Bare minimum or not, the expectations are excessive. People wanted him to fill multiple roster holes, upgrade the team, find those upgrades at value, and still hold onto the picks, while ignoring that there is a finite budget unless they go past the third luxury tax threshold and give up additional draft capital in future years. And if that happened, people would still bitch. The same goes if they sign a frontline starter and sacrifie the QO pick.
There is always a trade-off between chasing higher-end talent and building legitimate depth around the edges, and this offseason clearly leaned toward the latter. It has not been perfect, but the overall floor of the roster is better. That matters for a team that regularly deals with injuries and unexpected underperformance. In that context, an average offseason that improves depth, manages cost, and preserves future flexibility still has real value. Expecting every weakness to be solved at once without meaningful trade-offs is not realistic.
