Look at the grizzlies. He hired the right coach (Davis), signed the right players (Posey) and put together the right team for that situation.
One player. Albeit a great player, regardless, other great players have been drafted and traded for. I don't think it's too hard to build a good team in Los Angeles for one, and two, when you have a centerpiece of Shaquille O'Neal. In my opinion, Popovich is as good, if not a better gm than West. I would say that there are a number of personnel directors and general managers that I would rate above West. I believe the coach you're looking for is Hubie Brown. The Gizzlies are a nice overachieving team but they will never win it all. The pickup of Posey hardly justifies the label of best general manager. It's one thing when you have the city of Los Angeles and the tradition of the Lakers doing most of the work for you, it's another when you are in Memphis. The book is not closed on West and the Grizz, but it's only barely open.
(Note: If you're being sarcastic, clearly, I'm not sensing it 100%) Kobe isn't just a great player. He's younger than Steve Francis right now. Despite this, he has 3 rings and earned them fair and square. He carried those Lakers as much as Shaq did overall. BTW, I believe Shaq and Kobe arrived in the same season, meaning... West IS a genius. He also hired Phil Jackson, who was/is perfect for their team. As for the Grizzlies, just the fact that you said "they'll never win it all" says the whole story. Just before the season, it was "they're never going to come out of the lottery". Few expected them to make the playoffs, much less win 50 games and snatch 5th or 6th seed! Ofcourse they overachieved, but remember that they won only 1 game less than us in the playoffs, but almost 10 more than us in the regular season. It isn't the same roster - he actually built this one: Mike Miller Earl Watson The new J-Will James Posey Bonzi Wells These players are all main cogs and were all made available through Jerry West. The Grizzlies are a 50-win team. When he joined them, I thought to myself "he's going to ruin his career because they're too screwed to fix." But he did it again. I don't think anyone else could've done it, and I'm SURE no one could've done it in just 2 seasons.
Agreed. There's a tremendous amount of undeserved condensation toward the Grizzlies amongst folks here at Clutchcity. They want to dismiss what Jerry West has done as some sort of "fluke" when it is clearly not the case at all. The facts are that in just 2 seasons, he's gotten his team to 50 wins and LEAPFROGGED the Rockets. If CD & Co. EVER show this kind of progress, I'll be the first in line to congratulate them for finally pulling their heads out of their ass.
