True budceltic, but there are only a certain amount of roster spots and a salary cap. Right now we have 4 projects- Pruitt, Giddens, Walker, and POB.
But it's not like it's 4 out of 12. There are still 11 "non-projects" on the team. I don't think loading up exclusively on aging vets who are steady but have no upside is a good idea.
I'd add BBD as a "project", and Scal and Cassell in the "usually not very useful" category.
That means 7 out of our 15 players are either projects, or just not that good at their stage of their career. Add to that that Tony Allen is wildly inconsistent, and I can see why some folks are concerned.
We have our five starters, and two steady vets (Powe and Eddie, even if Eddie is struggling). The rest of the roster is a crap shoot.
To be fair, we don't know if Cassell will be useful or not. I get the feeling that they simply don't want to waste any bullets he has left so early in the season.
He sucked for us last year, but was pretty good earlier in the year with the Clippers (and from what I understand there was a wrist injury in between, which may not have been completely healed by the time the C's needed him to start playing).
He certainly is not useful right now, but the playoffs are what matters, and it is nowhere near a stretch based on his career track record (not just the two months that C's fans saw him) that he will be a very useful player at that point in time.
I also don't agree that BBD is a project. He is a rotation player right now, who has earned his minutes with excellent defense, rebounding, and the occasional offense. Yeah, he may still be able to get better, but he is no more a project than Powe, its just that his contributions don't show up on the stat sheet as easily.
To me, House is a bigger questionmark than BBD, or maybe even Tony (wait...strike that), because he simply cannot play the PG position effectively.