My Dream

I think my dream for this offseason would be if we drafted Ming and moved up to get Butler.

Butler can shoot from the outside (Rudy loves a SF that can do that), plus he gives us a major boost in toughness and defense. He's a pretty big SF but still has athleticism to burn. He gives us a defense stopper type of guy, he can rebound, and can play the inside-outside game.

Ming gives us a true center. He could wind up a Rik Smits with more drive (nobody played with less passion than Smits) in a worst case scenario or wind up as Bill Walton in a best case scenario. Either way, he's a big upgrade from Cato in the worst case scenario and the potential for a true, dominating type of center. He's been a great rebounder in China, but won't have the weak competition here. The question will be how quickly he can adjust to the speed of the game, more in the paint action, and facing bigger stronger guys. He's a better rebounder than Cato now, has 10 times the offense, and 10 times the potential.

The only question mark, in my mind, is how the chinese government comes into play. If they aren't going to screw around with us too much (like making him do all these Chinese basketball events and crap like that) then what we should do this offseason is set. Draft Ming and draft Butler. We get extra toughness, we improve our rebounding, we improve our shooting (we had one of the lowest FG% in the league and were pretty low in 3pt% as well....both of which are improved by these 2 guys), and we get 2 guys that seem to have a lot of drive and motivation. Butler played with his heart on his sleeve in the tourney and Ming feels the weight of a nation on his shoulders, so they both want to work their tails off to be as good a basketball players as they can be.