30 teams, 30 bad decisions (since 2020): Where does your team rank?

[Plutonashfan]

Cavs at 30, I'll take it lol

I would have ranked them slightly higher for drafting the Isaac Okoro. I knew he sucked and would bust out. I remember being really fond of Deni Avdija who they passed up despite badly needing a SF post LBJ.

[mastermixer]

76ers should be #3

[clippertown]

How are the Clippers not 30? Have they made a single mistake since that timeline? Granted, they haven't really had the opportunity to make many mistakes, but still..

Analysis was restricted to 2020+ and the SGA debacle happened in 2019. Still, the author had no gripes for Clipper management from that moment.

Funny that if the analysis was a year earlier, the Clippers would have easily been #1. Instead, they should have been #30.

[Hoop Hunter]

#29 out of 30 is pretty good. Hiring Nate Bjorkgren as head coach (2020).

It was a weird hire to start with, total disaster. The only time we have ever had a 1 year and done coach. A few more that I wish had been.

[pace31]

For the Jazz our worst decision has nothing to do with not trading Lauri. Our biggest fumble was drafting Udoka Azubuike in 2020 at #27. We took a swing on a raw defensive big man earlier than most teams expected him to go. We still had Rudy Gobert on the roster........ We also badly needed wing help which we could've gotten with either of the picks that came right after him (Desmond Bane & Jaden McDaniels). Draft either of them and things could've been a lot different for the Jazz, especially the year we had the #1 overall seed.

[Bank Shot]

I don't see how you can have the Dame trade so much higher than the George signing. Dame gave the Bucks two really good years and wasn't the reason why the team fell off. George probably won't give the Sixers a single decent season and he's going to hamstring them for the next three years.

[dkb964]

#29 out of 30 is pretty good. Hiring Nate Bjorkgren as head coach (2020).

It was a weird hire to start with, total disaster. The only time I we've ever had a 1 year and done coach. A few more that I wish had been.

I believe it was after the year the Raptors won the NBA Championship and he was 2nd in command under Nurse. It reminds me of when OC/DC in the NFL get poached from successful teams. It can be hit or miss when they become HC.

[ArksNetsSince99]

Bottom 5 including this offseason

1 Suns - Beal KD
2 Sixers - George Embiid
3 Mavs - trading Luka although Flagg makes this bearable
4 Knicks -5FRP for Bridges plus replacing Thibs with even worse HC
5 Rockets - trading for KD , dumb move for otherwise fairly young and ascending team

[ArksNetsSince99]

#29 out of 30 is pretty good. Hiring Nate Bjorkgren as head coach (2020).

It was a weird hire to start with, total disaster. The only time I we've ever had a 1 year and done coach. A few more that I wish had been.

Should be at #30

Cavs declining Hartenstein was way bigger mistake than Pacers hiring Bjorkgren , then getting Rick Carlisle just one year later

Pacers did all things right , just terrible luck with Hali getting this terrible injury in game 7 , this one still bothers me even as a Nets fan

[kodo]

Chicago trading for Vucevic for picks, one of them being Wagner, was pretty bad. But I don't think it's the worst if we're including drafts, they drafted Patrick Williams #4 over expected picks Deni or Haliburton. Haliburton tanked his own draft by only communicating with a few teams, but Chicago was one of those few teams he was open to coming here.

But every team has screwed up a top pick, it would be better to leave them off for all teams including GS picking Wiseman.

[ForeverTFC]

I don't see how you can have the Dame trade so much higher than the George signing. Dame gave the Bucks two really good years and wasn't the reason why the team fell off. George probably won't give the Sixers a single decent season and he's going to hamstring them for the next three years.

Dame cost the Bucks assets and will be $22.5m of dead cap for them for the next 5 years. PG didn't cost the Sixers anything but cap space. If the Sixers stretched and waived PG, they'd have a similar dead cap hit over 5 years (I think slightly higher) so we'll call that a wash. In that scenario, who lost more? The team that gave up Jrue Holiday and picks or the team that gave up nothing?

[Iwasawitness]

While I am glad to see my team at the bottom of the list, the Hartenstein thing still bothers me to this day. We could have had a frontcourt combo consisting of Mobley/Allen at the four while Allen/Hartenstein was our center duo. I was a big fan of his game and was mad at Cleveland for letting him go.

[Mr Peanut]

I don't agree with the Monty Williams hiring for the Pistons. Sure, it was terrible in retrospect. But it was the owner who had to eat the remaining 65M. The main detriment to the fans, beyond watching that godawful 23-24 season, was the lost year of development for the young core. Otherwise we've moved on.

I personally would've chosen drafting Killian Hayes over Haliburton in 2020. Although if that happened you can get into butterfly effect hypotheticals of would we have then won the lottery the following year to draft Cade. So who knows.

[flow]

Detroit has had too many bad decisions to count since 2020, but ESPN got the worst one wrong.

Monty Williams turned into a disaster 1-year coaching hire, but drafting Killian Hayes over Haliburton was definitely a worse and more detrimental decision for the team. It was worse than any of the draft decisions that were listed in the article.

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[tamaraw08]

18. Washington Wizards
Biggest mistake: Drafting Johnny Davis (2022)

Among lottery picks from 2020 through 2023, the worst career box plus-minus (BPM) belongs to Davis, the No. 10 pick in 2022. BPM calculates that Davis has made the Wizards worse by a whopping 6.2 points per 100 possessions.

Davis' surface stats don't look any better: 3.5 points, 0.6 assists and 11.4 minutes per game with ghastly 40%/27%/56% shooting splits. Not every lottery pick pans out, but few bust as dramatically as Davis. Worst of all is who Washington missed by selecting Davis; the next guard taken in the 2022 draft, just two spots later, was Jalen Williams.

I think about this often.

If the Wizards would have taken Jalen Williams in 2022, they probably would have won a good 6 or 7 games more in 2022-23, giving them roughly the 12th pick in the 2023 draft instead of the 8th. Derrick Lively would have made the most sense.

With Williams and Lively in the fold, they would have had a much more successful 2023-24 season and probably been a 9-11 seed in a weak East. An improving young team like that would not have traded Deni. They probably would have drafted around 12-14 in the 2024 draft and still gone with Bub Carrington (plus Kyshawn George with their LAC pick).

They'd win 40 games in the East in 2024-25 and pick in the late teens, where Jase Richardson would have made good sense:

PG Bub Carrington
SG CJ McCollum/Jase Richardson
SF Jalen Williams/Khris Middleton
PF Deni Avdija/Kyshawn George
C Derrick Lively

That's an impressive rebuild on the fly with max cap room next summer. That one pick of JDub in place of Johnny Davis would have dramatically altered their direction.

I still don't understand why they had to trade Deni Avdija though. It's not like this guy is a chucker who plays lazy defense.
and btw, why were so high on acquiring a chucker like Jordan Poole?

[nate33]

18. Washington Wizards
Biggest mistake: Drafting Johnny Davis (2022)

Among lottery picks from 2020 through 2023, the worst career box plus-minus (BPM) belongs to Davis, the No. 10 pick in 2022. BPM calculates that Davis has made the Wizards worse by a whopping 6.2 points per 100 possessions.

Davis' surface stats don't look any better: 3.5 points, 0.6 assists and 11.4 minutes per game with ghastly 40%/27%/56% shooting splits. Not every lottery pick pans out, but few bust as dramatically as Davis. Worst of all is who Washington missed by selecting Davis; the next guard taken in the 2022 draft, just two spots later, was Jalen Williams.

I think about this often.

If the Wizards would have taken Jalen Williams in 2022, they probably would have won a good 6 or 7 games more in 2022-23, giving them roughly the 12th pick in the 2023 draft instead of the 8th. Derrick Lively would have made the most sense.

With Williams and Lively in the fold, they would have had a much more successful 2023-24 season and probably been a 9-11 seed in a weak East. An improving young team like that would not have traded Deni. They probably would have drafted around 12-14 in the 2024 draft and still gone with Bub Carrington (plus Kyshawn George with their LAC pick).

They'd win 40 games in the East in 2024-25 and pick in the late teens, where Jase Richardson would have made good sense:

PG Bub Carrington
SG CJ McCollum/Jase Richardson
SF Jalen Williams/Khris Middleton
PF Deni Avdija/Kyshawn George
C Derrick Lively

That's an impressive rebuild on the fly with max cap room next summer. That one pick of JDub in place of Johnny Davis would have dramatically altered their direction.

I still don't understand why they had to trade Deni Avdija though. It's not like this guy is a chucker who plays lazy defense.
and btw, why were so high on acquiring a chucker like Jordan Poole?

Believe me, I don't understand the Deni trade either. I was apoplectic when they traded him. He was my favorite Wizard of the last I don't know how many years. I just knew he would blow up in Portland. He actually blew up in his final season in Washington. The guy is a big time stat stuffer and a top quintile defender who can guard 1 through 4, and he is locked into the best non-rookie, non-max contract in the league. The only rationale for trading him is he might have made the team too good to tank.

The Poole acquisition I understood. The guy was one year removed from having a pretty impressive playoff run for a championship team at the age of 22. Yeah, Poole has his flaws, but when you are a rebuilding team, why not take a flyer on a young guy with talent and hope that he can address his weaknesses?. It didn't really work out that great (but not bad either), but I don't blame the organization for taking a swing.

[Dominator83]

I have to agree that the Bulls trading for Nikola Vucevic was their worse move, in this time frame. While keeping the oft injured Zach Lavine is part of what makes the trade bad, two liabilities on defense starting was a bad plan, when they added Demar DeRozan it was an attempt to put together a big three but they were all #3's with no #1 and #2.

A close 2nd place was when they resigned Vucevic to his now expiring contract. Karnasovas really should have seen the three of them weren't a Big 3 and pivoted from Vuc to a defensive center who needed the ball less. How bad that 2nd signing was is evidenced by the fact that the Bulls can't seem to be able to trade an expiring Vucevic.

Equally bad moves were drafting Patrick Williams over Haliburton, then doubling down and re-signing Patrick to good money while bidding against nobody.

[redslastlaugh]

I don't really agree. When Ainge convinced Charlotte to do the deal as a sign=and-trade, Boston created a TPE that was able to absorb Josh Richardson without Boston sending money out. Josh Richardson was rolled forward as a salary match to acquire Derrick White.

The Haywood transaction facilitated the addition of D White

I actually think the worst mistake was hiring Ime Udoka. The Celtics had only had two head coaches over a 17 yr period and making the right choice for the new HC was really critical. Obviously, Udoka got suspended after only one year and the team couldn't resolve the situation promptly nor hire a new head coach either. It all ended well in a championship in 2024 but the whole situation was extremely difficult and just would have been easily avoided if the Celts had hired a different coach in 2021

Bostons biggest blunder, to me, was not getting Myles Turner and losing Hayward to Charlotte for nothing. There were reports in 2020 that Indiana and Boston were talking of a Turner-Hayward swap, but Ainge got greedy and wanted Oladipo instead of McDermott like Indiana was offering.

Turner would have been a lot more impactful than some of the revolving door of bigs they’ve had post 2020. Trading Bane away and drafting Romeo were also terrible moves by Ainge.

[oldncreaky]

Detroit has had too many bad decisions to count since 2020, but ESPN got the worst one wrong.

Monty Williams turned into a disaster 1-year coaching hire, but drafting Killian Hayes over Haliburton was definitely a worse and more detrimental decision for the team. It was worse than any of the draft decisions that were listed in the article.

.

I agree that the Monty decision was "meh", and that drafting Killian Hayes was worse

But for me, I can forgive a draft bust, that happens all the time for various reasons. The larger mistake was continuing to invest in Hayes for years after it was clear he was a bust. IMO, however, the worst mistake was a series of starter-level contracts handed out to backup-level Cs by GM Troy Weaver. Dedmon, Plumlee, Olynyk, Wiseman, Bagley II (twice!) and a few I'm forgetting; they all used up cap space, roster spots and exceptions, and all except Olynyk cost resources to move off.

Trajan Langdon looks like a genius in comparison to Weaver simply by spending money / roster spots on shooting instead of unplayable bigs.

[SkyBill40]

I do appreciate the alternating takes that posters have made which disagree with what ESPN has to say about the franchises. Good to see there's some hardcore fans out there that really follow their team rather than just shooting fish in a barrel and taking the easiest moves that were bad.