the trigger for. We'd still be waiting.
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