ForeverTFC wrote:CPT wrote:To me, the Casey thing would be more funny than obviously bad. It would have a chance of turning bad though, for sure.
This is why there were lots of people like me, who thought Masai deserved to be fired based on recent performance, but didn't actually want it to happen for a variety of reasons, one of which we're seeing on full display.
In one of those threads, I made the point that front office hirings rarely look good when they happen. It's either "who is this guy?" or "oh **** I can't believe we hired this guy." If a known guy is available, it's probably because he's got some warts. The same is generally true of coaches, but people generally have a lot more knowledge of coaches and asssistants than other teams' front office structures.
That is to say, whoever is hired will more than likely inspire one of the above two reactions. And as much as I would have kept Masai for image and stability (or the image of stability, even), matching his recent performance would not be particularly difficult, and it would be well within the range of possibilities for any hire, even Dwane Casey.
That's a very narrow way of looking at things. The on-court performance may not have been good, but during that time we have drafted very well. Also, we still have all of our future picks (pretty rare in the NBA today). If you look more broadly, things could be WAY worse.
Things could be way worse, sure. But I don't take much solace in the idea that we're not one of the 5-10 bumbling laughing stock teams; I want to be one of the 5-10 respected organizations that seems to be doing everything right. I say this in full recognition of the fact that Masai at one point brought us from the former group to the latter. Recent performance has certainly pushed us out of that top group and closer to that bottom group, if not right back in it.
And while it may not be the right place for this discussion, the idea that we've drafted very well recently is certainly up for debate. For his whole tenure it's obviously a strength, but how long should he get credit for some good picks 8-10 years ago? In the last 5 years, the Scottie pick is doing a lot of heavy lifting based on early returns (ROY, 1st All-Star, outperforming the "consensus" #4 in Suggs), while it's now looking more like he got the 3rd-6th best player with the 4th pick; good, but not blowing away expectations. Among the other recent picks (Koloko, Dick, JKW, Mogbo, Shead), it's more of a mixed bag, but we'd need to see someone really pop to convince me that we did "very well" in that time. Obviously too early to say anything about CMB and Martin, and even then I don't know how much credit should be given to Masai if he was already on the way out.
Again, it comes down to what you would expect in terms of young talent from a team that hasn't made the playoffs in 3 years. Maybe it's about what you would expect, but I don't think it's anything special. A replacement-level exec could probably replicate it. We just have to hope MLSE doesn't hire someone who would actively make things worse. To be fair, a lot of the worst basketball situations I can think of are more due to ownership than management, and to give MLSE a bit of credit, I don't know if we've seen anything to indicate they will **** things up to that extent. Worst case, we're probably looking at a bunch of "win now" or "at least try not to lose too much now" moves, which is basically how the team has been run the last few years by Masai anyway.
