Ainge 4th is an even bigger joke than Stevens 3rd.
In the last year, he traded down but still grabbed the best player in the draft, cleared out room for a max All-Star free agent, traded for another one, and still had created a strong enough bench to absorb the loss of both said All-Stars to win even more games than the prior year’s #1 seed, despite turning over 11 of the 15 roster spots.
Yeah, I agree its more egregious than Stevens' finishing 3rd. What this team did this past season coming off of a ECF appearance in '16-17 is truly remarkable. It'll go on Ainge's Mt. Rushmore.
4th is an absolute joke.
Did Morey literally win for getting Chris Paul to take a trade there? I can't find any other transactions of note other than dumping Dillon Brooks who looks decent and signing so-so role players like Tucker. I guess the Harden extension helped? Lifetime achievement award?
I feel like that Chris Paul trade was kind of genius though.
He got a max free agent the team couldn't afford.
Openly tampered with no penalty to make a trade happen instead.
But still didn't have the trade assets to pull it off without gutting his team, so he went out and traded for 5 non guaranteed players (Hilliard, Kelly, Quaterman, Liggins, Long) to make the trade work and not give back unwanted salary and also providing ammo for future trades (though nothing became of that).
If you asked all the great minds here on June 27th last year how the Rockets would be able to acquire Chris Paul, nobody would have been close to getting it right.
Morey didn't just trade for Chris Paul, he pulled off some of the greatest GMing ever to make it happen.