Illmatic12 wrote:Just listened to the whole Leonsis sit downgravytrain24 wrote:So why did he think this way was acceptable for so many years when what he was doing with the caps actually provided consistent results. I can't wait to listen to this on the drive home.
Well in Ted's view, starting from when he took over in 2010 the rebuild was on track and nothing Ernie did really set off any alarm bells until these past few seasons when they started to lose. At least that's what I gathered from his comments in the interview.
Tbf if we're just isolating the Leonsis-era Wizards, he kind of has a point. Ernie did manage to get Arenas off the books and successfully initiate the rebuild (granted landing Wall at #1 was a stroke of luck), under his watch they matured into a viable playoff team with a promising young core, local TV ratings were booming , and as recently as 2017 it seemed like they were just 1-2 pieces away from contention. You could see how in the eyes of a non-basketball mind like Leonsis , the team wasn't "failing" per se up until these last two years.
But NBA junkies like those of us on RealGM who get deep into the finer points of basketball were forecasting years ago that this team had shallow depth and poor coaching, and the lack of draft picks would eventually catch up to them.
Ernie had an excellent run from 2010 through early 2011 -- I can't imagine it having been any better. He picked up Kirk Hinrichs & a R1 pick (#17, which he used to take Kevin Seraphin) for nothing, went from #8 to #1 in R1 via the ping pong balls, traded up from #30 to #23 to get Trevor Booker, & dumped Gilbert for Rashard Lewis. Then, a few months later, he traded Hinrichs & Hilton Armstrong to the Hawks for a guy who'd been a R1 pick a few months earlier (Jordan Crawford) & the Hawks 2011 R1 pick (wound up being #18).
Frankly, that was incredible work. Unfortunately, the incredible work ended right after it had begun. After 1 year of the Leonsis era in other words. Thereafter, Ernie Grunfeld did nothing, absolutely nothing else, good during the Leonsis era. Between the Okariza trade, the failure to deal Crawford when he had some value, & the 2011 draft fiasco he essentially threw away the entire rebuild.
I don't mean that nothing he did turned out well (though not much did) but that what turned out well either required no skill (picking Beal @#3 in '12), or was sub-optimal by a lot (picking Sato @#32 that year, while Draymond Green, Jae Crowder, Khris Middleton & Will Barton were on the board -- & then we never saw Sato here for four long seasons).
Most of what he did was worse: picking Otto then letting him go for essentially zero return, giving assets to trade up for GR who washed out quickly), giving assets for an expiring salary (Gortat), giving assets to trade up for Oubre then getting nothing for him, signing a bunch of negative value FAs, etc. etc. etc.
He did sign Paul Pierce for one season. That was fun.
& then came the complete disaster -- trading a lottery pick for Kieff, the '16 off-season, the idiotic give away of our '17 draft, turning the excellent opportunities presented by the '18 draft into 1 promising player, throwing away more R2 picks, etc.
So, no, I'm sorry, even isolating the last 9 years, Ted has no point. 1 productive year followed by 8 years that he turned into absolute zero, or as close as you can get. & Ted is right -- he, not Ernie, is the one to blame.
