RBB wrote:
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Of course VC's stock was at an all-time low. He had only been stinking it up that season after several brilliant seasons, to the point where the coach benched him during the team's important minutes. Any-time your performance decreases like that after averaging over 20+ ppg per season, your stock is inherently at an all-time low. But "few wanted the guy" can't be farther from the truth, and "99% of fans wanted him out" is a stat you just made up, not to mention the fans that wanted him out didn't want him out for nothing in return.
When you say fans were happy after we traded him, that's you coloring the events with how YOU felt. If the moment the trade was announced can be considered 20/20 hindsight then fine, but it's not like years later, looking back, we finally realized how shitty that trade was. That realization was instant and the only reason anyone might have thought the deal was okay is if 1) they thought Mourning would actually play for the Raptors (oh Raptor fans and our fascination with big names), and 2) they didn't know who Aaron Williams and Eric Williams were. The reality of that situation broke pretty soon after the trade too. The only criticism truly deserving of being called hindsight is the realization now that we essentially traded Vince for Joey Graham and a bunch of cap ballast.
How do you know we wouldn't have gotten more than Babcock received? Do you have an alternate universe machine? I certainly don't, and while I can't tell you what we would have received, I can certainly say we did not try to trade him for very long. It's not like we didn't have 2.5 years remaining on his contract to trade him for crap. If his value was that low, as you suggest, it certainly could not have hurt to wait longer. No, Babcock pounced on the trade almost immediately -- a trade involving two meaningless D-Leaguers would have taken as long to complete -- and then instead of suspending Mourning without pay for refusing to report, he again did the "gentlemanly" thing and bought his contract out, citing the team's doctors as saying Mourning did not meet the medical standards for playing with the sad-sack Raptors, though apparently he was fine enough to play for the 2005-2006 NBA champions. The trade should have been made contingent on all players passing their physicals, and the moment Mourning failed his, we should have at least forced them to substitute someone else for him or rescind the trade. Realizing he'd go on to win the championship is hindsight, but we already knew in February 2005 that rather than buying him out, we should have just suspended his butt without pay as a team with any pride remaining would do.
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