I’d rather go after one of the top 3 right now because the teams they go to won’t be on the ‘losing money’ end of the spectrum.
If you strike out on the big 3 now you still have the ability to go after a lesser, yet quality player on a team losing money and in need of financial relief.
But you can’t pass up the opportunity to be able to at least offer a contract to the (arguably, if your a hater) best player in the league right now.

I think they could’ve made the push around having Derrick Rose and assets + picks to deal in a S/T instead of cap space.

Also, I think the most obvious way for them to leverage their money right now would’ve been not even do the Morey ‘zag’, but obtain more expensive expiring contracts (and going into the luxury tax) for long-term deals, to both get better now and have more 2010 cap space.

at landing one of the big 3 this summer. If they acquired Camby and Martin and a FA was actually interested, they’d still have some good pieces to work with in a S&T. Martin as a young talent and Camby as an expiring talent if they could get him to sign a 1 year deal at his current value to complete a trade. Of course, if the FO was shrewd enough to do something like this, they likely also would have been shrewd enough to dump Kirk for the first offer of expirings that came along.

Substitute a re-signed Ben Gordon plus adding Carlos Boozer along with keeping Tyrus (instead of what the Rockets did)—all of which were available with 95% certainty—and I think that team could have been a long-term contender. Dumping pieces like Salmons could have also brought more help and depth.

At the end of the day, we’re banking on one of these three or four guys taking less money (or doing a sign-and-trade) to come to a team with a horrible history of player/front office relations in a market that is not NYC/Miami/LA. We’re in the ballpark, but the stakes are too high (Rose’s prime, 12 years of average performance) to gamble like that, in my humble opinion.

But….this is the path that was chosen, so we’re now all-in on bringing in a big gun. I really hope it works.

I don’t know what opportunities they’ve passed since getting Rose. Gasol was pre-Rose, and at the time we were playing well the price was Gordon/Deng to which (rightfully IMO) we declined. The following year we may have been able to get him by paying the tax, but the team was god awful, so I understand the reluctance of adding money to it even though I think it would have been a good idea long term.

Especially if they go hard cap and don’t retrofit contracts in some way. If htere’s a hard cap then overpaying permanently screws you.

and it was really just meant to cut salaries to the bare bones minimum in 2010 until the new CBA is worked out. Another wasted year of Rose’s excellence. Yikes. The crazy thing is that I can imagine perfectly the scenario and how JR would come out after it, “well, we tried to get one of the top 3 FAs, but none of them would leave their current situations and we just couldn’t justify overpaying someone a max deal, because then the other teams might laugh at me like I usually laugh at them. So, we will try again next time.”