Report: Trailblazers extend Neil Olshey thru 2021

[OptionZero]

Pe Woj:

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2017-18 would have otherwise been the final year of his contract.

My take:
For a winning team, continuity is good. Front office stability + wins are appealing to both outside free agents and your own guys up for new contracts (and fans).

Good GMs and front office staffers are hard to find, if you punt yours, are you going to get a better one? It's usually an uphill battle, and its never smart to do it without a clear plan in place, which means candidates in-house and on the market.

On that very basic level, Portland fans shouldn't complain. Olshey joined the Blazers in 2012, and after 1 year out of the playoffs, the Blazers have been IN the playoffs every year from 2013-14 to present. Under his watch, PDX drafted Lillard and McCollum and traded for Jusef Nurkic; frankly, you could do a hell of alot worse. You could be run by Garpax. or Vlade. or Steve Mills. or Robert Rowell.

but

Under Olshey's watch, they did lose Lamarcus Aldridge for nothing. They dealt Nicholas Batum for Vonleh (project without much return) and Gerald Henderson (1 year of bench production, now on the shelf for another team). Wesley Matthews walked for nothing - with the caveat he was hurt and that isn't a good contract he got).

Let's say LMA was out of his hands and Batum/Wesley left at the right time b/c keeping them would have been overpays.

Let's look at his record:
2012-13: 33
2013-14: 54
2014-15: 51
2015-16: 44
2016-17: 41

This is not trending in the right direction.

I think this is the most damning, Payroll Rank (compared to rest of league)
2012: 26th highest payroll
2013: 25th (WCF exit)
2014: 14th (1st round exit)
2015: 13th (2nd round exit, CP3 injury)
2016: 3rd (1st round exit)
2017: 5th (???)

Portland is spending more and more each year. They are winning less and less. Is that the GM you want to extend for four more seasons?

Just looking at that, it seems like Neil Olshey's spent lavishly to build a winning team, sure, but one with a fairly low ceiling, despite drafting a well-regarded PG in Dame, who has been on a rookie deal until recently signing a new deal.

Looking at his most recent 2 offseasons, it seems like two really bad trends are emerging:
1) Overvaluing mediocre or middling talent; undervaluing flexibility

He gave sizeable commitment last offseason (2016) to Leonard, Harkless, Crabbe, and Turner. This is the opposite of his Aminu deal, which was a great player analysis and market forecast. Aminu was versatile and now is cheap for a starting/rotation level 3/4 forward locked up under $10M/year. Leonard, Crabbe, and Turner are all very one-dimensional; Leonard and Crabbe can shoot and do little else; Turner is a shot creator who can't shoot or do anything else. Harkless is the closest to being worth his contract, due to positional scarcity.

The financial outlay was so bad he gave Crabbe away for nothing, just a contract that was immediately stretched for financial savings. Good job saving money; but you have less talent now and that contract is still taking up space.

Olshey didn't recognize that those guys had some value on their old deals, but as soon as they were re-signed, became negatives and not positive assets. Thats poor GM work, particularly when he blew the space he DID have on Evan Turner, a terrible fit for today's NBA, a guard that can't shoot.

Preserving his cap space, with shorter deals, at the risk of a little less familiarity and certainty in other FA would have been a much better play; the signings he made didn't exactly produce wins, so what was the point?

2) Overspending in the front court.
Olshey seems to have a very strange obsession with filling up his front court. After LMA left in the 2015 offseason, he traded for Vonleh and Plumlee and signed Kaman and Ed Davis. He already had Meyers Leonard. I get the need to replace LMA, but thats 5 dudes for 2 spots AND both Aminu and Harkless should have gotten smallball minutes at the 4.

Then, 2016, he gave Leonard the aforementioned long-term deal ($40m/4year) knowing that Plumlee was coming up on a new deal

This past offseason, he still has Leonard, Davis & Vonleh, added Nurkic the past trade deadline, and then he DRAFTS a project in Zach Collins (didn't start in college) and Swanigan (undersized C).

Meanwhile, PDX has no good backup PG and they just traded their 3rd shooter (Crabbe). They have no one else to reliable space the floor and no guard depth. They passed on Malik Monk AND Donovan Mitchell, hell, they passed on Luke Kennard. They're going to rely on Evan Turner and Shabazz napier as their reserve guards?

Olshey is spending his limited resources on the opposite of what the modern NBA demands that a winning team has: shooting and lots of versatile dudes at the 2-3-4 spots. Either he's ignoring it or doesn't see it. Is that the GM you want to extend?

So overall, there's pretty big concerns for me in keeping Neil Olshey

[Bertrob]

Hes a pretty average GM.

[clyde21]

His 2016 off-season was an albatross, but he redeemed it a little by stealing Nurkic and shaving Crabbe off the cap. Still not quite convinced that he can build a team, though, with some of the roster moves he's been accumulating the last couple of years.

[monopoman]

Despite his problems he is probably the best GM Portland has had in a while he has had a pretty ridiculous record in drafts and is great at finding undervalued talent on other teams that can be a nice piece for Portland at least temporarily.

He also does pretty damn good in the trade world picking up Nurkic for a player we would have had trouble potentially re-signing anyways. I think some of what he did in 2016 was due to the need of Paul Allen to retain that talent, Paul Allen is probably the most hands on owner in the entire NBA and he has fired GM's for trying to fight him in the past like Cho.

Keep in mind with the cap growing ever larger any team with a lot of young talent will be forced into either letting that talent walk or re-signing it for huge deals in the future. Obviously if the team in question is competing for championships that is not a problem unfortunately that is not the same for the other 26-27 teams in the league.

[Forte IV]

He traded the pick that would be Kyrie Irving. WE could have amnestied Baron Davis ourselves. I understand at the time the Clippers were looking at a pick around 7-11. But still. At least put top 3 protection on it.

[Nuggets_Talk]

Hes a pretty average GM.

This

Made some good moves but when you create a team that is top 3 in salary but pretty average on the court, something is wrong

[OptionZero]

Grading him depends on your perspective, I guess.

The Kings and Knicks have had GM's that spend a buncha assets and DIDN'T make the playoffs, so thats pretty clearly the dumbest thing you can do.

The 2016-17 Golden State Warriors won 67 games and the championship without paying the luxury tax. Hell, they only had the 16th (you read that correctly) highest payroll in the league at $100M. Thats the ideal, but its not repeatable, not even by GSW themselves

So what does that say about a guy thats in between? That has a high payroll and a good but not great team?

I think if your team has a history of being crap, then you give that guy a B.

If your team has a history of being good, you give him a C.

The blazers have been good before Olshey got there (playoffs from 09-11) and he hasn't really gotten them further, so I say he's a C.


In other words, an average GM.

[MartinToVaught]

An extension? Seriously? Those contracts he handed out should have gotten him fired.

[OptionZero]

If Denver hadn't stupidly handed portland both Nurkic AND a first for a guy they currently haven't even signed, I think olshey would have been fired. They would be totally up a creek with Plumlee an RFA and that bloated salary. They wouldn't have made the playoffs either.

[PDX MM]

Word was that it was Allen that wanted to match Crabbe and resign Leonard because he didn't want more assets walking away without any return which was an over reaction to LMA leaving the summer before. He isn't in the top 5 of GMs but we certainly could have worse so I am ok with the extending him.

[monopoman]

Yeah, I think it is pretty good that he kept this team competitive after losing LMA, Matthews, Batum etc.. They obviously were worse but that was going to happen no matter what, but thanks to his picks in Lillard+McCollum and some nice additions they weren't battling for a top 3 pick in the West.

[zzaj]

On the Blazer board we've broken it down and it's unclear whether or not the Blazers were sold on Lillard BEFORE Olshey became GM or not...so it's not entirely clear whether that was really his pick.

I think the OP did a great job breaking down Olshey. Stability is important for brand, but Olshey is trending in the wrong direction.

[KnicksGadfly]

I think a team could do worse than Neil Olshey.

[Howard Mass]

May he give in and support Portland getting a G-League Team.

Right now, there are 26 G League Teams.

Washington will join in 2018-2019
New Orleans plans to join in either 2018-2019 or 2019-2020
Denver is actively seeking a G League Team.

Portland is the holdout here and hopefully if Denver and New Orleans get teams, it will squeeze Portland as they will have to rely on other teams to send down players from their 15 man roster and to assign their two-way players.

[smartyz456]

I don't think this should really matter at all in the grand scheme

We all know that owners are the one who's making the moves and decisions anyway

It's Jordan who makes the decisions instead of Cho, Cuban instead of Nelson, Riley instead of Arison, Magic instead of Pelinka, etc

[Village Idiot]

Whether it is Paul Allen or Neil calling the shots on free-agency the overall strategy is a fail.

Ben Falk, our former head analyst, has some very good insights on free-agency overspending on his blog:

https://cleaningtheglass.com/cornered-market/

some tidbits:

free agency is generally not an efficient way to acquire players.

The Winner’s Curse - The team paying the most for a free agent is the team who values that free agent the most — who likely overvalues the player the most. It’s possible that all of the other teams with money undervalue the player and so the winner gets good value. But more likely than not the winning bidder will be the one that overpays the most.

The middle of the free agency market is where teams get the least bang for the buck, while the best investments tend to be on the extremes. This doesn’t mean teams should stay out of free agency altogether — there are still ways to find value in the middle of the market. Perhaps a team can correctly identify an undervalued player, or find one that is worth much more to their particular roster than to the rest of the league. Maybe they take a risk on someone with injury problems or personality questions and the player is able to overcome them.

But those are the exceptions. Trying to build a team through free agency is like trying to win a game with midrange jumpers. You can do it — but you’re much better off with corner threes.

I agree with Falk's conclusion. If you strike out on the big names, punt your cap-space forward and fill-out the roster with low salary players instead. That cap-space can be used to acquire picks which is the other value opportunity.

[OptionZero]

Falk is an excellent basketball writer - he doesn't put out enough stuff, i enjoy reading it.

He is putting into visual form something that's been said often in basically all sports regarding free agency: go hard early or wait and get value later.

Winning in the NBA is about getting MORE value for your dollar - the contracts most likely to do what are the elite, top tier guys, like your Lebrons, KDs, etc and the bargain basement finds, like draft picks that produce early, or vet min types that contribute rotation minutes for little cost

Spending on free agents in the middle is how you lose, because you're usually NOT doing better than "replacement level" guys - Meyers Leonard got paid alot obstensibly to "retain an asset" but his production was negative, you can do more or less the same with a minimum guy. In that case, why the hell are you spending $10M on him?

Thats where Olshey's approach was so off the rails bad - all those bad contracts are for middling talent AT BEST. There's no problem, really, in doling out money on Lillard or McCollum - those guys are good! But Turner, Leonard, Harkless, Crabbe . . . these are middle rotation guys that shouldn't be consuming that much cap space.

[Karate Diop]

This seems like a reactionary move based off the Nurkic trade...

[Att]

I believe his strategy in the previous offseason has cost Portland a chance to be true contenders.

[a_sensei]

Again, I think we need to remember that Paul Allen tends to fall in love/ overvalue the potential of his own assets. It's no coincidence that every Blazer GM for the last decade+ held on to the young guys and resigned them to questionable contracts. Last summer's signings were poorly conceived. Leonard hasn't proven to be worth more than the minimum. Crabbe and Harkless are mid-level guys (Harkless' contract is actually pretty good). The Turner signing was not good, and had the Blazers gotten Parsons instead it may have been worse. That being said, the team had few options last summer. It was the only time they would have space. Obviously Durant was unattainable. Horford was probably as well. They went after the bigger names (Whiteside, Howard- ughh, Parsons- ughh). Once they couldn't get those guys it came down to resigning some or all of their own guys or punting until this year. The problem the only way to completely punt would have been to renounce Leonard, Crabbe and Harkless last summer and Plumlee, Connaughton, and Layman this summer and never signing Napier. Best case scenario Blazers come into this summer with 20-25m in capspace and a roster looking something like:

Lillard/McCollum/Aminu/Vonleh/Ed Davis/POR 1st round pick, CLE first round pick.

Blazers pick is most likely a middle lottery pick as they would have played last season with those five guys, Plumlee, and young or vet minimum one year guys.
You can hope to get a third star to come play on a team with zero depth, but why would a Hayward or a Millsap come to that situation.
Otherwise your choices are to overpay or, again, punt until next year and watch Lillard and McCollum get increasingly antsy to leave.

While I agree that matching Crabbe, resigning Leonard and signing Turner were all mistakes my question is-
what moves could he have made last summer to put the team closer to contending?