2022-23 RealGM All-Season Awards - Discussion Thread

[Texas Chuck]

I mean you name your GM of the year, and if I wanted I could find "mistakes" that would be disqualifying by your position. Literally any GM save maybe a rookie. Even the best have some really big misses on their resume. Shouldn't disqualify Buford because of Richard Jefferson. Or Meyers because of Wiseman. Or Riley because of Duncan Robinson's contract. etc etc etc

[Colbinii]

Disagree that we can't reward an exec for having a good year just because they once had a bad year. Steve Nash wasn't even a good NBA player until like year 5 or 6(I know Doc thinks he was better than Kidd as a rookie, but that's very much an outlier take with not much to defend it), so should he have never been named MVP? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. We expect players to get better.

Why can't execs learn from mistakes? Or since so much of this seems to be results oriented judgment rather than process-based, why can't they get credit when moves work even if previous moves failed?

If a coach is fired, can they never win COY again? Of course not.

I think that's a fundamentally flawed way of evaluating anyone.

I'm reminded of the old question:

Did you stop beating your wife?

The man who says "Yes" did something good - he stopped beating his wife! - but that doesn't mean he should be getting Husband of the Year.

I'm all for Pelinka making moves that get him EOY. I just don't feel comfortable giving it to him on the basis of undoing a mistake that all the best GMs avoided making in the first place.

Yeah this isn't a beating the wife issue though. At all. Pelinka wasn't intentionally doing something he knew was wrong (ie beating one's wife). Analogy doesn't apply here.

And I'm not defending Pelinka or any specific Exec. I'm disagreeing with your position that a guy who had a bad year as a GM previously should not be considered for this year. I just fundamentally disagree with that.

Had Pelinka made the move in July there is a good chance the Lakers are playing with HCA in rounds 1 and 2.

[Texas Chuck]

Had Pelinka made the move in July there is a good chance the Lakers are playing with HCA in rounds 1 and 2.

This still is not about Pelinka.

I made it clear I took issue with Doc specifically saying that a GM that was bad in his opinion the year before should not be considered no matter how good his moves were for the year in question. I fundamentally disagree with that approach.

I don't think Pelinka is a candidate at all. But I wouldn't rule him out because the year before he made moves that didn't work out. Just like Curry could be POY the year after missing most of a year with injury, you know?

[Doctor MJ]

Disagree that we can't reward an exec for having a good year just because they once had a bad year. Steve Nash wasn't even a good NBA player until like year 5 or 6(I know Doc thinks he was better than Kidd as a rookie, but that's very much an outlier take with not much to defend it), so should he have never been named MVP? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. We expect players to get better.

Why can't execs learn from mistakes? Or since so much of this seems to be results oriented judgment rather than process-based, why can't they get credit when moves work even if previous moves failed?

If a coach is fired, can they never win COY again? Of course not.

I think that's a fundamentally flawed way of evaluating anyone.

I'm reminded of the old question:

Did you stop beating your wife?

The man who says "Yes" did something good - he stopped beating his wife! - but that doesn't mean he should be getting Husband of the Year.

I'm all for Pelinka making moves that get him EOY. I just don't feel comfortable giving it to him on the basis of undoing a mistake that all the best GMs avoided making in the first place.

Yeah this isn't a beating the wife issue though. At all. Pelinka wasn't intentionally doing something he knew was wrong (ie beating one's wife). Analogy doesn't apply here.

And I'm not defending Pelinka or any specific Exec. I'm disagreeing with your position that a guy who had a bad year as a GM previously should not be considered for this year. I just fundamentally disagree with that.

Intention has nothing to do with it.

The point is that a husband who has never beat his wife cannot stop beating his wife, and thus cannot be praised for stopping beating his wife, just like a team that never traded for Westbrook cannot trade him away.

Re: disagreeing with guy who had a bad year before shouldn't be considered now. But that's not my position. My issue is specifically with praising a guy for undoing a mistake relative to other guys who never made the mistake.

As I said before: If you can take Westbrook out of it, and you simply believe that the Laker acquisitions this year were a big enough deal, I get voting for Pelinka. I'm just not going to punish other GMs for the fact that they weren't able to improve their team by getting rid of Westbrook because they were smart enough to never acquire Westbrook.

[Texas Chuck]

Westbrook is simply a sunk cost to start the year. If the award is about this year its completely irrelevant how he got there. Again not defending Pelinka. Just the theory.

Shocked this only bothers me too lol.

[Doctor MJ]

I mean you name your GM of the year, and if I wanted I could find "mistakes" that would be disqualifying by your position. Literally any GM save maybe a rookie. Even the best have some really big misses on their resume. Shouldn't disqualify Buford because of Richard Jefferson. Or Meyers because of Wiseman. Or Riley because of Duncan Robinson's contract. etc etc etc

As I keep trying to communicate:

The issue was never about DQing GMs because of unrelated mistakes of the past, but about giving the guy EOY for his work undoing his previous mistake.

So Wiseman's a great example, because if anyone here attempts wants to argue for Meyers for EOY for getting rid of Wiseman, I'll respond with the same ripostes as I am with the Westbrook situation.

[parsnips33]

I'm reminded of the old question:

Did you stop beating your wife?

The man who says "Yes" did something good - he stopped beating his wife! - but that doesn't mean he should be getting Husband of the Year.

I'm all for Pelinka making moves that get him EOY. I just don't feel comfortable giving it to him on the basis of undoing a mistake that all the best GMs avoided making in the first place.

Yeah this isn't a beating the wife issue though. At all. Pelinka wasn't intentionally doing something he knew was wrong (ie beating one's wife). Analogy doesn't apply here.

And I'm not defending Pelinka or any specific Exec. I'm disagreeing with your position that a guy who had a bad year as a GM previously should not be considered for this year. I just fundamentally disagree with that.

Intention has nothing to do with it.

The point is that a husband who has never beat his wife cannot stop beating his wife, and thus cannot be praised for stopping beating his wife, just like a team that never traded for Westbrook cannot trade him away.

Re: disagreeing with guy who had a bad year before shouldn't be considered now. But that's not my position. My issue is specifically with praising a guy for undoing a mistake relative to other guys who never made the mistake.

As I said before: If you can take Westbrook out of it, and you simply believe that the Laker acquisitions this year were a big enough deal, I get voting for Pelinka. I'm just not going to punish other GMs for the fact that they weren't able to improve their team by getting rid of Westbrook because they were smart enough to never acquire Westbrook.

I don't totally understand this - only 1 team can have Westbrook at a time lol

Every GM will have a totally unique starting position for the year based on what was done previously, whether by that GM or by the previous one

[Doctor MJ]

Westbrook is simply a sunk cost to start the year. If the award is about this year its completely irrelevant how he got there. Again not defending Pelinka. Just the theory.

Shocked this only bothers me too lol.

But he wasn't simply a sunk cost. He was an opportunity to make the team better by getting rid of him.

So gain, if someone were to champion Pelinka because they were so impressed by Vanderbilt, I'd have no fundamental issue with it.

But if someone makes the argument, "Pelinka was the EOY because there's nothing more valuable you can do for your team than get rid of Westbrook, and he's the only GM who did that this year!", I quibble.

[jalengreen]

I'm conflicted because I think the "cleanest" method is to assess how a team improved thru roster changes since the end of the previous season. But I can't help but share the reluctance to award someone for undoing their prior mistake, as Doc said, versus some GM who didn't have as much net impact *this* year alone because they improved an already good (because they hadn't made a fatal error like trading for Westbrook) team

[OhayoKD]

I mean you name your GM of the year, and if I wanted I could find "mistakes" that would be disqualifying by your position. Literally any GM save maybe a rookie. Even the best have some really big misses on their resume. Shouldn't disqualify Buford because of Richard Jefferson. Or Meyers because of Wiseman. Or Riley because of Duncan Robinson's contract. etc etc etc

As I keep trying to communicate:

The issue was never about DQing GMs because of unrelated mistakes of the past, but about giving the guy EOY for his work undoing his previous mistake.

So Wiseman's a great example, because if anyone here attempts wants to argue for Meyers for EOY for getting rid of Wiseman, I'll respond with the same ripostes as I am with the Westbrook situation.

Tldr: Pelinka a floor-raiser, not a ceiling raiser, needs to artificially make his rosters worse to pad up that RAEM
(The gm equivalent of what ppl think lebron is )

In all seriousness though, if this team was to win the title or come reasonably close, you could probably make a westbrook-free case for pelinka based on keeping the lakers at the same or similar level to where they were at 2020 despite their top 2 players suffering significant injury issues and getting a set of role players(with youth and upside)strong enough to compensate for Lebron tearing his tendon

[MyUniBroDavis]

Westbrook is simply a sunk cost to start the year. If the award is about this year its completely irrelevant how he got there. Again not defending Pelinka. Just the theory.

Shocked this only bothers me too lol.

But he wasn't simply a sunk cost. He was an opportunity to make the team better by getting rid of him.

So gain, if someone were to champion Pelinka because they were so impressed by Vanderbilt, I'd have no fundamental issue with it.

But if someone makes the argument, "Pelinka was the EOY because there's nothing more valuable you can do for your team than get rid of Westbrook, and he's the only GM who did that this year!", I quibble.

Idk why we’re all talking about Vando he’s shouldn’t be playing much this series lol

[MyUniBroDavis]

That wife analogy is crazy lol I thought y’all were talking about kidd

[HeartBreakKid]

That wife analogy is crazy lol I thought y’all were talking about kidd

i wanna have a kid with u

[MyUniBroDavis]

That wife analogy is crazy lol I thought y’all were talking about kidd

i wanna have a kid with u

Ur a strange person

[ShaqAttac]

That wife analogy is crazy lol I thought y’all were talking about kidd

i wanna have a kid with u

Ur a strange person

naaah let him cook

[ardee]

Westbrook is simply a sunk cost to start the year. If the award is about this year its completely irrelevant how he got there. Again not defending Pelinka. Just the theory.

Shocked this only bothers me too lol.

But he wasn't simply a sunk cost. He was an opportunity to make the team better by getting rid of him.

So gain, if someone were to champion Pelinka because they were so impressed by Vanderbilt, I'd have no fundamental issue with it.

But if someone makes the argument, "Pelinka was the EOY because there's nothing more valuable you can do for your team than get rid of Westbrook, and he's the only GM who did that this year!", I quibble.

Idk why we’re all talking about Vando he’s shouldn’t be playing much this series lol

His defense in game 1 was spectacular. Who else will do as good a job as him on Curry then?

[MyUniBroDavis]

But he wasn't simply a sunk cost. He was an opportunity to make the team better by getting rid of him.

So gain, if someone were to champion Pelinka because they were so impressed by Vanderbilt, I'd have no fundamental issue with it.

But if someone makes the argument, "Pelinka was the EOY because there's nothing more valuable you can do for your team than get rid of Westbrook, and he's the only GM who did that this year!", I quibble.

Idk why we’re all talking about Vando he’s shouldn’t be playing much this series lol

His defense in game 1 was spectacular. Who else will do as good a job as him on Curry then?

Vando doesn’t make sense if Curry is going to be in a more on ball roll because he dies on ball screens, the reason we had to change our screen coverage is because he was dying on those screens and turning our high drop into a hedge without any sort of recovering, that didn’t work when we switched to it full time in the second half either

Not to mention how bad he is on offense

Unless Vando can navigate on ball screens better than he did, he doesn’t make much sense on defense

And on offense he makes it so hard because despite his physical gifts he’s not a good cutter or finisher

[GSP]

I dont see how Jokic isnt 1st for this season. It should be unanimous TBH.

[HeartBreakKid]

i wanna have a kid with u

Ur a strange person

naaah let him cook

Thanks for letting me breath, brotha.

[Doctor MJ]

Idk why we’re all talking about Vando he’s shouldn’t be playing much this series lol

His defense in game 1 was spectacular. Who else will do as good a job as him on Curry then?

Vando doesn’t make sense if Curry is going to be in a more on ball roll because he dies on ball screens, the reason we had to change our screen coverage is because he was dying on those screens and turning our high drop into a hedge without any sort of recovering, that didn’t work when we switched to it full time in the second half either

Not to mention how bad he is on offense

Unless Vando can navigate on ball screens better than he did, he doesn’t make much sense on defense

And on offense he makes it so hard because despite his physical gifts he’s not a good cutter or finisher

Right, but Vando was the reason why Curry moved on-ball, so if you take him out, then GS can move back to Plan A.

Not saying that that's not what will happen - it may happen, and it may be the best move for the Lakers - but it's a hell of a place for the Lakers to be if that happens.

To put it another way: The way Vando as a freaking 6'9" guy was able to chase Curry effectively was maybe the most stunning thing about the Lakers' Game 1 win (AD was MVP of course), and so if the Lakers win the series with Vando nailed to the bench it would be pretty amazing.