I think LMA gives you more flexibility in terms of the supporting cast you can put around him...with him being the first piece of the puzzle I think that flexibility is valuable.
Yeah, but he isn't really the first piece of the puzzle. If we were building from scratch, fine, Aldridge. But our roster fits better with Love currently, because he can give us what Olynyk and Sully do, but significantly better than both. Guys like Crowder, Smart, Turner don't fit with Aldridge as well, and even Bradley to a lesser extent, because Aldridge doesn't create the floor spacing needed to give range-challenged guards and wings the space to operate. And while I'm willing to stipulate that in an ideal world you would say role players shouldn't decide your star, it's not an ideal world. Aldridge is on the wrong side of 30, and bringing in an entirely new set of guards and wings will take time, both to add to the roster and acclimate to each other. It would certainly be a two, if not three, season process, to build a roster around Aldridge. And at that pint, he's 33 with a year left in his deal.
If we get Aldridge, I'll try to do a handspring to celebrate, because it would be great, but he's not the best fit for our current team, and it might just take tookng to create that future team.