Who's building the best team?

[RAHMOR]

I find myself comparing our rebuilding to the rebuilding of another team and that team is normally the Bobcats. At the end of the offseason I thought we should be clearly ahead of them but so far it hasn't looked that way, but I still will hold judgment because this is such an early season. Looking at the teams who seem to be starting from the bottom in terms of young talent and not in terms of wins. Those would be Portland, New York, and New Orleans.

These other teams seem to have a more traditional model of PG and solid bigman, ie. Chris Paul, Eddy Curry & Channing Frye & Nate Robinson, Raymond Felton & Sean May & Emeka Okafor, Sebastian Telfair & Zach Randolph. If the Hawks model is truly better than the traditional model over the next couple of year's it should be fair to compare our progress to the progress and of these other teams. Do you guys think these teams will offer a fair comparison?

[chillzatl]

having a real PG and having a solid paint defender will guarantee you more instant gratification. It doesn't mean that you will be the better team at season end. but the benefit of a floor leader has been a constant in basketball since its early days. That has not changed. Having someone who can defend the paint has always had a big impact. Those teams that have those things are naturally going to look more polished than we do at this point because they can fall back on decades old formulas for stability.

right now we can't do that. We have to search for stability on teh floor when things get disrupted.

I would say that by season end we will compare with Charlotte on the development scale. I think teh Knicks will be better than us because of the experience factor and portland will be better because they have a bonafied go-to guy in Randolph.

[AHF]

Randolph has been in the league as long as Joe Johnson so I am not sure he is a good basis for comparison. The distinction in the Knicks scenario is the number of veterans who are important parts of the team. I guess I would say you can't necessarily use team success as a barometer for comparison except with Charlotte but generally I think it is fair to compare the development of those core young players for each team and see where they go.

[Packfill]

Quote:

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having a real PG and having a solid paint defender will guarantee you more instant gratification. It doesn't mean that you will be the better team at season end. but the benefit of a floor leader has been a constant in basketball since its early days. That has not changed. Having someone who can defend the paint has always had a big impact. Those teams that have those things are naturally going to look more polished than we do at this point because they can fall back on decades old formulas for stability.

right now we can't do that. We have to search for stability on teh floor when things get disrupted.

I would say that by season end we will compare with Charlotte on the development scale. I think teh Knicks will be better than us because of the experience factor and portland will be better because they have a bonafied go-to guy in Randolph.

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You could make a pretty good team if you combined the rosters of Charlotte and Atlanta:

PG - B. Knight, R. Felton

SG - J. Johnson, S. Stoudamire, K. Rush

SF - G. Wallace, M. Williams

PF - E. Okafor; A. Harrington, S. May, J. Smith

C - Z. Pachulia, P. Prezac, M. Ely

[Duff_Man]

New York is a friggin mess. As long as Isaiah is there, they are gonna stink.

[Final_quest]

I'm very impressed with what Bickerstaff has done in his short time at Charlotte. The move to get Okafor was brilliant. Their payroll is miniscule, and has a lot of potential for improvement.

I have to say I think they have done a better job than us.