http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/36494/nba-today-daryl-morey-and-al-harrington And Al Harrington, too. What a self-promoter Morey is! No wonder everybody hates him.
This will be bad for team morale!!!! I don't have time to listen. Non rockets related, but what coach did Harrington "rave" about?
Most interesting part for me came at 9:47 when Henry asks him what criteria he thinks should go into rating a GM's performance. Paraphrasing: draft success realtive to position free agency - track record of free agents relative to money spent trades: value in vs value out of trades overall: probability they've been able to create in terms of giving teams a chance to win a championship over a long period. not necessarily if they won, but if they gave their team a very good chance to win. The last point, I think, might be different from what many fans would say. Should a GM's performance be rated based on the actual results (e.g. did he win a championship?) or on how he's improved the chances of his team getting good results?
Luck is always a factor. You can put together a great team but have freak injuries to important players in the middle of playoffs. Your team might also run into a bad matchup or perform below normal level for a number of reasons. The GM can only put a team in position to succeed, but with 30-teams competing for 1 trophy, measuring a GM's performance solely by the number of trophies won is not very useful. For example, the Mavs didn't win a title until last year, does it mean that Donnie Nelson and Mark Cuban did horrible jobs in all of the year before it, but all of a sudden became geniuses last season?
Definitely the latter. A general manager isn't God. He can't control what the players do on the court or the vagaries of fate/luck/fortune. He can only do his best to give his team a chance to win it all.
Nothing real mind blowing here other than the GM ratings which I find kind of interesting. Really just a promo for the Sloan Conference.
This is why ring-counting, whether it be player, coach, or GM, is one of the most prevalently misguided way of evaluating success. I've been saying this countless times and will continue to say this.
