RealGM

This poll to give a grade to EG during his tenure as the Wizards GM.
Given EG's tenure, and the moves that the Wizards have made up to 7/7/16, do you think the front office has done its best? If you can, list other GMs who have made better moves, had better insight, and/or feel for the market and players. Yes, you have the benefit of hindsight, so, if you can, mention moves that our GM should have seen coming and should have prepared for.

Once again, this poll to give a grade to EG.

I like this offseason a lot more than most, but I give EG a 1 out of 10 he should have been gone after the Gilbert/jamison/buttler core imploded.

gambitx777 wrote:I like this offseason a lot more than most, but I give EG a 1 out of 10 he should have been gone after the Gilbert/jamison/buttler core imploded.

I was tempted to give him a 1 and then I remembered what Billy King did to the Nets, so I bumped him up to a 2.

gambitx777 wrote:I like this offseason a lot more than most, but I give EG a 1 out of 10 he should have been gone after the Gilbert/jamison/buttler core imploded.

I thought Ernie took the old team apart and re-started on a new track reasonably well. He got what he could for the older players, which wasn't much, then he made some quite good moves -- above all managing to turn nothing at all into Heinrich and the #17 pick in 2010.

He got lucky and we wound up with Wall. He picked Seraphin #17 -- a good pick, I thought, even though he didn't turn out to be a good player at all. His trade up to #23 cost nothing and yielded Booker, a solid NBA player. Then late in the 2010 season, he did even better: turned Heinrich into the 2011 #18 pick plus another 2010 R1 guy (Crawford). He also traded for Nene and dumped Young/McGee. So far so good.

Then it all fell apart. He started a 5 year run of just terrible awful work. He kept Crawford way too long, until he had no trade value. He utterly botched his 2 R1 picks in 2011, then made an "ok/mediocre" R2 pick -- but at least a player! -- whom he proceeded to waive. He made the Okariza trade, which (as must be obvious by now) made a big noise but netted the team very very little (2 years of Ariza, 1 irrelevant year of Okafor) while killing our cap flexibility. He also made bad FA choices, etc. And he held his socks for Phoenix in order to rent Gortat for a year (terrific player, terrible trade). He blew high R2 picks in 2012 (tho he may *somewhat* redeem himself if Satoransky is an ok NBA player) and 2013, blew the 2014 R2 (picking Clarkson for the Lakers rather than for us -- in return for a little cash).

The only exceptions during this period, the only good moves at all, have been the picks of Beal (the right pick, even if he doesn't turn out) and Porter (again helped by luck w/ the ping pong balls), re-signing Gortat, and signing Pierce -- which even if it didn't really help build the team at least provided some fun for fans. He got Sessions for Miller and a R2 pick, and he'd gotten Miller for his failed 2011 high lottery player and more. At least Sessions played well as a rent-a-player, but it's hard to see the sequence of moves as good because of the high cost. Nor did we add any youth at all.

Trading up for Oubre may turn out well, but the jury will be out for a while. Picking White instead of Alan Williams or Christian Wood makes the 2015 R2 a failure (not to mention failing to sign either of them when they went undrafted) Trading for Morris was awful. Managing to throw away so many draft picks in so many different ways has been very costly to the team.

And then... this off season! Burke? Smith? Nicholson? No Curry? No Aldrich? No Acy? No Smith? Mahinmi is a good player -- but why was he worth $64m to us, when Dedmon, etc. were there for the taking?

Still, I gave Ernie a 2 rather than a bottom grade, because of the brief period of good work 6 years ago.

Rico obviously hasn't seen the poll yet. Any guesses on how he votes?

Do you really have to ask? PIF's analysis is good if a bit generous. When you trade for picks then blow them, I'm quite sure you've netted nothing.

Chimps with a typewriter and an ESPN account would certainly have done better.

The Poll should be Grades: A-B-C-D-F for simplification. I give him a D for his terrible KD strategy and the wrap sheet that PIF put-together. Grunfeld's abuse of draft assets and his constant rotating of vet role-players around John w/o much foresight, is really hampering the teams ability to get out of 1st or 2nd gear.

Wait there's no zero option

EG isn't a 1 because he isn't a true franchise wrecker like Isiah Thomas. EG is short-sighted and unimaginative, but he has a few redeeming qualities. He's pretty decent at trades provided all players involved are well-known veterans. The Hinrich Maneuver, the Jamison trade to Cleveland, the Gortat acquisition, the Kwame for Butler trade - those were all pretty good. He also has had the discipline to let a few guys like Hughes, Jeffries, Young and McGee go rather than overpay them as free agents.

His critical flaw is that he absolutely sucks at identifying and nurturing young talent. Unfortunately, that skill is the most important skill of all for a GM. Without the ability to identify young talent, you can't find superstars and you can't fill out the end of your bench cheaply. And without superstars or cheap depth, you can't be better than a 45-win team.

I'd give EG a 3 out of 10.

The ability of this team to let good people and players slip through their fingers while hanging on to incompetent people and rubbish players is unmatched.

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3

I rank EG higher than John Nash and Wes Unseld.

tontoz wrote:Rico obviously hasn't seen the poll yet. Any guesses on how he votes?

I think even Rico has finally stopped supporting Ernie, if Hands were here ( I believe he still has a sock-puppet here) he'd give him a 10.
Hands is still covering for Ernie over at BF.

Am considering giving him a 10 just to screw up the averages.

nate33 wrote:EG isn't a 1 because he isn't a true franchise wrecker like Isiah Thomas. EG is short-sighted and unimaginative, but he has a few redeeming qualities. He's pretty decent at trades provided all players involved are well-known veterans. The Hinrich Maneuver, the Jamison trade to Cleveland, the Gortat acquisition, the Kwame for Butler trade - those were all pretty good. He also has had the discipline to let a few guys like Hughes, Jeffries, Young and McGee go rather than overpay them as free agents.

His critical flaw is that he absolutely sucks at identifying and nurturing young talent. Unfortunately, that skill is the most important skill of all for a GM. Without the ability to identify young talent, you can't find superstars and you can't fill out the end of your bench cheaply. And without superstars or cheap depth, you can't be better than a 45-win team.

I'd give EG a 3 out of 10.

Not just young talent, Nate -- look at his incomprehensible signing of Jason Smith!

I give him credit for re-signing Gortat; I don't give him credit for the trade that got us Gortat. Phoenix wanted to get rid of Gortat, yet they were able to extort a lot from us and also saddle us w/ a bunch of other bad contracts. We had to accept it, because Ernie had no Plan B at all when Okafor went down. Even though Gortat was expiring, making it basically just a rental.

Up through the Gortat acquisition, I'd been giving Ernie about a B (which I guess would be an 8 on this scale). I either agreed with most of his moves, or felt they were at least explainable at the time they were made. But the completely botched execution of the 2016 plan has changed it for me.

EG avoided moves that would have added to the team under the pretense of maintaining 2016 cap space, only to watch his one year rentals backfire last season. He makes a desperate move to give up a pick for Morris (who I'm actually not down on) but pretends like it isn't a deviation from the plan, when in reality if the plan involved trading picks and adding salary we could have been doing that all along and the team wouldn't have taken said step back. Oh and he took to long to fire Witt-less.

Now that the offseason is here, we don't even get a meeting with Durant (which maybe we could have gotten if we'd been a better team). Instead, our cap space is spread out in longterm deals for non-impact players. The one bright spot is the successful execution of the draft-and-stash with Satoransky. But considering the total end result, many of the moves and non-moves supposedly made for KD2DC now look much worse to me in hindsight. Averaging all that out with the moves from years past that I still support, Ernie is down to a 5 IMO.

Still the additional depth (however overpriced) coupled with the also pricey coaching upgrade to Brooks does keep this team in the playoff mix in the East IMO. And I know that if they make the playoffs again, Ted is going to claim victory and probably give Ernie an extension. But I can't root for the team to fail, so I'm going to stay positive about the season. Just don't take my positivity to mean that I'm not looking for change. At this point, the front office needs to go in a different direction.

I would have considered giving him a 4 or 5 given some of his mid-level trades, but unfortunately his draft picks drop him to 3.

I had an interesting comparison come up yesterday that (at least to me) shed some light on Ernie's tenure. Like most of you, I have grown frustrated with the sad state of affairs in Wizland. We stayed with the team through the sad-sack lovable loser stage the Bullets went through after Wes & Big E, through the Beef Brothers and the Malones, Never Nervous, LaBradford, and Gheorghe and all the rest. But the current administration is just frustrating, nothing lovable about them.

So, I have transferred much of my rooting capital to the Virginia Cavaliers (also known as the "Good Cavaliers") basketball team. And while college recruiting and NBA Free Agency are very different in many ways, there are some similar dynamics that came to light for me this week.

Quick background in case you're not as close to the Hoos as I am. Tony Bennett was hired as the coach in 2009, and was a bit of an unknown when he was hired away from Washington State, though I was very excited to have him at the time. He inherited a mess of a program, a consistent doormat in the ACC and one that had become increasingly an embarrassment to the fans and graduates of UVA. He worked with what he was given, had a lot of turnover - including 4 transfers out of his first recruiting class - and instilled a new mindset throughout the program.

After a couple rough years to start, the Hoos have won 20 or more games in 5 straight years, including 2 regular season ACC titles and one tournament title in the past 3 seasons. CTB (Coach Tony Bennett, as the fans refer to him while distinguishing him from the singer of the same name) has consistently been named as one of the best young coaches in the country, and there's not a single coach anywhere that I would trade for him today. He has earned the trust of the Wahoo faithful and then some.

And that's what brings me to yesterday's events.

Virginia has only one scholarship to offer for the class of 2017, and had been pursuing a 5-star prospect named Michael Porter. By all accounts, he is a great kid, excellent student, and while he is planning to only play 1 year in college, he would have been a good fit for the Virginia program.

Only problem: His dad just got hired as an Assistant coach at the University of Washington, where his godfather (Lorenzo Romar) is the head coach. So yeah, not too likely he's going to say no to the family and choose a college 3,000 miles away. And sure enough, he announced on Friday that he is committing to UW.

Then yesterday, UVA announces that they have received (i.e., accepted) a commitment from Marco Anthony, a 3-star recruit out of Texas who is not listed on any top-100 lists.

What does this have to do with EG and the Wiz?

See if this sounds familiar: Creating/holding a space for an elite athlete who's really a longshot but is enough of a game changer that you have to try. Then, immediately after finding out that the dream guy has chosen someone else, give that space to an unheralded player who is not an apparent area of need and looks to be less of an impact than other plausible options that were still out there.

We know how Wiz fans responded to EG in that scenario. But the Hoo Crew had a very different response.

There were a couple who called it a "panic signing" or the equivalent, and it is hard not to assume that this deal was completed quickly after (and in response to) Porter's announcement that he was going to U-Dub. But for the most part, fans were quick to support CTB and pointed to players like Joe Harris, Malcolm Brogdon, and London Perrantes who were not highly regarded by the Scouting services but turned into major contributors for the team.

Point is, in either case, past results drove the interpretation of the events - very negative in one case and fairly positive in the other.

What are the takeaways? Well, first that I am amazed at how different the two teams that I root for are. One is run in a very professional manner, with a staff and players who I can feel good rooting for. And the other is the Wiz.

But there is hope. The 2008-era Hoos were pretty much what the current Wiz are. But with the right leadership, a commitment to the process and doing things the right way instead of chasing shortcuts and wishful thinking, plus a healthy dose of innovation, it's possible to reach the top (or close to it). Needless to say, however - the current administration has to be released in order to have any hope of getting the right leadership in place. That was true of UVA in 2009, and of the Wiz in 2016.

And watch out for the Hoos - hoping we can bring a Cavaliers championship worth rooting for in 2017!

I see Millie has voted

Sigh. Why is this my home team franchise now?

Every move EG made was in the context of making a big free agent splash in 2016, so there was no sense in making any judgments til you see what he managed to do.

Which was zilch, zip, nada. The team is WORSE now than it was when they beat the Bulls, and that team couldn't crack 50 wins to save it's life. This team has zero chance at a championship and making the second round will be overachieving.

So done with Wizards "basketball." Go DC United!