Poll: Should Ernie Grunfeld Lead the Rebuild?

[LyricalRico]

^ Huh? I think you're mis-reading JJ's post. We probably all agree that EG put the pick on the market with the thought that he needed guys who would make an impact right away because the team was trying to get as far as possible as fast as possible. What I think JJ is saying that Ernie never would have traded the #5 if he knew that the team would have to be blown up the very next February.

[Ruzious]

Yeah, while I understand a lot of the other side, it's really really really hard to defend the trade of the #5 pick. But most of all, EG showed no inclination to build a great team. He settled for above average. And even the settling didn't work. His history isn't terrible - as spelled out well by JJ and Nate - but it's gotten increasingly mediocre. He should take a large chunk of the fall for the implosion and not return. But with Ted here, I'm not so concerned that he will.

[fishercob]

I think Ernie has been okayish. He had a very good trade (Kwame-Caron) and the recent very bad one. I think he could perform better under Leonsis. I also wouldn't be sad to see him go. Though the team has been better under his regime than the previous one, there has still been limited playoff success and two straight abysmal seasons. At the end of the day, if the GM doesn't answer for that, who does?

More than anything, my pause with Ernie relates to the draft. We're entering a period where we have a pronounced need to build through the draft and get value out of our picks. There's not a lot of room for error. Yet, Ernie has a terrible track record drafting here. Lifting this from a post of mine back in February:

Let's go year by year, pick by pick, shall we?

I think 2004 was Ernie's first draft.
5. Traded Devin Harris for Jamison. Despite Jamison's shortcomings, considering where the organization was at the time, I think the trade should still be viewed as a win.
32. Peter John Ramos . Ramos never contributed anything meaningful. Two players drafted after him have had good NBA careers: Chris Duhon (38) and Trevor Ariza (43).

2005
49. Andray Blatche. Ernie's best pick by far. Ironically, Blatche's talent has never been in question. It was questions about his drive, desire, and work ethic that made him slide to 49. While he's a bargain at his current contract, he's still inconsistent and has been unable to silence his critics.

2006
18. Pecherov (complete failure)
48. Vladimir Veermenko (who?) in the second round.

Pech went before Rondo, Kyle Lowry, Craig Smith and Paul Millsap, among others. Veermenko was one pick after Millsap and one before Leon Powe. Ouch.

2007
16. Nick Young
47. Dominic McGuire

Ernie passed on Wilson Chandler (23), Rudy Fernandez (24), Aaron Brooks (26), Carl Landry (31), Big Baby (35), and Marc Gasol (48). Meanwhile Young and McGuire are both basically the same players now as when they were drafted. Young can only help the team by shooting the ball, and when he's off he's useless. McGuire has some redeeming qualities, but hasn't been able to develop a reliable enough jumper that defenses have to respect, so he can't stay on the floor.

2008
18. Javale McGee
47. Bill Walker -- sold for cash consideration

It's growing apparent that while McGee has high-lotto talent, he dropped to 18 for a reason -- he's either an idiot or doesn't have much in the way of a work ethic. Ernie passed on Nicolas Batum, Courtney Lee, George Hill, Ryan Anderson, and Mario Chalmers. Hibbert and Marreese Speights were picked immediately before him and would have been much better options if he could have traded up a spot or two.

2009
5. Traded to Minnesota for Miller/Foye (pick became Ricky RUbio)
32. Jermaine Taylor -- sold for cash considerations

I continue to maintain that you cannot fully judge this trade until we know who of Haywood, Miller and Foye will be retained, but it's not looking good. The influx of veteran talent hasn't seemed to have made a lick of difference, and Ernie missed on a chance to grab a good young talent (FLynn, Curry, Jennings, Lawson, etc). By selling 32, Ernie whiffed on Dajuan Blair (well documented). Other second rounders like Sam Young, Jerebko, AJ Price, Budinger, etc are showing signs of being contributors.

At the end of the day, out of eleven picks that he controlled, Ernie has drafted ONE player who could be termed a success -- Blatche (and some here would roll their eyes at "Blatche" and "success" in the same sentence). That's not emblematic of the flukey nature of the draft, my friends. That's damning evidence that Ernie has no proven methodology in place to find value. SO not only do the Wizards suck, the cupboard is pretty bare too.

Meanwhile organizations like the ROckets, Spurs, Zombie Sonics, and others continually are able to draft productive players no matter where they're picking (as an aside, after seeing Houston steal Brooks and Landry, I would never sell them a pick. What are the odds Jermaine Taylor ends up a pretty good player?). You don't need to draft an All-Star every year, and some second rounders will never see the NBA. But you need to succeed in the draft a hell of a lot more than Ernie has. You have to have cheap production to win in the NBA, and the Wizards have next to none.

To update my thoughts a little bit, we now know for sure that the Minny trade was epic failure. McGee came on at the end of the year and still has huge upside, but two years into his rookie deal we're talking about his potential and not his production. Nick Young doesn't work for me at all. Nate says we play better when we plays, but unless you're Bruce Bowen, a 10.9 PER from a shooting guard doesnt work for me at all. He's no farther along offensively three years in.

So that all gives me pause. At the same time, while Ernie's likely "running" the draft, I'm sure he's going to get a lot of input and scrutiny from the new ownership and "their people." My main takeaway is stay away from guys you think are developmental projects and draft guys who you believe (based on data and analysis) are ready to contribute now. I feel like for every Serge Ibaka, there are ten Patrick O'bryant and Ndudi Ebi's.

In Ted we trust...

[Ruzious]

That's it basically. ITWT

[closg00]

That's it basically. ITWT

Sorry ITWT is a new acronym for me, please define.

[Ruzious]

That's it basically. ITWT

Sorry ITWT is a new acronym for me, please define.

Newbie Actually, we just made it up.

In Ted We Trust.

[nate33]

fishercob,

Regarding your reposted pick analysis, I think it's a bit unfair to say, for example, that Nick Young was a bad pick because Aaron Brooks, Marc Gasol and Carl Landry went later. There's always a handful of late surprises that everybody misses out on. That's not a fair standard. You should look at the next 5-7 picks in the draft - the guys who were presumably "in the conversation" on most GMs' draft boards. Nobody picked immediately after Nick Young has made any more of an impact. The next 5 players drafted after Young were Sean Williams, Marco Belinelli, Crittenton, Jason Smith and Dequan Cook. All have done less than Young in their careers.

You have to go down to #22 to find the next decent player: Jared Dudley. Then there was Wilson Chandler and Rudy Fernandez at #23 and #24 respectively. And I fail to see all that much difference between Young and those guys. None of those guys are starters on a decent team. You have to go all the way down to Aaron Brooks at #26 before you find a legit starter who is clearly better than Nick Young.

I'm not saying Young was a brilliant pick at #16, but he wasn't terrible either.

[closg00]

Doh! I missed that ITWT thingy. I trust Ted, it's Ernie I don't trust. What I fear is Ernie selling Ted on players that HE and HIS staff like, the same staff the brought us Opech over Rondo and Veremeenko.
The same crew that didn't think anyone in last-years draft could help us. THAT is scary to me.

[Hoopalotta]

I'm definitely not a Nick guy at all, but as I've said, that guy is starting on the 'All-World Tease-Team'. We're still debating the merits of Noodles' worth as he'll ambush you with a "I just outplayed Wade" game e'ry now and again.

Bottom line: I can't fault the pick. The development hasn't gone well and some would say that was foreseeable, though I wouldn't. But on raw talent, he was a solid choice.

I think I'll start calling his good games "Ambush Noodles". That sounds like a nice Engrish name for a fast food chain. The other games would be described as "Nick Young with a tough shot".

[montestewart]

fishercob,

Regarding your reposted pick analysis, I think it's a bit unfair to say, for example, that Nick Young was a bad pick because Aaron Brooks, Marc Gasol and Carl Landry went later. There's always a handful of late surprises that everybody misses out on. That's not a fair standard. You should look at the next 5-7 picks in the draft - the guys who were presumably "in the conversation" on most GMs' draft boards. Nobody picked immediately after Nick Young has made any more of an impact. The next 5 players drafted after Young were Sean Williams, Marco Belinelli, Crittenton, Jason Smith and Dequan Cook. All have done less than Young in their careers.

You have to go down to #22 to find the next decent player: Jared Dudley. Then there was Wilson Chandler and Rudy Fernandez at #23 and #24 respectively. And I fail to see all that much difference between Young and those guys. None of those guys are starters on a decent team. You have to go all the way down to Aaron Brooks at #26 before you find a legit starter who is clearly better than Nick Young.

I'm not saying Young was a brilliant pick at #16, but he wasn't terrible either.

How'd everyone miss Dennis Rodman and Mark Price? What about the teams that passed on Drexler, Stockton, Malone? I once charted Bullets picks and misses under Ferry, and came up with an all-star team worth of misses about every five years, but plenty of other teams missed them too. It can drive you crazy, but it is useful to look at all aspects. Even though I still like Young somewhat for his potential (as I do McGee) both picks go to what some have observed about EG frequently drafting for potential more than for ready contribution. Since Blatche, possibly McGee, and maybe even Young could be part of the Wizards future, maybe that was good in the long term, but after the Big-3 and Haywood, the Wizards at that time had a lot of needs to be addressed.

[Silvie Lysandra]

Most if not all of your points are bizarre. Like trying to paint Caron Butler as undersized for SF.

Caron Butler is 6'6 in shoes at BEST. He's one of those players who is an inch or so below his listed height.

Or ignoring that the 09-10 Wizards had plenty of size, defense and rebounding with Haywood, Blatche and Oberto

Haywood is only an above average rebounder. Blatche a good rebounder? Oberto? Do you watch the Wizards?

not to mention that both Jamison and Butler are nothing if not good rebounders. Glen Davis?!?!?! Glen Davis would not have gotten playing time ahead of any of Haywood/Blatche/Jamison so what are you talking about?

Jamison is a pretty average rebounder, not great by any means. Butler is a good rebounder for his size but that's it.

Glen Davis is a starter for most teams in the NBA, and easily gets 25 minutes per game.

Then you complain about tweeners and follow that by complaining that Grunfeld has no Trevor Ariza, a tweener with a $40M+ contract.

okay so you say caron butler is not undersized but call ariza a tweener? Sure, he's overpaid, but Ariza was a solid roleplayer on a championship team.

Code: Select all

And again, did Grunfeld "give away" a #5 pick? Or did he trade it AND bad contracts for 2 veterans? Because there is a huge cognitive difference?

I don't...know what to say. We're not resigning Miller. We're not resigning Foye. We used a top 5 pick to dump Songalia's salary essentially. You call that a good deal?

Grunfeld is the one who acquired Marcus Camby, Kurt Thomas, Larry Johnson, Latrell Sprewell, Charlie Ward etc.

Grunfeld's MO is generally to acquire a few tough backups to compensate for a lack of overall team toughness. The good thing is that the Knicks were tough to begin with so he didn't hurt them. Charlie Ward was a terrible contract to boot.

You ignore the fact that Grunfeld was the one who hired Pat Riley in NY, hired George Karl in Milwaukee, and his FIRST coaching hire in DC was Flip Saunders.

Wrong. Both Riley and Karl were hired before Grunfeld was in a position to make those hires.

Again, the facts contradict your analysis. And, no, inheriting a HOF big man does not guarantee you 50 wins per year. See Kevin McHale and Kevin Garnett.

From 1999-2004, which was effectively KG's prime, he had 50, 47, 50, 51, and 58 wins. With possibly the worst management job imaginable.

[fishercob]

fishercob,

Regarding your reposted pick analysis, I think it's a bit unfair to say, for example, that Nick Young was a bad pick because Aaron Brooks, Marc Gasol and Carl Landry went later. There's always a handful of late surprises that everybody misses out on. That's not a fair standard. You should look at the next 5-7 picks in the draft - the guys who were presumably "in the conversation" on most GMs' draft boards. Nobody picked immediately after Nick Young has made any more of an impact. The next 5 players drafted after Young were Sean Williams, Marco Belinelli, Crittenton, Jason Smith and Dequan Cook. All have done less than Young in their careers.

You have to go down to #22 to find the next decent player: Jared Dudley. Then there was Wilson Chandler and Rudy Fernandez at #23 and #24 respectively. And I fail to see all that much difference between Young and those guys. None of those guys are starters on a decent team. You have to go all the way down to Aaron Brooks at #26 before you find a legit starter who is clearly better than Nick Young.

I'm not saying Young was a brilliant pick at #16, but he wasn't terrible either.

First off, I'm looking at things in aggregate and I see one drafted player out of 11 picks that's a consistent, solid contributor.

Secondly, I don't think what everyone else did should matter when judging whether you picked a good player or not. Was Ernie picking based on what everyone else thought -- the Conventional Wisdom Draftboard -- or did he have solid scouting and data dictating the pick? TSW and others immediately commented that Nick did nothing in college to help his team other than shoot/score, and that hasn't changed. The fact that he knew that and Ernie didn't is a red flag to me.

I don't think there's a GM in the NBA who wouldn't take Rudy Fernandez or Dudley over Nick Young today. Wilson Chandler would probably be about even. I dont love the guy. I'd take Dudley, Rudy, Brooks, Afflalo, Splitter's rights, Landry, Big Baby, Fesenko, Gasol and Sessions over NIck. That's 10 guys and others are debatable.

I don't know if I'd call the Young pick "terrible" either, but I'd call it unsuccessful. More importantly, when looking at the big picture, there are far too few successes.

[Dat2U]

I think the expectation level for our GM is a bit high. Yes, the goal is to have a championship, but let's not act like this is easy to accomplish. 26 of the past 30 champions have had a Top 15 player of all time on the roster (and 3 of the other 4 have had a Top 30 player). We don't have anyone in the Top 100. It takes skill and a great deal of luck to acquire such a player.

On the whole, I think Ernie has done a decent job as GM. He took a terrible franchise with very few trading chips and managed to get them into the playoffs for 4 consecutive years after 1 year of rebuilding. During his first few years, his moves were consistently good. He signed Arenas, resigned Wood cheaply, traded #5 for Jamison and traded Kwame for Butler. He didn't overpay Hughes or Jeffries. More recently, he found Blatche in the second round, McGee late in the 1st, and DMac was a pretty good gamble in the 2nd round.

Ugh...

1. #5 for Jamison is very debatable. I argued the moment that trade was made, EG had doomed us to mediocrity. We paid $14 mil per for Jamison as opposed to an Iggy or Deng on a rookie deal. And we spent the next five years trying to hide Jamison on D.

Whatever your feelings about AJ & his "leadership", one thing is for certain, you cannot call that trade an unequivocal success.

2. EG tried to overpay for Hughes & Jeffries. He wanted to keep both, both was outbid by two bigger idiots in Isiah Thomas & Danny Ferry. That's not an accomplishment.

3. Drafting DMac is not an accomplishment either. Especially considering we paid Sacramento to take his salary off our cap for an imaginary 2nd round pick & to give us a stronger negotiating position to buy out Big Z after the trade deadline. DMac will be lucky to be in the league next year.

[JonathanJoseph]

Chaos,

Again, your "opinions" fly in the face of the facts. You call Haywood "above average" and Jamison "pretty average" but both finished in the Top 20 in the entire NBA in rebounding this season. I have plenty of dislike for Jamison but the guy had his worst rebounding year in years and still finished top 20.

With regards to Garnett you are willing to completely discount the bad years to make your point and again, that's not right. Taking the entire Garnett era into account the Wolves averaged 45 wins per year, a full 7 wins less than the Knicks during Grunfeld/Ewing.

While I stand corrected regarding Riley and Karl (Karl was hired the same year as Grunfeld and Riley was hired when Grunfeld was still VP of Player Personnel), the point remains. Grunfeld's teams are proven to be winners over the long haul. Fact. Your trying to assert that Butler was undersized, or that Haywood/Jamison weren't great rebounders or that Blatche/McGee were unintended luck are all very biased opinions that are NOT supported by facts.

[Dat2U]

And again, did Grunfeld "give away" a #5 pick? Or did he trade it AND bad contracts for 2 veterans? Because there is a huge cognitive difference?

You mean Etan's expiring contract? Or DSong's deal which had 2yrs & less than $9 mil on it?

So in essence, we basically dumped the #5 pick in the draft for expirings to save $4.5 mil next year.

Sorta like how we used Brendan Haywood to dump DeBrick for $3.1 million next year instead of taking Portland's offer of a 1st round & pick & Dante Cunningham for him. To do what? Use our cap space to acquire additional picks & prospects this offseason. Oops.

The draft history, his complacency, the culture of dysfunction, the mis-management of the cap. What more evidence do you need?

Seven years ago, when EG was hired we were considered a laughingstock of the NBA after the MJ debacle.

Seven years later, after two miserable & embarrassing seasons, were still considered a laughingstock.

Anyone who can consider EG's tenure a success thus far has incredibly low standard of expectations.

[montestewart]

FOOD FIGHT!

[nate33]

1. #5 for Jamison is very debatable. I argued the moment that trade was made, EG had doomed us to mediocrity. We paid $14 mil per for Jamison as opposed to an Iggy or Deng on a rookie deal. And we spent the next five years trying to hide Jamison on D.

Whatever your feelings about AJ & his "leadership", one thing is for certain, you cannot call that trade an unequivocal success.

2. EG tried to overpay for Hughes & Jeffries. He wanted to keep both, both was outbid by two bigger idiots in Isiah Thomas & Danny Ferry. That's not an accomplishment.

3. Drafting DMac is not an accomplishment either. Especially considering we paid Sacramento to take his salary off our cap for an imaginary 2nd round pick & to give us a stronger negotiating position to buy out Big Z after the trade deadline. DMac will be lucky to be in the league next year.

1. I didn't love the Jamison trade when it happened, but I have to cede that it turned out pretty well. Jamison helped turn a 19 win franchise into a 45 win franchise immediately. Of the alternatives (Deng, Harris, Iggy, Childress) only Iggy has proven to be even in the same category of production.

2. EG did indeed try to overpay Hughes. But Cleveland overpaid even more. To my recollection, EG did not try and overpay Jeffries. Jeffries was a RFA. All he had to do was match the offer.

3. You are distorting the DMac situation. DMac, as a 2nd round pick, had a team option on his final year. EG didn't have to dump his last season. We could simply have let him walk in the summer. We "paid" Sacramento to take him off our hands, but that was the money we would have otherwise paid in salary to him. It was a revenue-neutral trade. We just gave him away along with the cash to cover his salary because we no longer needed him (with Thornton, Singleton and Howard around). We were better off with the salary flexibility to negotiate a Z buyout.

DMac had some decent production as a Wizard. How many players drafted lower performed better?

[Dat2U]

1. #5 for Jamison is very debatable. I argued the moment that trade was made, EG had doomed us to mediocrity. We paid $14 mil per for Jamison as opposed to an Iggy or Deng on a rookie deal. And we spent the next five years trying to hide Jamison on D.

Whatever your feelings about AJ & his "leadership", one thing is for certain, you cannot call that trade an unequivocal success.

2. EG tried to overpay for Hughes & Jeffries. He wanted to keep both, both was outbid by two bigger idiots in Isiah Thomas & Danny Ferry. That's not an accomplishment.

3. Drafting DMac is not an accomplishment either. Especially considering we paid Sacramento to take his salary off our cap for an imaginary 2nd round pick & to give us a stronger negotiating position to buy out Big Z after the trade deadline. DMac will be lucky to be in the league next year.

1. I didn't love the Jamison trade when it happened, but I have to cede that it turned out pretty well. Jamison helped turn a 19 win franchise into a 45 win franchise immediately. Of the alternatives (Deng, Harris, Iggy, Childress) only Iggy has proven to be even in the same category of production.

2. EG did indeed try to overpay Hughes. But Cleveland overpaid even more. To my recollection, EG did not try and overpay Jeffries. Jeffries was a RFA. All he had to do was match the offer.

3. You are distorting the DMac situation. DMac, as a 2nd round pick, had a team option on his final year. EG didn't have to dump his last season. We could simply have let him walk in the summer. We "paid" Sacramento to take him off our hands, but that was the money we would have otherwise paid in salary to him. It was a revenue-neutral trade. We just gave him away along with the cash to cover his salary because we no longer needed him (with Thornton, Singleton and Howard around). We were better off with the salary flexibility to negotiate a Z buyout.

DMac had some decent production as a Wizard. How many players drafted lower performed better?

1. Again, Jamison @ $14 mil per or Iggy & Deng at $3 mil per? What's the better value? We could have let Stack & L8 expire the next season and had a good amount of cap room. And instead of a patient rebuild, we "go all in" with Jamison for a trifecta of 40 win seasons, cake & 2nd round t-shirts.

Yes, Jamison had better production offensively, but defensively... Deng, Iggy & even Childress were all were significantly better.

And we peaked at 45 wins! That may be a cause for celebration to lowly Wizard fans who've dealt with the likes of Unseld & MJ the previous decade but considering more than half of NBA teams make the playoffs every year, it's really not that much of a success story.

2. EG did want to re-sign JJ, but of course not at full MLE prices. But it was mentioned at one point that EG made a significant offer to JJ. EG just got outbid by Isiah Thomas. I don't know how much credit he deserves for being outbid by an insane man.

3. Bottom line, DMac on a minimum deal, was dumped for cap flexibility. It shows he wasn't held in very high esteem. I'm not panning EG for the DMac pick. I'm saying why are we giving EG credit for drafting a fringe NBA player who may not even been in the league next year?

[willbcocks]

Sorta like how we used Brendan Haywood to dump DeBrick for $3.1 million next year instead of taking Portland's offer of a 1st round & pick & Dante Cunningham for him.

Is this reliable information or just heresay? That would have been a nice trade...

[Kanyewest]

EG really only made two mistakes in his first 5 seasons: resigning Etan and drafting Pecherov. (Jarvis Hayes wasn't a good player, but of the next 7 guys taken in the draft, 6 were busts and 1 guy, Michael Pietrus, became merely a role player.)

Jarvis Hayes was taken by Wes Unseld. EG was hired after the draft.