The Amazingly Suck Theodore Leonsis Thread

[Jay81]

So, I posted a respectful response this evening that disagreed with Leonsis' position on Ted's Take. Two hours later my post was removed.

http://www.tedstake.com/2012/06/20/wiza ... /#comments

I'm finding it a real challenge to continue to support this organization.

lol...they never accept my comments. All they want is positive feedback. What did you say?

[Upper Decker]

This is a thread i can get behind. Leonsis is the worst pro sports owner in DC.

[Dat2U]

So, I posted a respectful response this evening that disagreed with Leonsis' position on Ted's Take. Two hours later my post was removed.

http://www.tedstake.com/2012/06/20/wiza ... /#comments

I'm finding it a real challenge to continue to support this organization.

lol...they never accept my comments. All they want is positive feedback. What did you say?

It was a copy & paste of two posts I made in the trade thread, and looking back on it, maybe it wasn't that respectful at all

Here's what I want to know. What changed? What happened to the patient rebuild? You can legitimize the Nene trade as a stand alone move, but tying up $70 million in 3 veteran players (two of which are merely serviceable) was not the plan that Leonsis had promised we'd take.

I guess the OKC plan has been trashed and Ernie has sold Teddy on his own plan.

Ok, I guess I see why they would delete that.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

It is better than what I truly think and probably not as offensive as what I would say.

I would tell him I am not impressed. Rich does not mean smart. If you really wanted a winning team I could have done that for this franchise years ago. Your GM pays too much and he drafts the wrong guy more times than not. You play it safe when you need to swing for the fences and you panic when you need to stay the course. I HATE that you are the owner. I HATE that Grunfeld kept his job.

I liked Gilbert better than Ernie, and EJ, too.

I have been a fan for 40 years. I have and others have ties to this franchise. No, I don't have money and power and influence. If I did, Troy Weaver would be the GM and Dave Joerger would be the coach. Consiglieri, I would give my plan a better chance than acquiring Trevor Ariza and Emeka Okafor.

Any way, this is why I post here. I know people in back channels read this.

All I have to say is respect is not due a franchise that was 19-63 with a high payroll, and that won a COMBINED 49 games in two full seasons under Flip. The owner hired his familiar GM mainly because IMO of the way he handled Gil and the Rashard deal.

Good riddance.

(Dat, my letter is worse).

[paulpressey25]

I read the letter your owner put up defending the trade.

Again the parallels between your franchise and the Bucks are stunning.

Our owner as well laments the fact that free agents won't come to Milwaukee, and he has no patience for the draft (and tanking) so he acquires "well known" veterans under contract. Guys that he watched in a game once put up a 20/12 against the Bucks so he thinks they are "good". But since he never watches the other 81 games that guy plays, he never sees that the guy looks good against us because he's playing.....us (the Bucks).

The other theme that I saw from Ted was his take that he didn't want to let that $13.5 million dollar Rashard buyout go down the drain. He just had to exchange that salary for something that could play next year.

We did the exact same crap twice in a year with Maggette and then Stephen Jackson. Because we were too cheap to amnesty Maggette, we had to give up the 7th pick in the draft last year to exchange him for "productive winner" Stephen Jackson. Once Capt. Jack went on strike and partied on game nights, we couldn't just tell him to sit home or cut him. We had to put that $10 million to work, so we used our last remaining decent asset in Andrew Bogut to carry Jackson's remaining $10 million owed out for Kwame Brown's expiring.

So we waste good basketball assets just because our owner refuses to admit a sunk cost in a $10 million a year contract. Just like what you did yesterday.

As I said in the other thread, if our management was smart, we'd be on the phones to Ernie today, offering to take Blatche off your hands for Monta Ellis and the 3rd pick. I bet Ernie would bite on that. But don't worry, our owner wouldn't ever allow that, because he wants Monta for ourselves and would never want to carry a bad contract like Blatches when he has good contracts like the one we gave Drew Gooden.

[closg00]

Welcome back to our board Paul, I often posted your dire warning about Ernie Grunfeld, but to no-avail

[montestewart]

Hey paulpressey25. I have a friend, a longtime Bucks fan from Milwaukee. He doesn't post on this board, but almost from the time EG got here, he was warning me, and with virtually every transaction, he would comment on the parallels between the two teams. He wasn't an extreme hater, acknowledging some decent picks or moves for both teams, and he thought the Big-3 team here was at least exciting to watch, but overall his comments echo your own.

DC doesn't have the wide appeal of LA, New York, or Florida, and it doesn't have the NBA history of Boston or (more recently) Chicago. Right now, it also seems to lack an owner (and GM) with the bold vision to try and mimic successes in OKC, San Antonio, Dallas, or even Houston, Utah, Denver, or Indiana. It's an odd mixture of patience and inpulsiveness, and the comparisons to Atlanta and Philadelphia seem appropriate right now.

All other things being equal, players want to sign with a winner, and it isn't just the players and the on court play here that make this team look like the opposite. Until Leonsis thinks like a winner and gets a visionary GM to actively translate that thinking into action, this team will continue to lose out to other teams. They could start by trying to go after top FAs as if they have a chance, and if they fail, refuse to overpay too much for 2nd tier, but go after them too, and if they fail there, refuse to overpay too much for 3rd tier, but go after them too, and so on. If they strike out, fill in the gaps with the likes of Singleton, Martin, etc., try for deadline trades to fill gaps (without overpaying) and try again next year. Stop having EG mastermind these pennies on the dollar trades as if it's the Annandale Computer Center trying to cut a deal with Microsoft.

This watching a loser (that looks and acts like a loser, on court and off court) is too much for me. I'm taking a year off from being a paying fan, to see how it goes. Maybe I'll start using a DVR so I can invest less time in watching the games too. Taking a cue from CCJ, maybe I'll adopt another team to watch as well. Hornets will probably be pretty exciting to watch.

[mohammed10]

You just lost 30mil in salary to invest into 2 starters from one of the worst teams in the league last season. This is what you get when you retain a veteran GM who's built 2 contenders during his entire career. Those 2 teams were in the 90's built around a player who was already there! This trade displayed no savvy as every bit of leverage seems to not have been applied. This is a lazy trade, the front office did not work for the best deal possible! This is the typical crap I expect out of Ernie Grunfield. This is why I don't feel comfortable with this man building a contender. He did this in Mil. and with the first Wizards trio where he stopped and held in his glory of barely being above mediocrity. Ernie Grunfield and his team are great talent evaluators but they are too lazy to build a contender. Where's the push for improvements in player development or in strength & conditioning? You added coach Conelly which was a good move but it happened in the middle of the season after the media criticized you for not doing anything for your players! Now you have utilized one of your most valuable components in building a contender (cap space) in order to at best keep John Wall sane.

I just have one question. Would R.C. Burford or Sam Presti have done this trade? No! Look how Sam Presti manipulated cap space 4 or 5 yrs ago with Kurt Thomas. You say you want to use that team as a model, your not! Your not working hard enough to get it done. I don't work in the NBA and I can see that. So what does that say? I swear if the FO takes the safer pick in the draft I'm starting to go negative in all my discussions about this team. I've been defending this team to people that are pretty well respected and that's all I'm going to say.

Well said!

[mohammed10]

Hey paulpressey25. I have a friend, a longtime Bucks fan from Milwaukee. He doesn't post on this board, but almost from the time EG got here, he was warning me, and with virtually every transaction, he would comment on the parallels between the two teams. He wasn't an extreme hater, acknowledging some decent picks or moves for both teams, and he thought the Big-3 team here was at least exciting to watch, but overall his comments echo your own.

DC doesn't have the wide appeal of LA, New York, or Florida, and it doesn't have the NBA history of Boston or (more recently) Chicago. Right now, it also seems to lack an owner (and GM) with the bold vision to try and mimic successes in OKC, San Antonio, Dallas, or even Houston, Utah, Denver, or Indiana. It's an odd mixture of patience and inpulsiveness, and the comparisons to Atlanta and Philadelphia seem appropriate right now.

All other things being equal, players want to sign with a winner, and it isn't just the players and the on court play here that make this team look like the opposite. Until Leonsis thinks like a winner and gets a visionary GM to actively translate that thinking into action, this team will continue to lose out to other teams. They could start by trying to go after top FAs as if they have a chance, and if they fail, refuse to overpay too much for 2nd tier, but go after them too, and if they fail there, refuse to overpay too much for 3rd tier, but go after them too, and so on. If they strike out, fill in the gaps with the likes of Singleton, Martin, etc., try for deadline trades to fill gaps (without overpaying) and try again next year. Stop having EG mastermind these pennies on the dollar trades as if it's the Annandale Computer Center trying to cut a deal with Microsoft.

This watching a loser (that looks and acts like a loser, on court and off court) is too much for me. I'm taking a year off from being a paying fan, to see how it goes. Maybe I'll start using a DVR so I can invest less time in watching the games too. Taking a cue from CCJ, maybe I'll adopt another team to watch as well. Hornets will probably be pretty exciting to watch.

I nominate this for a HOF posting...could not have said it better - especially the last paragraph.

I too am taking a year off from going to games. I have already adopted another team and will start investing more time watching them next season.

[Newk Rollins]

I'm coming around to the view that Leonsis can do a lot better as an owner.

One reason is the performance of the Mystics. I admit I've never had much interest in the Mystics, but I've noticed their scores on the ESPN ticker, so I decided to do a little research. This year they absolutely suck, and last year they were an image of the 2012 Wizards- second worst team in the league, with the third worst team far ahead. Further, this year's top draft pick looks bad so far. They had two first-rounders, and one of them, the #10 overall pick, has already been waived. That's what often happens when your coach (whose overall record as a coach is 8-33) is your GM!

Ted's major success has been the Caps, who were blessed to get Ovie, and who have generally drafted well. But in the last couple of years, all of his teams have performed poorly.

It seems that he's done a poor job setting processes and expectations for what his teams do when they're not playing. The Wizards off the court have set the standard for dysfunctional- Arenas, Blatche, etc. The Caps had a deeply ingrained star system which Hunter briefly started to change. Ernie should have gone long ago, because he in particular was at fault for the Wizards culture.

Ted needs to use more metrics to evaluate the performance of his players and especially his GMs. He should evaluate Grunfeld's draft performance this year based not only on what he does with the #3, but also on the performance of his whole draft board. It's 30 data points, not one. He should re-examine whether star systems really make economic sense. I think that it's winning that brings fans, not stars. He should be sure that the medical staff does a good job (seems he's improved on Abe's weaknesses here). Above all, he should be sure that his offseason programs have the highest standards.

[cdouglas]

Why won't he hire a GM with a good record to take care of that side of the business. Mediocre begats mediocre. How does he expect the fans to give their support and believe in his plan if you keep the GMs that created the mess we're in!

[penbeast0]

This is a thread i can get behind. Leonsis is the worst pro sports owner in DC.

Why can't he be more like the Caps owner?

[mohammed10]

Why won't he hire a GM with a good record to take care of that side of the business. Mediocre begats mediocre. How does he expect the fans to give their support and believe in his plan if you keep the GMs that created the mess we're in!

Kevin Pritchard was just signed as GM of the Pacers...ugh

Another blown opportunity by Ted

[cwb3]

Being like the Milwaukee Bucks would be a notable upgrade for the Wizards. I get the notion that being just good enough to contend for 7th thru 10th place in the Eastern Conference is a recipe for sustained mediocracy. Still. . .having a playoff berth to aim for would at least make watching the last 6 weeks of the season meaningful. I've grown tired of tanks I guess.

[mohammed10]

Being like the Milwaukee Bucks would be a notable upgrade for the Wizards. I get the notion that being just good enough to contend for 7th thru 10th place in the Eastern Conference is a recipe for sustained mediocracy. Still. . .having a playoff berth to aim for would at least make watching the last 6 weeks of the season meaningful. I've grown tired of tanks I guess.

...hence my location status

This team has been in mediocrity purgatory for the last 30 years. Nothing that Ted has done to date has shown me otherwise.

[sfam]

Ted hasn't shown me anything that makes me totally lose confidence in him. That would change if he trades out of the #3 to get rid of Blatche. If Ted does that, he will lose my confidence. Basically, that would mean that Ted is a cheapskate only interested in crappy wins, not championships.

[mohammed10]

Ted hasn't shown me anything that makes me totally lose confidence in him. That would change if he trades out of the #3 to get rid of Blatche. If Ted does that, he will lose my confidence. Basically, that would mean that Ted is a cheapskate only interested in crappy wins, not championships.

You give him far for slack on the rope than I would, sfam

But, I agree - if Ted trades #3 to dump 7-day, then there may be a riot on this board

[montestewart]

Ted hasn't shown me anything that makes me totally lose confidence in him. That would change if he trades out of the #3 to get rid of Blatche. If Ted does that, he will lose my confidence. Basically, that would mean that Ted is a cheapskate only interested in crappy wins, not championships.

You give him far for slack on the rope than I would, sfam

But, I agree - if Ted trades #3 to dump 7-day, then there may be a riot on this board

I like those riots when the mods go away. If the above happens, maybe they'll take their badges off and come out and smash some plate glass with the rest of us.

[mohammed10]

I like those riots when the mods go away. If the above happens, maybe they'll take their badges off and come out and smash some plate glass with the rest of us.

+1

[Zonkerbl]

Aw, sad:

http://www.tedstake.com/2012/07/16/the- ... -accounts/

No more answering personal emails.