2018 Official Offseason Thread

[Franchise408 116]

Hennigan was that bad.

First of all, this is the longest playoff drought the franchise has ever faced. Therefore, my assessment that Hennigan is the worst thing to ever happen to this franchise is quite factually true.

2nd of all, while he was dealt a bad hand, he literally did nothing to make it better. He aimlessly dealt away what little pieces he did have for even less, and then wasted all the cap space on less than role players.

Yea, tanking when your best option is Oladipo is bad luck. Kind of the reason why tanking is a bad philosophy to begin with. You're intentionally sinking your team on the hopes that your team will win the lottery. Not just the draft lottery, but the lottery of time as well that you are getting the right pick at the right time. Not a great idea. It's somewhere around 50% of all #1 overall picks that bust out or underwhelm. On top of the fact that over the past 2-3 decades or so, you can count on 1 hand the number of franchises that have turned their fortunes around and won championships on the back of their #1 overall pick. It's a horrid philosophy that is proven time and again to not be viable.

I won't blame him for the drafts. In hindsight, he could have done better. But at the time, these guys were the best options at the time.

Oladipo and trading for Payton looked good.

Gordon was the best possible pick at that point.

Hezonja made all the sense.

But trading Oladipo AND a 1st for Ibaka did not make sense. That was a horrible trade to send away 2 young talents for 1 middling non-super star.

Trading away a young developing player for Ilasova and Jennings was a waste of a talent.

Giving $17 million to a roleplayer in Fournier was damaging to the franchise. Giving $17 million to a roleplayer in Biyombo was damaging to the franchise. Wasting all of our free agent signings on guys like Jeff Green or DJ Augustine was a waste of time and cap space.

Hennigan was dealt a bad hand, yes, but he did absolutely nothing to better us. Hennigan's actions as GM were actively detrimental to this franchise and have set us back greatly for years to come. Weltman now has to come in and clean up the mess created by Hennigan, and waste crucial years of Gordon, Isaac, and Bamba's contracts and careers to do it.

Hennigan literally is the worst thing to ever happen to this franchise. I'm actually kind of dumbfounded that you've continued to defend him all this time, failure after failure after failure. The proof is in the results. In all of his tenure, we did not improve even slightly. It's taken getting a new GM in here to clean up his mess and give a little bit of hope and optimism for the future. 

I'd take Otis Smith over Hennigan any day. For all of Smith's faults by the end, at least Smith initially assembled a championship caliber roster. And at least in the downfall, he was *trying*. I'm not gonna defend some of those moves he made towards the end, like bringing in Gilbert Arenas for example, but at least the guy was trying to assemble a championship quality roster. A feat that he did accomplish once. With Hennigan, we just perpetuated in mediocrity and obscurity to the entirety of his tenure. With Weltman, we are at least beginning to swim to the surface to get our heads back above water.

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

1 minute ago, Franchise408 said:

Hennigan was that bad.

First of all, this is the longest playoff drought the franchise has ever faced. Therefore, my assessment that Hennigan is the worst thing to ever happen to this franchise is quite factually true.

2nd of all, while he was dealt a bad hand, he literally did nothing to make it better. He aimlessly dealt away what little pieces he did have for even less, and then wasted all the cap space on less than role players.

Yea, tanking when your best option is Oladipo is bad luck. Kind of the reason why tanking is a bad philosophy to begin with. You're intentionally sinking your team on the hopes that your team will win the lottery. Not just the draft lottery, but the lottery of time as well that you are getting the right pick at the right time. Not a great idea. It's somewhere around 50% of all #1 overall picks that bust out or underwhelm. On top of the fact that over the past 2-3 decades or so, you can count on 1 hand the number of franchises that have turned their fortunes around and won championships on the back of their #1 overall pick. It's a horrid philosophy that is proven time and again to not be viable.

I won't blame him for the drafts. In hindsight, he could have done better. But at the time, these guys were the best options at the time.

Oladipo and trading for Payton looked good.

Gordon was the best possible pick at that point.

Hezonja made all the sense.

But trading Oladipo AND a 1st for Ibaka did not make sense. That was a horrible trade to send away 2 young talents for 1 middling non-super star.

Trading away a young developing player for Ilasova and Jennings was a waste of a talent.

Giving $17 million to a roleplayer in Fournier was damaging to the franchise. Giving $17 million to a roleplayer in Biyombo was damaging to the franchise. Wasting all of our free agent signings on guys like Jeff Green or DJ Augustine was a waste of time and cap space.

Hennigan was dealt a bad hand, yes, but he did absolutely nothing to better us. Hennigan's actions as GM were actively detrimental to this franchise and have set us back greatly for years to come. Weltman now has to come in and clean up the mess created by Hennigan, and waste crucial years of Gordon, Isaac, and Bamba's contracts and careers to do it.

Hennigan literally is the worst thing to ever happen to this franchise. I'm actually kind of dumbfounded that you've continued to defend him all this time, failure after failure after failure. The proof is in the results. In all of his tenure, we did not improve even slightly. It's taken getting a new GM in here to clean up his mess and give a little bit of hope and optimism for the future. 

I'd take Otis Smith over Hennigan any day. For all of Smith's faults by the end, at least Smith initially assembled a championship caliber roster. And at least in the downfall, he was *trying*. I'm not gonna defend some of those moves he made towards the end, like bringing in Gilbert Arenas for example, but at least the guy was trying to assemble a championship quality roster. A feat that he did accomplish once. With Hennigan, we just perpetuated in mediocrity and obscurity to the entirety of his tenure. With Weltman, we are at least beginning to swim to the surface to get our heads back above water.

No. Hennigan wasn't that bad. 

Good players don't sign with bad teams. We pursued good players in free agency, they didn't want to come. Biyombo was a terrible move but the Lakers, Pistons, hornets, heat, grizzlies, bucks, blazers, pelicans, Hawks, Knicks, rockets, wizards and Mavs made similar bad deals. It's just kind of a situation where the league lost their minds. 

The ibaka trade was hennigan trying. 

You're being intellectually dishonest with your assessment. 

[Franchise408 116]

I'm not being dishonest about anything.

This franchise was light years away from contending the entire time Hennigan was in charge. There was absolutely no reason to trade away our top young player, and another 1st round draft pick, for Ibaka who was a glorified role player with success playing alongside Durant, Westbrook, and Harden. That move was awful in every sense of the word.

While trading for Arenas was also awful, at least the team was in somewhat of a contention window at the time, so bringing in a vet like Arenas made a lot more sense. Especially since Rashard Lewis was on the decline and on a max contract.

Just because other bad franchises do the same thing doesn't mean that we should too. Would be better to make no move than to overpay for mediocre talent and hinder this franchise for the foreseeable future from being able to make any sort of improvement. 

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

Just now, Franchise408 said:

I'm not being dishonest about anything.

This franchise was light years away from contending the entire time Hennigan was in charge. There was absolutely no reason to trade away our top young player, and another 1st round draft pick, for Ibaka who was a glorified role player with success playing alongside Durant, Westbrook, and Harden. That move was awful in every sense of the word.

While trading for Arenas was also awful, at least the team was in somewhat of a contention window at the time, so bringing in a vet like Arenas made a lot more sense. Especially since Rashard Lewis was on the decline and on a max contract.

The team was in contention solely because of Dwight who we lucked into. Going back to the spoiled magic fan point. 

[Franchise408 116]

5 minutes ago, ?4thewin said:

The team was in contention solely because of Dwight who we lucked into. Going back to the spoiled magic fan point. 

You can call it luck if you want, and luck certainly plays a major factor (Exhibit A against tanking), but I do believe there was another player coming out in that draft who was widely considered to be the better NBA talent. It was our front office, our GM, that made the (correct) decision to acquire that player, against loads of logic stating otherwise. But don't let the actual decisions made by both front offices in question actually get in the way of the argument, right? Poor Rob just had bad luck. He should have been given 15 years to continue driving this franchise into the ground, because eventually "luck" would go his way and he'd look good. Right?

Use Dwight Howard to excuse Hennigan all you want. Your sole job is to improve the team and make it the best that it can be. When the team didn't improve in 5 years, you failed at your job. Within that same time frame after losing a franchise turning player, Weisbrod and later Smith had turned this franchise completely around. So much so, in fact, that LeBron had to take his talents to South Beach.

Maybe if he didn't employ the "tank" philosophy, he wouldn't have had to rely on luck, which was out of his control, and perhaps he could still have his job.

You play the lottery, you lose. Don't tank if you can't handle the results.

[Originalticketholder 133]

1 hour ago, Franchise408 said:

As much as I am disappointed in them for walking away from Isaiah Thomas... I'm not sure exactly what else they were supposed to do up to this point other than make draft selections?

Hennigan destroyed this franchise. I'm not kidding when I say I consider him the worst thing to ever happen to this franchise. I totally get that he walked into the Dwightmare, but to be fair, John Weisbrod and later, Otis Smith, walked into the same situation with Tracy McGrady leaving. However, Weisbrod (and again, Otis Smith later down the line) turned that rebuild into quite possibly the best roster this franchise has ever assembled. At this point after losing Tracy McGrady, we already had to ECF appearances and an NBA Finals appearance in our pocket. Because of Hennigan, we haven't even sniffed an 8th seed.

Hennigan absolutely refused to sign talent. It's like he was repulsed by talent. Instead of taking chances on actual talent, he ruined our cap space by giving big time $$$ to guys like Evan Fournier and Bismack Biyombo. On top of other somewhat largeish contracts to DJ Augustine, Nikola Vucevic, and Terrence Ross, this team has a playoff level payroll with less than playoff level talent. So we can't go out and actually get anybody.

Which is one reason why I was such a proponent of Isaiah Thomas... he is a talent that can carry us to the playoffs at a fraction of the cost. But that aside...

We have no assets to make trades with. We don't have the kind of assets that would be necessary to trade for a top talent. If we were able to pull of a move like that, it would guy our roster to the point that having that talent would mean nothing. Assets that we did have, Hennigan aimlessly traded them away (Oladipo, Harris)

We have no cap space to sign significant talent. So we have to wait out all of these contracts to expire so we can have cap space to start surrounding our young core of Gordon, Isaac, and Bamba with talent.

The scary thing about this is, by the time we finally get our team to a point where we can start supplementing our young talent, guys like Gordon, Isaac, and Bamba are gonna be nearing free agency again so we are going to have to sign free agents AND extend our existing talent.

My disappointment in Isaiah Thomas aside, and my negative perspective of the Biyombo trade aside (I don't think that trade actually did anything to make us better or put us in a better position in the short or long term), I'm not sure what else these guys were supposed to do the past year and this off-season? There's just not a lot of options for them on the table at the moment. Literally, drafting is the only option they have at their disposal right now.

But I definitely do like the Bamba pick. Jury is still out for me on the Isaac pick. I love him in NBA 2K18 lol. But in the NBA, he's just too young and last year missed too much time to have an educated opinion on him right now. But I'm optimistic that he'll end up having been a good pick too.

Outside of the Biyombo trade and not signing Thomas, they haven't done anything that I wouldn't do as GM. Basically, I feel like the plan is - and should be - build up around a developing Gordon, Isaac, and Bamba, and when the time is right, bring in one star talent to supplement them and lead them. That would hopefully be enough to put this team over.

No thanks. Hard pass on Dwight.

Great post and your articulation and thought process hits the nail on the head.  This FO picking up the pieces of what Hennigan and Vogel did/failed to do. Having followed Isaac here in Tallahassee and seeing his character and skill set I am very confident he can become a very good playmaker/facilitator but will probably ccome to frution in year 3 not this year.  Lots of learning for him this year.  We are all in agreement about the PG need.  And all hoping for a miracle. lol.  IT would have been a good offensive addition.  Wish we knew what happened?  

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

2 minutes ago, Franchise408 said:

You can call it luck if you want, and luck certainly plays a major factor (Exhibit A against tanking), but I do believe there was another player coming out in that draft who was widely considered to be the better NBA talent. It was our front office, our GM, that made the (correct) decision to acquire that player, against loads of logic stating otherwise. But don't let the actual decisions made by both front offices in question actually get in the way of the argument, right? Poor Rob just had bad luck. He should have been given 15 years to continue driving this franchise into the ground, because eventually "luck" would go his way and he'd look good. Right?

Use Dwight Howard to excuse Hennigan all you want. Your sole job is to improve the team and make it the best that it can be. When the team didn't improve in 5 years, you failed at your job.

Maybe if he didn't employ the "tank" philosophy, he wouldn't have had to rely on luck, which was out of his control, and perhaps he could still have his job.

You play the lottery, you lose. Don't tank if you can't handle the results.

If ownership didn't lose patience we wouldn't have traded oladipo.

In a market where every team has cap space tanking is the only real philosophy you can utilize for improvement. 

[Mauro Pedrosa 1,031]

Hennigan wasn't horrible, he just stuck with two negative players for too long. Payton and Vucevic

At one point we had Oladipo, Mario and Gordon on the same team. 3 incredibly athletic players that could play together and had upside as 3 pt shooters.

I was even cool with the Ibaka trade but we basically refused to play him at the 5. Mario, Gordon, Ibaka could have been a great modern frontcourt.

I know basketball can be tricky and you have to make tough choices. Even running a fantasy team is tricky. I traded away Andre Drummond for a different look and now I want him back lol

But yes, Vucevic and Payton were a type of player that we KNEW were awful fits in today's NBA from the very moment they came to Orlando, and somehow one of them is still around. That's what killed Hennigan and got us to where we are

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

11 minutes ago, Mauro Pedrosa said:

Hennigan wasn't horrible, he just stuck with two negative players for too long. Payton and Vucevic

At one point we had Oladipo, Mario and Gordon on the same team. 3 incredibly athletic players that could play together and had upside as 3 pt shooters.

I was even cool with the Ibaka trade but we basically refused to play him at the 5. Mario, Gordon, Ibaka could have been a great modern frontcourt.

I know basketball can be tricky and you have to make tough choices. Even running a fantasy team is tricky. I traded away Andre Drummond for a different look and now I want him back lol

But yes, Vucevic and Payton were a type of player that we KNEW were awful fits in today's NBA from the very moment they came to Orlando, and somehow one of them is still around. That's what killed Hennigan and got us to where we are

That's kind of my criticism with hennigan and why I think our current roster is fine to start actually building around. 

Hennigan collected too many young players and then never built toward something. And instead tried to maximize the highest frequency of players instead of taking oladipo and Gordon and building a team based on them. He thought going forward with oladipo meant not choosing Fournier and Payton and it was a miscalculation. Ibaka was meant to salvage vucevic and it was a miscalculation. 

So now we have Gordon Bamba Isaac, just build around those guys. Find the best supplementary pieces and just go from there. Don't look too the draft for another season and hope the perfect point guard or shooting guard falls to you. Go out and get that guy (though it's true that "that guy" might take time to find). 

[magicdoc1 261]

16 hours ago, Murphy13 said:

You said you liked the trade, and also said you weren't sure if ATL would do it unless we added a first round pick to the trade.  How I value Nik is irrelevant to the topic, though my view of him is best described as indifferent.  Regardless, its a terrible return to begin with, especially when you consider the potential legal trouble.  It's not well thought out.  

I got you. I was referring on me no agreeing on adding an extra pick in the deal. While Atlanta likely be requesting it. 

I was ok with just the swap but I didnt know about his legal issues so I agree NOW that it is not a good deal at all.

[Mauro Pedrosa 1,031]

16 minutes ago, ?4thewin said:

That's kind of my criticism with hennigan and why I think our current roster is fine to start actually building around. 

Hennigan collected too many young players and then never built toward something. And instead tried to maximize the highest frequency of players instead of taking oladipo and Gordon and building a team based on them. He thought going forward with oladipo meant not choosing Fournier and Payton and it was a miscalculation. Ibaka was meant to salvage vucevic and it was a miscalculation. 

So now we have Gordon Bamba Isaac, just build around those guys. Find the best supplementary pieces and just go from there. Don't look too the draft for another season and hope the perfect point guard or shooting guard falls to you. Go out and get that guy (though it's true that "that guy" might take time to find). 

I agree and at some point you have to look at the pieces you already have and build around their specific needs. That's why I'm against drafting BPA at every opportunity. When you have an empty drawer, you obviously take BPA but not all the time

[Mauro Pedrosa 1,031]

Also, I haven't expressed how good AG's contract was yet. Masterpiece by WeltHam