Official Countdown Grunfeld Era-2nd SuperStar?

[montestewart]

Three years? I can't wait three years! I want to complain NOW!

[closg00]

Also from that great 2006 draft class?

Adam Morrison - 3rd
Tyrus Thomas - 4th
Patrick O'Bryant??? 9th
Mouhamed Sene - 10th

[Severn Hoos]

:lol: Clever cherry-picking Sev, choosing from one of the worst drafts in recent years to make your point Why don't you post that-years lottery picks as -well.

Guilty as charged (though not intentionally so, I searched on rookie rankings and that was the one that caught my eye). But even so, from that class, Craig Smith finished higher than Rondo. And the 21-30 block had guys like Azubuike, Ilyasova, Redick, and Sefolosha, all of whom are (or were) solid contributors, while guys who are out of the league today were ranked higher at the time.

But if you prefer, the final 2008 rankings had Al Thornton & Jamario Moon at #4 & 5, while Joakim Noah, Ramon Sessions, Mike Conley, and Carl Landry lagged behind.

In March 2009, Hibbert was an honorable mention and Love ranked behind Beasley, Mayo, Gordon, and Russell Westbrook (who was ranked #1, ahead of Rose).

At roughly this point of the season in 2010, they were playing up Thabeet, AJ Price, and Jordan Hill, and Jonny Flynn was ranked ahead of James Harden and Taj Gibson.

Point is - some guys make a big splash as rookies, but then fall off. Maybe the league figures them out and learns their weaknesses. Other guys just take longer to "get it" and come on strong in later years. Rookie rankings are notoriously inconsistent.

And monte, you go right ahead and complain now, you don't have to wait. This is America, fer dang sakes!!!

[Ed Wood]

But if you prefer, the final 2008 rankings had Al Thornton & Jamario Moon at #4 & 5, while Joakim Noah, Ramon Sessions, Mike Conley, and Carl Landry lagged behind.

In March 2009, Hibbert was an honorable mention and Love ranked behind Beasley, Mayo, Gordon, and Russell Westbrook (who was ranked #1, ahead of Rose).

At roughly this point of the season in 2010, they were playing up Thabeet, AJ Price, and Jordan Hill, and Jonny Flynn was ranked ahead of James Harden and Taj Gibson.

The same evidence more convincingly points to the conclusion "the people making these rankings are bad at their job" than that there aren't any meaningful conclusions that can be drawn based on rookie performance. Jamario Moon was in his late twenties entering the league so he's something of a special case but otherwise most of those incongruous rankings were visibly dumb at the time. Noah, Sessions, Conley and Landry were pretty good generally as rookies while Al Thornton was at no time pretty good.

Johnny Flynn was far better as a rookie than he has been since, perhaps he's been injured or something, but James Harden was a better player as a rookie, if not orders of magnitude better as is the case now. Gibson was a little better but he's the sort of player who's going to do poorly in a counting stats beauty pageant sort of competition anyway because so much of his value is tied up in defense.

Anyway, the moral seems more to be "look at a halfway sensible measure of performance like PER or WS or whatever" rather than to eschew judgements of rookies. Which is not to say that players can't change or develop, but I don't think there's any reason why we can't safely say our rookies blow.

[Severn Hoos]

Well, I can agree with that Ed - that the people who come up with "Draft Grades" and "Rookie Rankings" seem to know less about basketball than the average cashier at the hot dog stand at your local NBA arena.

Guess my main point was - some of those names that cause us angst today are likely to bring a chuckle in a few years. And I'm still not giving up on Singleton yet!

[Ed Wood]

I don't want to bail on Singleton but I'm very uncomfortably aware of how the last athletic and "NBA ready" wing out of Leonard Hamilton's program worked out and we're still a pretty significant step forward away from a blah NBA player with Chris.

And I didn't really disagree with the point honestly, my point was essentially semantic.

[hands11]

http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/22 ... or_Wizards

Wow.

So EG didnt extend and now rumors that they are looking at other people.

Maybe this is to keep EG focused. Maybe they have already decided to replace him.

You would think we would know before the draft.

[Rafael122]

Eh, Ernie's on borrowed time. If Ted wants to clean house, he needs an entirely new front office before the draft so I expect him to start making moves a week or two after the season.

But I was thinking about this while watching the game today, I have to give credit where credit is due. He's hit on the Seraphin and Booker draft picks. Those two may not be starters, but they're solid back ups, and Vesely is coming along as well. So props to him.

[JonathanJoseph]

http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/220214/Ferry_Could_Be_Candidate_For_Wizards

Wow.

So EG didnt extend and now rumors that they are looking at other people.

Maybe this is to keep EG focused. Maybe they have already decided to replace him.

You would think we would know before the draft.

I would be fairly surprised if EG comes back at this point. More because the organization needs a refresh rather than any specific basketball move (and we could surely mention a couple).

[closg00]

I wonder if Ernie will get to do one last draft for the Wizards?

[verbal8]

I know Portland did it that way, but in general it makes very little sense to have an outgoing GM making the draft pick/moves. I think the only way EG would have been retained was if the team completely turned around when Saunders was fired or possibly the Nene trade. It seems the talent is just not there yet for the Wizards to be a good team, and that falls on the GM.

I wonder if Ernie will get to do one last draft for the Wizards?

[Zonkerbl]

Is this an April fool's joke?

http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/22 ... or_Wizards

Say it isn't so! Ugh! Isn't he one of the worst GMs ever?

[fishercob]

Is this an April fool's joke?

http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/22 ... or_Wizards

Say it isn't so! Ugh! Isn't he one of the worst GMs ever?

Right. Everyone sucks, except for the guys with no resume/history of any deal that ever didn't work out as expected.

Everything is black and white. There is no gray. There is no luck. There are winners and LOSERS. JOKES of human beings. Abject FAILURES.

[Zonkerbl]

No but seriously. I remember a time when this dude was the laughingstock of the NBA.

I guess he did ok at Cleveland.

[closg00]

http://washingtonexaminer.com/sports/nb ... ing/399626

[Ruzious]

If you want a GM to clean up a mess, Ernie has shown he's capable of being the guy to do it effectively. But if you want a GM to build a great franchise, Ernie has not shown he's capable of being the guy to do it.

[thinker07]

Having worked in politics/national security for a number of years, I learned that sometimes good decisions work out badly and sometimes bad decisions work out well. You can certainly judge decisions strictly on how things worked out - that happens plenty of times - but to me that is pretty weak analysis. Most people on this board are comfortable taking chances on draft picks - in fact virtually all draft picks have significant risks. When picking in the high lottery we all understand that there is a chance the guy will be great, a chance the guy will bust and a chance the guy will just be average. That's why the discussion of high ceiling/low floor; low ceiling/high floor etc. is so important.

When you look at the HUGE Oden vs. Durant decision that Portland had and what people thought at the time -- Oden was seen by many as having more upside and less risk than Durant. Now obviously it didn't turn out that way so Portland's decision by definition was "wrong" but it wasn't a "bad" decision.

So when I judge EG, I want to look at the circumstances surrounding the decisions he made more than just the bare outcome. For the purposes of looking at him now it also seems pointless to talk about the Arenas/Polin co-dependency era because he was under such different instructions then.

What we know is that EG has dumped out virtually all of the old players and brought in virtually all new players. People can complain about what EG got in return for Jaimison, Butler, Haywood, etc. but we don't really know what his options were and what anyone else was offering (if anything). So I don't think he can fairly judge whether those were good deals.

We know that EG masterfully turned some cap space two years ago into Seraphin, Crawford, and Singleton. Obviously that was great work.

We know that the Booker and Seraphin picks from 2 drafts ago look better and better all the time. People on this board were ready to dump either or both for a ham sandwich early in their careers. And looking at the 2010 draft, it's still not clear WITH THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT that we would have been better off selecting other players who were available when we picked.

We know that EG extended Blatche - This was a high risk move that if Blatche had progressed would have looked great and instead now is disastrous. To me this is probably his worst decision in the Ted era.

We know that EG declined to sign NY to any kind of higher price extension - the same with McGee. Last year, many on this board (including me) would have been happy to sign NY to something like a 4 year $24 million deal. GREAT decision to not offer NY that. Same with extending McGee even at what might have seemed like a decent price. Now we can see that NOT extending them was a GREAT decision. That EG could turn two poisonous personalities into a long term option at center - seems like a good decision (obviously if Nene doesn't hold up then that decision will turn out badly).

Kudos to EG for being able to dump Arenas for Lewis and save Ted some serious $$ (close to $30 mil) and get rid of another poisonous personality.

So I'm left, now, with the two draft picks from 2011. So far it's pretty easy to curse EG for not taking other players who were available when we picked who have played better this year. My current favorite HINDSIGHT picks would be Kawhi Leonard at #6 and Marshon Brooks at #18 and any number of guys in the 2nd round - Honeycutt, Leuer, Parsons, Lee, Jenkins, Goudelock etc. But I think it's way too premature to judge Singleton and Vesely -- both have shown flashes of upside that actual practice, coaching, summer league etc. could turn into good players on the team. Both of these guys have also been badly hurt by the disarray on the team and having their own roles so badly defined.

I think on balance Ted keeps EG and on balance I'm ok with that.

[nate33]

Nice post, thinker07. It's pretty hard to argue with most of your points. I generally agree with your assessment of EG post-Arenas, but I'm not quite so ready to dismiss some of the mistakes he made pre-Arenas. That Mike Miller trade was absolutely disastrous. That move alone is enough to put EG on the hot seat. I can forgive a GM when he swings for the fences and misses from time to time (like the Vesely draft or even the Blatche extension), but it's tough to forgive patently stupid moves that were obviously stupid the moment they were made.

EG really needs to pull off a home run trade/acquisition to counterbalance that giant blemish on his record. Maybe the Nene trade pans out to be the home run and Nene plays like he did these past 6 games, but for 75+ games a season. Or maybe Vesely comes back next year looking like Noah. But short of something like that, I wouldn't be upset if EG is canned. I'm not screaming from the mountaintops that he must be canned, but I'm not going advocate for him to stay either.

[montestewart]

I think a big part of the trade was McGee's and Young's overestimation of their own worth. I'm not so sure EG wouldn't have offered Young something in the 4-5 year, $20-25 million range.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/wi ... story.html

I understand allowing for constraints placed on a GM by an owner, but since we don't know all the specifics of what Pollin and Leonsis told EG to do and not to do, I'm not inclined to give EG credit for every good move (and there have been a few) while freeing him from blame for the bad moves. He's not great, and he's probably not as horrible as he frequently seems to me, but I've watched him assemble rosters for three teams and I'm ready for my team to move on.

[Zonkerbl]

My problem with EG is not so much the transactions he makes or doesn't make. What worries me is his tendency to let stronger personalities badger him into bad decisions.

At some point he had to choose between EJ and Thibodeau -- he obviously knew Thibodeau was the better coach, but he choked and let EJ chase him out of town.

He allowed EJ to create an undisciplined, fractious atmosphere in the locker room.

He had to choose between keeping the #5 pick or pissing it away on two one year rentals. He MUST have known that the trade was a bad long term decision but he let Abe talk him into it.

He had to choose between extending AJ at Gilbert's request. I think extending AJ was a mistake. EG's a smart guy - he could have figured out a way to turn AJ into a player with a little less offense and a little more defense. But he let Gilbert pressure him into a bad decision.

I sense a pattern here. Here's a guy who's competent at the technical part of his job -- talent evaluation, making transactions -- but when it comes time for big decisions to be made he takes a back seat. He is incapable of communicating his knowledge of talent to his superiors effectively enough to convince them not to push for a bad decision. He does not have a strong enough personality to take a stand and fire a bad coach -- a coach who blatantly ignored the defensive side of the game, and who encouraged (or failed to discourage, however you want to put it) a circus atmosphere in the locker room. He's just not a good leader.

EG has too small an ego -- he doesn't have the courage to stand up and assert himself when it matters. Ted's leadership can only take you so far. EG's job is to be the leader as it relates to decisions related to talent. He can't let powerful but uninformed personalities push him around. And I think that's what's responsible for his biggest failures. There's evidence that he's an excellent talent evaluator, so the head scratching decisions -- like trading away the #5 pick -- must be part of the other theme that emerges when you look at, say, the EJ vs. Thibodeau debacle, or the more general "trying to get EJ to take defense seriously" issue. EG's inability to assert himself in the face of ignorant stubbornness is his biggest failure. He should have just fired EJ, and hired Thibs. He should have somehow convinced Abe that the current roster can't win a championship because it can't play defense, so mortgaging the future for a playoff run would be a mistake. His failure to do these two things are the most important indicator to me of his lack of leadership/assertiveness/spine/whatever.