Puff wrote:
My point is really not about who or what players we keep, trade or go after. It is about the freaking process.
McDonough has come up a number and we haven't even announced who our coach is going to be. I personally would demand that the coach has input in all player decisions with the GM having the final say. However if the coach vehemently disagrees with the GM's plan he has the ability elevate the decision to the owner for the final decision. This should be rare because, IMO, the coach and the GM MUST be on the same page. If they aren't, one or both must go sooner than later.
I could be wrong but it appears to me that we have not had a legit GM/Coach working relationship since BC and D'Antoni. Ever since Sarver decided not to pay BC what he appeared to deserve and promoted D'Antoni to GM we have been in a downward spiral.
Let's review what has happened.
Kerr replaced MDA as GM and they really never worked well together. While they grin **** each other I think there really was not a good working relationship. I think Kerr wanted Mike's job. Kerr never got Mike legit bench players or draft picks. He just wanted to tell Mike how to coach.
After Mike left it was Kerr and Terry Porter for a short time, that was never a working relationship. After Kerr fired Porter he promoted Gentry to coach. Gentry got the 2010 roster to the WCF then Kerr blew up the roster that summer and left town. Gentry was not happy and wanted to make another run at a ring the next year. He wanted to keep that roster in place but had no say.
We then hired the great Lon Babby and he hired Lance Blanks. Blanks fired Gentry, after giving Gentry a lousy roster to coach. Their was no relationship. Blanks replaced Gentry with Hunter. That only lasted a couple of months and both were out the door. We then hired McDonough and he hired Hornacek. In their first year together McDonough brought in a raft of new players and Hornacek did a fantastic job while almost getting to the playoffs. Then in the off season McDonough made another raft of moves than seemed to be done on his own and not in conjunction with Hornacek. We struggled and the team slid badly after the break. In their third off season McDonough again made a raft of moves apparently on his own and we ended up with 23 wins with Hornacek getting the axe. McDonough remains and gets the opportunity to hire a new coach and bring in more players. Why?
Quite frankly you can blame Mike D'Antoni's and many other coaches struggles on poor decisions by the front office of the teams they coached. Thibodeau should never have got the axe in Chicago. He is a very highly regarded coach, one of the best in the league. Yet the GM stays and the coach gets the axe. At least he learned by his experience and is demanding player control if he takes the Minnesota job. Good for him.
What I really do not understand is that head coaches are almost always paid far more than the GM but the GM can fire them. That just does not make sense to me. I would love to see a coach have the authority to fire the GM if they make or suggest lousy player moves.
I hope we have learned. I hope any coach that comes into this franchise observes the Cluster Funk we have been as an organization and demands huge input into player personnel decisions. That includes Watson.
I agree that it would be great if they would always have a great working relationship, and that has not been the case, and has really hurt other teams as well (Chicago, Sacramento, etc). I think Hornacek, for example, typically went along with the decisions of McD and obviously agreed on trying to get Aldridge. I'm unsure if he would have wanted Thomas.
But yes, he did overachieve even with that subpar talent in year one and even last year despite chemistry issues and subpar talent he did well with the team at 28-22 before the absolute chemistry meltdown and blowup at the trade deadline with at least one highly questionable move followed by the rash of injuries, and a glaring hole at PF this year with a hugely disgruntled player.
And it usually ends badly with the coach, and obviously getting rid of D'Antoni was a blow that hurt us short term. Perhaps we did better in 2010 with Gentry than we would have with D'Antoni, but he was pretty much just running D'Antoni's system with more depth. But of course even then, a blowup of the team with terrible additions to the roster.
But, in this case, with Watson, maybe since we have had this issue, is a decent choice due to being a really young coach coming from the bench and knowing the players. I think McD has generally had a decent relationship with the coach though. And since we seem more forced now to go young, where three years ago, even though it appeared we were going young, Dragic and Frye vastly overachieved with their chemistry and play and we vastly outperformed expectations, seemingly throwing a full rebuild kind of out the window, and signing guys like Thomas. Fortunately we still got Warren, who may not be great, but we could have ended up with Embiid who may never amount to anything if we were terrible, or Stauskas, Exum or Randle, each of who I'm not a fan of.
And then last year, despite the low lotto pick we still get Booker.
We obviously need a better culture though, and when people don't want to work or play for Sarver, that's a big problem.
