Just in case anyone forgot, Karl Malone played 30.6 mpg as a rookie, 34.8 mpg as a soph, and 39.0 mpg in his third season. FURTHERMORE, the Jazz TRADED Adrian Dantley in the 1986 off-season to the Detroit Pistons for a 2nd rounder, Kent Benson, and Kelly Tripucka. Why did the Jazz trade their first option who was scoring between 25-30 ppg on any given night? They traded him because he was bad for the team going forward and to make room for their new stud primary option in Karl Malone.
Malone was bigger, rebounded more, and played defense. Both ended up being in the Hall of Fame, but only one actually played most of his playoff games in a Jazz uniform.
There are a lot of examples of this kind of thing happening, not just with the Jazz - the Lakers dumped All-Star Eddie Jones to make room for Kobe Bryant. The Seattle Supersonics got rid of Rashard Lewis to make sure Kevin Durant got the playing time he needed. Even the Timberwolves got rid of Al Jefferson so Kevin Love, who just got a Gold medal for the US Men's Olympic team, was able to be 'the man'.
Teams have made hard decisions along the way, but it's not unsual to get rid of a good guy to make room for a GREAT guy. The Jazz even left former All-Star Rickey Green to dangle in the expansion draft, which led to John Stockton's greater playing time. All teams get rid of guys who hurt their futures. Sometimes you can hurt the future of your team by retarding the growth of your youth.
The Jazz knew when to break it off before. The Jazz should see that wasting another year of our youth behind mediocre vets while making the younger guys even LESS ready to perform at the level they should be able to perform at, is a bad thing. I can go into greater details about all of this . . . but I thought I'd bring it up. We've ALL posted our thoughts on this now. It's just *funny* when we see the media propaganda machine finally turn to agree with us. Where were you Johnny come Lately-ies back when you were talking big about Raja Bell and Josh Howard helping you get wins?
Probably out buying cookies : )