The point was to indicate the type of people who have won titles within the past decade. It was NOT to point out anyone's level of greatness. Also I did kinda an apples to oranges thing with comparing COACHES to stat GMs, shoulda been "traditional" GM to stat GM. Though I also was thinking of coach/GMs. My mistake on overlooking Buford. Still have the image in mind as Popovich being GM when he hasnt been GM in years. On the level of coaching greatness (which isnt the point, but still..) Larry Brown's been the Finals twice the past 8 years and winning 1. And currently has the BOBCATS sniffing playoffs. (Besides Riley hosing Stan Van Gundy by replacing him with himself so he can take all the credit), Riley is a top 5 coach of all time. And is also a GM/Team President. But the stat-lead movement has just begin, give it time.
First of all, we all know that Morey is a brilliant guy and as Durvasa pointed out, he doesn't exactly keep a low-profile, but I think that there's at least two different schools of thought. The "old school" general managers seem to embrace the idea of being loyal to your older player, which Buford has shown a propensity to do, while the more new age buys like Morey treat players more like assets that can be moved on a whim as long as they either can't justify their contracts, or there is better value. I personally think that there is room in the NBA for either style of managing but I'm not sure that everyone feels that way and feel that by treating players like assets people like Woj feel that you can't be successful over an extended period of time. There's no denying that there are egos that can't take the mindset that Morey adopted for the position, but I guess only time will tell whether players will or will not be able to take it. As for myself, I don't think that I would like it if the management at work was always looking to trade me to another organization because they felt someone else was a better fit, but I guess it's life sometimes for people in the NBA and maybe elsewhere.
The challenge for Morey is how to maintain excellence. Now that people are wise to his approaches, they will be more wary, making it hard for him to keep up the personal relations necessary to get trades done. Analytical types tend to be weaker in personal relations, but Morey has been good at this so far. He seems to know how to make a joke (Check his twitter history) and I haven't heard any player other than TMac complain about him yet. Landry was surprised by the trade but he didn't come off angry.
Maybe Woj was reading the Clutch forums when we were ragging on him for his moronic trade rumors, and now he has a grudge against anything Rockets.
Well, not as bad as Bill Simmons' three page tirade on how much he thought the city of Houston sucked, but I can go ahead place Woj alongside him in my garbage club. Once you take a shot at anybody from my team or my city, I'm done with you forever.
Interesting to hear the news from Portland. Now I am thinking Woj might have been talking about KP and Penn.
