Magic Promote Anthony Parker to General Manager, John Hammond Moves to Senior Advisor

[bigdogdylan5]

lol

Magic headed for doom after promoting former Kings “worst GM in history”

This Wednesday, the Orlando Magic made a terrible mistake that only Sacramento Kings fans can see coming. The Magic promoted former Kings GM Pete D’Alessandro to executive vice president of basketball, according to ESPN. Since 2017, D’Alessandro served as the assistant GM for the Magic.

Fans know Pete D’Alessandro as a harrowing name from a dark time in Kings’ history. D’Alessandro served as GM for Sacramento from 2013-15, making some infamously poor decisions during that time.

The D’Alessandro era in Sacramento was so poorly run that Pete literally was asking fans their ideas on how to run the team in a Reddit thread. Being called the “worst GM in NBA history” by many fans, we have just one message to fans of the Orlando Magic: we understand your pain. We are sorry.

Here are a couple of things Magic fans can get not-so-excited about.
The firing of a world-class head coach

Infamously, D’Alessandro decided to fire then-head coach Mike Malone in December 2014, the first half of the season. Malone, who is now an NBA champion with the Denver Nuggets, led the Kings to a great start of the season with a record of 9-5, playing ahead of expectations set by previous years. Unfortunately, a freak illness of viral meningitis then caused superstar Demarcus Cousins to miss nine games leading up to Malone’s firing.

The loss of Cousins obviously stunted that part of a season where everything seemed to be going right, so the decision to fire Malone was inexcusable.

Malone told this to USA Today in 2016 about his firing:

“It never needed to happen. We were headed in the right direction, and you always wonder, ‘What if?’”

You do have to wonder – what if? Malone, who has led the Denver Nuggets to domination in the west over the past few years, could easily have pulled the Kings out of their playoff drought early.
D’Alessandro passed up fantastic prospects in the draft

Continuing on the trend of poor decisions from D’Alessandro, the 2014 draft is a night to forget for Kings fans. After passing up on names like Zach Levine, Jusuf Nurkic, Clint Capela, Bogdan Bogdanovic, and now-superstar Nikola Jokic (to be fair to Pete, everyone passed up on Jokic), D’Alessandro selected Nik Stauskas.

Nik Stauskas was a good shooter at the time, but just not what Sacramento needed, and fans had a poor reaction to his pick.

Stauskas was never notable for the Kings, averaging only 4.4 points per game in his only season with the Kings before being traded to the Philadelphia 76ers the following summer. Stauskas has since played overseas and returned to the NBA, but is rarely making appearances.
Orlando Magic are headed for doom

The Orlando Magic, while historically had some NBA legends, are not a great team right now. They have missed the playoffs for the past three years, and have not won a series since 2010 (which, ironically, is still more than the Kings in that time).

There just doesn’t seem to be much direction in the Orlando front office, and with his final act as assistant GM to waive fan-favorite Bol Bol, you have to feel sorry for Magic fans for the next few years. Hopefully D’Alessandro has learned from his past and can improve the Magic, for their own sake.

I certainly can't/won't try to defend the guy's record in SAC...but, as far as Stauskas goes - the whole world watched that foolishness unfold with Vivek (who is arguably the worst/most meddling owner in NBA history) walking around the war room, with a s**t-eating smile, confirming that all the FO guys were on board with "Stauskas", "It's Stauskas?, "Stauskas, right?".

That was a bad era, when Vivek was really reveling in his new toy, suggesting game plans (defend 4 vs 5 and have a "cherry picker" at half-court for freebies")...Vlade Divac made a lot of money and took a lot of heat for his period of just nodding and agreeing with the Boss.

Here is the video

Watch on YouTube

I still can’t believe an NBA team let grantland have that access. Idk how you watch this and not conclude that owner was calling the shots.

[MartinsIzAfraud]

lol

I certainly can't/won't try to defend the guy's record in SAC...but, as far as Stauskas goes - the whole world watched that foolishness unfold with Vivek (who is arguably the worst/most meddling owner in NBA history) walking around the war room, with a s**t-eating smile, confirming that all the FO guys were on board with "Stauskas", "It's Stauskas?, "Stauskas, right?".

That was a bad era, when Vivek was really reveling in his new toy, suggesting game plans (defend 4 vs 5 and have a "cherry picker" at half-court for freebies")...Vlade Divac made a lot of money and took a lot of heat for his period of just nodding and agreeing with the Boss.

Here is the video

Watch on YouTube

I still can’t believe an NBA team let grantland have that access. Idk how you watch this and not conclude that owner was calling the shots.

ehh seemed like they were mainly in on Stauskas so I don't think it was as much Vivek. Would've been TITS if they took Payton, as we would've taken Lavine. Oh man how that would've worked out good lord.

[The Effect]

I mean hard to put all the blame on him, watching that draft video years ago, i didnt even think they had a GM and it was a jerry jones situation. I mean hell wasnt he the same guy who was pushing the team to play a 4 on 5 defense and leave someone back for "easy buckets"? you know, seems like a tough place to succeed. Say alot that a team like the nuggets would bring him back after that joke of a run in SAC

Is the guy amazing? probably not but he has been the assistant gm here since 2017, so clearly he has SOME say over whats happened here over the past 5 years. Weltman is still here and dont think his role has changed and Parker is the New GM, so i dont see him being a major decision maker or anything, so really dont see the big deal

[J_Magic]

This seems kind of corrupt.

Not sure why Hammond was hired in the first place when Weltham was doing all the talking the in media.

Exactly how hard is this job?

What's Anthony Parker going to do - actually scout some players and initiate trade discussion with teams? Weltham and Hammond sit on their ass the last few years and wait for this Organic process to happen.

Don't get me wrong...I'm happy with Banchero and Wagner - cornerstone franchise players for us. But many they are weak in the open market. They don't generate excitement that Orlando is a play free agents want to sign.

[Kent]

Don't get me wrong...I'm happy with Banchero and Wagner - cornerstone franchise players for us. But many they are weak in the open market. They don't generate excitement that Orlando is a play free agents want to sign.

Who would you have pursued the past few years?

[KillMonger]

people quick to point out problems without stating their solutions for said problems

[SOUL]

Read on Twitter

[RookieStar]

Read on Twitter

Can you give us some highlights SOUL? Some of us are working.lol

[MartinsIzAfraud]

Read on Twitter

Interesting comment about FA and why we didn’t spend.

Continue to evaluate our own roster and who we are as a team with all the youth.

Not shocked honestly, they’re going to wait until the last minute to make decisions and then pick one. He’s already got the GM speak down and don’t expect much more then the normal mouth piece stuff.

[fendilim]

Speak of the devil.

Read on Twitter

Is he even making the decisions? Sounds like everything is run through Weltman, and need to have Weltman’s approval, tbh. Its just a change of title and salary for AP.

I mean you would think the GM handles most of the negotiations and day to day stuff bringing things to the PBO for approval. So yea we still have the guy that makes the final decision but the principal advisor has changed. I do love the idea of having a former player really high up in the decision making process to have that perspective. I think some stuff will change because we have a different person providing inputs to Weltman

Not much has changed for him haha

Kravitz: Did you have a different level of responsibility for recent events like the draft and free agency? Did your seat at the table change prior to it being announced to the public?

Parker: The wonderful thing about our group is that Jeff Weltman has done an unbelievable job of allowing everybody to have a voice. From that standpoint, I don’t think much has changed. We all did the work. We all contributed what we thought and then it’s up to Jeff to make the decision. That’s how it’s always worked. From that standpoint, the role, the responsibility, the voice… hasn’t really changed much.

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2307048&p=107513361#p107513361

[pepe1991]

I thought that reddit thing was joke, but it seems it was legit


Most painful part of reading his old reddit posts is figuring out that he targeted Rudy Gay as he desrcibed perfect player to play with Cousins, and actually beliving Cousins can play full time PF.

"One of the amazing things about working for Vivek is that he challenges us to think differently. He has changed the way I view the game. His vision of NBA 3.0 will surely transform not only this team but also the City of Sacramento."


Okey, Weltman, keep doing everything on your own


To me it was common sense before moves, now it's just cristal clear that Weltman does everything, and those guys around him are just puppets to fill positional spots. Probably yes-men to tap him on a back when he falls asleep during trade deadline last hours

[drsd]

Not much has changed for him haha

Kravitz: Did you have a different level of responsibility for recent events like the draft and free agency? Did your seat at the table change prior to it being announced to the public?

Parker: The wonderful thing about our group is that Jeff Weltman has done an unbelievable job of allowing everybody to have a voice. From that standpoint, I don’t think much has changed. We all did the work. We all contributed what we thought and then it’s up to Jeff to make the decision. That’s how it’s always worked. From that standpoint, the role, the responsibility, the voice… hasn’t really changed much.

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2307048&p=107513361#p107513361

I have read that the PBO and the GM are analogous to the CEO and COO structure of business. That is: The CEO sets a strategy and the COO implements and makes the decisions adherent to that strategy.

This could mean that it is Parker's job to make all the decisions and Weltman's job to say Yes or No to those choices. I guess their relationship would be about how often Weltman says No. If it is rare/never, then Parker is in charge of personnel. If it is sometimes/frequent, then Parker is essentially an advisor doing the leg-work of the decision processes.

Given Weltman's vibe and front-of-camera personality, it does seem more like the later. In that, the transition from Hammond to Parker will be seamless to us fans.

[eyriq]

https://pca.st/episode/208efced-9d17-415e-aebd-b40aeab80bf3

Weltman heavily invested in analytics. #respect

[JoshuaPotter]

https://pca.st/episode/208efced-9d17-415e-aebd-b40aeab80bf3

Weltman heavily invested in analytics. #respect

I wanna see the Jett Howard stats they saw.....

[KillMonger]

https://pca.st/episode/208efced-9d17-415e-aebd-b40aeab80bf3

Weltman heavily invested in analytics. #respect

I wanna see the Jett Howard stats they saw.....

get on board man, he's already here

[JoshuaPotter]

https://pca.st/episode/208efced-9d17-415e-aebd-b40aeab80bf3

Weltman heavily invested in analytics. #respect

I wanna see the Jett Howard stats they saw.....

get on board man, he's already here

I'm on board. My curiosity will always get the better of me though.

[fendilim]

I wanna see the Jett Howard stats they saw.....

get on board man, he's already here

I'm on board. My curiosity will always get the better of me though.

Jett Howard ranks 12th actually on stat-based WARP of Pelton. So I wouldn’t be surprised if in some other advanced stat metric, he is high as well