No, it doesn't. But if a gm and highly respected coach don't want a guy on their team I'd suggest there's a reason for that.
If this is the criteria for grading moves, than every move the Bucks have made in the last year have been great since a gm and a highly respected coach signed off on them.
There obviously wasn't a decent deal out there for him or it would have been made. There is still the possibility of a S&T, but I do feel they'll let him walk and that's ok by me. I also think Hammond and probably Kohl were extremely conscious of not allowing this team to 'fall off a cliff' like it has in the past. That is important in building a long term winner imo, and worth the 50th pick in a crappy draft or whatever we might have gotten.
If CV wasn't a part of their long term plans, they should have gotten anything for him, period. If that resulted in the team being worse in the 2nd half of last season, great, we could be talking about getting Blake Griffin or Ricky Rubio right now.
RJ is more important to this (or almost any other) team than CV period, I'm not going to get into a debate about that. If you're talking money versus production then maybe but I could also make that argument by saying Moute at his contract level is worth more than Kobe on that scale when clearly that isn't the case.
RJ is not important to this team. This team could be using his 15 million dollar contract in far better ways. For one RJ, we possibly could have Sessions, CV, Ersan and our draft pick. Instead, we may have RJ and maybe our pick. This team does not need a Richard Jefferson. We could easily win the 35-40 games we will next year without him and develop more young talent. He's a solid player and a legit 3rd option on a championship team, but this team has no use for him.
This past season saw the Bucks take giant steps to no longer being a laughing stock imo.
How? We made the worst pick of the draft, the worst trade of the season, and we are in one of the worst salary situations in the league, and this past season only added to it.
I don't think we screwed it up, nor do I think it was a fair deal, nor do I think financial flexibility is more important to the Bucks than on court production.
So you'd rather win 40 games with RJ rather than clearing 15 million in cap and winning 35 games? I guess 40 is an improvement....
You must have missed the part where I said players 'who we want'. We did not want Mo, that is incredibly obvious.
Of course we didn't, that is why we are the Bucks.
I'm absolutely certain some posters hope Hammond fails, the four most powerful words on this board seem to be 'I told you so". Of course they'd rather see the Bucks win, but you can't tell me people (including yourself) don't enjoy bagging the hell out of Hammond, or you guys wouldn't spend half your lives doing it. And yes, the mentality has changed.
It's hard not to expect failure with the moves he has made. If he had made different moves, there would be far different rhetoric on the forum than you see today. The reason the animosity towards Hammond is so great is because posters that would have no reason being an NBA GM such as myself saw these terrible moves and could see what would happen as a result, but the guy getting paid millions to do it can't.
I still really want to know how the mentality has changed. Because we don't have a shoot first PG? Besides Mo being gone, this is the exact same Bucks team we've had the last 5 years, instead we have a $15 million dollar average SF now instead of an $8 million one (Simmons).