I remember endorsing the Sebastian Telfair acquisition. Whether I believed it would work or if I simply wanted it to work is irrelevant. Whatever my thought process, it hurts my criticism of the move after the fact. Which brings me to my point about Chauncey Billups. Did anyone think he would be this good? Consider the following segment from an old Bill Simmons' mailbag:
(Intriguing. You could come up with an entire team of Kevin Gamble guys from this season alone: Lee Nailon, Chauncey Billups, Quentin Richardson, Charles Smith, Rod Strickland, Tony Battie ... the list goes on. I like this one.") - Simmons' response
In a different article from the same time period Simmons argued for the following trade:
This is not an attack on Simmons. The bigger issue is that it is a lot harder to be a general manager than we like to think. The salary cap alone confuses me. Consider the power of agents, the fact that the NBA is a players' league, posses, and numerous other factors and it starts to get interesting. I'm not saying Danny Ainge has done a good job. In fact I believe his employment should depend on this summer. But I could not do it better.
- If Ainge picks Yi Jianlian then I will cease to think up ways to defend him.