ATLTimekeeper wrote:I thought he had a pretty bad off-season last year and they got better. It's hard to rate him on spec moves, because things seem to work out for him.
I do think he and Webster are looking sloppy right now. They wanted to trade last night, at three different points in the draft, and they weren't the ones that said no. Personally I think they should buck up and pay the tax. The fans have been loyal, too loyal, in some cases. Last night I was disappointed, but mostly because the most successful arm of Ujiri's management team the last few years is the scouting department. You should want to invest more heavily in those guys, because they're covering up for the lack of return on investment from some of the bigger contracts.
I agree. Last offseason was pretty brutal but this one is going to be the most telling.
Masai is far from a bad GM. As much as a critique him, he isn't bad. His strengths are in the draft and in trades.
However, his flaws are pretty big as well - he is VERY, VERY slow to make moves/changes and I think he lacks a clear direction. Both of these issues are kind of intertwined. Before I call his lack of direction "his flaw", we might have to read between the lines and look at management. That Carroll signing was bad before the ink even touched the paper. He was a system role player coming off a great season and an injury. I think even amateurs could have told you it was a bad idea. Two seasons later, he's traded for a first and second round pick... then we instill a system of ball movement?? Right after paying to offload a guy that we saw flourish in that system?? Why? Just to save MLSE money. This was very clearly not in the best interest oi the team. This was in the best interest of MLSE.
Oh and that money we saved on the Carroll trade? We used it to outbid ourselves for Ibaka and overpay Powell who is beginning a 4yr/$40M deal this summer and is out of the rotation.
At this point, whether they have a firesale of our vets and rebuild or get more vets to compete, I don't even care anymore. Just pick a direction and go hard in that direction. If the goal is to compete, let's go get Gasol or someone who's good enough to at least try to take us to the next level. CJ Miles isn't good enough to do that. If we're going to go through the draft, let's take chances on the right high upside guys. Let's buy picks. Let's trade into the draft. The most frustrating thing about this franchise and/or management is they teeter-totter too much which in turn wastes time, money, player's prime etc. Look at Boston. They were better than us, worse than us and better than us again in the same 5 years we've been riding this Lowry-DeRozan core.
Now I'm not sure whether this is because of Masai or MLSE but since Masai is the President and claims to have full autonomy, I'm going to put the blame on him. When you add to the fact that his tenure in Denver was very similar (decent pieces, decent picks, overachieving team that never went anywhere and a few overpaid contracts) and the trend seems to suggest this is who he is OR the Nuggets and Raps management have similar goals. One or the other. Or both.
He's GM that owners love because he makes them money but he doesn't make teams that compete at the highest level. He'll never be out of a job in the NBA though, that's for sure. But he'l also never build a winner. Whether that's his fault or not, we'll never know. He'll never come out and say he's being instructed by management because they cut his cheque at the end of the day and won't throw his employer under the bus publicly.
and there you have, the Toronto Raptors.
