wildturkey
Well-Known Member
In refection, if you have to choose either just good or bad, yes, you would choose bad.
But, at the time, they were justified.
We’ve already discussed that summer lead to some crazy spending/contracts.
They waited on Hayward, luckily we didnt get him.
After that, options weren’t very great.
So he went with the group that had just went 30-11.
It was going to be a mediocre few years no matter what, which really is the bottom line.
That's the thing though, they were never justified. They were always bad deals but the excuse people latched onto was "well the cap is going up so it'll be ok". It's no different from the Lakers signing Mozgov. It was still a bad deal just like it was a bad deal to sign Tyler Johnson or any of the other deals they made. Justified would be signing someone like say Lou Williams or JJ Redick or some other quality player to a number that initially looks high based on past salaries but really is just the start of a new market price for players in that category. They're quality players that lived up to that new number. This was never that though. It was always bad players getting ridiculous contract numbers. At the end of the day, you're still overpaying mediocre players. Riley screwed up. He missed out on the guys he wanted and instead of keeping his cap sheet fluid, he locked himself into a bunch of bad contracts with the misguided notion of "well, we gotta do something". He was too prideful to just dip into the lottery while keeping your roster with fluid pieces that can be used in trades with other teams to pick up assets. He did find a way out though. Both things can be true
But like msgkings said, its fine to acknowledge his bad decisions because it doesn't take away that he can still do some good