Everyone moaning about Danny not pulling the trigger on this thread would have been moaning twice as loud if AD had left in free agency next year and we gave up a lot for him. There's such a thing as managing risk. I'm sure if Danny could have gotten away with paying cheap for AD he would have but he's a victim of his own assets. LA paid a huge price and gutted their team to get AD, even if they could have gotten AD for free in the summer of 2020.
That's the amount of pressure LeBum exerts on an organization, he's willing to cripple its future to win now. If Danny had done the same and given away our future everyone here who's moaning and ****ing would be calling for his head and rightfully so.
Everyone moaning about missed deals (PG13, Kawhi, etc) is making themselves look like geniuses with the benefit of hindsight. Let's check all the posts from a year ago and see what people were saying at the time. Most people were high on Hayward, there was an enormous thread on trying to sign him. Most people thought PG13 was a flight risk. As for Kawhi, people were referring to Jaylen as Kawhi-lite and didn't want to give him, let alone others, up for a year of Kawhi, given people thought he was damaged goods and nobody knew Kawhi's injury situation and why conditions deteriorated between him and Pop so quickly. Masai was in a different situation, his team had been swept out of the playoffs 3 years in a row, he knew he wasn't getting it done with DeRozan. While with us, take yourselves back to this time last year, the future was bright, we made it to the ECF and we had Kyrie and Hayward coming back.
Nobody could have foreseen Hayward's injury, which led to the series of events, including the overachievement in 2018 that ultimately culminated in the chemistry issues in 2019, which led to Kyrie wanting to leave, which then made trading the future of the franchise for AD too much of a risk. You do your best to position your team to make deals but you also have to have the judgment to know if they are good deals to make.
Where Danny has a case to answer is in sitting still last season and holding all the assets to try to make a run for AD as a result the season spiraled out of control. As expectations weren't met, and the pressure from the media and fans increased, Kyrie became moody, young guys chafed at less responsibility, Hayward struggled to make his mark, too much hero ball was played and everyone started blaming each other. He should have stepped in at the trade deadline and made changes to correct things. He may have lost an asset or two but we would have kept Kyrie, which would have helped with the pursuit of AD or at least we would have retained control of Kyrie as an asset to trade him later on instead of him walking away for nothing.