Andersen would have been much better than either POB or Mikki. However, having him on the team wouldn't have made a huge difference in terms of our ability to repeat, in my opinion. Once KG went down, it just wasn't going to happen.
I agree with you that when the opportunity to win a championship is there, the team should be more concerned about the present than the distant future. In Danny's defense, neither Andersen nor Jones was a sure thing. However, he misjudged the off-season, and his plan -- such that it was -- was a failure in the short term.
I do think it's fair to ask the question if we had a more solid bench, would we have ended up in the position we were in.
remember, it's not just KG that was injured. we now know that all of the Big Three were battling injuries and Paul and Ray were on fumes at the end there.
obviously you can't make a direct link to KGs injury and the filling out of the bench, but i think there is a clear link to the burden that was placed on GPA (and all the starters really) by not having bench players capable and reliable enough to get major minutes during the season as well as the playoffs.
our Title chances i'm pretty confident saying were not severely altered by players Danny filled out the bench with....if the starters were healthy.
but now seeing that ALL of the starters were worked over by the end of the season, maybe we can see that that was the real effect of not filling out the bench better.
not that the bench players weren't good enough to win a Title with, but they weren't good enough to take enough of a load off the starters during the season so as to keep them healthy for the playoffs...