Lol man... DA himself said the group had stagnated in the playoffs and he wanted to build a team that could compete for titles. He also said himself that they are surprised at how well the team did... so not on accident per se but he didn't think we'd be this good.Ok you need to stop repeating this. You really think we were going to places with Rudy and DM? You paint that picture way too often. We were an asset poor team in cap hell who didnt beat any contender when properly schemed against.
DA took those trades because he was tasked to fix the issue at hand. He was not tasked to blow it up. He was tasked to rebuild the team.
If he really wanted to tank, he had done much poorer job on roster building (just sell Bogdy or trade him for a young guy). He had every justification to sell high early season because of the magic word "rebuild" was never gonna be questioned in our case and even when we started 3-0 everyone still thought we were just accidentally good.
He didnt. In fact he traded for KO with a sole purpose of making our roster better. Yet you somehow think he was aiming for the bottom.
Its very likely he wanted a functional team to help guys develop. We didn't want to be the worst team in the league. The KO trade was the best deal we could get for Bogey and we told him we'd move him before camp... also saved us $5M. We had engaged with LA and Phoenix on deals that would return picks first... then settled on the KO deal.
Trade season really isn't "open" yet. So DA even if he planned to have a good lotto pick... really hasn't had much of a chance to sell high yet. And maybe he saw the rough opening schedule and thought "I will have time and can get a premium for these guys later". Then we won 3 close games... we got some injury luck and opponent shooting luck... and the team jelled faster than he thought. So now the record is 10-6 when it could easily be 7-9 or worse.
I think the plan all along has been to be opportunistic. That is still the plan but now we may be buyers instead of sellers... I'm okay with that if great opportunities arise. The biggest upside imo is still very much selling off some vets and ending in the lotto.
We also have to realize DA/JZ report to Ryan... and saying "we will tear it to studs and be the tanky sixers for two years" likely doesn't fly. So you tear down piece by piece as opportunities arise.