first of all

3 of your examples are FA departures, so I'm not sure how they are relevant

but you do know MEM was the dog of the league the last 2 years Pau was there

winning +20 something games

and yet they didn't get worse after he left

they had a couple of high water years with Pau

but he left during the 08' season

and MEM was a problem in the 11' offs

so I don't know where you get these years and years

they improved almost immediately after he left (they kind of treaded water the first year)

if I had to make a correlation to the Melo trade from the FA departures

it would be how imperative it is to trade that player instead of just letting him walk away

the teams that didn't trade their star have a lot harder road to rebuilding

than the teams that actually got something in return

kind of funny when you consider that Melo was telling the world he wanted to be traded for what seemed like forever

tryin to help you out