Doctor MJ wrote:it seems overly persnickety to object as a runner to stuff like this when I know guys have gotten the EOY based on perspectives like this.
I think with AEnigma's post, what popped out to me was the specific reference to Jimmy Butler in a list of moves, because I know how prominent that move was in getting Riley the EOY in 2020...which was kinda the "plan comes together" year for the Heat know that I ponder it with our current discussion in mind.
Perhaps there's an inconsistency in my approach here, and if there is, I apologize. I want to be clear though that I have no fundamental problem with someone voting for Riley for EOY this year, I just think it's critical to use arguments that are not evergreen.
Which is all reasonable, and I suppose this is why I should have fully written out my explanation rather than just coldly listing the transactions involved in this Finals team.
Nevertheless, for me there is always an element of: is it better to be responsible for a player being on the team? I say yes, which is why I think hypothetically someone like Connolly could have been a better choice than Booth (again, overpaying for a player who has not fit well is disqualifying for me, but if that had not happened…). This year I am primarily praising how previous lesser roleplayers like Vincent, Strus, and Martin became key to a Finals run, and how those players were all overlooked by every other executive. If it were a Connolly/Booth situation, then I could not say that Riley built a Finals team, could I?
No, Riley does not win every year for the Butler sign&trade, just like Pelinka does not win every year for Lebron and Davis being there, and just like Myers does not win every year for drafting a dynasty core. However, we can in perpetuity say that those players were not brought in by anyone else. Again, on me for not offering any explanation in the original post, so I understand questioning the thought, but all I was trying to show (for future thread readers who may forget) was that Riley was the one who built that Finals team. He was not adding Vincent and Strus and Martin to an established core of Butler and Bam, or a preexisting Finals rotation in Herro and Robinson. Every player there is present because Pat Riley pursued them and actively moved for them when no one else really did, and on that, yes, to an extent he will have that in perpetuity, even if he does not have my vote in perpetuity. If the Heat return to the Finals with the same core, I will not vote for him again… but if they return with Bradley Beal, then I will not only be thinking about that singular move for Beal.
Riley has arguably been the most capable GM in the league non-stop for the last 20+ years...but it's not every year that he's a big EOY candidate. So if he is this year, why this year?
Because of the growth of Martin, Strus, and Vincent into key players, because of the comparative advantage Riley had in signing those guys with minimal competition from anyone else, and because Riley is responsible for every piece of a Finals team. Oh, and Kevin Love paid off, but there I think that was more a case of Love individually pursuing a veteran playoff team in dire need of a power forward. As a point of comparison, last year, the Lowry sign&trade was a “bigger” move than any of that, and the Vincent/Strus/Martin signings were all more immediate. However, the pay-off was lesser — exited in the conference finals — as were the returns on those latter three.
I think I said I would not have voted last year. The title winner was Bob Myers, but the main difference for them was that Klay and GP2 became healthy, the Otto Porter health gamble paid off, and much like Pelinka the team was no longer being dragged down by Myers’s own bad pickups in Oubre and Wiseman. Yeah, there is credit for Wiggins paying off (but I already thought he was good in 2021, and imo the Wolves dumbly bailed them out on Russell), and for Otto, and for GP2, but even with all of that, I am in the camp of “had the Warriors simply devoted less time to Wiseman and Oubre in 2021, they would have been securely in the playoffs rather than in a risky play-in.” That passive core credit plus the Otto addition could maybe get him on the ballot anyway, but I see that as a much more contentious path than with Riley.
The Celtics were the Finals runner-up. Stevens traded for Derrick Jones, Jr., which was good. Traded for Horford to come back (and got off the Kemba contract), which was good. And hired Udoka to replace himself lol, which was good for one-year title contention and would have looked like a long-term move at the time of voting. Still, he was not the guy responsible for Tatum, or Brown, or Smart, or Timelord, so only so much of that is on him. Those moves were significant enough to make the ballot, but still we have the cloud of it not being his team.
The Mavericks were the other conference finalist. Harrison was a first-year executive and therefore only was responsible for the Kidd hiring (…) and the Porzingis/Dinwiddie swap (…). Nope. The Suns were the other conference 1-seed; saw how that went (although Jones would have been on my ballot the year before). Horst did not do much for the Bucks that year. Morey traded Simmons for Harden, so that was great, but every other part of the roster was not his. Finally, the official league award winner, Kleiman, traded for Adams and was the instrument behind the entire roster; given that he won, do we think voters were considering more than solely that Adams trade?
Being the person responsible for the team’s composition matters, and it puts a ceiling on guys like 2022 Stevens and Morey (or this year, Booth) who only added to a preexisting roster. That is offset in part by being responsible for bad moves that need to be undone or otherwise overcome (Myers in 2022, Pelinka this year). Riley is not top of my ballot this year for signing Butler and drafting Bam several years ago, but he would not be on the ballot at all if they were there independently of Riley. After a postseason where everyone incessantly talked about “Heat culture”, I have no qualms recognising the man who built that culture.
Let me ask: How do you think NBA EOY voters would deal with this? along with, What basis leads you to this conclusion?
I don't want to be constraining voters into a much smaller box than is typically allowed for EOY voters, and so if I am, then I should loosen up.
For my deliberately absurd hypothetical, well, it depends. For that hypothetical executive to win, I think they would need to have nearly no competition at all from anyone else. For them to be on several ballots though? I think with a much larger and more ideologically diverse voting body, yes, I would expect several people to arrive at the same conclusion, but I will acknowledge there does seem to be an implicit standard to treat the award as “Executive (for their team) of the Year”. I do not mind if you stipulate that people only consider actions for one specific team, but your reasoning should not be lack of clear precedent or whether hypothetically anyone of dozens of official NBA award voters might have voted that way, because the official ballots are substantially more willing to diverge from consensus than anyone here (never forget the MVP ballots for 2021 Derrick Rose).
On that note, while I tend to align with Colbinii on Ainge — acquiring picks itself is only part of a process — if I were to vote for Ainge this season, a large part of that vote would be based on Ainge separately being the primary architect of a separate conference finalist this season. I know Ainge is a top five executive, so I can trust those unrealised picks are likely to convey into something of value, and I can trust the Kessler/Markkanen trades were not only a matter of unexpected fortune. History is essential to this award, and when I eventually do vote for Ainge in a future season, I will be keeping in mind how he picked up all these assets in 2022-23.
