It will always be on my mind how it would have turned out if we resigned Evans and went with a Cousins/Evans duo going forward.
If I could do it over, this is how I would have had it play out. I would have drafted McLemore (I thought he was the correct pick at that time), resigned Evans, resigned Aldrich, and would have not signed Landry. We would have gone into the 2013-2014 season with this rotation:
PG - Evans/Thomas/McCallum
SG - Thornton/McLemore/Fredette
SF - Salmons/Moute/Outlaw
PF - Patterson/Hayes
C - Cousins/Thompson/Aldrich
Since we have Evans, I wouldn't have made the Rudy Gay trade, but I did like the other two trades we made at the time (Thornton for Evans and Terry / Mbah a Moute for Williams). That leaves us with this roster to finish out the year.
PG - Evans/Thomas/McCallum
SG - McLemore/Fredette/Terry
SF - Salmons/Williams/Outlaw
PF - Patterson/Evans/Hayes
C - Cousins/Thompson/Aldrich
Going into this offseason, I probably would have drafted Stauskas if we landed the 8th pick. I really liked Payton as well, but he would not be a good compliment with Evans so Stauskas would have been the guy. I would have been willing to keep Thomas but not at the price Phoenix wanted him, so I would have let him walk. I would have released Fredette, released Salmons, released Patterson, resigned Aldrich to the veteran minimum, signed Casspi to the veteran minimum, and signed Moreland to his minimum deal. We would have gone into the 2014-2015 season with this rotation:
PG - Evans/McCallum/Terry
SG - Stauskas/McLemore
SF - Casspi/Williams/Outlaw
PF - Thompson/Evans/Moreland
C - Cousins/Hayes/Aldrich
This team would most likely struggle again, but I personally think taking this patient approach could pay off big time.
Next offseason, we would likely keep our 1st round pick. In this year's upcoming draft, there are plenty of bigs near the top of the draft that I would take to try and bring in a shotblocker (Towns, Turner, Porzingis, Cauley-Stein). There are also a couple of SFs near the top of the draft that could fit in nicely as well (Oubre, Hezonga, Winslow, S. Johnson, Dekker). I really have no idea who I would take at this point because I would prefer to watch the upcoming season and I don't really know where we would pick. But based off who will be available in FA, a SF would make a little more sense so I'll just say we draft Hezonga to take over the SF spot since he's a little older and might be a little more NBA ready playing international ball. Also he's projected to be the best shooter out of the bunch with decent defense, handles, and playmaking.
There will also be plenty of players coming off our books. I would release Terry, Williams, Outlaw, Evans, and Hayes. This would give us around $23 mil in cap space (factoring in our 1st round picks salary). I would go all in for Marc Gasol. It probably won't happen, but a frontcourt of Gasol and Cousins would undoubtedly be the best frontcourt in the league and would cause headaches for opposing teams.
If unsuccessful, I would offer Kawhi Leonard the max. Again, very unlikely that he signs our offer sheet or the Spurs don't match, but you have to cover everything.
Next up would be targeting DeAndre Jordan. Another unlikely as we haven't proved we're a competitive team and we're not in our new arena yet. He's also already on a very good team in a good location already. It would be hard to pry him away.
Next on my list would be targeting the next tier of guys. I would look to sign Jimmy Butler and Kyle O'Quinn. I think prying away O'Quinn from the Magic is doable as they just extended Vucevic, signed Frye, and drafted Gordon. Butler might be a little more challenging but with Rose, Gasol, Noah, and Gibson eating up cap they might have to let him go. If we come away with Butler and O'Quinn, I would be very happy. I think just signing O'Quinn might be the most realistic scenario, but even if we strike out on O'Quinn and Butler this offseason, we can load up on 1 year deals and try next year which happens to be a much stronger FA period (LeBron, Durant, Batum, Deng, Gallinari W. Chandler, H. Barnes, Kidd-Gilchrist, Horford, J. Hill, E. Davis, Henson, and Noah are some of the SFs, PFs, & Cs that will be available).
But for the sake of it, let's say we were only able to land O'Quinn, I would probably resign Casspi and Aldrich to veteran minimum deals and go into the 2015-2016 season with this rotation:
PG - Evans/McCallum
SG - Stauskas/McLemore
SF - Hezonga/Casspi
PF - O'Quinn/Thompson/Moreland
C - Cousins/Aldrich
Right now, this team has the potential to be very good at each position. The question is will they get to that level. Next year, you'll have even more cap space with Thompson coming off the books and you can try to bring in a big name free agent to play in the new arena and strengthen our young, up and coming team (Batum or Gallinari would fit in really well as a support scorer who can space the floor). This year happens to be the last year of Evans and Cousins contract so we would need to be a competitive team by then to keep them happy and want to resign with us.
Phew now that's a lot of bottled up frustration!