You’re giving Griffin credit for things that ended up being coincidences and other things that had nothing to do with him.
The fact that Bogut was made available and chose to sign here? Coincidence.
The fact that ownership is willing to blindly eat money? Fortunate for him.
The fact that Liggins was cut on the latest day possible? That actually cost Gilbert more money than if he had done it earlier. Liggins was out of Lue’s rotation a LOT longer than before Sunday.
Signing Sanders over Tavares once Bogut went down? The Celtics and at least 3 other teams had enough sense to realize Sanders couldn’t provide a NBA team anything for the foreseeable future. Apparently we couldn’t see the same thing.
If I’m being honest of my assessment of Griffin, I give him a C- this year. Passable because Korver looks like a hit, but signing Birdman was a mistake, as was waiting too long to address the backup PG position, and his tendency to fill the roster with one-way players with duplicated skill sets has shown problematic this year.
What you call coincidence, I just call reality.
Are you saying Griff should not have waited to see if Bogut would become available? Are you saying Griff should not have signed Bogut? Would Bogut have been an option if, say, we signed Tavares 6 weeks ago? Then what, we sign Bogut, then re-sign Tavares when Bogut broke his leg?
As for Sanders, I don't care what the Celts or anyone else had to say, from what I saw in his limited time he was worth a look. I think TT's injury made it necessary to get someone with a little less rust like Tavares, but if TT was completely healthy we might have stuck with the plan for Sanders. As it is we'll just have to wait and see if Sanders is back for training camp and if this contract paved the way for him to make a complete comeback on a more realistic timeline.
Gilbert being willing to eat money isn't "fortunate" in some random way. It is the reality that Griffin is operating under. I don't understand how you can somehow penalize or take credit away from Griffin for operating within the parameters he is given?
I can agree that there are problems with Griff failing to address some of the roster holes earlier in the season like the hole left by Mo Williams and Birdman. These were exacerbated by the other injuries we had with base rotation players.
But the fact is a lot of the timing on getting quality replacements was dictated by the need to wait for people like Deron Williams and Andrew Bogut to become available. It required a lot of patience from Griffin and it made people in this forum uneasy while he waited. In the end getting Bogut and DWill1 were clearly the best decisions. Then Bogut going down created a domino effect leading to Sanders then Tavares and to me the way this all went down seems perfectly logical if you look at it in context.
As far as Liggins goes I can only surmise that Lue and Lebron saw more need for an enforcer in the playoffs than for an offensively challenged defender. And didn't that move save Gilbert something like $2.5 million? Not chump change.