Friday, January 27, 2006

Kevin McHale and his unraveling sweater of ineptitude

But Mike, you forgot to mention the TWO conditional second round picks we got as well!

You couldn't be more right. Yet another inept move from McHale that leaves us hanging out to dry in the winds of mediocrity.

I like Wally a lot. I understand that the game is a business and Wally's stock has never been higher since he's averaged over 20 points a game and showed that his injury problems seem to have disappeared. But the thing about this move is that it's a move of necessity rather than one of opportunity.

When you look at how poorly McHale has run this team, it should come to no surprise that this team is in desperate needs to shake things up. How many players did this team miss out on by pulling the Joe Smith debacle. How many wrong players has McHale chosen when he did have draft picks (Ndudi over Josh Howard comes to mind immediately).

Instead of holding on to our first round picks, something this team has been without for years, and has suffered miserably because of it, we've chosen to put our hopes in a glut of second round picks and castoffs from a mediocre team. If you know anything about the NBA, you know the difference between a 1st and 2nd round pick his huge. Probably the NFL equivalent of a 1st rounder and a 6th round draft pick.

I guess I don't look at this trade as something that makes us worse, but like Mike says, it doesn't make us better. We'll probably have a first round pick next year, as I don't see us making the playoffs this year without a remarkable turnaround. But that means (if I understand the way it works), we give away our '07 first rounder from the Jaric deal, and then the '08 would be the one from this most recent deal.

There's so much to dissect and analyze, but I think the end result of any discussion needs to include showing Mr. McHale the door at season's end. His year to year handshake deal with Taylor is one of the more absurd things I've heard of in sports. When the guy in charge of building this team and making sure it has every piece it needs to win, why would we wait for a guy to decide if wants to make a commitment to the team or if he wants to go fishing. If we're trying to build a solid foundation for championship run with KG, we need to start fresh.