Rick Stevens

It was a very obvious path, and I think as you... Hopefully we get to the other end of it and the path becomes obvious again because we'll be on the other side of it in the interim.

Yeah, it's a delicate balance, and there's a lot of considerations because if you go make a move...

to bring something in, over what time period and what does that do in terms of other players that deserve an opportunity or may come and prove that they belong because you can't just make contracts disappear.

Can't just make contracts disappear.

I thought that was really interesting.

And he recognizes that...

You know, they got a lot of praise.

They made some really good decisions with respect to adding assets to getting rid of some assets and turning them into something more valuable.

They drafted well.

But as Kent Hughes said, that was the easy part.

Some of those decisions were pretty obvious because we were just going to the grocery store and throwing everything in the cart that we were going to need without much regard to how we were going to...

put them into a meal once we get home.

And now comes the harder part, because now he has to think about using those pieces, both the newly acquired pieces and the ones who, you know, are the contracts that are still on the books, to...

to not only use them to win now, but to build into that contender that they want for the future.

And it is a balance.

It is more... This is more... It's more difficult...

to put the puzzle together than to just gather the pieces.

And the additions that you make now are far more consequential because you might be adding somebody who's going to block the path of your younger players.

Or the flip side of that is those players that you have high expectations of may not turn into the player you need them to be by the time you need them.

So it's all that balancing the youth with winning now, but still not jeopardizing your overall blueprint.