Off-season grades for some teams
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Aeneas Hunter
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 5:34 am    Post subject:

JerryMagicKobe wrote:
That is his rationale - he put it right in his original post so how is that missed until now?


Who cares? If it's a dumb rationale, he doesn't get a pass just because he put it in his original post.

JerryMagicKobe wrote:
And you find 'unintentional comedy' in a sytem of grading GMs based on putting their team in a position to win a Championship ABOVE just being competitive?


I find unintentional comedy in a system of grading GMs that is completely -- and in fact laughably -- divorced from the way that GMs work in the real world. These ratings have been ridiculed since the beginning by a host of people, not just me. This is just some kid who likes to write controversial stuff and pat himself on the back for being controversial.

Seriously, do you really think the Mavs should plan on ditching their team and chasing free agents in 2011? Do you really think that would be anything other than a moronic plan that would be implemented only by an insane or incompetent GM? How do you really think their fans -- and season ticket holders -- would react to that?

JerryMagicKobe wrote:
Can you imagine being Mark Cuban and having your GM tell you "we are 3 years removed from losing in the Finals. 2 years from losing in round 1 and a 6 seed last year now capped out, old and extended with Jason Kidd and Shawn Marion. We can't really hope to actually win, but we can keep on selling tickets and making the Playoffs and winning 50 games and being competitive until Dirk breaks down."


You're assuming that they don't think they can contend. The Mavs are trying to become a contender. You and I may think that they'll fall short, but how is that the basis for an F?

These ratings are a farce, and you know it. I'm not going to spend more time talking about them. It's embarrassing for LG that something this juvenile gets a sticky.
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Aeneas Hunter
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 6:08 am    Post subject:

davidse wrote:
is rebuilding some type of guarentee ?
i can probably name you a dozen teams that would have gotten an A from dennis and yourself every year for the past decade or longer, and still suck year after year - gradualy losing fan base, revenue, and a credible reputation among players and agents.
it has gotten them nowhere.
rebuilding hasn't proven to be the only or even the best strategy to become an nba champion. far from it.

retooling is just as legit of a strategy as rebuilding.
in fact, i'm pretty sure there were far more championship teams that were built by retooling than by rebuilding.
even the lakers didn't rebuild when they traded shaq - they took back 3 contracts - 1 horrible one, 1 overpaid one, and 1 great asset which they wasted away.

and even though i myself would like my chances better with rebuilding than retooling - that has been proven more often than not to be false hope, and handing out F's to a team that decides to go the other way is ridiculous.


Well said. Generally speaking, you rebuild when you have nothing to retool around. It's hard to win a title without a bona fide superstar. The Pistons are the only team to do it in the modern era of the NBA. If you have a superstar caliber player, you retool around him, because it might be years before you get a replacement. You don't go out into the free agent market looking for superstars, because superstars almost never switch teams as free agents.

If you think you have a chance to pry open a window, you go for it. There comes a point when you have to rebuild, but there's a reason why every GM and every owner delays that decision as long as possible. As you say, rebuilding is more often a false hope. It's usually a process of waiting around for a draft pick to blossom into a superstar. To get that draft pick, you have to be pretty bad for a year (or more). And then you might finally get that great draft pick, and choose Kwame Brown or Darko Milicic. Rebuilding sounds a lot better in theory than in practice.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 6:17 am    Post subject:

Sky wrote:
JMK - My point is this. If Cuban refuses to trade Dirk, and he's made public comments asserting precisely that, who gets the F? Donnie? Hardly. The F goes to Cuban, he's the one that refuses to blow it up due to being too attached to Nowtizki.

I'd trade Dirk and blow it up, so would you, so would Dennis. But if Cuban refuses you can't just say well it's on Donnie to convince him to trade him. An egomaniac as headstrong as Cuban is very unlikely to be talked into dealing Dirk. You can't make it incumbent upon Nelson to force logic on an emotional owner. You make your case, Cuban says no, keep building a now team, Nelson's hands are tied.

It's convenient to say well I'm not going to predict office politics but the fact remains those politics are real. Those politics can force things despite the best arguments of a GM. You don't just get to sweep them under the "well that's office politics and that's a black box" rug. The politics exist. The politics prevent moves that can be made in theory. The GMs operate within limitations set by ownership, that's the reality.

Sky, would it make you feel better if I changed the heading from "Donnie Nelson of the Mavericks" to "The Mavericks"? The GM is the personification of the basketball operations aspect of the franchise so that is why I list them, but my grades are really about what the franchise did in terms of basketball personnel.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:29 am    Post subject:

davidse wrote:
i'd say it's better than giving luke that extention or signing vlad to the full mle contract - by the gm who did it "quickly" according to you.

The Mavericks are in a vastly different situation than the Lakers were in the 2006 and 2007 off-season. When Luke was given his extension, he was a young player that was the third best starter on a team that had gone 45-37 the season before and had started 26-13 before it got creamed by injuries. A contract starting at $4M for such a player is reasonable in my book.

Signing Vlad was a poor gamble that didn't work out, so I wouldn't say signing player A is a good idea because it is better than the Vlad signing.
davidse wrote:
At the same time, the Lakers didn't seem to be competing w

actually, you'd give mitch a fail back then for signing these guys and not trading odom for an expiring - right ?

Again, the Mavericks are in a vastly different situation than the Lakers were in the 2006 and 2007 off-season. If you dumped Odom for an expiring to free up room to sign a free agent, what are you hoping to get as a free agent? I would say a player that is young that you hope has All-Star potential. In other words, a player a lot like Odom. So keeping Odom makes much more sense than giving him away and hoping you can sign a free agent just as good as him.

davidse wrote:
or do you think gasol was part of some "plan" rather than a flat out miracle that allowed things to work even with the mistakes (according to your and denis' philosophies) of keeping odom, luke, and vlad...

The Lakers started the '07-'08 season 24-11 with Bynum and without Gasol. Getting Gasol was absolutely awesome, but the Lakers were stacked with young talent before they got him.
davidse wrote:
and why is anyone assuming the mavs are done ?

I am assuming that based upon their record the last two seasons and the fact that there is no reason to expect for any of their starters to play better.

davidse wrote:
howard is just about the best trade bait in the nba and the addition of marion (and gooden as a back up pf) makes him expendable.
dampier is also very attractive with only a small amount of his salary guarenteed for the 2010/11 season, and the mavs have an owner who's proven to be willing to shake up the roster and spend.

And what are you going to do with those pieces? If you trade Dampier, then you need to get a starting center back and teams rarely trade those. Howard is a very talented player, but his pro-marijuana statements are going to make teams leery of him. Even if they got back a starting center, they would still have the rapidly eroding Kidd as PG and the overpaid, undersized Terry at SG. Their bench outside of Marion is weak. There isn't one magic trade that will fix the Mavericks roster problems.

davidse wrote:
is rebuilding some type of guarentee ?
i can probably name you a dozen teams that would have gotten an A from dennis and yourself every year for the past decade or longer, and still suck year after year - gradualy losing fan base, revenue, and a credible reputation among players and agents.
it has gotten them nowhere.
rebuilding hasn't proven to be the only or even the best strategy to become an nba champion. far from it.

retooling is just as legit of a strategy as rebuilding.
in fact, i'm pretty sure there were far more championship teams that were built by retooling than by rebuilding.
even the lakers didn't rebuild when they traded shaq - they took back 3 contracts - 1 horrible one, 1 overpaid one, and 1 great asset which they wasted away.

I am saying that teams shouldn't wait until their their team clearly has no future before trading their star player so they can just retool instead of rebuild. Are you agreeing with that?

davidse wrote:
and even though i myself would like my chances better with rebuilding than retooling - that has been proven more often than not to be false hope, and handing out F's to a team that decides to go the other way is ridiculous.
might as well just eliminate all other grades and leave only A's and F's, or only have 4-5 teams every year actually try and improve rather than dump salary...

That aren't that many teams every year that have a veteran core that is good enough to make the playoffs but isn't good enough to contend. In the WC, the Suns and Mavericks are definitely in that category and I put the Spurs there but others disagree.

davidse wrote:
so does all of that means that i'd give the mavs an A ?
absolutly not.
but an F is ridiculous.

not as ridiculous as the wolves getting an A, but still...

We all make statements where we think we are right and others are wrong and it turns out we were wrong. But you can't tell at the time and only time will reveal the truth. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. "i'd take charlie bell over fisher for our team any day of the week"?

Edit: changed some stuff to hopefully improve the tone
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davidse
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 10:10 am    Post subject:

Dennis_D wrote:

davidse wrote:
i'd say it's better than giving luke that extention or signing vlad to the full mle contract - by the gm who did it "quickly" according to you.

Do you understand that the Mavericks are in a vastly different situation than the Lakers were in the 2006 and 2007 off-season? When Luke was given his extension, he was a young player that was the third best starter on a team that had gone 45-37 the season before and had started 26-13 before it got creamed by injuries. A contract starting at $4M for such a player is reasonable in my book.


your book has a short memory and a double standart.

luke wasn't looking like a starter in this league, much less for a championship team.
he defenetly wasn't this team's third best starter when he was given that extention (odom, bynum, kobe), and how he compared to the rest of OUR roster is irrelevant anyway.
the only thing that matters is the contract he was given compared to the alternative.

and nice job wording it "a contract starting at $4M"...
did you really seriously think you could get away with that on LG ?

bottom line, the lakers had a chance to generate cap space pretty easily.
the confrence was loaded, kobe was still pretty young, and according to you - they should have blown it all up and went for championship caliber players which we simply did not have at the time.


Dennis_D wrote:

Signing Vlad was a poor gamble that didn't work out, so I wouldn't say signing player A is a good idea because it is better than the Vlad signing.


at the time he was signed - the lakers were not that much better than the mavs were last season.
so the lakers sign vlad and it's a gamble that didn't work, but the mavs sign a flat out consensous better player to a 5 year deal - and they get an F ???...
(they actually traded for him so didn't even add that much 1st year salary...).

Dennis_D wrote:

davidse wrote:
At the same time, the Lakers didn't seem to be competing w

actually, you'd give mitch a fail back then for signing these guys and not trading odom for an expiring - right ?

So much need to teach Basketball 101, so little time. Again, do you you understand that the Mavericks are in a vastly different situation than the Lakers were in the 2006 and 2007 off-season? If you dumped Odom for an expiring to free up room to sign a free agent, what are you hoping to get as a free agent? I would say a player that is young that you hope has All-Star potential. In other words, a player a lot like Odom. So keeping Odom makes much more sense than giving him away and hoping you can sign a free agent just as good as him.


how about before you starting teaching anybody basketball, make sure you quote me correctly...
because i don't know what that first line is, or why YOU added it, but it's defenetly not something i've written in my post.

now, about the second part - no, sorry - it's YOU who doesn't understand.
the lakers' team wasn't good enough to win the title, even though they had some very good players.
according to YOUR philosaphy, what the lakers should have done rather than extend/sign mediocre players like luke/vlad, or hang on to overpaid underachieving players like odom (pre gasol) was to tank one season and get a championship core in place.
ironic how that clashes with your commanding of the lakers' great job in "planning" this championship team...

and what you don't seem to get about odom is that when you have an OVERPAID (restricted fa when signed, and then trade kicker added) player like odom, you can do better by defenition if you use the same money in the open market - DEFENETLY when he simply wasn't doing a good enough job for us - and you can add luke and vlad to that list because both can be considerred overpaid.
give me luke, vlad and odom's salaries in cap space - and i'llk (aparently) "shock" you by getting this team much better talent for that money.

odom was overpaid, didn't get the job done, but still tradable for an exp contract (and possibly even more sweetners).
luke and vlad were supposed to be core players if signed/extended.

- a classic "dennis" scenario to rebuild if i've ever seen one rather than lose all future cap flexibility as the lakers did.


Dennis_D wrote:

davidse wrote:
or do you think gasol was part of some "plan" rather than a flat out miracle that allowed things to work even with the mistakes (according to your and denis' philosophies) of keeping odom, luke, and vlad...

Do you not know that the Lakers started the '07-'08 season 24-11 with Bynum and without Gasol? Getting Gasol was absolutely awesome, but the Lakers were stacked with young talent before they got him.


the 07/08 season is not the time frame we're discussing.

and the lakers were NOT stacked with young talent.
bynum was the only quality young talent on the roster.
sorry, but farmar, sasha, and turiaf are not what i consider championship talent.

Dennis_D wrote:

davidse wrote:
and why is anyone assuming the mavs are done ?

I am assuming that based upon their record the last two seasons and the fact that there is no reason to expect for any of their starters to play better.


ok, that's a misunderstanding - look at the following points - i meant "done making moves".
not that i do think they're "done", but regardless, that wasn't what i meant.

Dennis_D wrote:

davidse wrote:
howard is just about the best trade bait in the nba and the addition of marion (and gooden as a back up pf) makes him expendable.
dampier is also very attractive with only a small amount of his salary guarenteed for the 2010/11 season, and the mavs have an owner who's proven to be willing to shake up the roster and spend.

And what are you going to do with those pieces? If you trade Dampier, then you need to get a starting center back and teams rarely trade those. Howard is a very talented player, but his pro-marijuana statements are going to make teams leery of him. Even if they got back a starting center, they would still have the rapidly eroding Kidd as PG and the overpaid, undersized Terry at SG. Their bench outside of Marion is weak. There isn't one magic trade that will fix the Mavericks roster problems.


wow, talk about teaching basketball 101 - this is nba 101.

dampier's contract is just about an expiring contract.
howards' is even better - he has a team option for next season, so he presents ZERO risk for the team that trades for him (you can throw those pot statments out the window), AND presents them with a great chance to cash in and keep him if he pans out for one more season - risk free.

trade these two together - and you have a super attractive package that can get them plenty of help mid season - at the center position, sg position, or whatever - this will be mostly about money for the team they trade with, but these two guys being able to play sure won't hurt either.

in theory - they can even get shaq and moon for that package if things don't work out well in cleveland - but that's just an example. please don't get caught up in it.

kidd is obviously declining, but to say he's "rapidly" eroding is plain hyperbole for the sake of winning an argument.
it's just not true.

and let's just say we disagree BIGTIME about jason terry.
you call him overpaid ?
i call him UNDERRATED !
one of the best guards in this league for me.
both ends of the floor, 2 guard positions - a stud.

their bench is as good as the lakers' bench.


Dennis_D wrote:

davidse wrote:
is rebuilding some type of guarentee ?
i can probably name you a dozen teams that would have gotten an A from dennis and yourself every year for the past decade or longer, and still suck year after year - gradualy losing fan base, revenue, and a credible reputation among players and agents.
it has gotten them nowhere.
rebuilding hasn't proven to be the only or even the best strategy to become an nba champion. far from it.

retooling is just as legit of a strategy as rebuilding.
in fact, i'm pretty sure there were far more championship teams that were built by retooling than by rebuilding.
even the lakers didn't rebuild when they traded shaq - they took back 3 contracts - 1 horrible one, 1 overpaid one, and 1 great asset which they wasted away.

Do you read what you type? I am saying that teams shouldn't wait until their their team clearly has no future before trading their star player so they can just retool instead of rebuild.


and nba history proves you are wrong.
in the vast majority of superstar trades, the team who trades the superstar ends up worse off - short and long term.

Dennis_D wrote:

davidse wrote:
and even though i myself would like my chances better with rebuilding than retooling - that has been proven more often than not to be false hope, and handing out F's to a team that decides to go the other way is ridiculous.
might as well just eliminate all other grades and leave only A's and F's, or only have 4-5 teams every year actually try and improve rather than dump salary...

That aren't that many teams every year that have a veteran core that is good enough to make the playoffs but isn't good enough to contend. In the WC, the Suns and Mavericks are definitely in that category and I put the Spurs there but others disagree.


you would also put the nuggets in that category, and by your own standarts, i would add the hornets and jazz too - and that's just in the western confrence, whlie keep in mind - you're basicaly saying all those players these teams should dump to rebuild, really have no market - except for the 4-5 contenders because it'll be horrible moves for rebuilding teams to pick them up...

i'd say most nba teams disagree with your view of things...


Dennis_D wrote:

davidse wrote:
so does all of that means that i'd give the mavs an A ?
absolutly not.
but an F is ridiculous.

not as ridiculous as the wolves getting an A, but still...

We all make statements where we think we are right and others are wrong and it turns out we were wrong. But you can't tell at the time and only time will reveal the truth. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. "i'd take charlie bell over fisher for our team any day of the week"?


make any statment you want - just back it up with logical arguments.
and in this case - you're not.

and what's your point about charlie bell ?
did i ever say fisher was a bad move ?
i was actualy one of those who thought that although there were a couple of better options, he was a nice signing.

did you ever see bell playing pg with the lakers ?
nope.
which means no one knows how this would have worked, and i still think it would have worked great - possibly better than fisher because of the defensive side.

sorry, but if you want to make this childish - i'm done with this topic.


unless i get the urge to chalange you to defend the monumental wolves' A grade...
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Sky
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 10:45 am    Post subject:

Dennis - The title of the thread is off-season grades for GMs. Change that to organizations and ok, but the focus has been on GMs. I'm just saying you can't ignore the outside aspects that force a GMs hand regardless of his ability to persuade.
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JerryMagicKobe
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:57 am    Post subject:

davidse wrote:
harris for kidd is irrelevant.
marion was such a horrible move ?
i'd say it's better than giving luke that extention or signing vlad to the full mle contract - by the gm who did it "quickly" according to you.

actually, you'd give mitch a fail back then for signing these guys and not trading odom for an expiring - right ?
or do you think gasol was part of some "plan" rather than a flat out miracle that allowed things to work even with the mistakes (according to your and denis' philosophies) of keeping odom, luke, and vlad...

and why is anyone assuming the mavs are done ?
howard is just about the best trade bait in the nba and the addition of marion (and gooden as a back up pf) makes him expendable.
dampier is also very attractive with only a small amount of his salary guarenteed for the 2010/11 season, and the mavs have an owner who's proven to be willing to shake up the roster and spend.

is rebuilding some type of guarentee ?
i can probably name you a dozen teams that would have gotten an A from dennis and yourself every year for the past decade or longer, and still suck year after year - gradualy losing fan base, revenue, and a credible reputation among players and agents.
it has gotten them nowhere.
rebuilding hasn't proven to be the only or even the best strategy to become an nba champion. far from it.

retooling is just as legit of a strategy as rebuilding.
in fact, i'm pretty sure there were far more championship teams that were built by retooling than by rebuilding.
even the lakers didn't rebuild when they traded shaq - they took back 3 contracts - 1 horrible one, 1 overpaid one, and 1 great asset which they wasted away.

and even though i myself would like my chances better with rebuilding than retooling - that has been proven more often than not to be false hope, and handing out F's to a team that decides to go the other way is ridiculous.
might as well just eliminate all other grades and leave only A's and F's, or only have 4-5 teams every year actually try and improve rather than dump salary...

if you're willing to trade a guy like dirk - you'll always be able to blow things up and move him with your bad contracts - and the mavs don't really have a bad one other than possibly marion who can help any contender that trades for dirk.

so does all of that means that i'd give the mavs an A ?
absolutly not.
but an F is ridiculous.

not as ridiculous as the wolves getting an A, but still...


Fair points, davidse. Obviously we are going to disagree on the final grade, but I agree with Dennis that the Mavs got further from the goal of winning a ring, but that they didn't get worse in the short term by adding Marion.

I think Gasol was one of a handful of options and we were willing to trade Odom to get him. Not having to include Lamar and take back was more of the miracle than acquiring Gasol - who else was willing to take the hit and had expirings and had picks/young guys?

As for the Mavs, if you have confidence that Donnie can move the roster to win now, then by all means grade him higher. I think he is fine with second tier performance, and happy to keep selling tickets, but there are enough things that COULD be done I guess, to improve the team. Really the only disagreement that I can see is that Dennis issues an F if a team fails to realize that it is time to blow it up, and you and other I'm sure think that an F is unwarranted and/or the Mave still have upside. We'll see...

As for me grading GMs, unfortunately I am too lazy to issue grade and tend to go by my eyeballs than any type of measurable grading system. The only GM I ever cared about was Mitch, and how he stacked up against others. I really couldn't give a crap about Donnie Nelson and think many GMs are capable enough but that most owners tie their hands with salary restrictions and fan appeasement (Phoenix/Nash!). Drafting and smaller trades are really the best way to grade GMs, because few owners are willing to pony up for Gasol - although salary cap management and stocking the roster with youngs/expirings/picks to be in the right position, and then negotiating the best deal deserves to be praised as well. I just appreciate when someone is willing to put forth the effort of sorting through the moves, and I am happy to ride the coattails. Honestly, between you and Aeneas I'm confident you could come up with a grading system of your own that would be quite interesting and I would enjoy reading it and seeing how the GMs fair. But until then I'll take what I can of value from Dennis' system and say "Thanks for the effort, Dennis. I enjoyed it as always."
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:07 pm    Post subject:

Aeneas Hunter wrote:


Who cares? If it's a dumb rationale, he doesn't get a pass just because he put it in his original post.


Aeneas Hunter wrote:
I find unintentional comedy in a system of grading GMs that is completely -- and in fact laughably -- divorced from the way that GMs work in the real world. These ratings have been ridiculed since the beginning by a host of people, not just me. This is just some kid who likes to write controversial stuff and pat himself on the back for being controversial.

Seriously, do you really think the Mavs should plan on ditching their team and chasing free agents in 2011? Do you really think that would be anything other than a moronic plan that would be implemented only by an insane or incompetent GM? How do you really think their fans -- and season ticket holders -- would react to that?


Aeneas Hunter wrote:
You're assuming that they don't think they can contend. The Mavs are trying to become a contender. You and I may think that they'll fall short, but how is that the basis for an F?

These ratings are a farce, and you know it. I'm not going to spend more time talking about them. It's embarrassing for LG that something this juvenile gets a sticky.


You crack me up, Aeneas - so passionate and outraged! I sincerely hope you use your keen eye and mind for numbers to come up with an alternate system, or finish up the project you have mentioned you are working on. I enjoy Dennis' opinion because I have agreed with him (primarily on matters of Mitch and Mitch vs. other GMs) and that his way of looking at GMs makes sense to me. The macro-view is infinitely more interesting to me than how any one specific team fared in any given year, or whether the Mavs can contend or believe they can contend. Regardless, the board is always better for your opinion, regardless of at what volume it is shouted.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:23 pm    Post subject:

JerryMagicKobe wrote:
davidse wrote:
harris for kidd is irrelevant.
marion was such a horrible move ?
i'd say it's better than giving luke that extention or signing vlad to the full mle contract - by the gm who did it "quickly" according to you.

actually, you'd give mitch a fail back then for signing these guys and not trading odom for an expiring - right ?
or do you think gasol was part of some "plan" rather than a flat out miracle that allowed things to work even with the mistakes (according to your and denis' philosophies) of keeping odom, luke, and vlad...

and why is anyone assuming the mavs are done ?
howard is just about the best trade bait in the nba and the addition of marion (and gooden as a back up pf) makes him expendable.
dampier is also very attractive with only a small amount of his salary guarenteed for the 2010/11 season, and the mavs have an owner who's proven to be willing to shake up the roster and spend.

is rebuilding some type of guarentee ?
i can probably name you a dozen teams that would have gotten an A from dennis and yourself every year for the past decade or longer, and still suck year after year - gradualy losing fan base, revenue, and a credible reputation among players and agents.
it has gotten them nowhere.
rebuilding hasn't proven to be the only or even the best strategy to become an nba champion. far from it.

retooling is just as legit of a strategy as rebuilding.
in fact, i'm pretty sure there were far more championship teams that were built by retooling than by rebuilding.
even the lakers didn't rebuild when they traded shaq - they took back 3 contracts - 1 horrible one, 1 overpaid one, and 1 great asset which they wasted away.

and even though i myself would like my chances better with rebuilding than retooling - that has been proven more often than not to be false hope, and handing out F's to a team that decides to go the other way is ridiculous.
might as well just eliminate all other grades and leave only A's and F's, or only have 4-5 teams every year actually try and improve rather than dump salary...

if you're willing to trade a guy like dirk - you'll always be able to blow things up and move him with your bad contracts - and the mavs don't really have a bad one other than possibly marion who can help any contender that trades for dirk.

so does all of that means that i'd give the mavs an A ?
absolutly not.
but an F is ridiculous.

not as ridiculous as the wolves getting an A, but still...


Fair points, davidse. Obviously we are going to disagree on the final grade, but I agree with Dennis that the Mavs got further from the goal of winning a ring, but that they didn't get worse in the short term by adding Marion.

I think Gasol was one of a handful of options and we were willing to trade Odom to get him. Not having to include Lamar and take back was more of the miracle than acquiring Gasol - who else was willing to take the hit and had expirings and had picks/young guys?

As for the Mavs, if you have confidence that Donnie can move the roster to win now, then by all means grade him higher. I think he is fine with second tier performance, and happy to keep selling tickets, but there are enough things that COULD be done I guess, to improve the team. Really the only disagreement that I can see is that Dennis issues an F if a team fails to realize that it is time to blow it up, and you and other I'm sure think that an F is unwarranted and/or the Mave still have upside. We'll see...

As for me grading GMs, unfortunately I am too lazy to issue grade and tend to go by my eyeballs than any type of measurable grading system. The only GM I ever cared about was Mitch, and how he stacked up against others. I really couldn't give a crap about Donnie Nelson and think many GMs are capable enough but that most owners tie their hands with salary restrictions and fan appeasement (Phoenix/Nash!). Drafting and smaller trades are really the best way to grade GMs, because few owners are willing to pony up for Gasol - although salary cap management and stocking the roster with youngs/expirings/picks to be in the right position, and then negotiating the best deal deserves to be praised as well. I just appreciate when someone is willing to put forth the effort of sorting through the moves, and I am happy to ride the coattails. Honestly, between you and Aeneas I'm confident you could come up with a grading system of your own that would be quite interesting and I would enjoy reading it and seeing how the GMs fair. But until then I'll take what I can of value from Dennis' system and say "Thanks for the effort, Dennis. I enjoyed it as always."



fair enough jmk.

and for the record - i have no issue with the effort part, nor did i mock dennis - i just strongly disagree with his grades - even after having read his preconditions.
seems to me that some of the more extreme grades - a's f's and d's in particular, were handed out without good reasoning behind them.
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Dennis_D
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:31 pm    Post subject:

davidse wrote:
your book has a short memory and a double standart.

luke wasn't looking like a starter in this league, much less for a championship team.

Luke started 31 games for the '07-'08 squad and they won 22 of those games.

davidse wrote:
he defenetly wasn't this team's third best starter when he was given that extention (odom, bynum, kobe)

He started every game he played the prior season, was #3 for scoring, #3 for assists and #5 for rebounding on the team. Bynum played 82 games, but averaged only 21.9 mpg. '07-'08 was Bynum's breakout season.

davidse wrote:
bottom line, the lakers had a chance to generate cap space pretty easily.
the confrence was loaded, kobe was still pretty young, and according to you - they should have blown it all up and went for championship caliber players which we simply did not have at the time.

You are misunderstanding what I am suggesting. I am saying that teams with a vet core should look to trade their oldest star when it is obvious that they can't contend (I changed the wording there to more accurately reflect what I am saying). The Lakers were one of the youngest teams in the NBA in the 2007 off-season.
davidse wrote:
Dennis_D wrote:
Signing Vlad was a poor gamble that didn't work out, so I wouldn't say signing player A is a good idea because it is better than the Vlad signing.

at the time he was signed - the lakers were not that much better than the mavs were last season.
so the lakers sign vlad and it's a gamble that didn't work, but the mavs sign a flat out consensous better player to a 5 year deal - and they get an F ???...
(they actually traded for him so didn't even add that much 1st year salary...).

The Lakers were a team on the way up and the Mavericks are a team on the way down. The Mavs got a "F" for extending Kidd for 3 years for $25M, for doing a S&T for Marion and losing their best young player (Bass) to free agency.
davidse wrote:
it's YOU who doesn't understand.
the lakers' team wasn't good enough to win the title, even though they had some very good players.
according to YOUR philosaphy, what the lakers should have done rather than extend/sign mediocre players like luke/vlad, or hang on to overpaid underachieving players like odom (pre gasol) was to tank one season and get a championship core in place.

Where did I say that? Again, I said teams with a vet core should should look to trade their oldest star when it is obvious they can't contend.
davidse wrote:
and what you don't seem to get about odom is that when you have an OVERPAID (restricted fa when signed, and then trade kicker added) player like odom, you can do better by defenition if you use the same money in the open market - DEFENETLY when he simply wasn't doing a good enough job for us - and you can add luke and vlad to that list because both can be considerred overpaid.
give me luke, vlad and odom's salaries in cap space - and i'llk (aparently) "shock" you by getting this team much better talent for that money.

I am not sure of your point here. Are you saying that the Lakers shouldn't have signed Vlad? We agree! I think you may be saying that if the Lakers hadn't signed Walton and had traded Odom for expiring contracts then something about free agents.

davidse wrote:
odom was overpaid, didn't get the job done, but still tradable for an exp contract (and possibly even more sweetners).

If Odom was overpaid and not getting the job done, why would any team trade expiring contracts for him?
davidse wrote:
Dennis_D wrote:
davidse wrote:
or do you think gasol was part of some "plan" rather than a flat out miracle that allowed things to work even with the mistakes (according to your and denis' philosophies) of keeping odom, luke, and vlad...

Do you not know that the Lakers started the '07-'08 season 24-11 with Bynum and without Gasol? Getting Gasol was absolutely awesome, but the Lakers were stacked with young talent before they got him.

the 07/08 season is not the time frame we're discussing.

Gasol was acquired during the '07-'08 season. Luke Walton was signed to an extension in the 2007 off-season. What time frame were we discussing?
davidse wrote:
and the lakers were NOT stacked with young talent.
bynum was the only quality young talent on the roster.
sorry, but farmar, sasha, and turiaf are not what i consider championship talent.

You don't go 24-11 with trash.
davidse wrote:
wow, talk about teaching basketball 101 - this is nba 101.

dampier's contract is just about an expiring contract.
howards' is even better - he has a team option for next season, so he presents ZERO risk for the team that trades for him (you can throw those pot statments out the window), AND presents them with a great chance to cash in and keep him if he pans out for one more season - risk free.

trade these two together - and you have a super attractive package that can get them plenty of help mid season - at the center position, sg position, or whatever - this will be mostly about money for the team they trade with, but these two guys being able to play sure won't hurt either.

in theory - they can even get shaq and moon for that package if things don't work out well in cleveland - but that's just an example. please don't get caught up in it.

Expiring contracts are really helpful for trades, but there are far more contracts that expire untraded every year then get traded. The T-Wolves can trade $28.4M in expiring contracts. The T-Wolves also have 3 2010 first round picks where as Dallas has zero and 3 2010 second round picks were as Dallas has zero. The earliest first round pick Dallas can trade is 2012. So if anyone good is going to be traded this season, it is hard for me to see how Dallas can compete with Minnesota.

davidse wrote:
and nba history proves you are wrong.

I cited two examples earlier in the thread where NBA history proves me right.

davidse wrote:
in the vast majority of superstar trades, the team who trades the superstar ends up worse off - short and long term.

To pick an example, I would say that the Nets should have tried to trade Kidd after the 49-33 '05-'06 season. They were healthy that season, they were a veteran team with the 22 year old Krstic being the only player under 25 to play more than 600 minutes. Their 6th man Robinson was 39 years old. If they trade the 33 year old Kidd, he has a lot of value and they still have Kristic (23), Jefferson (26) and Carter (29) on the roster. But the Nets held on to Kidd and won 41 games the next season. And they still held on to Kidd, trading him in the middle of the '07-'08 season. Are you saying that if the Nets had traded Kidd in the 2006 off-season, they would have been worse off?
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:47 pm    Post subject:

davidse wrote:
and for the record - i have no issue with the effort part, nor did i mock dennis - i just strongly disagree with his grades - even after having read his preconditions.
seems to me that some of the more extreme grades - a's f's and d's in particular, were handed out without good reasoning behind them.

I am testing out a new system, trying to be somewhat objective in assessing GM's (really, the basketball personnel decisions of a franchise). Next off-season, I will review how this set of grades did and hopefully will come up with a smarter method. Based upon the feedback posters gave me, I significantly improved the language of the initial post over time. For the WC, I gave out 3 A's, 2 B's, 5 C's, 3 D's and 2 F's, which I think is actually a decent distribution. For the EC, I gave out an A, a C and a F.

If I sounded harsh to you, I am sorry. One post in particular I realized that I was too strong and edited it to tone it down, but it was after you had read the post and started to reply to it. I appreciate the feedback as it forced me to think through some issues that I had been fuzzy on. I will try to incorporate what I learned in the next iteration.
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LakerLanny
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 9:52 pm    Post subject:

LOGoods7 wrote:
a C for the Spurs? Really?

They looked like they were done last year, and I'd say now they're definitely in the hunt again..They got rid of 3 old players for RJ and got McDyess who is pretty good....definitely deserve an A to me


I hate the sp*rs with a passion, but they get an A for this past off-season, unquestionably.
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 6:24 pm    Post subject:

Sky wrote:
Dennis - The title of the thread is off-season grades for GMs. Change that to organizations and ok, but the focus has been on GMs. I'm just saying you can't ignore the outside aspects that force a GMs hand regardless of his ability to persuade.

Changed to teams
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Tanlentueux
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 5:14 am    Post subject:

Odom back, Artest for MLE, Shannon for less money then the market, so it's a A+
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