Countdown to Ernie Grunfeld Firing (Part 2)

[Sluggerface]

So what's the EG Countdown time at now?

I still wouldn't resign him, but it's easy for Ted to push him around (trading the 2nd round pick for cash considerations again when we needed a PG), and he hasn't done anything lately to jeopardize the team.

All of these moves he made this summer were pretty basic, and come easily when you're negotiating from a position of strength. In this case, our playoff run. And honestly, the pierce signing was ALL Casell.

He handled the Gortat trade atrociously on almost every level. The Miller trade happened WAY too late in the season.

My main problem with Ernie is that he has no sense for a long game. He makes moves based on year to year, and not two or three year sets. As soon as the rebuild was initiated our asset accumulation was horrible.

Just go back to how he dismantled the previous big three.

Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood, and Deshawn Stevenson for Josh Howard, Drew Gooden, James Singleton, and Quinton Ross.


I mean are you serious? Caron was still in his prime and his contract, which had GREAT value on it, wasn't even expiring for at least another season. He was one season removed from back to back All-Star years and this was the best he could do? Absolutely pathetic. He was able to squeeze a first from Cleveland for Jamison who was closing in on the wrong side of 30, but this **** show of a trade still floors me to this day.

Imagine if he would have held on and traded Caron and the first we got from Cleveland to Indiana in exchange for Paul George.

I know the chances of that happening are slim, but it still irks me how Ernie didn't even try to get more lottery picks that year when he had prime talent to give away.

[WallWithTheDime]

So what's the EG Countdown time at now?

I still wouldn't resign him, but it's easy for Ted to push him around (trading the 2nd round pick for cash considerations again when we needed a PG), and he hasn't done anything lately to jeopardize the team.

All of these moves he made this summer were pretty basic, and come easily when you're negotiating from a position of strength. In this case, our playoff run. And honestly, the pierce signing was ALL Casell.

He handled the Gortat trade atrociously on almost every level. The Miller trade happened WAY too late in the season.

My main problem with Ernie is that he has no sense for a long game. He makes moves based on year to year, and not two or three year sets. As soon as the rebuild was initiated our asset accumulation was horrible.

Just go back to how he dismantled the previous big three.

Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood, and Deshawn Stevenson for Josh Howard, Drew Gooden, James Singleton, and Quinton Ross.


I mean are you serious? Caron was still in his prime and his contract, which had GREAT value on it, wasn't even expiring for at least another season. He was one season removed from back to back All-Star years and this was the best he could do? Absolutely pathetic. He was able to squeeze a first from Cleveland for Jamison who was closing in on the wrong side of 30, but this **** show of a trade still floors me to this day.

Imagine if he would have held on and traded Caron and the first we got from Cleveland to Indiana in exchange for Paul George.

I know the chances of that happening are slim, but it still irks me how Ernie didn't even try to get more lottery picks that year when he had prime talent to give away.

Moving on I think he is doing a better job, but how many years down the road did that take...I agree with the moves lately. Like you said it seems he doesn't have a future mindset only thinking in the present with moves, so that seems it might hurt the KD thing, but he made some moves in regards to that x D haha, we will see how the season goes! I'm still genially excited

[hands11]

Come on ... This future mind set stuff is BS.

Ted laid out the plan and for the most part has stuck to it. The future mind set started when the owner laid out the time line and said, we are going to be bad for a few years, stick with us. Abe never had a long time line. It was always win now.

It started with drafting Wall and then they extended him max before he was do because of the future.
They drafted Porter because they know TA would be a FA. Well TA left and they have Otto.
TA wasn't signed in large part because his deal would be to long. Why ? The future.
Gortat was inked to stabilize the center for then next 4-5 years.
Paul was signed in large part because they wanted his vet presence and because its a 2 year deal.

Beal was picked to be Wall running mate for 10 years. Future. Not Waiters but Beal. Personality counts.

Hump, Blair, Gooden. All short deals with an eye on the future.
A Miller brought in to help develop Wall.. Future

Since Ted took over, they have shown they have a plan and an approach that is centered on developing Wall and Beal and now Otto, while winning in the playoffs and keeping cap space to land another big fish.

Actually, they have done a pretty good job of balancing current needs and future needs.

There are lots of moves they might have been able to do sure. And everything didn't work out as planned. But they did make a ton of progress.

EG got better the day he got a new owner. Still made some mistakes but after 4 years, I like the team a hell of a lot better then anything put together under Abe, short of once team in the 70s

So the goal this year in ECF and farther. And the next major move is landing a big FA in 2016.

Enjoy the ride.

[closg00]

Stockholm abuse victims would often thank their abusers for occasionally ceasing their hideous abuse, Grunfeld supporters are kinda like that.

Jan Vesely, the Blatche, Maynor, Webster panic-signings etc are all swept-away because Ernie managed to raise to the level of competence...and we are supposed to be grateful.


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[Sluggerface]

Come on ... This future mind set stuff is BS.

Ted laid out the plan and for the most part has stuck to it. The future mind set started when the owner laid out the time line and said, we are going to be bad for a few years, stick with us. Abe never had a long time line. It was always win now.

It started with drafting Wall and then they extended him max before he was do because of the future.
They drafted Porter because they know TA would be a FA. Well TA left and they have Otto.
TA wasn't signed in large part because his deal would be to long. Why ? The future.
Gortat was inked to stabilize the center for then next 4-5 years.
Paul was signed in large part because they wanted his vet presence and because its a 2 year deal.

Beal was picked to be Wall running mate for 10 years. Future. Not Waiters but Beal. Personality counts.

Hump, Blair, Gooden. All short deals with an eye on the future.
A Miller brought in to help develop Wall.. Future

Since Ted took over, they have shown they have a plan and an approach that is centered on developing Wall and Beal and now Otto, while winning in the playoffs and keeping cap space to land another big fish.

Actually, they have done a pretty good job of balancing current needs and future needs.

There are lots of moves they might have been able to do sure. And everything didn't work out as planned. But they did make a ton of progress.

EG got better the day he got a new owner. Still made some mistakes but after 4 years, I like the team a hell of a lot better then anything put together under Abe, short of once team in the 70s

So the goal this year in ECF and farther. And the next major move is landing a big FA in 2016.

Enjoy the ride.

Again, these were all incredibly simple moves. Denver didn't want Miller (Ernie got fleeced for a pick when he was in a position of strength). Phoenix didn't want Gortat. Beal was a consensus lock. Everyone had a feeling Trevor wanted to be closer to home out west. And most importantly, he had the mandate from the head of the snake to give up any non untouchable assets to do it. We are now tapped out, unless Rice and Porter can make a name for themselves, and even then they are stationed to fill some pretty gigantic holes on this roster going forward. But honestly it wouldn't surprise me if he handled any trade between the two like he handled the Jordan Crawford situation, which would be essentially getting nothing while the other teams flips the player and ACTUALLY gets picks.

Just because the rebuild has been a quote unquote "success" doesn't absolve EG from his incredibly incompetent and lazy managerial skills that repeatedly set us back. He drafted Vesely based on a 5 minute dunking youtube video, and then pairs that pick with getting another tweener with poor basketball skills. Out of 30 players in the first round that year he picked perhaps the two worst players from a skills standpoint. Satoransky was an abomination of a pick (32nd), one I think was made for the sole purpose of trying to motivate Jan Vesely. Satoransky's rights are now useless because he's a **** boy with a massively overinflated sense of his own talent level.

The best trade he has made during this rebuild was trading Nate Wolters and some eurogarbage for Glen Rice, who fell from a first round pick due to attitude issues back at Georgia Tech. That was a great value trade. I won't give a good grade to the Nene trade either because he essentially gave up Nick Young to match salary and got nothing in return for one of his best perimeter players.

[payitforward]

Stockholm abuse victims would often thank their abusers for occasionally ceasing their hideous abuse, Grunfeld supporters are kinda like that.

Jan Vesely, the Blatche, Maynor, Webster panic-signings etc are all swept-away because Ernie managed to raise to the level of competence...and we are supposed to be grateful.

LOL !!!

You forgot a few bonehead moves: Singleton instead of Faried? Tomas Satoransky instead of Jae Crowder? Flush the #46 pick that year instead of picking Kyle O'Quinn? Flush the #46 this year for a few bucks? Draft Shelvin Mack instead of Parsons, then waive him, then watch him turn into a solid young backup pg (exactly what we are missing), then say that we didn't have time to develop him (because we had to go hard for our 29 win season?).

Not to mention trading all our flexibility for an injury-troubled veteran C, then having no plan B, then having to give too much to find a replacement for him when, as was predictable, an injury took him down.

Etc. etc. etc. Moreover, the idea that there was "a plan" is plain ridiculous! Did we plan to luck out w/ the ping pong balls twice? And where would we be if Ernie hadn't lucked out that way?

And, if injury strikes us again (keeping in mind that on a per-minute basis we are now the oldest team in the league), what does that say about the "plan?"

Ernie turned a #1, a #17, a #23, a #6, a #18, a #34, a #3, a #32, a #46, another #3, a #38, a #58, a #18 and a #46 into Wall, Beal, Porter & Rice. Put another way, of the last 14 picks, he's trashed 10 of them. He traded in order to pay Okafor $22m to play 2000 minutes. And when he went after FAs last year he signed the 2 biggest duds imaginable -- Maynor & Harrington.

As to being better since he got a new owner, as Hands writes? No, he was better his first few years.

To his credit, he has had a good off season this year, though you'll notice that for every asset he had acquired by giving away our assets, he let them go in return for no assets at all. Not a sign of a good GM. And if the vets he got this off season -- the ones that turned us into the oldest team in the league -- if injury knocks down 1 or more of them, our record will be vulnerable.

Finally, if we don't sign Durant in '16, we'll be rebuilding again. No plan at all.

[Severn Hoos]

Whew - looks like we dodged a bullet there, so to speak...

Denver Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried has reached agreement on a five-year, $60 million contract extension, league sources told Yahoo Sports.

Faried is part of the 2011 NBA draft class eligible for extensions until Oct. 31.

Just think. If we had drafted Faried, we'd have to re-sign him now, and then we wouldn't have enough cap space for KD. Behold the genius of EG!

[Nivek]

Whew - looks like we dodged a bullet there, so to speak...

Denver Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried has reached agreement on a five-year, $60 million contract extension, league sources told Yahoo Sports.

Faried is part of the 2011 NBA draft class eligible for extensions until Oct. 31.

Just think. If we had drafted Faried, we'd have to re-sign him now, and then we wouldn't have enough cap space for KD. Behold the genius of EG!

In 2016, the cap is going to get MUCH bigger. Wizards (and a bunch of other teams) will have cap space for a guy like Durant. They could have had both.

[Ruzious]

Sev just wanted to say "dodged a bullet".

Gotta give more props to EG for the 3rd year team options on the Humphries and Blair contracts - 2 guys to protect our future megasupastar.

[FAH1223]

we haven't forgotten

[FAH1223]

redundant roster

#FIREGRUNFELD

[dckingsfan]

Stockholm abuse victims would often thank their abusers for occasionally ceasing their hideous abuse, Grunfeld supporters are kinda like that.

Jan Vesely, the Blatche, Maynor, Webster panic-signings etc are all swept-away because Ernie managed to raise to the level of competence...and we are supposed to be grateful.

LOL !!!

You forgot a few bonehead moves: Singleton instead of Faried? Tomas Satoransky instead of Jae Crowder? Flush the #46 pick that year instead of picking Kyle O'Quinn? Flush the #46 this year for a few bucks? Draft Shelvin Mack instead of Parsons, then waive him, then watch him turn into a solid young backup pg (exactly what we are missing), then say that we didn't have time to develop him (because we had to go hard for our 29 win season?).

Not to mention trading all our flexibility for an injury-troubled veteran C, then having no plan B, then having to give too much to find a replacement for him when, as was predictable, an injury took him down.

Etc. etc. etc. Moreover, the idea that there was "a plan" is plain ridiculous! Did we plan to luck out w/ the ping pong balls twice? And where would we be if Ernie hadn't lucked out that way?

And, if injury strikes us again (keeping in mind that on a per-minute basis we are now the oldest team in the league), what does that say about the "plan?"

Ernie turned a #1, a #17, a #23, a #6, a #18, a #34, a #3, a #32, a #46, another #3, a #38, a #58, a #18 and a #46 into Wall, Beal, Porter & Rice. Put another way, of the last 14 picks, he's trashed 10 of them. He traded in order to pay Okafor $22m to play 2000 minutes. And when he went after FAs last year he signed the 2 biggest duds imaginable -- Maynor & Harrington.

As to being better since he got a new owner, as Hands writes? No, he was better his first few years.

To his credit, he has had a good off season this year, though you'll notice that for every asset he had acquired by giving away our assets, he let them go in return for no assets at all. Not a sign of a good GM. And if the vets he got this off season -- the ones that turned us into the oldest team in the league -- if injury knocks down 1 or more of them, our record will be vulnerable.

Finally, if we don't sign Durant in '16, we'll be rebuilding again. No plan at all.

Just to add a bit of balance...

[Brenice]

Ernie ain't going nowhere any time soon. So far 44 people are learning how crow tastes.

[montestewart]

Ernie ain't going nowhere any time soon. So far 44 people are learning how crow tastes.

Wizardry! I was wondering where you went.

[FAH1223]

I can voice my displeasure with management because I have been a fan of the team for 25 years...I'm not going to let some bumbling troll dictate whether I'm allowed to do that or not. But that's beside the facts—Grunfeld executed a simple order, and that was to tank, accumulate high draft picks, and try not to screw it up. In my opinion, he screwed it up. He made two good draft picks during the rebuild (both pretty much no brainers) and the others are either out of the league or were traded for 30 year olds. The Wizards, despite having two very good young players, are one of the oldest teams in the league. Who knows how long they can depend on Pierce, Nene, Miller, and Gortat in the near future.

I'm displeased with management because I think the team, as currently constructed, is at is highest potential. They had four years of lottery picks and capspace to build a contender, and they aren't. They are simply a good team in a weak conference. Unless Porter becomes the next Durant, or they land the real Durant (both of which are highly unlikely scenarios), they probably aren't getting past the second round.

Grunfeld executed the easiest fix available to save his ass.

[TGW]

Ernie ain't going nowhere any time soon. So far 44 people are learning how crow tastes.

I ain't eating sh8t. I still want that con-man out of here.

374-535 win loss record as Wizards GM, but you think he deserves a medal. GTFOH

[doclinkin]

I think for even the diehard detractors the bar for GMEG to clear would be if we won a championship. Which is as it should be -- no fan should be satisfied with less than that, otherwise what are we competing for?

[FAH1223]

I think for even the diehard detractors the bar for GMEG to clear would be if we won a championship. Which is as it should be -- no fan should be satisfied with less than that, otherwise what are we competing for?

WINNING the championship is the only way we can clear EG

Just getting to the ECF or the NBA Finals won't do it. He got the Bucks and Knicks there.

[dckingsfan]

I think for even the diehard detractors the bar for GMEG to clear would be if we won a championship. Which is as it should be -- no fan should be satisfied with less than that, otherwise what are we competing for?

WINNING the championship is the only way we can clear EG

Just getting to the ECF or the NBA Finals won't do it. He got the Bucks and Knicks there.

Seasons: 15
Playoffs: 7
Division Titles: 1
Conference Titles: 0
NBA Titles: 0

[fishercob]

I think for even the diehard detractors the bar for GMEG to clear would be if we won a championship. Which is as it should be -- no fan should be satisfied with less than that, otherwise what are we competing for?

WINNING the championship is the only way we can clear EG

Just getting to the ECF or the NBA Finals won't do it. He got the Bucks and Knicks there.

If the Wizards are a perennial playoff team that usually makes deep runs, makes multiple finals trips, and never wins a title, I will be okay. I would be no more or less entertained or fulfilled than if someone other than EG was steering the ship. My investment is in the Wizards being good -- not in who the GM is. I am more interested in Ernie doing well than in Ernie being gone -- even if I would have replaced him long ago. He's doing well and so is the team. I'm certainly not going to complain right now.