Countdown to Ernie Grunfeld Firing (Part 2)

[leswizards]

I would be much happier if it was Ted who was reading our message board rather than EG.

[Dat2U]

According to Ted's own mouth a few years back (the quote is no longer online, I think he had it removed lol)... this is what Ernie is really judged by:

Wizards attendance figures:

13-14 17,139*
12-13 16,343
11-12 16,728
10-11 16,791
09-10 16,204
08-09 16,612

Attendance is slightly up! Extensions for everyone!

[verbal8]

According to Ted's own mouth a few years back (the quote is no longer online, I think he had it removed lol)... this is what Ernie is really judged by:

Wizards attendance figures:

13-14 17,139*
12-13 16,343
11-12 16,728
10-11 16,791
09-10 16,204
08-09 16,612

Attendance is slightly up! Extensions for everyone!

Where did you get the attendance stats from? It looks like Basketball-reference might be a little behind.

[closg00]

According to Ted's own mouth a few years back (the quote is no longer online, I think he had it removed lol)... this is what Ernie is really judged by:

Wizards attendance figures:

13-14 17,139*
12-13 16,343
11-12 16,728
10-11 16,791
09-10 16,204
08-09 16,612

Attendance is slightly up! Extensions for everyone!

Hopefully someone on the board quoted this so it can be found. One of the blogs probably referred to it as-well. Stunning.

[Dat2U]

According to Ted's own mouth a few years back (the quote is no longer online, I think he had it removed lol)... this is what Ernie is really judged by:

Wizards attendance figures:

13-14 17,139*
12-13 16,343
11-12 16,728
10-11 16,791
09-10 16,204
08-09 16,612

Attendance is slightly up! Extensions for everyone!

Where did you get the attendance stats from? It looks like Basketball-reference might be a little behind.

http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance

[closg00]

*Finger-tenting* I wonder if limping into a 1st-round sweep would be enough to get Ernie & Randy "canned"?

[Silvie Lysandra]

Knowing that eg's job security is tied to attendance, no Wizards fan should attend a game until he is fired. Period.

[hands11]

The original thread started Nov 2012, just months after EG was extended for two years.

Anyone that thought Ted was going to fire him instead of honoring the two year commitment were not dealing in reality.

The day Ted signed that contract, he was committed to having him here two years. Period. Then he would reevaluate the situation. Consider his options and make another decision.

As an owner of an NBA franchise, I have to assume Ted spends time talking with other owners, looking at other franchises and keeping track of other GMs. He would also look at how other front offices are structured.

So if you were Ted, how would you need things structured and how are the Wizards structured? If EG was to go, how would you structure things differently or would you keep the same structure ?

I guess first things first, how are the Wizards structured ?

http://www.nba.com/wizards/wizards-re-s ... ont-office

What is EG current role ? If a new GM was to get added, how would that process of evaluating be taking place ? What team of people would be doing it ? Is the Wizards front office structured in a typical way right now ? And lastly, does the fact that Ted is owner of more then one franchise mean he needs things structure differently ? He clearly doesn't have the time to be equally involved in multiple franchises like he could if he focused on just one.

So no one with a good working knowledge of how front office are structured willing to take on these questions ?

I guess other question would be. Which sport is the one he is more interested in ? Does he plan on keeping them all, if so, he probably needs to take on a major partner so he can focus on one sport and let the partner focus on the other.

[TGW]

Knowing that eg's job security is tied to attendance, no Wizards fan should attend a game until he is fired. Period.

Dat is probably right. The Mystics were heavily criticized for putting up attendance banners in the Verizon Center, and Ted was basically shamed into taking them down after ridicule from the media, both local and national.

Anyone who doesn't think attendance numbers aren't important to Ted is delusional.

[verbal8]

Considering the improvement in the record, the numbers look pretty bad to me. A likely 20 to 25% increase in wins leading to a 4% improvement in attendance seems pretty underwhelming to me.

Knowing that eg's job security is tied to attendance, no Wizards fan should attend a game until he is fired. Period.

Dat is probably right. The Mystics were heavily criticized for putting up attendance banners in the Verizon Center, and Ted was basically shamed into taking them down after ridicule from the media, both local and national.

Anyone who doesn't think attendance numbers aren't important to Ted is delusional.

[payitforward]

The original thread started Nov 2012, just months after EG was extended for two years.

Anyone that thought Ted was going to fire him instead of honoring the two year commitment were not dealing in reality.

The day Ted signed that contract, he was committed to having him here two years. Period. Then he would reevaluate the situation. Consider his options and make another decision.

As an owner of an NBA franchise, I have to assume Ted spends time talking with other owners, looking at other franchises and keeping track of other GMs. He would also look at how other front offices are structured.

So if you were Ted, how would you need things structured and how are the Wizards structured? If EG was to go, how would you structure things differently or would you keep the same structure ?

I guess first things first, how are the Wizards structured ?

http://www.nba.com/wizards/wizards-re-s ... ont-office

What is EG current role ? If a new GM was to get added, how would that process of evaluating be taking place ? What team of people would be doing it ? Is the Wizards front office structured in a typical way right now ? And lastly, does the fact that Ted is owner of more then one franchise mean he needs things structure differently ? He clearly doesn't have the time to be equally involved in multiple franchises like he could if he focused on just one.

So no one with a good working knowledge of how front office are structured willing to take on these questions ?

I guess other question would be. Which sport is the one he is more interested in ? Does he plan on keeping them all, it so, he probably needs to take on a major partner so he can focus on one sport and let the partner focus on the other.

Not much of the above makes any sense in the real world. A contract is a document with consequences, but it's not a "commitment" the way you mean it. You've never seen contracts changed or broken? It happens all the time.

Actually, Hands... have you ever been in business? I suppose you may have, but really it's hard to imagine.

Yes, people who wondered whether Ernie would serve out that contract were "dealing in (a possible) reality." And, no, you didn't and don't "know better" than such folks -- "knowing better" is actually not a kind of "knowing" at all. Had something different happened, you'd be writing "that's what I've been saying all along," what you usually write no matter what happens.

What would make you think Ted spends any meaningful time looking at how other franchises work? The Wizards are only one of his businesses, and his businesses are only one of his financial interests, and most people who've been successful, for that matter, don't spend much time worrying about how other people do things.

What do you mean by asking "how things are structured" anyway? What an NBA franchise has to do, on the basketball side, is pretty well-defined, don't you think?

For that matter, so are the way jobs and responsibilities work in an organization.

A GM can be thought of along the lines of a COO -- in fact, sometimes they are called "President of Basketball Operations" -- in fact that may be Ernie's title. Does he "operate" the arena? Someone does, and it sure ain't Ted. But I don't know if that's Ernie's job, and I don't care.

Usually a COO serves a CEO, and it's the latter's job to set strategy and, ultimately, to be accountable to ownership for results. In many businesses, obviously, CEO and "ownership" are the same. Monumental owns the Wizards, and Ted has control of Monumental (though there are other owners, minority owners).

The COO has a budget and is accountable to the CEO for results. In theory at least, the CEO sets "strategy" (one of the most overused words in business -- usually "overused" to disastrous results), and the COO carries it out. In practice, of course, the COO is in on strategy discussions and decisions, because he has information relevant to the question of whether any given strategy is possible for the organization, and because a COO w/o buy-in on strategy is thought less likely to be able to carry it out successfully.

If Ernie were to be fired, the new GM would bring in all his own people right down the line, though administrative staff probably wouldn't necessarily change much. The new guy might keep some people, but usually that decision would mean that they had become "his own people" -- or, sometimes, that they have so much critical informal organizational knowledge that losing them makes operation too difficult.

Every GM has to scout for the draft. The only difference is between those who do it well (e.g. Morey) and those who do it badly (e.g. Ernie). Ditto across the reasonably well-defined spread of activities. And in pretty much every case, the difference is between those who do it well and those who, like Ernie, do it badly. Of course, even a bad GM sometimes makes a good decision, maybe even often. Just as even the worst NBA player is an unbelievably great basketball player on the overall scale.

But you are only judged by one thing -- results.

[payitforward]

Results?

We see that in the run up to the last 3 drafts Ernie had 9 picks (including two #3s and a #6), which he turned into 7 by giving one away and using another to trade "up" (in draft order not player quality).

Of those 7 guys, one 1 of them was on the floor for us last night in what was obviously an important game.

Two other of the 7 play for other teams. One of them, Jan, doesn't play much and is likely at the end of his short NBA career -- a guy taken 6th in the draft. The other one, Shelvin Mack, has become a pretty solid journeyman NBA player. We could put that pick on the plus side for Ernie, if he hadn't given the guy away for nothing!

Two more look like busts (Singleton and, yes, Rice), and another (Satoransky) is just a name -- he hasn't come over, maybe never will, etc.

That's 1 player out of the 9 picks he started with. The late Rd 2 pick he threw away in 2012 would have been Kyle O'Quinn had I been choosing -- he's a terrific young big w/ a bright future in the league. The guy he gave away (w/ another pick) for Rice was someone many of us liked and who has become a rotation point guard and a pretty good one in his rookie year. Another failure by our GM.

Judged by results, Ernie is an altogether incompetent GM. I'm sure he'll be retained if he wants to be. Fortunately, he is old enough that he may consider this year of incredible success (bah!) the right moment to bow out. I sure hope so.

[payitforward]

Had I had the opportunities to use the 9 picks Ernie had available in 2011-12-13, I would have picked (in order) Kawhi Leonard, Kenneth Faried, Chandler Parsons, Bradley Beal, Jae Crowder, Kyle O'Quinn, Otto Porter (more likely than Nerlens Noel), Nate Wolters, and I don't know about that last '13 pick: I would have tried to trade it up for as little as possible to get Mike Muscala I guess, but that might not have been possible. Kazemi? Louvergne? Djubevic?

No one on planet Earth would hire me as an NBA GM (one day I'll tell the comical tale of my attempts to get to the owner of the Warriors in the mid-80's to try to convince him to do just that!). I wouldn't even classify myself as a basketball expert -- except in my dreams.

So, if I can do a better job picking players in the NBA draft than Ernie Grunfeld, what that means is that he's completely incompetent at it. Pin the tail on the donkey looks like it would have done better over the years than Ernie has!

What I can't understand is how this is not both obvious and decisive to the man Ernie works for.

[payitforward]

There is hope:

Daryl Morey admits GM's browse message boards.

What Morey said:

We do RT @jamesasteven: @dmorey Do nba GMs (to your knowledge) ever gain trade/transaction ideas from online message boards/fans?
— Daryl Morey (@dmorey) March 25, 2014

Not just "browse" or even "read" -- Darryl Morey says "we do 'gain trade/transaction ideas from online message boards/fans.'"

But, by *we* I think he means not "GMs" in general, but we at the Houston Rockets. You can be sure Ernie neither browses nor reads and certainly has never gotten an idea from this or any such board.

[mohammed10]

There is hope:

Daryl Morey admits GM's browse message boards.

Yeah, but our GM is milellie111.

So...not only does Ernie browse these boards, he posts, too!

[dobrojim]

you wanna talk results - 45 max wins over ~ 10 or however many years as GM.

attendance figures are probably a lot more tied to the economy than
a marginal difference in team performance.

[leswizards]

you wanna talk results - 45 max wins over ~ 10 or however many years as GM.

attendance figures are probably a lot more tied to the economy than
a marginal difference in team performance.

And, a better GM = a better record = even better attendance. I don't understand why this is so difficult for Ted to understand.

[closg00]

Annoy Miley, support this thread, not his troll-thread.

[leswizards]

Annoy Miley, support this thread, not his troll-thread.

Sorry for breaking the embargo. Can't promise it won't happen again.

[closg00]

Annoy Miley, support this thread, not his troll-thread.

Sorry for breaking the embargo. Can't promise it won't happen again.

There is a good discussion happening over on that thread, but it is not a truly honest intellectual exchange of ideas among board-members. Miley obviously is Ernie Grunfeld himself, or someone working for Ted's PR outfit.
A major propaganda victory has already taken place by-virtue of the continued support of that thread.