Remember 2013? We were a 7th seed abd went up against the heavily favoured knicks and gave them a good run... That was fun wasnt it?? And we still got olynyk in the draft... Anything is possible so u may as well give the young guys some playoff experience and the vets a chance to showcase their talents and up their trade value...
We would have beaten that Knicks team with Rondo. Even down 0-2, I still thought we could do it, seeing as we were better than the Knicks for most of the first 2 games. We just couldn't finish them off because our rotation was screwed up due to injuries. Losing Barbosa and Sullinger, in addition to Rondo, really hurt us. Personally, I think that Doc made a huge mistake by starting Terry in game 3. That backfired tremendously. Man, a couple more free throws and we could have won game 6. That was hilarious, watching the Knicks crumble in crunch time. It wasn't even Melo who beat us, or JR Smith. It was Felton, lol, who never did anything against Rondo, but had the series of his life against us, and, surprisingly, Avery Bradley, who just cannot play the point guard position. Shumpert also made it tough on Pierce, especially because Paul's ball handling, imo, was always a bit sloppy, but I also thought that he was just missing a lot of his favorite shots, even when he was open, which wasn't too often, but I'm not taking anything away from Shumpert. He was outstanding. I'm not saying he was a bad dribbler, but I always thought that The Truth could have drastically improved in that department.
Here's something else to think about - what if we had taken Giannis instead of KO, kept Pierce and Garnett, traded Green and Terry for, I don't know, anybody, haha, and signed Greg Oden? He would have been awesome behind KG, and that team could have surprised a lot of people, imo, even with Rondo coming back mid season. Put Pierce on the 5-5-5 plan to keep him fresh, sign Barbosa, and see what happens. The Greek Freak would have added the perfect dimension to our club, imho, and he would have learned so much from Pierce and Garnett. I don't care who we'd have had to face in the playoffs, because with Indiana imploding and Miami just not being the same team, that postseason could have been even more interesting. Plus, at the end of the year, both Pierce and Garnett's contracts would have come off the books, giving us financial flexibility, instead of having to be tied to the albatross of Gerald Wallace's contract. Add to that Stevens' use of the trap and his other plays, like the one against Miami, and I really think that that team could have surprised a lot of people. I just never would have traded Pierce and Garnett. Even though they're older, you simply can't replace players like that. Hey, maybe if we had traded Green and Terry to the Cavs, who wanted to make the playoffs, for their first round pick this year, we could have had the best of both worlds - keep the veterans and get a top 3 pick. Haha yeah right.