Where do you think we would be at right now? I'm not a huge RJ fan, and I do like Yi's potential, but from the immediate point of view, where do you think we would be? Would we be sitting around our 12-11 record, better? worse? I think if RJ took up the role of being the 'role player' (which I doubt he would have haha) I think we would have a better record than what we have, with the inconsistency of Yi and Simmons, but don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I have high hopes for the years to come.
Keeping RJ wouldn't have allowed Devin to blossom into the player he is now, and it would severely hamper Brook's offensive progression. Simmons, on a good night, is a great compliment wing player to the Devin-Vince dynamic that has evolved so far. Other wise there's just too many mouths to feed, so to speak.
Keep in mind that the additional cap space from making that deal allowed the nets to sign Hayes or Dooling or someone.
The Nets would definitely be better: you'd have a great improvement in SF and Ryan Anderson would be replacing Yi in the line-up. I think they'd be in the Orlando talent range - not top tier, but a dark horse threat. I'm still torn on the Yi/RJ trade. On one hand, you have to build for the future. Being in the second tier is where the Nets have been stuck for a while, and winning 47 games and losing in the 2nd round isn't fun. However, I'm not convinced a) that the Nets will acquire a marquee free agent that will justify watching two average seasons, b) that Yi/Simmons was the best we could've gotten for RJ (his trade value might have gone up playing in a line-up with Thriller/Ryan/Vince/Devin), and c) that the Nets were better off dumping RJ's salary instead of Vince's (vince makes more in 2010, and is older)
Hm. Do you (or probably Net Income) have the math on this? Just a guess, but aren't the Nets significantly under the luxury tax due to the Jason Kidd trade? I thought, salary-wise, the RJ trade was a wash till 2010.
NetIncome worked it out once, I think. It's possible I'm wrong, but I think they saved a little money.
We got Dooling by "Sign and trade" with Magic, and we sign Hayes only for 1.9M, I mean is it true that we can have Dooling and Hayes just because of the trade of RJ.
I haven't really been posting on here as much a last year, but I find it kind of disturbing that posters such as GMJ, Pegs, KC and War Poet are either suspended or banned.
I think we could have been in this spot as well with Jefferson. I honestly believe the problem was Kidd. Players were either on his side or Franks side which I don't think worked well as for now, Carter and Frank have a great relationship and you can really see the others working for both players. We may not have Dooling or Hayes but Jeffersons offense and maybe Carroll or someone else could fill in.
Devin wouldn't play as great as he has been if RJ were here, in my opinion. Jefferson would be taking a large bulk of his shots and I'd much rather have Devin taking those shots than RJ. I also don't know how our offense would be run with RJ still here. That said, with Jefferson, we'd have a third viable scoring option and defenses would have to adjust to him. Plus, our small forward rotation's rather weak.
Shoulda, coulda, wouda. Personally I don't think we'd have a better record than we already do if we had RJ here.
That what I was thinking. This is plain nuts when old-timers like GMJ can be banned in a second. WTF? Where is respect?? Also, does anybody know if say Raps mod can ban nets poster? And what I suspect actually happened. Jigga was too active on Raps board during our (Nets-Raps) games.
RJ would have given us what we needed at the SF position. The problem was his contract. Do you guys think the dribble and drive wouldnt have worked with RJ? Harris and RJ in the open court? The last thing is the bench is definitely better. Dooling, Anderson, CDR, Hayes, & Najera > Allen, Armstrong, Krstic, M. Williams & Boki I wont even go to coaching.
I think getting rid of RJ accomplished a lot of good things for us... none of which is getting Yi. Nor Simmons, obviously. Even though at the end of last season I wanted everyone but Devin traded, I do kinda wonder lately what we'd look like with RJ still starting at the 3, and anyone else in the world at the 4, even Ryan. But really the moral of this post is... I'm not much of a Yi fan. Upside schmupside.
