Actually if you did it right, it was possible to land Lillard. We wouldnt just have started tanking at the end and barely miss the playoffs. What good would that do? Im an advocate that we should have tanked. This is how you do it. You trade one, two, or all the players you could last year minus the core four. So that would have been Al, Millsap, Harris, Howard, or whoever we wanted. Maybe even keep Millsap and do away with the rest. Or even just Al. But if you went with just Al we probably would have been better. So that might not have worked. So Al + a few others.
This is how it works. We trade away the vets for bad contracts and picks. We would have got a lot for Al too, dont fool yourself. He isnt as hard to move as people think. Look at what Houston did for example. Now that we have done that we now have time to play and develop our young core, all while probably losing a lot of games. Our crappy record then pushes the Golden state pick back one as well. At that point we probably have the 6 pick or better plus the 8 or 9 from GS. Dont forget about the games last year too that we beat GS, those games we probably lose because we arent that good. Then there is the possibility that we could have won the first pick over all and landed Anthony Davis.
Ya its too late now, but I just think that was a better direction for the franchise at that point in time. We would have increased our odds of landing a star all the while getting rid of this stupid Al Jefferson offense that isnt going to be here in a year anyways. We also wasted valuable time getting guys experience that wont be on the team next year, and guys who arent on the team any more either. I know that we would have been bad for a while, but I would be willing to wait. Because I would have a lot more hope that the team could actually win a championship one day. Watching the our rooks would have been much funner anyways.
How about this for a core going forward if we did it and it worked
Lillard
Hayward
Barnes/Drummond
Kanter
Favors
Burks
+ Whatever picks we obtained from our trades.
That was actually obtainable last year, and we decided that we would pass all for a pathetic blow out in the playoffs, and another frustrating team this year.