Wha???
No no no no NO.
Geoff Petrie was one of the absolutely WORST, most incompetent boobs in the history of the NBA when it came to maintaining a talent base. He was slow as molasses to do ANYTHING, always waited until a player's value was completely shot before moving him in desperation. We got good value back for absolutely nothing. And it was a HUGE factor in us being terrible forever. It will continue to be a huge factor in us being terrible now if it continues.
Also, people have to either quit using San Antonio as an example or that city just has to quietly sink into the sea so people will stop. San Antonio cheated to get great with Duncan/Admiral. Then they leveraged that resulting early greatness into being able to do whatever the hell they wanted for a solid decade. They drafted amazingly, but the only reason they could pull off that strategy with the patience entailed, why the system could be so steady and inviolate, was because it was sitting on the back of multiple championships won by a god emperor coach and the same franchise player they took a dive to get in the first place. We, nor basically anybody who doesn't have that background, have that kind of time or stability. You can't just skip ahead and say now we're going to be San Antonio in 2014, or even San Antonio in 2004, without first being San Antonio of 1998.
It goes back to this. We are a sucky miserable franchise. Our greatest player, with a chance to be the greatest player in the Sacto franchise's history, has experienced no success at all with us in 4 years. All his peers are on TV right now having fun and earning accolades. He is stuck home watching. Because of us. We have become the dumpy girlfriend on the arm of the hot guy. Maybe he was as scruffy as we were when we first met him, but he cleans up good, and if we don't want to get dumped we had damn well get in shape before the local hotties take notice.
Duncan alone doesn't keep San Antonio in the playoffs for 17 straight years. And how do you explain Indiana making the playoffs for 20 of the last 25 seasons without ever dipping below 32 wins in their down years? It's about more than one guy, it's about how you build a team. It's about how you identify talent and put those players in a position to succeed. It's sortof taken for granted that San Antonio and Indiana just magically pull above-average talent out of their low draft picks but I think it's time to take a closer look here and admit that there's more going on than that. Both of those teams are committed to winning games defensively and they seek out role-players and specialists and don't ask them to do too much.
Take a look at these franchise index pages:
San Antonio ;
Indiana ;
Sacramento
First look at relative pace. San Antonio and Indiana are almost always below league average in terms of pace. The exception for San Antonio has been the last 4 years and the exceptions for Indiana correlate pretty well with the years that they did not make the playoffs. Now look at Sacramento -- we haven't had a below average pace rating since 1995. Now look at relative defensive rating. San Antonio has (unsurprisingly) been above average for every one of the past 17 seasons. Indiana has been below average in only 2 of the past 21 seasons. Now look at our page. The entire Sacramento era has produced only 6 seasons of above-average defense, corresponding with the peak of Adelman's tenure, his last year (Bonzi, Artest), and the Brian Grant/Michael Smith rookie year. Now look again at the playoff results. Perhaps these teams know something that we don't?
But getting back to Geoff Petrie, I don't think he's at fault for failing to predict Webber's knee exploding or failing to trade Doug Christie before a particularly bad bout of plantar fasciitis effectively forced him into an early retirement. It's true he got nothing for Brad Miller and Mike Bibby but that's not what sunk us either. Boston didn't get much for unloading Garnett and Pierce at the end of their careers. Teams usually don't get much in that situation.
The reason we never got a top 3 pick in the last 8 years is that he settled for bringing in guys like Mikki Moore, Shareef-Abdur Rahim, and John Salmons long after it was apparent that we should cut our losses and start over. Then when we finally bottomed out -- drafted Tyreke Evans, and rid ourselves of the last vestiges of that infamous "flexible pieces" trade -- he went out and celebrated the occasion by over-committing again to Marcus Thornton, Chuck Hayes, and Jason Thompson. If you want to trace a line back to why new management felt their hands were tied on a new Tyreke deal, that's it. Would it have killed us to lose Thornton and Thompson for nothing? Were Shareef, Salmons, or Hayes the difference makers we needed to push us back into contention?
I agree with your last paragraph. We need to start winning ASAP. Sorry, I don't think Rudy Gay and Isaiah Thomas are going to get us there. I think they look good from the perspective of 8 straight losing seasons. We're in pretty good shape here though. We have the franchise center. We have a solid coach who knows what defense is. We have some developing prospects who are 3 or 4 years away from entering their primes yet. And we have a relatively unencumbered salary cap (so far). I believe Vivek and Malone
can sell people on a Sacramento franchise with a state-of-the-art brand new arena and Cousins as a fixture in the post. If we desperately need anything right now it's to change the perception of this team into one that plays hard-nosed defense. That's where my focus would be, not on losing a solid backup guard and an overrated volume shooter.