___Rand___ wrote:Hoop Hunter wrote:From the outside looking in it seems he's unachieved for several years.
The timing is really ****ed up though. If there was any question before the draft why not then? They've had a long time to think about it.
It's hard to believe the draft was just so bad that ownership says this is the last straw, you gone. Maybe it was.
The new owner has a built in time buffer, it's like "look, this is not my mess, it'll take some time to fix. If he turns it around quickly then he looks like a genius.
I fully believe a lot of luck is involved. GM's have good runs and bad runs. The same ones that look like geniuses for a run, almost always look like chumps a while later. Masai, Bob Myers, Ainge, a long line of GM's. Brad Stevens still looks brilliant, his time could come though.
My Pacer's guy Pritchard had been up and down, currently looking good. Haliburton (the recent bad luck part) affects his job now. Instead of basking in the glory for a brief while, everything changes. So much luck involved.
I'm late responding as still reading the thread between other things going on, so here's my response to the mediocrity after the championship.
Masai flubbed on veteran assets - he didn't trade Gasol and Ibaka when their contracts were expiring but tried to re-sign them and lost. He held onto Pascal and OG too long believing we could make a run in the playoffs (his trade for Poelt says that is his belief) and didn't get enough value. He missed on one low 1st round pick (Flynn) but we've been happy with the picks before and since.
His other misstep was the 6'8" forwards experiment in '21 and '22 seasons and didn't draft/sign/keep enough guards. We have moved away from that since, and I have a suspicion Nurse had a hand in that too - Nurse believed in winning more possessions through offensive boards, and in 21 season Raps were tops in the league in that area. But next year, everyone else was onto that strategy, and we pivoted quickly away from that after '22 season.
Why did Masai think he could persuade Gasol and Ibaka to stay?
Masai brought a vision and a strategy for Raptors 13 years ago: he said the direction the cap is moving towards means we must develop talent in-house, draft well, trade for talent and retain them through relationships. He said we are going to attract and develop and retain the best talent in every aspect of the organization by treating people in the best way possible, and through fostering those relationships. That has been the case if you read about the Raptors. They are a 1st class organization now.
So he counted on the relationships he and the team developed with the talent to retain them. And that didn't work. (Gasol and Ibaka followed other personal relationships which turned out bad for them. Gasol went to Lakers because of his brother, immediately lost playing time there and was gone after that year.)
in 19-20, we had a 53 win season. We took Boston to 7 games in the bubble the year after championship. Covid season in Tampa really stank for us, had injuries and sank to 27 wins.
Followed that up in 21-22 with a 48 win season with the 6'8" team in full swing. The 1st pivot. The next year 22-23 was 41-41 when we lacked guards, shooting, and with the league having caught onto Nurse's strategy of winning offensive boards, it became mediocre. Nurse also wasn't developing young guys the way we had been.
Last 2 seasons was a second pivot in basketball strategy. Brought in Darko hoping Darko's offense could revitalize the pieces we had - Pascal, OG, Scottie, FVV and Poeltl and see if we could make a run in playoffs. It didn't. Darko was not prepared coach an NBA team - it was rough. The team didn't look prepared, the offense and defense (we had been a good defensive team with the same personnel!) looked crap, time outs and subs were bad, play calls out of time outs were crap. Pivot again, and sell the pieces for a completely new look.
So you can't say he didn't try some things, didn't work out, so moved on. Meantime outside of 1 bad draft, we kept adding through the draft. We've got interesting pieces now. We still lack shooting but there's talent here. He followed a strategy and vision that got us a championship. So while we saw parts of that strategy fail with certain aspects, it was within that frame work that works.
Having 2 pivots in strategy in the last 5 years makes winning difficult. But I would argue it is the cost of trying to find an edge in the copy-cat league where everyone (tries to) plays the same way.
