The Future

[Toocool]

Looking at our Bobcats roster, I'm wondering where we're heading in the future.

First we have four "keys" to the future if I would say.
These four are:

Alexis Ajinca
Gerald Henderson
D.J Augustine
Derrick Brown

We all know that LB isn't that much of a fan of playing rookies, and likes to give game-time to his senior members more (i.e Crash, Bell, Diaw). Therefore alotta benchwarming for Hendo and UPS.

So where does the future lie with the Bobcats?

Next year we'll have alot of superstars out on offer with the FA.
Bosh, Wade, James to name a few, but with our salary cap we won't be able to get one of these superstars due to several fellas being heavily overpaid i.e Diop, Mohammed, Vlad Rad

So would the question be to trade Vlad Rad and Diop, and possibly future round picks for a superstar, or start with building up our rookies?

I personally would like to see Diop and Vlad outta here, Vlad is somewhat sub-par for the minutes he's receiving, and with Diop we need a scorer, not someone who can't score at all.

Your thoughts on the future?

Oh and before I forget, keep LB on for another 2 years or so.

[spectre]

Our future is in 2011 when we will have maximum capspace. There's no one on this squad with the possible exception of Crash that warrants the word "future" IMO.

Some like DJ & Henderson have potential to be...but to date nothing's set in stone.

[Chef]

by 2011, crash's future will have come and gone. he will only have a few quality years left.

[dav7z]

Our future is in 2011 when we will have maximum capspace. There's no one on this squad with the possible exception of Crash that warrants the word "future" IMO.

Some like DJ & Henderson have potential to be...but to date nothing's set in stone.

, Players like Felton have proved to be support cast. DJ, Hendo , Lexy are looking for starting jobs and long contracts, This team could go a lot of ways . I don't really see a conor stone including Crash, He could make some cotender a great 2nd or 3rd option.
Its not a team in the league thet gives us a 2nd round pick for Diop , In 2011 , the new direction of the team will be more clear.

[BRNC]

Vlad and Diop (IMO) can only be traded for worse contracts than theirs at this point...I hope that changes but I don't see it happening in the near future...

[Walt Cronkite]

Looking at our Bobcats roster, I'm wondering where we're heading in the future.

First we have four "keys" to the future if I would say.
These four are:

Alexis Ajinca
Gerald Henderson
D.J Augustine
Derrick Brown

We all know that LB isn't that much of a fan of playing rookies, and likes to give game-time to his senior members more (i.e Crash, Bell, Diaw). Therefore alotta benchwarming for Hendo and UPS.

So where does the future lie with the Bobcats?

Next year we'll have alot of superstars out on offer with the FA.
Bosh, Wade, James to name a few, but with our salary cap we won't be able to get one of these superstars due to several fellas being heavily overpaid i.e Diop, Mohammed, Vlad Rad

So would the question be to trade Vlad Rad and Diop, and possibly future round picks for a superstar, or start with building up our rookies?

I personally would like to see Diop and Vlad outta here, Vlad is somewhat sub-par for the minutes he's receiving, and with Diop we need a scorer, not someone who can't score at all.

Your thoughts on the future?

Oh and before I forget, keep LB on for another 2 years or so.

This is totally untrue and if we all know it, then we're all fools. http://www.basketball-reference.com/...rownla01c.html --find a player in the last two decades that had talent and didn't play, much less a rookie.

Here, I'll do most of the work for you. Here's a list of guys that probably didn't get as many minutes as rookies compared to the success they had over their careers: Tony Massenberg, Elliot Perry, Mark Strickland, Travis Best, Fred Hoiberg.

Massenberg arguably should've played over Sidney Green and Dave Greenwood (in his final career), but I'm thinking he wasn't very good since a year later he played 18 games for 4 different teams. I also think it's fair to give LB a pass here, since rookies David Robinson and Sean Elliott both got 37+ mpg.

I'll admit to not being familiar with Elliot Perry, but statistically he had good years in his mid 20s and a last hurrah at 30. LB played guards Charles Grant, Doc Rivers, Bo Kimble and Danny Young more minutes than him. Of those, I can only say that I've seen Doc play before for certain.

Mark Strickland had a nice career but didn't get many opportunities as a rookie with Derrick McKey, Dale Davis and Antonio Davis all logging heavy minutes at his position. Maybe he should've played over LaSalle Thompson, John Williams and Greg Kite, maybe he wasn't ready yet.

I remember Travis Best being good, but looking over his career, maybe I overrated him because I was only 10 when he was a rookie. Haywoode Workman got the backup PG minutes behind Mark Jackson. Best still got close to 10 minutes a game. Hoiberg had to pick up minutes behind Miller, Johnson and Pierce, who were all good. Duane Ferrell was not, but maybe he brought something on defense that Hoiberg wasn't ready for.

This leads to the 76ers, who are going to require some more time, but I need to do some other things first. So far though, you had to have some really good players ahead of you to not get significant minutes as a rookie under LB. It's actually more damning if you didn't play much, because in almost every circumstance you were awful, or a Mark Strickland/Fred Hoiberg type guy.

[spectre]

Heh...I can see you having to repeat that ad nauseam just like I had to repeat over and over about Felton's BYC last summer.

Good luck.

[dnbman]

Heh...I can see you having to repeat that ad nauseam just like I had to repeat over and over about Felton's BYC last summer.

Good luck.

Speaking of Felton and this past summer, I wish we would have traded him!

But, then we'd be stuck with rookies, and Brown wouldn't have played any of them.

[Walt Cronkite]

As promised earlier, part 2.

LB’s Philly era isn’t as cut and dry as the near decade before it. There were many rookies brought, excluding the scrubs that were quickly out of the league (or never in it) we have: Anthony Parker, Tim Thomas, Nazr Mohammed, Larry Hughes, Jumaine Jones, Todd MacCulloch, Raja Bell, Speedy Claxton, Samuel Dalembert, and John Salmons. Of those, Parker, Mohammed, McCulloch, Jones, Bell, Dalembert and Salmons got less than 10 mpg as rookies (9.4 for McCulloch). Thomas, Hughes and Claxton all played more than 20mpg, but the guys getting less than 10mpg are pretty good, so what gives?

Anthony Parker’s career was jump started in Tel Aviv, where he became one of the best Euroleague players of all time. Since then, he’s been a consistent player who’s noted for his defense. I’m not sure why he fell out of the NBA, wiki mentions that he was “largely plagued by injury”. Since he seems like an LB type player, I think it’s safe to assume that the injury excuse is probably valid. LB played Jim Jackson and Aaron McKie at his position a lot, but neither had very good seasons. Without knowing more details, I’ll concede that this is a good example of a time when LB probably should’ve played a rookie, but thought veterans would be the key to making the playoffs. They missed the playoffs and let AP slip away. Whoops.

Nazr Mohammed has never played well for Larry Brown. I don’t know if it’s personal, but it’s true. Last season, when everyone was shocked at how few minutes Naz was getting, he still got more minutes than his first two seasons in the league. The best explanation I can offer is that Theo Ratliff was in his prime. This was the last above average year of Geiger’s career and both of those guys were getting more than 30mpg. I’d suggest that the 50 game lockout season had something to do with it, but his minutes didn’t really increase a year later and the roster was largely the same. (In fact, he only appeared in 2 more games in year two despite his team having an additional 32. OUCH!!) Best explanation I can come up with is that something about Mohammed’s playing style rubs LB the wrong way.

Todd MacCulloch got just under 10 mpg in his rookie year. He was efficient in his limited minutes and filled in nicely for the declining Geiger. Stole minutes at the 5 from sophomore Naz.

Jumaine Jones would have the most efficient year of his career as a sophomore, but his rookie year was not so great. He had Lynch, McKie, Kukoc, Hughes, Billy Owens and Bruce Bowen ahead of him on the roster. Billy Owens wasn’t very good at this point though, so maybe Jones should’ve had some of his 20mpg. Not sure if Owens was known for his defense or not.

Raja Bell provides the knee jerk reaction that would support a comment like “SEE! LB doesn’t like to play rookies that will go on to be good players!”, but remember, he was an undrafted FA out of Florida Int’l. I think LB really saw a lot of potential in Raja and made him his pet project, since a year later Bell would start 12 games and log 12mpg for the season.

Dalembert didn’t play very much as a rookie (5.2 mpg in 34 games) and didn’t play at all the following season. As a rook he missed 28 games due to injury and had arthroscopic knee surgery in his second year. In his first year of full health, he got 27mpg, but Randy Ayers and Chris Ford had taken over the coaching duties by then. Which leads me to:

LB’S DETROIT PISTON STINT AKA THE DARKO MILICIC FIASCO

Only three rookies would appear on the roster during LB’s tenure in Motown: Darko, Carlos Delfino, and Horace Jenkins. Delfino logged 15.3 mpg in 30 games as a rookie. Darko? Only 4.7 in 34. Despite the facts that Milicic is awful and one of the (perhaps THE) worst #2 picks of all-time, he is fully responsible for creating a negative stigma that surrounds Larry Brown to this day--that he is unwilling to play capable rookies. A rep that he didn’t shake in NY while playing Channing Frye 24.2mpg, Nate Robinson 21.4mpg and David Lee 16.9mpg. What is even more frustrating is that too many Bobcat fans hold on to this reputation despite DJ Augustin logging 26.5mpg a year ago.

I know this was long, so I realize that the primary propagators of this fictional assessment are unlikely to read it, but it was long in order to make a strong point. Larry Brown, FOR ALMOST TWO DECADES, has a strong history of playing his best, most game ready players, experience be damned. I’m gonna go ahead and bookmark this thread so I can reference it easily when this ridiculous notion next arises, which I expect to be sooner than later. Tragically, I wrote a much better post on realgm probably less than a year ago, but it was lost to that site’s nonexistent search engine. For shame!

[BigE]

If Alexis Ajinca is apart of our future plans then we are headed in the wrong direction...