[Grantland] "Bad GMing" aka - Good Charlotte? The Hornets and the Sliding Scale of NBA Mediocrity

It could happen, but they have big health questions. They could be much better than Brooklyn or worse. I think Brooklyn should be at about the same level as last year, close to 40 wins.

 

Charlotte is going through the same thing Washington went through when Jordan decided he wanted to play in the front office--questionable drafting (Kwame?), questionable personnel decisions, etc.

They don't even have a "franchise player" or a "best player" on the team. The problem with the plan to sign/overpay for B-Level players because A-List players don't want to play for you is that, at best, you're on the mediocrity treadmill...even in the East.

 

As of now, it will be more excited as a 76er fan, or Laker fan, or even a Knicks fan than a Hornets fan.

Because you know your team will have some hopes.

Your team are having some assets, new bloods, or at worst, your team has the track record, or some advantages to attract big time free agent (which is an overrated factor nowadays, but nonetheless, its still a hope).

There is ZERO hope as being a Hornet fans.

Your lineup is a complete pile of shlt, garbage, your management are a bunch of 5 years kids doing some freak shows. You have zero ability to attract good FA, in fact the last one you are able to sign, Lance, is also a disaster.

Your only hope is somehow you got really lucky, with some breaks for you and other teams also, that eventually you are going to win 37-38 games and get a 8th spot and then get swept in the first round, and you will call it a successful season.

That's all f**k up.

 

I thought the article was some weaksauce armchair quarterbacking. Not saying that Charlotte is a good or bad franchise or if Cho is a good or bad GM, but Lowe is throwing out a whole lot of speculation to make this argument that Charlotte made bad choices. I don't see at all that they did, or that it can't be proven yet. The first and worst one he does is saying Kaminsky -- a rookie who has not yet played his first NBA game -- won't amount to anything. Just his opinion, but he builds the rest of his argument on it. As unprepared as the team allegedly was, we can be certain at least that they took a hard look at who they preferred between Kaminsky and Winslow, and they chose Kaminsky. Boston thought Winslow -- the less valuable in Charlotte's eyes -- was worth more than those 4 picks. Yet Charlotte gets criticism for having essentially the same opinion.

I know Lowe thinks he's very smart and should be a GM or something. But, until he convinces some NBA team of that, he's just another armchair quarterback second-guessing the professionals just like us.

 

I thought most of his article was pretty clear that it's tough to be in the middle class of the Eastern Conference and the strategic disadvantage it conveys....Great job putting him in his place

It's very naive of you though to think that Rich Cho and Micheal Jordan have access to some incredible secret trove of knowledge and acumen that the rest of us don't. Classic expert fallacy.

Most research indicates that expert forecasting in situations with high variability and little repetition (like NBA player evaluation or the infinitely complex multiplayer game-theory situations of the NBA draft) is pretty much no more useful than throwing darts at a board.

The whole "you are not a coach/expert" internet-gument is pretty silly overall

I'm not a chemist or a physicist but I know that if you walk around with raw radium in your pocket for an extended period you will get sick. Marie Curie was and but she's the one who she got sick and died. Einstein thought the universe was static, I know that it's expanding.

It's not that hard to point out where experts failed, even for a non expert.

 

There still seems to be some residual Celtic bias @ Grantland. On the surface trading one #1 for a whole bunch of #1's seems to be a no brainer but the reality is that mid to late round #1's aren't worth that much compared to top 10 picks. Boston doesn't look too smart for drafting 2 more guards when their roster is already stacked with guards Bradley, Smart, Thomas, Young and Turner(sg/sf). Then they go and add another guard with the Zoran trade.

 

Zach Lowe never said if Kaminsky will be the next Adam Morrison or the next Larry Bird.

That's never the this article about.

Its rather about :

1. When the Celtics requested a trade and only gave the Hornets 2 minutes to consider it, the reason for the Hornets to reject this trade was : we were locked in the 9th pick since the end of the season and did not really care or think about the 15-20 pick range, we don't know what to do with it, so we passed.

2. With 4 picks instead of 1 pick from this trade, that means this year we are going to pick extra players, and the next few years we are going to pick more. We already have so many players with guaranteed contracts, what are we going to do with all these extra picks? So no thanks.

Those are probably the worse thing ever you will expect from your front office.

 

He didn't say that. He specifically said he doesn't know whether Cho is a good or bad GM. He's saying that Lowe is premature in criticizing Cho for not making that trade. What's Lowe going to say if Kaminsky becomes an all-star? Will he hold his stance that Charlotte should have traded down?

How many people bashed Chris Wallace for the Pau Gasol trade? "Why didn't he take the Ben Gordon/Deng package instead? They're good players instead of the trash the Lakers gave them!" How many people still think he's a bad GM or that was a bad trade now? Maybe wait and see the results before criticizing?

 

There was some woj like reporting in that article.

He also made a dig at pbev for being a below avg starter...

 

Exactly. If they have a value matrix for the top picks (which obviously they do) it's like they didn't have one for the back ones or future ones.

it's not about player evals it's about optimizing value and saying "we don't know what the value of picks are" is pretty silly - there's pretty decent empirical evidence saying what, on average, the value of a given pick is. Of course when you have a former player whose ego vastly exceeds his capabilities like Jordan in charge it's not hard to fill in the blanks as to what happened.

 

FIFY. We knew Curie and Einstein were wrong because we have more knowledge than they did, not because we are smarter or are better scientists. I am pretty sure we probably wouldn't be able to accomplish 1% of what they did if we were put in their situations with the same knowledge they had.

That said, I agree with your general point that it is silly to say that we cannot criticize the professional's performance. We constantly criticize player performance even though none of us could hold their jockstraps if we were put on the court against them.

 

The Gasol trade IS a bad trade, it is one of the most lopsided and horrible trades I've ever seen (no offense to what). This is kinda' off topic but to be honest I don't think using the results blindly to justify trades is correct, the reality is Chris Wallace traded an All star and one of the best big men in the league (at the time) for a 9M expiring contract and trash, it was just blind luck that "trash package" included Marc Gasol who apparently turned out to be as good or arguably better than his brother. Let's be real, if Memphis thought Marc Gasol was good enough to be the center piece in a blockbuster deal then they would have drafted him in the first place, MG was picked in the 2nd round Memphis could have drafted him themselves or traded for his rights and then have him play with his big bro and pretty much dominated the league for the next 5 years.

Because hindsight is 20/20, using it to evaluate decisions is not the correct way to do it because you get these guys to make decisions in real time so in a lot of ways the mentality and methodology for making the decision is way more important than the results of the decision itself. It may seem counter intuitive but the thing is you can't count on luck always being by your side, sure the Gasol trade worked out for the Grizz but how many 2nd round picks turn out to be all stars? Not only that Wallace could've also gotten more value out of the trade like an extra pick or maybe even Lamar Odom.

In this case choosing Frank Kaminsky over four 1st round picks is not necessarily bad by itself, but the reasoning why the FO is doing it is just too stupid I could have sworn this was an Onion article. If the FO said they believed Kaminsky had star potential or had more trade value over 4 lower first round picks etc then I would say that's a fair statement to make. Instead according to them they stuck with Kaminsky because they hadn't scouted players past 9 (wtf?) and they didn't have enough roster spots for 4 rookies (wtf?!?). Even if Kaminsky turned out to be Dirk with TD's defense then I'll still say the Hornets FO are way too incompetent for the job and if I owned a bball team there is no way I'll trust these people with running my franchise.

 

Well he is though... I don't see Pat getting any better and the only way he can go in terms of development is down.

 

This is not really true.

1) Memphis didn't have too many options.

They needed to get "rid" of Gasol's contract and wanted picks + young players. This is the same situation as the Harden trade where the owner was worried about money.

2) Memphis received cap relief + 3 first round picks (crittenton was a 1st rd pick the year before) + Marc Gasol.

This is a much better haul for what OKC received for Harden, even at the time of the trade. Marc Gasol was considered a very good prospect when the Lakers traded him (ACB player of the year after being drafted). It was definitely not "blind luck" as you have stated.

3) This was a much different time, where cap relief was expensive, and many trade partners were capped out.

Remember, Zach Randolph was traded for basically nothing. Tyson Chandler was traded for basically nothing from the Bobcats to the Mavs.

 

Except that it's not an example of hindsight bias to criticize the Hornets silliness on the last two drafts. Look at Lowe's last graph, which specifically mentions whether or not in hindsight these moves work out and his column looks dumb.

The moves are being criticized because They're absurd without any hindsight at all . They're silly based on the probability of draft pick success (something that Cho probably gets) according to the base rates of what we know about NBA basketball. They'rebeing criticized for that reason and because they're incoherent on their face

Take a project at 9 like Vonleh cause Jordan and his hangers on think he has "it", ok, then give up on him at age 19 r a gamble on Batum....what? Then come up with the absurd response that they hadn't really thought about the value proposition for a later pick his year when offered a deal for 9....what? By itself that's just bad and dumb Taken together it's a complete lack of direction.

NONE of that requires any hindsight. Further if you like I can disprove the expert fallacy without any hindsight but it's probably not necessary

 

No matter where the team is located the jersey's of said team will increase in sales in China or any Asian community around the world. This is not to say that your point isn't correct, its a valid point as well so for the BobKittens its a win win.

 

The Hornets will get 1/30 of the profit for each Lin's jersey will be sold in China,

or in Nigeria.

Same as the Mavs, the Rockets, the Knicks and the Lakers.

 

As others have said, it would have been a lot better had the front office folks just said Kaminsky was the guy that they really wanted and that's it.

Instead, it sounds like they may be falling on the sword to cover up for their boss's decision. I'm sorry but there's no way that they would not have assessed prospective players for the latter half of the lottery.