Originally Posted by
Zekyl
Just because it was brought up that we should have gone with Bosh instead of Darko:
You have to look past the entitlement thing Darko had going on. He was just barely 18 and still maturing when we drafted him and everyone was telling him how he was going to be a star. If he had been drafted by any other team, he’d have been playing 25 a night. We turned him into a human victory cigar killed his confidence:
How do you think it would have turned out if we'd given him at least 5-10 mpg as a rookie then given him Memo's role the next year? His biggest problem was the attitude he developed, which wouldn't have been as big of an issue if he'd been getting more than mop-up duty in blowouts.
03-04
Don't you think that 5-10 minutes in a real game situation along with a real big-man coach as a rookie would have given him some seasoning/experience and built his confidence more than 2 useless minutes with scrubs in a blowout? It would have cost us what, 4-5 games in the standings at most? We won 54 games for the #3 seed that year and the 4th seed won 42. It wouldn't have affected our playoff seed in the slightest.
04-05
He'd have developed more as a rookie and he'd be ready for a bigger role in his sophomore season. He wouldn’t be some dominant player or ready to star, obviously. He'd make mistakes but he'd be learning/developing and he'd provide some rest for our bigs. We had McDyess getting 22mpg, Sheed at 33 and Ben at 37, plus Elden at 10. We could easily give him 15 a game without even touching McDyess’s minutes and we’d keep Ben and Sheed a bit more fresh for the playoffs. We'd drop 3-4 games or so, but we had 54 and the next best team had 47. We'd still be the #2 seed and we'd have more frontcourt depth in the playoffs.
Everything changes from this point on.
05-06
We don't have to spend the '05 offseason on Dale Davis, instead using that money on a real backup SF. Davis and Mo Evans turns into an MLE SF and Tay isn't playing 37mpg in 05-06. You don’t have Ben and Sheed logging 36 and 35 mpg respectively. That’s quite a difference when you can keep 3 borderline all-stars from being burned out down the stretch.
06-07
When Ben leaves after the ‘06 season, Darko steps into the starting spot. We don't spend the MLE on Nazr or go after Chris Webber, instead fortifying our bench in the offseason. Our main bench was an aging Hunter, the beloved Flip Murray, Carlos Delfino (post-knee injury), McDyess and Dale Davis. We couldn’t improve that if we still had the MLE available? We could still get Murray with the LLE, so we’d essentially have a bigtime bench upgrade at PG (MLE) and SF (‘05 MLE), with McDyess being our #1 big off the bench and SG duties being a battle between Murray and Delfino (where he belonged). Chauncey played 37mpg because he didn’t have a real backup. Tay played almost 38. And we had a visibly aged Webber playing 30. They all wore out in the playoffs.
07-08
We all know the catastrophe that was this season. Dyess was forced back into a starting role. Nazr was moved from Brezec and Herrmann. Flip Murray was our backup PG and we brought in Juan Dixon and Jarvis Hayes. We got ourselves some Theo Ratliff time. Catastrophe. The fact that we made it as far as we did is amazing to me. With a developed Darko, McDyess stays on the bench. Nazr isn’t even here to be traded. We already have a decent backup PG and SF. We never have to consider guys like Dixon and Hayes and the idea of Ratliff is just for a big body at most. The only downside is that we don’t draft Stuckey, but we wouldn’t need him.
Darko could have been a poor man’s KG, with a little more range. He had range to the 3pt line. He had some nice face-up post moves that never got developed. He could handle the ball. He blocked shots. He was extremely athletic for his size, with people talking about him potentially being a 4 that could play some 3 (like a taller AK47) if we developed him that way. Our staff botched his development as much as he did. Yes he felt entitled, but he’d just turned 18 years old. Look at Andrew Bynum in LA. Same age as a rookie. He got minutes as and they hired Kareem to coach him. If you give Darko some minutes and pay an ex-star big man to tutor him, that becomes a completely different situation. Hell, they could have had Lambs or Mahorn knocking him around in practice and it would have been better than how the situation was actually handled.
I'm obviously not saying he'd have been as good as KG, just the same style of play. A little more range, a little less overall talent and intensity.
What if is a fun game when you’re killing time.
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