It always amazes me when DA is willing to trade away legit or semi legit shots at a ring for fools gold down the line. Like hey that's great that Jeff Green occasionally looks good two years after you traded Perk for him. Whoop de doo.
Fab Melo. Rookie year fail. Needed an instant impact guy. Got a project. That would be great if he turns out good....right when we don't need him.
We've gone over this a million times.
The problems with that team that year and since then:
-Bench scoring
-A guy who could guard Lebron besides Pierce
Things that were NOT a problem:
-Post defense
-Interior defense
Our team has had a TOP THREE DEFENSE EVERY YEAR POST PERKINS.
Our team has had A BOTTOM THREE BENCH SCORING UNIT THE LAST TWO YEARS (Greens first year and year without Green).
What we are seeing this year is what Ainge expected out of Jeff. If Jeff had adjusted quicker then we likely win that year. What happened was everything possible went wrong. Everything that could possibly not go right, went exactly as we hoped it wouldn't.
The fact that Perkins ceiling is "mediocre role player" while Greens is "star player" is just gravy.
EDIT:
It just boggles the mind how people think our top 2 defense that year (post Perkins) with our bottom 10 offense was "giving away a sure thing" because we lost Perkins. PERKINS IS A MASSIVE OFFENSIVE LIABILITY. OUR DEFENSE WAS GREAT, NOT GOOD, FREAKING GREAT WITHOUT HIM.
You people are so mind boggingly stupid. I don't understand how anyone can not understand.