PC Board OT Thread Take 4 [No Politics]

[Clyde Frazier]

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[E-Balla]

Shoutout to my governor stealing the election then trying to kill us to keep his rich pals happy. I'm about to legit miss the chance to celebrate my birthday because we're handling this worse than every other state.

[Owly]

Did Krause belittle MJ (assume you mean MJ here)?

I was aware of him being pompous. Self--centered and/or odd (heard something like telling Majerle to play badly in pre draft tournaments so that the Bulls could grab him in like the third round or something). Abrasive (just from the number of run ins, though Motta, Jordan, Jackson and Pippen all had their egos). Lacking in tact/diplomacy (not the worst instance but I recall him campaigning for himself to be in the HoF iirc).

In terms of "belittling" I'm only aware of that in one direction though. And I may just not have heard it because Krause didn't have a megaphone like MJ (though because he was the "villain" he did have plenty of people wanting him to look stupid) or not remembered. Could you cite something?

And whilst there were missteps (Sellers, King - though the picks after were pretty bad too so ...) a good patient build moving short term "assets" who aren't great for a winning team and aren't on the timeline (Woolridge) for picks, reloading on the fly by tapping untapped markets (Kukoc), moving on from a coach when getting good, going in the right direction, because you think there's someone better ... and being right. Not a systematic look but I don't think that he needs "defending" in terms of his record or comparisons with "moronic GMs" in terms of the degree of "intellectually incompeten[ce]" because he was competent, further, probably very good. Lucky to have MJ of course (though imagine a shorter-term thinnking GM on the Bulls, or imagine him on the Clippers, imagine him on a team that's happy to rush him back in year 2..., a team that doesn't come out of the '87 draft with Pippen and Grant ... there's a case that MJ was lucky to have Krause too) but good.

If you want to say his ego, lack of people skills brought ridicule on himself, okay. I think that's more separate from how good he was at his job than you seem to present (not that it isn't a part of it, and because the Bulls were successful [and maybe because Mj was willing to go to war] the being bad at PR and therefore being a punchline probably hurt him going forwards) and of course results are somewhat dictated by luck and circumstance but, he has pretty good results. I guess maybe if he was actually belittling MJ that gets to a point of weird/unprofessional/dumb that it's a version of being really bad.

Uh...

Players and coaches don't win championships; organizations win championships.

This is an incredibly self-aggrandizing statement made specifically by contrasting the role of the organizational leader (Krause) against the players (Jordan & Pippen) and coaches (Krause).

Add in the whole history with Krause regarding Toni Kukoc, and the fact that the Bulls' organization would eventually shoved the Jordan/Pippen/Jackson trio out the door in order to facilitate their future that they were so comically overoptimistic about, yeah, I'd call that belittling.

Re: ego is separate from good he was at his job. There's truth in this. On the other hand, part of any job is staying on good terms with the people who could destroy you. I mean, I'd say Krause should be a nice guy to even the least powerful employee, but that's more about being a good person. The fact of the matter is you can be a terrible, sadistic boss and be just fine as long as you keep on good terms with your star employee. What you never do is let your ego get in the way of that relationship.

I'm reminded of a story my dad told me that a mentor told him when he became a boss.

Sales team meeting with sales team, boss, and boss' boss.

Boss: "Hey #1 Salesman, could you...?"
#1 Salesman: "Go s**t in your hat."

Boss looks at boss' boss.

Boss' boss: "Time to get a new hat."

Many will look at that statement and blame the #1 Salesman for being bad, and they aren't wrong. Jordan was kind of a terrible person to those who were less powerful than him. But Jordan was Krause's meal ticket, and now is literally the only reason any of us are talking about Krause. If Krause didn't want to deal with the quick-to-be-annoyed anger of a star basketball player, he shouldn't have been in the NBA. It was Krause's job to be the bigger person.

(You can argue that he still was the bigger person because Jordan was so small, but Krause needed to be big enough that Jordan didn't end up having good reason to be irritated with Krause.)

(Incidentally, I had my own versions of this when I moved into management and had to deal with diva coders, but the answer was not to "stand up" to the coder that the CEO wouldn't stand up to - I certainly couldn't fire the guy if the CEO wouldn't. While I had that role, I swallowed my pride, ignored the arrogance and did the professional thing. And then I left.)

I don't think indirectly saying he was more important than MJ (and emphasis on indirectly and in such a way that it is framed as a philosophical belief) is belittling him. For me that's "marginalizing the importance of ..." MJ, whilst belittling in my usage (not super frequent) has implications of something more personal. My usage/framing may be atypical here. Fwiw, Krause supposedly intended to include "alone" in that quote and initially thought he had been misquoted.
tangent

Spoiler:

As it is the quote doesn't really make sense, as though players, coaches or organizations could win a title by themselves. Organizations are good because they bring together the right players and coaches (an oversimplification here, for brevity), coaches organize the players optimally, and the players play for the organizations and coaches and could play elsewhere but it would just be a schoolyard game. It's not mutually exclusive, rather they are dependent on one another.

Of course this doesn't mean Krause meant what he said he meant. He could have been saying organizations are more important to titles than the other parts in a clunky way. And depending what that means (very hard, per the above to parse out what it means to be a good organization without at some point getting the good players ... what is"equivalent" goodness in comparing a GM to a roster) it might not be wrong in the long term.

Re: Kukoc. I don't know what he said and as ever very plausible that he was tactless. Also very plausible that MJ makes up imaginary slights.

To the idea that Krause pushed the big 3 out ... ... I'm not sure. I know he wanted to do his rebuild. If he said all the stuff Phil said he said ... if it was his decision/ultimatum (rather than Phil or Reinsdorf's -- and Lazenby seems to have both getting it from Reinsdorf) then he's got a lot of blame and was an ass. I think there's a lot we (or I at least) don't know.

random sidenote

Spoiler:

In "Mind Games" Lazenby has the turning point for Krause-Jackson as being Pippen's staying on the bench routine and the resulting desire from Krause to trade him (p189-190)

Honestly I don't think they get the title in '99 anyhow (or rather I don't think their odds are great). Rodman was finished and they had no replacement on the roster. MJ (iirc, based on one of the "third coming" books I think) cut his finger with a cigar cutter and hadn't been working out, and was showing increasing signs of mortality/decline in '98 anyway. Pippen's boxscore falls off, his on-off goes seriously negative (-5.2 .... though "A Screaming ..."'s RAPM has him slight negative NPI still near elite PI ... priors seem to be doing a lot of heavy lifting). Lockout back-to-backs (and worse) probably hurt an old team. Even stuff like can they keep or effectively replace Longley, Kerr. Even if everyone were happy (never mind a more realistic tolerance of one another) I think the odds are against them.

Give me an imagined version of those Bulls and then estimate title %s for all the contenders. I don't know off the top of my head but I don't think it's good. There's a real possibility that everyone know this. The storybook ending works for pretty much everyone (even on the Bulls' side they don't have to pay MJ, Krause gets to build a team fully his). So to the extent that he shouldn't piss off the coach that the goose that lays the golden eggs loves off ... I think that team was probably done.

Fwiw, depending on what happens with that pick in an MJ-less world I think it's plausible that we might still be talking about Krause in the sense that he might be a highly regarded GM. Not as infamous as he is now, but maybe if he gets Barkley he pulls off otherwise equivalent moves he might get a title or two (a lot of luck in titles so a noisy measure, and I like early Barkley more than latter models so this messes with the optimal title window a bit).

[Goudelock]

Bill Simmons: The whole documentary landscape has really changed over the last four or five years. Like Billie Eilish's documentary went for 12 million....

Ryen Russilo: Who?

Bill Simmons: She's a singer.




For some reason, that exchange in their latest podcast cracked me up.

[Doctor MJ]

Shoutout to my governor stealing the election then trying to kill us to keep his rich pals happy. I'm about to legit miss the chance to celebrate my birthday because we're handling this worse than every other state.

I'm sorry E-Balla. I'd be furious if I felt like this. Hell, I'm already furious.

Are you talking about Cuomo are are you in another state?

[Doctor MJ]

I don't think indirectly saying he was more important than MJ (and emphasis on indirectly and in such a way that it is framed as a philosophical belief) is belittling him. For me that's "marginalizing the importance of ..." MJ, whilst belittling in my usage (not super frequent) has implications of something more personal. My usage/framing may be atypical here. Fwiw, Krause supposedly intended to include "alone" in that quote and initially thought he had been misquoted.

Hard for me to feel strongly about your word choice preference here, what I'll acknowledge is that I don't think his primary purpose here was to knock Jordan/Pippen/Jackson, it's just that when you have a bad relationship with your talent, you have to be careful with your words.

However, I always thought though that the fact that it showed a similar "I'm successful so it must be because of me" delusion to Joe Lacob's "light years ahead" statement was the real telling thing. I think that in cases like this it's hard not to get overconfident, and that overconfidence left Krause clearly eager to rebuild and prove he could do it again.

And of course, had he succeeded, the narrative now would be totally different. It's the unfounded hubris that leaves him looking so bad.

For the record, on this front, the real issue isn't actually his relationship with Jordan. Had Krause's next generation been the type of success we see from organizations led/mentored by guys like West/Riley/Pop again and again, even if there were no titles involved - always luck there - he'd be seen as a guy who may well have been right.

Instead, the post-Jordan rebuild went terribly - with his signature move being the Chandler/Curry high school core that didn't just fail, but really never looked like it even had a shot of working - and his replacement, John Paxton, seemed an immediate improvement.

We humans get a bit mean when someone basically announces to the world "I'm the one you need above all others", and then utterly falls on their face, and it's not us at our best. But when I look at this from Jordan/Pippen/Jackson's perspective, it's hard for me to imagine being any more charitable than they are.

tangent

Spoiler:

As it is the quote doesn't really make sense, as though players, coaches or organizations could win a title by themselves. Organizations are good because they bring together the right players and coaches (an oversimplification here, for brevity), coaches organize the players optimally, and the players play for the organizations and coaches and could play elsewhere but it would just be a schoolyard game. It's not mutually exclusive, rather they are dependent on one another.

Of course this doesn't mean Krause meant what he said he meant. He could have been saying organizations are more important to titles than the other parts in a clunky way. And depending what that means (very hard, per the above to parse out what it means to be a good organization without at some point getting the good players ... what is"equivalent" goodness in comparing a GM to a roster) it might not be wrong in the long term.

I just think this is a known human phenomenon.

In Venture Capitalist circles there's a known danger they talk about with previously successful founders where sometimes they actually feel more confident with a guy who failed before.

I see Krause as a guy who there's no doubt thought he had more figured out than he actually did because all he had as a baseline was success. Though to be clear, you can be that and still stay on good terms with your talent. Because you share in their success, there's really no reason to ever have a wedge there, and to have it happen in a way where they all unify against you on a personal level? It says something.

Re: Kukoc. I don't know what he said and as ever very plausible that he was tactless. Also very plausible that MJ makes up imaginary slights.

To the idea that Krause pushed the big 3 out ... ... I'm not sure. I know he wanted to do his rebuild. If he said all the stuff Phil said he said ... if it was his decision/ultimatum (rather than Phil or Reinsdorf's -- and Lazenby seems to have both getting it from Reinsdorf) then he's got a lot of blame and was an ass. I think there's a lot we (or I at least) don't know.

He wanted to do the rebuild more than he wanted to eek out as much as he could from the core, and that's the basketball sin here.

In his defense, that's oftentimes a tough call an exec needs to make.

To me part of what's damning though, is that he really didn't have anything great lined up. This wasn't a case where he had something great lined up and though he could become a competitor again quickly. He literally just seemed eager to prove he could build from nothing again, and that's just something you should never run toward because it will be there for you at any point in the future.

random sidenote

Spoiler:

In "Mind Games" Lazenby has the turning point for Krause-Jackson as being Pippen's staying on the bench routine and the resulting desire from Krause to trade him (p189-190)

That's interesting, but I was certainly under the impression there was bad blood well before then.

Honestly I don't think they get the title in '99 anyhow (or rather I don't think their odds are great). Rodman was finished and they had no replacement on the roster. MJ (iirc, based on one of the "third coming" books I think) cut his finger with a cigar cutter and hadn't been working out, and was showing increasing signs of mortality/decline in '98 anyway. Pippen's boxscore falls off, his on-off goes seriously negative (-5.2 .... though "A Screaming ..."'s RAPM has him slight negative NPI still near elite PI ... priors seem to be doing a lot of heavy lifting). Lockout back-to-backs (and worse) probably hurt an old team. Even stuff like can they keep or effectively replace Longley, Kerr. Even if everyone were happy (never mind a more realistic tolerance of one another) I think the odds are against them.

Give me an imagined version of those Bulls and then estimate title %s for all the contenders. I don't know off the top of my head but I don't think it's good. There's a real possibility that everyone know this. The storybook ending works for pretty much everyone (even on the Bulls' side they don't have to pay MJ, Krause gets to build a team fully his). So to the extent that he shouldn't piss off the coach that the goose that lays the golden eggs loves off ... I think that team was probably done.

Fwiw, depending on what happens with that pick in an MJ-less world I think it's plausible that we might still be talking about Krause in the sense that he might be a highly regarded GM. Not as infamous as he is now, but maybe if he gets Barkley he pulls off otherwise equivalent moves he might get a title or two (a lot of luck in titles so a noisy measure, and I like early Barkley more than latter models so this messes with the optimal title window a bit).

I get it, but as I said, if you're just going to try to tank & draft-guru your way to the top, there's no rush to push out 3-time defending champs that the entire city worships like gods. You trade them if you get a really, really good deal, that's all.

Re: Jordan-less world. Food for thought. We'll never know.

[Goudelock]

Shoutout to my governor stealing the election then trying to kill us to keep his rich pals happy. I'm about to legit miss the chance to celebrate my birthday because we're handling this worse than every other state.

I'm sorry E-Balla. I'd be furious if I felt like this. Hell, I'm already furious.

Are you talking about Cuomo are are you in another state?

I'm pretty sure he's talking about Gov. Kemp in Georgia. The Peach State is opening up in a few days even though case numbers are exploding.

[Clyde Frazier]

Shoutout to my governor stealing the election then trying to kill us to keep his rich pals happy. I'm about to legit miss the chance to celebrate my birthday because we're handling this worse than every other state.

What's especially disturbing is the CDC headquarters is in atlanta! Be safe man. It's flat out absurd that they're opening to this extent so soon.

[bondom34]

Got to my apartment, walked 2 houses down and saw a yard sign in front of a town house that said "Re Open PA", something about getting the governor out of office, and "No Mandatory Vaccines" (or vaccinations, I forget which).

I set the bar so low for humanity and it disappoints. At least he didn't re open it. Stay safe E-Balla, I'd be so mad if I were in GA/FL.

[E-Balla]

Shoutout to my governor stealing the election then trying to kill us to keep his rich pals happy. I'm about to legit miss the chance to celebrate my birthday because we're handling this worse than every other state.

I'm sorry E-Balla. I'd be furious if I felt like this. Hell, I'm already furious.

Are you talking about Cuomo are are you in another state?

I'm pretty sure he's talking about Gov. Kemp in Georgia. The Peach State is opening up in a few days even though case numbers are exploding.

Yeah I wish I was talking Cuomo he at least shut down for more than 2 weeks before opening up. Kemp decided to open up the most vulnerable businesses like barbershops and nail salons. I got family that'll have to pick between staying at home or burying their savings because they can't get unemployment now.

[E-Balla]

Things are going to get real bad in the Peach state before we opened up they said we wouldn't be ready until June 15th...

[Dr Positivity]

To defend the Bulls blowing it up... When you look at the salaries they're really insane. The salary cap in 98 was only 26.9 million, while Jordan made 33.1 million himself. The team salary was 61.3 million. The modern equivalent would be a team having a 248 million salary (and Jordan's was the equivalent of a 133 million player today WTF). Which they were willing to do in 98 to their credit.

99 however, is a different story. First off you have to pay Pippen like a superstar. Pippen was the 9th highest player in the league in 99, by modern standards his raise was like going from a 11 mil player to a 40 million player. Jordan's price possibly would have gone up. Phil's 6 million a year contract with LA would have made him the 14th highest paid player in the NBA, the equivalent of a 24 mil contact in today's salaries. So not only are you paying an absolutely WILD price even for a cash machine like the Bulls, even higher than the year before, the equivalent of if the Warriors resigned KD and had a 300 mil salary cap at some point or something - but the team repeating was a reach anyways as Rodman provided nothing as an NBA player in 99 and Jordan and Pippen were going to decline more most likely. If there's anything that messed up the Bulls longevity it's Jordan having one of the most insane per year contracts in history of sports.

[Goudelock]

LMFAO what are the Packers doing

[Clyde Frazier]

Read on Twitter

I'm laughing on the outside and crying on the inside...

[Doctor MJ]

Read on Twitter

I'm laughing on the outside and crying on the inside...

I feel rage, sadness, and disappointment.

If our species fails to get past the obstacles it has the potential to get passed in the next century or so and declines into a post-civilization world, it will be because the human populace chose to believe things that made them feel right rather than actually trying to learn from people who know more than them.

Obligatory xkcd:



The entire challenge of curing disease is not figuring out how to kill the disease, but the problem of toxicity. How to kill the thing you want to kill without killing what you don't? We've known this for forever and it never occurs to our president to try to learn the absolute basics before spitballing in front of the world and an impressionable public that may well start swallowing light bulbs for all we know.

[HeartBreakKid]

It's really surreal living in Taiwan where everything is almost perfectly normal. Just walking around the downtown area and it's business as usual, only difference is we get our temperatures checked every time we go into a building and we must wear masks for public transit.

[GSP]

It's really surreal living in Taiwan where everything is almost perfectly normal. Just walking around the downtown area and it's business as usual, only difference is we get our temperatures checked every time we go into a building and we must wear masks for public transit.

Wait are theaters/malls/schools etc open over there?

[HeartBreakKid]

It's really surreal living in Taiwan where everything is almost perfectly normal. Just walking around the downtown area and it's business as usual, only difference is we get our temperatures checked every time we go into a building and we must wear masks for public transit.

Wait are theaters/malls/schools etc open over there?

Yup everything is open. Even bars and some clubs. There were a lot of people in the park today.

[bondom34]

Didn't know if this fit here or the season thread more, but if you're kind of into nerdy stats oddities:

Read on Twitter

Stockton had a game of 23 assists/1 TO.

Ilgauskas had a game of 11 TO and 1 assist.

Keon Clark had a 12 block game with no fouls.

Tons of weird ones.

[HeadtopChunes]

Does anybody know around what time period the Pick and Roll, became a central part of American basketball?

Tried googling but couldn't find anything that detailed the history of it.