Magic GM John Hammond - In The Zone: Best of the Best

[MagicFanCincy]

Lot of interesting comments here. I think a good portion of the frustration is residual from previous management (you know, the one that brought us Effrid Peyton and Mario Hezonia).

I wish I had a record of what many of you posted immediately after the Magic drafted Bamba. I was ecstatic. It may yet work out, or I along with the Magic FO made a mistake that was worth the risk.

I don't think you can complain about JI, Okeke, or Anthony?

But in hindsight we see that there's too much emphasis on athleticism and "upside" as opposed to basketball skill, especially shooting. Back in the day when the NBA drafted college seniors, the draft was less of a crap shoot; less dependent on longshot projections.

[pepe1991]

Who are the good GMs, Pepe?

Nowdays:
Ujiri, Morey, Marks , with this champoinship Jon Horst probably gets honorable mentions, from disaster he found when he took over Hammond's mediocrity mess (42-40 record, Greg Monroe, Henson, Plumlee, Teletovic 4 out of 5 highest payed players) to championship where only 2 out of 19 players from orginal Bucks were kept ( Giannis & Middelton).

But all time, best GMs are probably Greg Popovich ( as GM and president of basketball operations AND coach he only won one ring, but boy, guy was busy ) . I would rank him in top 10 as GM mostly because he drafted 2 hall of famers , Duncan and Ginobili.
Where GM Pop stopped , R.C. Buford took over. 4 titles in 19 years,some out of this world win percentage ( over 65%).

Pat Riley. 3 nba titles. All around one of most influencal nba figures. Is he only person who won championship as player, as coach and as a GM?

Mayers from Warriors. Goes under a radar how guy in 9 years as GM won 3 titles and his team pretty much changed basketball into 3 point frenzy.

Jerry Krause. Jordan may hate him, but look around best Jordan rosters, Pippen, Kukoc, Kerr, Rodman, Grant... including hiring Phil Jackson. All under Krause.


All of them are fine, but GOATs of GMing are Red Auerbach and Jerry West.


As for Dumars, i would rank him probably as high as Jack McCloskey, whole Pistons sucess in past was tied with them in some fashion.

[RookieStar]

just a reminder folks... its hammond who got MIL both GA and Middleton.. that is all..

[4xBuck]

hammond who got MIL both GA and Middleton.. that is all..

[pepe1991]

just a reminder folks... its hammond who got MIL both GA and Middleton.. that is all..

His lottery picks are:

2008: Joe Alexander. One of worst busts in history.
2009: Brandon Jennings
2011: Ferdette ( traded )
2012: Henson
2014: Jabari Parker
2016 : Thon Maker
2017 : Jonathan Isaac
2018: Mo Bamba

yea... 13 yeras , 8 times in lottery. 0 times drafted allstar.

btw it's not true that he drafted Middelton. MIddelton was drafted by Dumars. Middelton was filler in Knight for Jennings swap.

Bucks were directionless during that time. Comming off trades where they dumbed Harris to us for nothing, tried to compete with Monta Elise, Brandon Jennings and JJ Redick, than decided to trade half of a team and build around Brandon Knight....

Reddick trade was one of worst in Bucks history. They traded Tobias Harris ( at times 20 yeras old, 19# pick) for JJ Redick, who after half of a season stopped talking with head coach, and after a season wanted to walk out in free agency for nothing, but wanted to join contender so did sign and trade instad.
Aftermath of that trade says: Tobias Harris was traded to JJ Redick who was traded for two second round picks it's worst trade than Magic did with Tobias Harris. Poor guy

[RookieStar]

just a reminder folks... its hammond who got MIL both GA and Middleton.. that is all..

His lottery picks are:

2008: Joe Alexander. One of worst busts in history.
2009: Brandon Jennings
2011: Ferdette ( traded )
2012: Henson
2014: Jabari Parker
2016 : Thon Maker
2017 : Jonathan Isaac
2018: Mo Bamba

yea... 13 yeras , 8 times in lottery. 0 times drafted allstar.

btw it's not true that he drafted Middelton. MIddelton was drafted by Dumars. Middelton was filler in Knight for Jennings swap.

Bucks were directionless during that time. Comming off trades where they dumbed Harris to us for nothing, tried to compete with Monta Elise, Brandon Jennings and JJ Redick, than decided to trade half of a team and build around Brandon Knight....

Reddick trade was one of worst in Bucks history. They traded Tobias Harris ( at times 20 yeras old, 19# pick) for JJ Redick, who after half of a season stopped talking with head coach, and after a season wanted to walk out in free agency for nothing, but wanted to join contender so did sign and trade instad.
Aftermath of that trade says: Tobias Harris was traded to JJ Redick who was traded for two second round picks it's worst trade than Magic did with Tobias Harris. Poor guy

I never said anything about drafted Middleton. I knew he was the 39th pick from DET and cibsidered a filler in a trade.

I said Ham-man GOT both Giannis and Middleton. That kinda means draft trade signed etc

[pepe1991]

just a reminder folks... its hammond who got MIL both GA and Middleton.. that is all..

His lottery picks are:

2008: Joe Alexander. One of worst busts in history.
2009: Brandon Jennings
2011: Ferdette ( traded )
2012: Henson
2014: Jabari Parker
2016 : Thon Maker
2017 : Jonathan Isaac
2018: Mo Bamba

yea... 13 yeras , 8 times in lottery. 0 times drafted allstar.

btw it's not true that he drafted Middelton. MIddelton was drafted by Dumars. Middelton was filler in Knight for Jennings swap.

Bucks were directionless during that time. Comming off trades where they dumbed Harris to us for nothing, tried to compete with Monta Elise, Brandon Jennings and JJ Redick, than decided to trade half of a team and build around Brandon Knight....

Reddick trade was one of worst in Bucks history. They traded Tobias Harris ( at times 20 yeras old, 19# pick) for JJ Redick, who after half of a season stopped talking with head coach, and after a season wanted to walk out in free agency for nothing, but wanted to join contender so did sign and trade instad.
Aftermath of that trade says: Tobias Harris was traded to JJ Redick who was traded for two second round picks it's worst trade than Magic did with Tobias Harris. Poor guy

I never said anything about drafted Middleton. I knew he was the 39th pick from DET and cibsidered a filler in a trade.

I said Ham-man GOT both Giannis and Middleton. That kinda means draft trade signed etc

It's just going into rabbithole of filler trades that panned out by accident.
Billy King is worst Gm in last 30 years, yet even he won one trade , by accident ofc. Traded cash and second round pick to buy rights for Bojan Bogdanovic.
Hell, he even won that Derron Williams trade where he gave up 2 potentially sky high picks. 2# pick ended up being Favors, other sky high pick Kanter. Easy W.

[drsd]

Billy King is worst Gm in last 30 years, yet even he won one trade , by accident ofc. Traded cash and second round pick to buy rights for Bojan Bogdanovic.
Hell, he even won that Derron Williams trade where he gave up 2 potentially sky high picks. 2# pick ended up being Favors, other sky high pick Kanter. Easy W.

I love the entry paragraph of his wiki:

King's legacy in the NBA was hurt by a series of oft-criticized trades that were deemed among the "worst in league history".

Wiki: Billy King (basketball) link


..

[SOUL]

Hell, he even won that Derron Williams trade where he gave up 2 potentially sky high picks. 2# pick ended up being Favors, other sky high pick Kanter. Easy W.

That's definitely not how you should look at winning a trade though lol. Deron had 2/5 "decent" years in Brooklyn, the rest were pretty trash for what he was being paid. Injured a lot. Favors had a 9 year career with Utah. Obviously not the star they hoped for, but carved out a nice role and made the playoffs 5 times. Kanter obviously didn't work out for them but yeah.

The focus shouldn't even be on the Jazz though, it's what sort of player could the Nets have gotten besides Deron with that pick + player to make them less likely to be a lottery pick? Maybe a way better disgruntled player is available for that package.

It's like saying trading the 1st pick in 2017 draft to a team is a win because the other team gets Bennett but trading the 27th is a loss because it resulted in Gobert.. it's all about the value you're getting for those picks and the truth is he got a broken Deron Williams as his value when it could've resulted in an actual all-star to make the Kanter pick be a later pick. King is still definitely a loser.

[pepe1991]

Hell, he even won that Derron Williams trade where he gave up 2 potentially sky high picks. 2# pick ended up being Favors, other sky high pick Kanter. Easy W.

That's definitely not how you should look at winning a trade though lol. Deron had 2/5 "decent" years in Brooklyn, the rest were pretty trash for what he was being paid. Injured a lot. Favors had a 9 year career with Utah. Obviously not the star they hoped for, but carved out a nice role and made the playoffs 5 times. Kanter obviously didn't work out for them but yeah.

The focus shouldn't even be on the Jazz though, it's what sort of player could the Nets have gotten besides Deron with that pick + player to make them less likely to be a lottery pick? Maybe a way better disgruntled player is available for that package.

It's like saying trading the 1st pick in 2017 draft to a team is a win because the other team gets Bennett but trading the 27th is a loss because it resulted in Gobert.. it's all about the value you're getting for those picks and the truth is he got a broken Deron Williams as his value when it could've resulted in an actual all-star to make the Kanter pick be a later pick. King is still definitely a loser.

I don't know.

Derron was top 5 PG at age of 26. Equivalent of making trade for him today would be trading De'aaron Fox for two unprotected picks. I would do it to be honest.

Utah botched both picks, Favors and kanter were 3rd overall picks, Favors went on to become average role player, Kanter to become bench spark. Non of them had Derron's impact.

This is probably that two-coins argument where knowng commodity is less popular than unknown due "mistery" appeal . 2 first round unprotected picks sure sounded way more sexy than Derick Favors and Enas Kenter. Just like for Suns two 4th overall picks in middle of rebuild sounded better than Dragan Bender and Jackson.

Just to be clear, i have zero desire to defend Billy King my point was that if you are GM for long time over time and with amount of trades, you will win some trade eventually. That's why i don't see why would give Hammond credis for Middelton.

He made 38 trades as Bucks GM. With so many transactions, ofc some filler turned into good player eventually.

If we are going to talk about his trades, there was one that aged as complete disaster. He drafted Norman Powell, but packaged him with future pick for Greivas Vasquez to Toronto. Pick he send turned into OG Anunoby.

But on other side, despite botching Thon Maker, drafted Brogdon late.

My complaints about Hammond as GM are always same. His rosters are always in awkward spots with combinations of players that never make any sense and his lottery drafting is pure garbage ( 8 lottery picks, 0 allstars, probably 1-2 good players alltogether).

[basketballRob]

just a reminder folks... its hammond who got MIL both GA and Middleton.. that is all..

His lottery picks are:

2008: Joe Alexander. One of worst busts in history.
2009: Brandon Jennings
2011: Ferdette ( traded )
2012: Henson
2014: Jabari Parker
2016 : Thon Maker
2017 : Jonathan Isaac
2018: Mo Bamba

yea... 13 yeras , 8 times in lottery. 0 times drafted allstar.

btw it's not true that he drafted Middelton. MIddelton was drafted by Dumars. Middelton was filler in Knight for Jennings swap.

Bucks were directionless during that time. Comming off trades where they dumbed Harris to us for nothing, tried to compete with Monta Elise, Brandon Jennings and JJ Redick, than decided to trade half of a team and build around Brandon Knight....

Reddick trade was one of worst in Bucks history. They traded Tobias Harris ( at times 20 yeras old, 19# pick) for JJ Redick, who after half of a season stopped talking with head coach, and after a season wanted to walk out in free agency for nothing, but wanted to join contender so did sign and trade instad.
Aftermath of that trade says: Tobias Harris was traded to JJ Redick who was traded for two second round picks it's worst trade than Magic did with Tobias Harris. Poor guy

I remember after AG's first summer league game I was comparing him to Joe Alexander.

I kind of feel like Weltman is more of the GM than Hammond is. I can't remember what program I was listening to the other day, but someone was referring to Weltman as the Magic's GM, and no one corrected him.

Sent from my SM-G950U using RealGM Forums mobile app

[RookieStar]

BTW... since we are getting Luka cuof Mos, Dame because of our assistant coach, should we prepare for Giannis cuz he really praied Hammond a lot? Do we want another non-shooter in this lineup or naaaah?

[skyguy]

Holy crap, we're trading up to draft Evan Mobley.

We all know I am a Green fan, but I wonder if Mobley might actually be the better fit on this team.

or maybe they like Kai Jones, or Charles Bassey.

[Magicfanatic82]

Weltman has the final say here, so Hammond is #2. The job here is fair to criticize. We pushed with a mediocre team hard for the playoffs and it paused any real building of a better foundation.
Isaac was a good pick, just injured.
Bamba was BPA, maybe we could have moved down since we had Vuc in his way.
Okeke and Anthony have preformed just fine for thier draft positions.
Fultz took very little to acquire.
This last 5 months we are finally seeing weltman and Hammond dig into a rebuild. Let's see how the team takes shape.

[Horcy]

Lot of interesting comments here. I think a good portion of the frustration is residual from previous management (you know, the one that brought us Effrid Peyton and Mario Hezonia).

I wish I had a record of what many of you posted immediately after the Magic drafted Bamba. I was ecstatic. It may yet work out, or I along with the Magic FO made a mistake that was worth the risk.

I don't think you can complain about JI, Okeke, or Anthony?

But in hindsight we see that there's too much emphasis on athleticism and "upside" as opposed to basketball skill, especially shooting. Back in the day when the NBA drafted college seniors, the draft was less of a crap shoot; less dependent on longshot projections.

Effrid Peyton and Mario Hezonia, Who?