Budenholzer Pulling Double-Duty

[Jamaaliver]

From NBA.COM:

The NBA has a new move that everybody’s getting in on: Coaches doing double-duty as general managers, presidents of basketball operations or other titles vested with personnel control...The latest to take all that on is Atlanta’s Mike Budenholzer, who had decision-making responsibility dropped in his lap last week in the fallout from the Hawks’ front-office mess.

Hawks CEO Steve Koonin appointed Budenholzer to be the team’s head of basketball operations for now.
His circumstances are unusual, but Budenholzer joins the likes of the Los Angeles Clippers’ Doc Rivers, Minnesota’s Flip Saunders, Detroit’s Stan Van Gundy and of course San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich in holding added clout beyond their work on the court.

So only a hand few of coaches have had this much power. Most of them have been coaches for years before gaining that added responsibility.

There are extra things you have to do to prepare for camp and the season, but we’ve got a great group. So there’s more work but I think we can manage it. The team, for the most part, is in place. That’s the most important thing. It’s something where I spent 19 years in that kind of a set-up. To whatever degree I can be comfortable, I wouldn’t feel that now if I hadn’t spent all those years around that in San Antonio with Pop and R.C.”

Thoughts?
Predictions?
Concerns?

[Jamaaliver]

I can't help but think Budenholzer will be encouraged top be more aggressive in acquiring the types of players he needs to be competitive. Whereas last season Ferry was more concerned with preserving cap space than acquiring a serviceable BIG after Horford's injury, I could see Bud moving more definitively after a trade target mid-season should something similar occur this year.

Here's hoping he learned enough from Pop and RC Buford in SAS to hit the ground running.

[Jamaaliver]

A year and a half later, do we have any growing concerns regarding Bud operating as Head Coach and President of Operations?

As HC he's won a bunch of games, setting franchise records for regular season and post-season wins.

As personnel man...he's given up on Adreian Payne after 19 minutes of PT and moved a top 15 pick for THJ and pocket change.

He did acquire Tiago Splitter for nothing. So, that's a win...I think.

Thoughts?
Predictions?
Concerns?

[DirtybirdGA]

Anyone outside of pop had success as both years ago?

[Hawk Eye]

A year and a half later, do we have any growing concerns regarding Bud operating as Head Coach and President of Operations?

As HC he's won a bunch if games, setting franchise records for regular season and post-season wins.

As personnel man...he's given up on Adreian Payne after 19 minutes of PT and moved a top 15 pick for THJ and pocket change.

He did acquire Tiago Splitter for nothing. So, that's a win...I think.

Thoughts?
Predictions?
Concerns?

I love Bud as much as anyone else on this forum but I don't think keeping him in that GM/HC role is the smartest decision going forward. Bud isn't stupid he knows that there are obvious flaws in this team that could be fixed via trade. However, i don't see him having the guts to trade any of Millsap, Horford, Teague, Korver, etc. He has built a relationship with these guys. Despite all the Teague/Dennis trade drama lately, I still don't think Bud trades either one of them.

Plus it's not like Bud has the best track record to support keeping him in that GM role.

His best case to make is the acquisition of Tiago Splitter for basically free but how well has Splitter been for us this season? And that trade sort of fell into his lap anyways thanks to old man Pop.

To sum up..we need a real GM and preferably someone who can actually nail a draft pick.

[Hawk Eye]

And for the record, I will gladly stand corrected on this if Bud actually does trade one of our key players this season

[azuresou1]

I gotta say I'm growing a little wary of coach/GM combos. Pops and Belichick prove that you can have great success if you do it right, but there's also mounting evidence that it's really hard to get right.

Coaches are a little too close to the action to be really objective in team construction. I'd say that's also arguably why sometimes coaches have painfully bad rotations that are obvious to all the fans but not to themselves.

As for Bud specifically, I'm not sold TBH.

[MaceCase]

The very obvious win that is getting overlooked was getting Millsap to re-sign.

[HMFFL]

At the moment I have no problem with him having both titles.
Trading Millsap or Horford will need to acquire us the perfect return for Bud to do it. Keep in mind our new ownership wants to win, not rebuild, so our return will most likely need to be proven. I doubt moving one of them for draft picks is an option unless one lands us a top 5 pick.

[King Ken]

At the moment I have no problem with him having both titles.
Trading Millsap or Horford will need to acquire us the perfect return for Bud to do it. Keep in mind our new ownership wants to win, not rebuild, so our return will most likely need to be proven. I doubt moving one of them for draft picks is an option unless one lands us a top 5 pick.

It highly unlikely we will see Sap or Horford traded. Dennis probably as well due to his value. Teague on the other hand, it depends. Based on RealGM value, not a chance in hell but based on real life, who knows.

[Jamaaliver]

The very obvious win that is getting overlooked was getting Millsap to re-sign.

This is a very good point. And even an observer as woefully cynical as me would find it difficult to call that signing a 'lose' or a bad decision.

However, choosing to re-sign Millsap at that salary prevented us from re-signing Carroll and kept us from pursuing other free agent targets.

Bringing back PM at twice his salary didn't improve the team or even keep us as good as we were last season.

Six months after getting Millsap to re-sign for the second highest annual salary in franchise history we're mired back in the second tier of contenders, are struggling to recreate last season's on court success, and are strongly considering 'rebootooling' this roster from top to bottom.

Millsap has clearly been our best player, but doubling his salary hasn't exactly bore much fruit in terms of team success...making it difficult to call it a definite victory.


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[MaceCase]

If that's how one chooses to view how salaries work in the NBA then there's nothing worth debating. You have to pay to play and there is zero rationale that supports a player's performance having to multiply by the amount that his salary multiplies. This is obvious given that the NBA follows a tier system (rookie scale, minimum, mid-level, maximum, etc. aren't just buzz words) rather than the free market.

If paying a guy his market rate (although he had more guaranteed on the table that he turned down) to be far and away your best player (not to mention being amongst the best players in the entire league) is considered being anything less than victorious then welp! We see where the agenda is even before the attempts to move the goal posts by trying to diminish the value of the individual through the performance of the rest of the team gets thrown in.

[jayu70]

The very obvious win that is getting overlooked was getting Millsap to re-sign.

This is a very good point. And even an observer as woefully cynical as me would find it difficult to call that signing a 'lose' or a bad decision.

However, choosing to re-sign Millsap at that salary prevented us from re-signing Carroll and kept us from pursuing other free agent targets.

Bringing back PM at twice his salary didn't improve the team or even keep us as good as we were last season.

Six months after getting Millsap to re-sign for the second highest annual salary in franchise history we're mired back in the second tier of contenders, are struggling to recreate last season's on court success, and are strongly considering 'rebootooling' this roster from top to bottom.

Millsap has clearly been our best player, but doubling his salary hasn't exactly bore much fruit in terms of team success...making it difficult to call it a definite victory.


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Remind me again, how much per year did DMC sign for? The doubling of Paul's salary? How about paying DMC almost 7X his previous salary? Does that sound better. It was one or the other, plain and simple. DMC wasn't gonna take the $8.5 million we used to acquire Splitter and leave us with 'Millsap's money' to spend elsewhere.

[Jamaaliver]

We see where the agenda is even before the attempts to move the goal posts by trying to diminish the value of the individual through the performance of the rest of the team gets thrown in.

Remind me again, how much per year did DMC sign for? The doubling of Paul's salary? How about paying DMC almost 7X his previous salary? Does that sound better. It was one or the other, plain and simple. DMC wasn't gonna take the $8.5 million we used to acquire Splitter and leave us with 'Millsap's money' to spend elsewhere.

I did not mean to offend. I did not mean to have an agenda. I did not mean to insult Millsap. Everything you guys said is correct.

But the massive pay increase we gave him is similar to the pay raise we gave Joe Johnson. He was our best player, but the decision to bring him back for more money...didn't make us a better team.

I, respectfully, think we'd have been better off spending that money elsewhere.

This is an opinion I've been pretty consistent on since last summer.

No agenda. Not diminishing the performance. But committing that much money just to be a treadmill team...makes me question the decision.

[MaceCase]

It's clear an agenda is present when the word "massive" is being bandied about in regards to re-signing a now 3 time All Star in his prime to less than $60 million.

The agenda is even clearer when you attempt to make such a poor comparison to Joe Johnson....

First, Joe was not the Hawks best player. This was one of the most hotly debated topics on here that I'm sure you can dig up 50 threads just based on it before he even got his 2nd deal and he certainly had no claim to that title afterwards.

Secondly, the team awarded such a player in his 29th year, after 26k minutes already played not including the playoffs with a 6 year guaranteed $124 million contract that pushed the team to less than the amount of a MLE deal away from the luxury tax for a bankrupt ownership.

Third, this was of course after the Hawks had their then most successful season in decades with 53 wins but ended up being on the brink of elimination in the 1st round to a lower seeded Bucks team missing their best player, surviving that only to go on to the worst sweep in NBA history at the hands of the Magic where Joe just so happened to have made disparaging remarks about the fan base.

The Joe Johnson deal was already amongst the worst deals in league history before he even signed it.

We get it, you're of a certain opinion but it just isn't necessary attempting to twist reality to fit said opinion.

[Jamaaliver]

It's clear an agenda is present when the word "massive" is being bandied about in regards to re-signing a now 3 time All Star in his prime to less than $60 million.

We get it, you're of a certain opinion but it just isn't necessary attempting to twist reality to fit said opinion.

Hey. We can call it a difference of an opinion. I simply think that $20 million would have been better spent elsewhere. (Jae Crowder for $11 million maybe)

But there's a decent chance re-signing Millsap ends up the same way re-signing Korver turns out. Fantastic for the first half of the contract, less than stellar for the second half once the inevitable decline sets in.

[MaceCase]

It's clear an agenda is present when the word "massive" is being bandied about in regards to re-signing a now 3 time All Star in his prime to less than $60 million.

We get it, you're of a certain opinion but it just isn't necessary attempting to twist reality to fit said opinion.

Hey. We can call it a difference of an opinion. I simply think that $20 million would have been better spent elsewhere. (Jae Crowder for $11 million maybe)

But there's a decent chance re-signing Millsap ends up the same way re-signing Korver turns out. Fantastic for the first half of the contract, less than stellar for the second half once the inevitable decline sets in.

Oh, there's a decent chance that at 33 that he'll have suffered the "inevitable decline" of a career threatening injury? Hmm, you do realize that Kyle blows away all of your doubts, correct? Given that he had the second best season in his entire 12 year career at the age of 33, which just so happens to be the age that Sap will be when his contract comes off the books (if he doesn't opt out sooner).

This is why I talk about there being an agenda because there's just far too much effort being put into attempting to twist reality to fit your bias. There really isn't much logical reasoning or victory behind overpaying a role player (like you are with Crowder) than paying an All Star PF in his prime his market rate. You are literally making the same argument that the Hawks would have been better off with re-signing DeMarre over Sap. As Jayu pointed out, you scoff at paying a guy double his previous salary and call it "massive" but 11x it is surely...reasonable? Sure, you can have that opinion but you'd be a very large hypocrite given that you like to tout yourself as Mr. Value.

[Jamaaliver]

^Sorry. I'm not buying it. Bud's biggest move of the summer was to give Millsap a pretty hefty pay raise to keep him here.

Millsap has played probably the best ball of his life...and the team is no better for it. Paying all that money to Millsap didn't make us a better team.

I have doubts regarding that decision now. I had doubts regarding it then.

...and I wasn't alone.

Agree, if we are going to over pay someone I would rather pay Wade 18 a year than Millsap 20

I agree that 20 million is way too much for Millsap at 30. Made this same problem back with Joe...gonna do it again now.

I personally am happy to bring Paul back but not at 20 million per year honestly.

Here


Also...Kyle was bad before the injury. Look back at last season's playoffs. There were signs of decline BEFORE the injury.

I think there's a good chance that after the 2017 playoffs...we'll be hoping Millsap doesn't stick around for year three.

[MaceCase]

Just perfect examples of more people who think they are penny wise but are really pound foolish. It's simply not a good argument to say that you acquired or retained a good asset but said asset somehow isn't as valuable because the rest of the team hasn't performed well especially when your alternative is to spend the same money on worse assets that would, do what exactly for the team record? To put it bluntly, a Carmelo Anthony is still a Carmelo Anthony whether he is on a good team or a lotto one.

And really, we're going to use the playoffs as a definitive sample? The time where you face 4 teams at most that have nothing better to do than game plan for you? Regardless, that "decline" is still two years away for Millsap....when his contract is already expired.

[PandaKidd]

Millsaps contract was a good value considering its only a 2 year deal (with a player option on the 3rd right?)

Id rather have Millsap as a trade chip right now than Demarre. I dont think that contract was as bad as it seems because you HAD to spend money on someone. Letting him walk only works if we went into tank mode and drafted Portis or someone and played them this whole year. Theres no way coming off a 60 win season they were going to jst go THAT WAS FUN! BLOW IT UP. Im not sure what else you would have gotten for 20 million, if Crowder really would have come here, etc. Right now, as MIllsap is playing hes worth every $. However, if the handwriting is on the wall, NOW IS THE TIME TO TRADE HIM. Now or this offseason. When his value is HIGH.