The Difference Between Dumping David Andersen and Dumping Ramon Sessions

The Vikings could well win the Super Bowl in 2011.
Edit...the point was already made several times. Never mind.

 

I really wish they would not write articles like this, it will eventually hurt Morey in trying to make deals.

DD

 

sad how jerome "i hate morey" solomon wrote about the same move and totally ripped the rockets .. god i hate that guy

 

Well, this is just silly. This I know, for King Solomon told me so. The Spurs and Mavs don't make mistakes, only the Rockets. If only we could coerce Les into firing Morey and hiring King, we'd be on the fast track to a championship. Who's with me?

.......

Edit... LOL, psingh34, I posted my reply right after reading the original post, I see you're on the King bandwagon too...!

It's funny, because my first impressions of JS were that he is quite intelligent, and I still think he comes out with very intelligent stuff fairly often, I just think his emotions take over sometimes... I'm sure he comes by his anger honestly, but DAMN... did Morey not invite him to his birthday party or something?

Not like me. I'm completely rational.

 

People know that the Spurs front office is pretty shrewd and it doesn't seem to have hurt them much... (or has it?)

On another note the article compliments Dallas' front office... I haven't noticed anything spectacular about them other than the fact that they're willing to chase every new toy that they see in the window. I don't see that they've made marked improvements in the last 5 years via non-draft acquisitions.

 

Well thats not the difference. It was dumb because Sessions was a real good player and Andersen was not good at all. So there is no correlation on it being Smart by Morey over just being dumb by the Twolves anyways. If its dumb its dumb. Morey just did what he had to to clear up his own mistake. Neither smart nor dumb but just practical to get under the cap. Andersen move was obvious with a glut adding Miller also. No real thought in that process. We are already loaded roster and have to shave someone.

 

Morey should auction autographed copies of that photo and donate the money to charity.

 

I wouldn't even consider acquiring Andersen a mistake. I don't think the expectations for him were that high to begin with. He filled in during a season of low expectations, and his contract made it easy for him to move when Morey acquired Brad Miller, the backup big man he coveted, a year later.

Seems like a pretty shrewd move to me.

 

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I believe this is already happening. No GM wants to be ridiculed as being the guy who was "moreyed", after the NY deal last year. Instead, they are probably asking too much, making any potential trade hard.

Reputation can help or hurt.

 

I do think its going to be tough to swindle a deal for the missing piece to Houston but I always Morey is going to have success making small deals like this and turning expirings into gold.

There's just too many poorly run, financially desperate teams out there.

Don't count out his ability to add great players in the draft every single year as well. Here's too the Knicks having a catastrophically bad season and the Rockets getting a top 5 pick.

 

That is the one thing that CD did very well, he kept out of the spotlight.

DM may need to back off a bit if it begins to hurt his ability to make decent deals.

DD

 

I really don't think a reputation is going to hurt Morey that much. Primarily because Morey doesn't really rob teams blind, IMO, he just isn't going to give away more than is needed to make the deal. With the Andersen trade, Toronto got a free player. Someone they could use and could use in a trade possibly. Sure BC could have asked for more, but Morey is willing to just walk away from the trade and wait. He simply refuses to overpay when he doesn't need to.

Secondly, I could be wrong about this, but it looks to me like the deals that get done are what Morey brings to GMs, not the other way around. I believe that Morey approached the Kings about Martin, not the Kings approaching Morey about Landry. On the Alston deal, Orlando might have approached us, but surely Morey brought Memphis into the picture. Teams may start thinking that Morey must know something they don't, but not making the deal isn't really going to help them figure it out. Memphis wasn't going to start playing Lowry because we wanted him, and no one else was going to offer anything for him.

Really the biggest danger to Morey is not so bring GMs like Kahn blocking our deals because they can't see that their getting robbed, and Cuban blocking deals he smart enough to know that as long as it doesn't make his team worse, he successful blocks us.

 

Nah, I don't think Morey's rep as a savvy GM is going to really hurt his ability to find trade partners. As long as Les continues to love him, he'll be fine (and avoid the fate of Kevin Pritchard, who got "too big for his britches" in the eyes of the top Blazers brass).

On the Sessions trade, the author COMPLETELY omits the part about Kahn dumping Ryan Hollins's contract on Cleveland. There were two more years remaining on that deal, and Hollins was slated to be the Wolves' third-string center. His contract is worse than Andersen's. (By the way, anyone who actually still thinks that Hollins is a good player needs to take a closer look at the guy. He's terrible. He had a few good games with Dallas, but that's it. He plays terrible defense, can't shoot and is otherwise totally worthless as an NBA player. He just got paid because he's 7 feet tall. Okay, enough of that rant.)

While Sessions is a nice young player who I thought could have netted Minnesota more than salary relief, I'm actually with David Kahn on this one, for the most part. He actually saved the team about $14.4M over the next three years with this move and opened up room to add Ridnour, who is a much better fit as a veteran leader on a team full of kids.

I agree that Kahn seemingly has no direction for his club and that overall he is a sub-par GM, but if you take a closer look at how he "handled" Sessions, it isn't all that bad from a GM perspective. Last summer, at the time he was signed, Sessions was far and away the best remaining unrestricted free agent on the market (yes, Milwaukee foolishly didn't extend him a qualifying offer). Kahn got him for what most felt was a very good bargain (4 years, $16M). To use GM terms, Kahn acquired an asset for good value, even though his team maybe didn't need that particular asset. But the value was there, so he acquired the asset anyway. Sessions served his intended role as the backup PG for a season. Then, when a better fit (Ridnour) came along, Kahn decided to move his existing asset in order to make room for that better fit. Kahn ended up choosing salary relief (dumping the contracts of both Sessions and Hollins) over acquiring additional talent, which is why so many people are killing him over the deal. It is what it is. Not great. But not all that terrible, either.

Still, I do agree with the author about the long-term PG mess in Minnesota. But that has more to do with his selection of Jonny Flynn. If (a big if) Rubio comes over to play for Minnesota, I think Flynn gets traded, not Ridnour. Luke would stay on to mentor Rubio.

Bottom line: David Kahn is not a very good GM, but I think he's getting way too much flack for this move. I actually think he came out fairly okay overall.

 

I agree with you. Especially given that there's no evidence some GM refused to deal wit the Rockets on the basis of Morey's reputation.

He got Kevin Martin at the deadline when several other teams wanted him (Dallas and Boston included, as I recall). He got the Knicks to cough up Hill and the pick/pick-swap, apparently in spite of his reputation. Bryan Colangelo was apparently perfectly willing to talk to Morey about Bosh, who made the reasonable decision to go with Wade (and James) in Miami. There was also apparently fairly substantial talk for Amare Stoudemire last February.

The year before, he landed Artest in the offseason, then landed Lowry in a 3-team deal at the deadline. A few days ago, Morey also just made the tax-relief trade with Andersen falling out of the projected rotation after the Miller signing.

So where are all the deal that fell apart due to GMs wary of Morey? I can see teams not liking him or wanting to deal with him if all he looks to do is to "rape" other teams by proposing ridiculously one-sided trades like the kind posted on this board and act like an ass by doing **** like sending out emails threatening other teams not to sign Darius Miles. But that's not what he does. And Portland still gets trades done during this year's draft.

In the end, we have a limited market-- there are only 30 teams and 29 potential trade partners for a 400-450 or so players. Rational (more or less) self interest takes over and teams make the best deal they can in any given situation with any team. "Blacklisting" a team and further constraining your already small list of potential trade partners doesn't really happen.

Hell, the Cavs and the Raptors both traded with Miami even though the Heat just pulled up a very savvy coup and stole their franchise players. Teams get over small stuff like reputation when there's something to be gained.

I agree. It seems sports fans make a "narratives" for each guy and interprets all actions of that guy in light of such narrative unless something happens to force a change.

Maybe it's Bill Simmons' fault, but the whole "Kaaahhhn" thing has really caught on and everything Kahn does is now interpreted in light of "He's an idiot" narrative. The truth is, sure he's acted idiotically on some occassions, but not everything he does is a mistake. The difference between good and bad GM is much more of a matter of percentages, much like the difference between a good and bad shooters. It's not that Shaq never makes FTs, he justs makes it at a lower 50%-ish clip than a good FT shooter like Yao Ming.

This one decision is a rational one by Kahn.

We'll see how things get sorted out. To me, Kahn took over a mess with some talent on it, but they don't reallyu fit. He had/has to (a) add talent, and (b) decide which parts should be kept and which should be discarded. I am willing to watch how things work out in a couple years to see if he's made progress (I mean, Rambis only had a year on the job to figure out which guys from a bad team "fits" within his plan to revive the team).

In the mean time, Kahn does not strike me as a savvy/wise enough person to be a good GM. I think the Flynn draft was an immediately questionble decision. More so, I think Kahn's interviews reveal him to be rather defensive and insecure. To me, if people question your moves or your smarts, the thing to do is to just say "We'll see how it works out" rather than "Darko is manna from heaven" and "Chris Webber is a dick." Not good PR moves.

 

After the Cato signing and Eddie Griffin trade, you wouldn't want to be in the spotlight either. It's nothing to brag about.

 

David Andersen is too weak to play in the NBA. If he wants to play in the NBA he's going to have to bulk up. A LOT.