[The Athletic, Shams] Weaver out in Detroit

[babyjax13]

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[Texas Chuck]

This is in my crow pile. I had heard glowing things about what he was contributing under Presti in OKC and I thought this was a good hire. It was not a good hire.

[babyjax13]

This is in my crow pile. I had heard glowing things about what he was contributing under Presti in OKC and I thought this was a good hire. It was not a good hire.

I actually think he had some good moves, but they got really, really unlucky in the draft. There aren't the same kind of head-scratching draft day decisions (to me) as a guy like McNair picking Davion Mitchell while also having Fox AND Haliburton. So, I guess my opinion is - I think he had a bad run and should be gone, but I'm not sure he won't do a good job somewhere else.

[HadAnEffectHere]

Every move he made other than the Ausar pick and the Hayes pick were fine.

The Ausar pick felt like an exec not understanding just how unsaveable Ausar's jumpshot was, but basically everyone pretended that these guys could learn how to shoot someone so it's hard to ridicule him too much when everyone was under a similar delusion.

[MoneyTalks41890]

Sold cap space way too cheap and made some head scratching veteran moves imo.

[babyjax13]

Every move he made other than the Ausar pick and the Hayes pick were fine.

The Ausar pick felt like an exec not understanding just how unsaveable Ausar's jumpshot was, but basically everyone pretended that these guys could learn how to shoot someone so it's hard to ridicule him too much when everyone was under a similar delusion.

Well, there was extending Bagley then using minor assets to drop him.

[jbk1234]

I just don't understand how you draft that many guards who can't shoot in the top 10.

[JimmyPlopper]

This is in my crow pile. I had heard glowing things about what he was contributing under Presti in OKC and I thought this was a good hire. It was not a good hire.

Same here.

[zimpy27]

Yeah Weaver was bad.

[babyjax13]

I just don't understand how you draft that many guards who can't shoot in the top 10.

Honestly I think Weaver is an interesting 'philosophy of team building' case study. I think he searched for 'best value' and 'best player available' with all of his picks and personnel moves, but really neglected fit. So now those guys that may have developed better in the right context (esp. Ivey) have extremely depressed value. The only moves that I feel like were super maligned at the time were:

1. extending Bagley
2. signing Grant

and only one of those two ended up being bad value. Am I misremembering?

So, with hindsight I feel like the issues are fairly clear (but compounded by slipping in the lottery over and over), but at the time nothing was super questionable. I still think it is the right move, they need to think about fit and they need a culture change, but I do think people are overly critical and that he has been better even than some GMs whose teams have had success (e.g., I will die insisting that McNair is a very bad GM, and Olshey had tons of teams go to the playoffs, but IMO is one of the worst GMs in the last 20 years - certainly worse than Weaver).

I'll also say that I think Weaver's teambuilding should be a cautionary tale for what Ainge is doing in Utah.

[Snakebites]

This is in my crow pile. I had heard glowing things about what he was contributing under Presti in OKC and I thought this was a good hire. It was not a good hire.

We were all optimistic at first. It “felt” like a good hire.

Hopefully our new hires don’t age in similar fashion.

[wemby]

This is in my crow pile. I had heard glowing things about what he was contributing under Presti in OKC and I thought this was a good hire. It was not a good hire.

I actually think he had some good moves, but they got really, really unlucky in the draft. There aren't the same kind of head-scratching draft day decisions (to me) as a guy like McNair picking Davion Mitchell while also having Fox AND Haliburton. So, I guess my opinion is - I think he had a bad run and should be gone, but I'm not sure he won't do a good job somewhere else.

He could have had better luck, so could many others. Fact is, there was plenty of talent available in the past 4 drafts and he missed more than he hit. His asset management was bad, his roster construction was bad, his FA signings and trades were bad... there's no way to spin this as anything other than a failure.

[Snakebites]

Weaver’s asset management was abysmal.

We’d give up so much cap space for second rounders, then throw those seconds into trades like they meant nothing.

He had an unhealthy obsession with bust lottery picks especially if they are bigs who don’t defend.

At the end of the day I think all of those things would be forgiven if he’d drafted well. For a rebuilding team starting from square one nothing mattered nearly so much as that.

And…well, you see what our roster looks like.

Nothing against Troy personally but he deserves to be gone.

[jbk1234]

I just don't understand how you draft that many guards who can't shoot in the top 10.

Honestly I think Weaver is an interesting 'philosophy of team building' case study. I think he searched for 'best value' and 'best player available' with all of his picks and personnel moves, but really neglected fit. So now those guys that may have developed better in the right context (esp. Ivey) have extremely depressed value. The only moves that I feel like were super maligned at the time were:

1. extending Bagley
2. signing Grant

and only one of those two ended up being bad value. Am I misremembering?

So, with hindsight I feel like the issues are fairly clear (but compounded by slipping in the lottery over and over), but at the time nothing was super questionable. I still think it is the right move, they need to think about fit and they need a culture change, but I do think people are overly critical and that he has been better even than some GMs whose teams have had success (e.g., I will die insisting that McNair is a very bad GM, and Olshey had tons of teams go to the playoffs, but IMO is one of the worst GMs in the last 20 years - certainly worse than Weaver).

I'll also say that I think Weaver's teambuilding should be a cautionary tale for what Ainge is doing in Utah.

You can always trade back, but if you find yourself repeatedly identifying guards who can't shoot as best available, maybe there's something wrong with your evaluation process.

Also, he did a very poor job of accumulating assets or selling high on role players. Extending Bogs at his age after no one met his asking price of an unprotected 1st was dumb. How many deadlines was Burks on their roster? The two seconds for Joe Harris at the beginning of free agency was dumb. You need to get at least one or two additional firsts if you're in a rebuild, and IIRC, he actually traded one with declining protections on it to NY. Impatience screws up more rebuilds than anything else besides poor drafting.

[giberish]

I just don't understand how you draft that many guards who can't shoot in the top 10.

Honestly I think Weaver is an interesting 'philosophy of team building' case study. I think he searched for 'best value' and 'best player available' with all of his picks and personnel moves, but really neglected fit. So now those guys that may have developed better in the right context (esp. Ivey) have extremely depressed value. The only moves that I feel like were super maligned at the time were:

1. extending Bagley
2. signing Grant

and only one of those two ended up being bad value. Am I misremembering?

So, with hindsight I feel like the issues are fairly clear (but compounded by slipping in the lottery over and over), but at the time nothing was super questionable. I still think it is the right move, they need to think about fit and they need a culture change, but I do think people are overly critical and that he has been better even than some GMs whose teams have had success (e.g., I will die insisting that McNair is a very bad GM, and Olshey had tons of teams go to the playoffs, but IMO is one of the worst GMs in the last 20 years - certainly worse than Weaver).

I'll also say that I think Weaver's teambuilding should be a cautionary tale for what Ainge is doing in Utah.

I feel like he's made a lot of moves that were seen as poor (often not big enough to draw major criticism but still not much liked) that have generally turned out poor (Bey for Wiseman, trading a future 1st at the start of a rebuild, generally selling cap space cheap). None that bad individually, but consistently losing deals at the margins makes it hard to build up a team. Add in having essentially no draft wins (Cade's nice but at #1 that's the least you expect) over several years and it's tough to see much reason to keep him.

Even with nothing obviously terrible at the time (obviously in retrospect Hayes over Hali but that was credibly debatable at the time), the lack of good moves and large number of mildly bad moves justify moving on.

[HadAnEffectHere]

I just don't understand how you draft that many guards who can't shoot in the top 10.

Honestly I think Weaver is an interesting 'philosophy of team building' case study. I think he searched for 'best value' and 'best player available' with all of his picks and personnel moves, but really neglected fit. So now those guys that may have developed better in the right context (esp. Ivey) have extremely depressed value. The only moves that I feel like were super maligned at the time were:

1. extending Bagley
2. signing Grant

and only one of those two ended up being bad value. Am I misremembering?

So, with hindsight I feel like the issues are fairly clear (but compounded by slipping in the lottery over and over), but at the time nothing was super questionable. I still think it is the right move, they need to think about fit and they need a culture change, but I do think people are overly critical and that he has been better even than some GMs whose teams have had success (e.g., I will die insisting that McNair is a very bad GM, and Olshey had tons of teams go to the playoffs, but IMO is one of the worst GMs in the last 20 years - certainly worse than Weaver).

I'll also say that I think Weaver's teambuilding should be a cautionary tale for what Ainge is doing in Utah.

I mean, look at who was picked after Ivey and Ausar.

The guys on the board for the Pistons at 5 last year were

Ausar-Defensive star prospect with a horrible jumpshot
Black-Defensive star prospect with bad jumpshot
Bilal-Extremely raw defensive prospect with bad jumpshot
Jarace Walker-Good defensive prospect with questionable offense
Taylor Hendricks-Good shooter and defensive prospect with no other offense
Cason Wallace-Good shooter and defender with question otherwise offense

The clear pick in retrospect was Cason Wallace, but Cason Wallace would have looked horrible one year after taking Jaden Ivey.

And for the Pistons at 5 in 2022 we have

Ivey
Mathurin
Sharpe
Dyson Daniels
Sochan
Johnny Davis
Dieng
JDub
Duren
Agbaji
Mark Williams

There's like one good player on this list so far. Ivey was also supposed to be a good fit with Cade as Ivey was an undersized SG but that was fine as Cade was an oversized PG.

[LaSheed]

When Troy Weaver came out and said that he loves bigs...let me tell you one thing.....that man wasn't lying.

[HadAnEffectHere]

I just don't understand how you draft that many guards who can't shoot in the top 10.

Honestly I think Weaver is an interesting 'philosophy of team building' case study. I think he searched for 'best value' and 'best player available' with all of his picks and personnel moves, but really neglected fit. So now those guys that may have developed better in the right context (esp. Ivey) have extremely depressed value. The only moves that I feel like were super maligned at the time were:

1. extending Bagley
2. signing Grant

and only one of those two ended up being bad value. Am I misremembering?

So, with hindsight I feel like the issues are fairly clear (but compounded by slipping in the lottery over and over), but at the time nothing was super questionable. I still think it is the right move, they need to think about fit and they need a culture change, but I do think people are overly critical and that he has been better even than some GMs whose teams have had success (e.g., I will die insisting that McNair is a very bad GM, and Olshey had tons of teams go to the playoffs, but IMO is one of the worst GMs in the last 20 years - certainly worse than Weaver).

I'll also say that I think Weaver's teambuilding should be a cautionary tale for what Ainge is doing in Utah.

You can always trade back, but if you find yourself repeatedly identifying guards who can't shoot as best available, maybe there's something wrong with your evaluation process.

Also, he did a very poor job of accumulating assets or selling high on role players. Extending Bogs at his age after no one met his asking price of an unprotected 1st was dumb. How many deadlines was Burks on their roster? The two seconds for Joe Harris at the beginning of free agency was dumb. You need to get at least one or two additional firsts if you're in a rebuild, and IIRC, he actually traded one with declining protections on it to NY. Impatience screws up more rebuilds than anything else besides poor drafting.

Hayes, Cade, and Ivey were projected to be much better shooters than they ended up being.

Ausar was mostly inexcusable.

[Snakebites]

Only thing I’ll say is that unlike his predecessor (SVG) he didn’t leave behind any bad contracts.

[mhd]

Weaver had terrible luck with the ping pong balls. All of his 1st round picks were completely defensible at the time.

2020:
Hayes(7) (yeah this one hurts for sure, but he was a highly regarded prospect). Passed on Deni (9), Vassell (11), Halliburton (12).
Stewart (16) (Solid Pick)
Bey (18) (Solid Pick, was eventually traded away).

Passing on Maxey (20) hurts, but they put their money on Hayes and it didn't work out. Took Solid role players in Stewart & Bey.

2021:
Cade (1) (I would have taken Mobley), but he was the consensus #1 that year.

2022:
Ivey (5) (As stated above, only Jalen Williams taken at 12 makes this hurt). He was the consensus pick here.
Duren (13) (He has incredible athleticism and puts up numbers. Defense has been an issue. Would Eason, Mark Williams, and Kelsey have fit better?)

2023:
Thompson (5) (too early to tell).

Aside from Hayes, you can't really fault any of his picks. Detroit isn't exactly a FA destination. They had cap space but no one was willing to sign there.