We’ve known our weaknesses. We saw them against Denver. We ended up signing Shaq (after he dangled out there for quite a while), which seemed to indicate that we were aware of some of those needs. In any case, he never played and we waived him. We watched the exact same thing repeat itself but in drastically worse fashion last post-season. If we showed that we were actually trying to improve on these fronts, I’d be fine. Even if those weren’t working out. Anyone who has followed my posting at all knows that any of my suggestions for improvement are quite modest and often rather simple (for instance having Udoh be our backup rather than everything we’ve invested in that position over years). There are definitely ways we can improve our weaknesses that are within reach. Hell, even if we were to say that House is that addition, I’d totally be all for it. But it’s not. There’s no evidence that the really believe that. We’ve had an available roster spot (2 spots) since forever. On January 4th, we salary-dumped Oni, dropping us below the league-required threshold. House was waived by the Rockets on December 18th. Stanley Johnson has been available the whole season. Do I think either of these guys are a cure for all that ails? Hell no. But if we pursued those guys, it would at least be evidence that we have some self-awareness and that we’re looking to address it. Instead we kept roster spots open because of tax. We used an asset to dump a guy’s $1.5M salary halfway through the season. Our priority was keeping that roster spot open while House was still out there. We didn’t sign House until January 6th when we absolutely had to and when we used a health exception. And if he’s the improvement that the media will inevitable claim the FO is delivering on, WTF is he still floating out there as a free agent? Because right now that open roster spot not occupying $$$ space is a bigger priority than whatever House brings to the table (at least that’s what they think) but we’re going to be gaslit otherwise by the org not too far down the road.
The org could change very little and I’d be quite satisfied. If they signed House when he was available (or hell, sign him NOW) and said “hey, we really think he’s a valuable guy to have,” I’d tip my hat to them in seeing that they’re being active in doing something besides dumping salary. We’ve seen them be plenty active doing that. But show us that you’re active in actually improving the team.