There has been alot of people on this board who have dogged CD. They say he is a poor judge of talent and they point out the draft picks that havent worked out over the years, even though the draft is and always will be a hit and miss way to add players. They say his free agent pickups and traded for players never work out even though he has brought in some of the biggest names ever to play in the NBA. Well he's done a pretty good job of putting together a talented and versital team that on paper anyway should compete with the top teams in the western conf. What do you think of him now? Time to eat some crow. Let me be the first to say GREAT JOB CD!!!! Keep up the good work!
CD has made some questionable moves in his career, some were straight bad. But I think everyone will agree that he has done a great job of turning this team around, and turning us back into a championship caliber team.
He's good at acquiring veterans that fit this team (Sura, Wesley), but he's still not a good drafter and evaluator of talent. He had little to do with Swift signing with the team he grew up watching and DA wanting to play for a team on the rise that needed a quality guard.
I think CD has done a very good job....but his trades are so so...... It is in convincing players to play here, and recruitment that he really shines. I read somewhere that he takes the guys by the championship trophies, and talks about the great winning tradition..... Whatever works baby ! Go CD go ! DD
Actually, Swift said that it was CD going to visit his house and family in Louisiana that made all the difference in getting him to Houston.
give credit where credit's due man. cd did an awesome job last yr (well...maybe weisbrod did a CRAPPY job...either case) by bringing tmac in. after the jimmy trade for wesley was questionable...but it did bring in a spot up shooter (though sometimes i still wonder if we should have kept jimmy). the sura signing was amazing and lue for barry, gaines, 2nd roudn pick for james? those were real good trades IMO. now we signed 2 guys for DIRT CHEAP, who are excited and willing to play. i use to think CD should get fired, or he sucked as a GM...but right now, he has won me over.
He's still one of the top 5 GMs in the league. He is a great GM at working with the coach to bring in the kind of talent that will help mold a team to do what the coach envisions them to do. You have to understand the roles that our front office positions play. Jeff Van Gundy is the keeper of the gate. Rudy was the keeper of the gate before him. In both cases, CD's job was to get the talent that those coaches wanted on the floor to coach and to fit the roles that they envisioned. It worked in the early nineties with Rudy and Hakeem. Time ran out on Rudy with Francis, Mobley, etc. We can't blame all that on CD. He was simply bringing in the talent that Rudy wanted and felt that he could make win. He's not a Jerry West type GM who brings in a coach to coach the talent that he assembles. The Rockets under Les, have been a coach driven team. Just as he did with Rudy, CD has done a tremendous job of getting deals done to help Van Gundy. CD has been able to adapt his vision of winning from Rudy's style to Van Gundy's style. That is truly saying something. How many other GMs in this league have won 2 or more championships with one group of players and then won more championships with another group of players? You can count them on one hand. CD is on the cusp of joining them if this team plays out the way some of us here think they will, be it this year, or some time in the next 3-4 years. We should pull at least 2 championships out of this team with the core of Yao and TMac. Yes, you can say that Yao and TMac fell in our lap. I say there is more to it than that. We have the combination of an owner who wants to win it all and a general manager who understands the need to acquire franchise players to win it all. CD could have screwed up royally and taken Jason WIlliams instead of Yao. He didn't, he got it right. CD could have screwed up and not traded for Steve Francis, with an aging Hakeem, thinking that Francis would be a malcontent and trouble maker. He overlooked those possibilities and saw superstar talent. He took that talent and turned it into something. Yeah, TMac fell in our lap. But before TMac, we got Francis because CD was willing to take a chance on him. Without Francis, we don't get TMac. Yeah, in hindsight the MoT deal looks stupid. But consider, he was getting the player that Rudy wanted. Rudy's player/players didn't fit for the most part what Van Gundy wanted to do. Look what CD did with them. Very quietly, he has moved them on and gotten the most possible out of them, spotting the right deals and making them work. He's one of the top GMs in the league.
3 Best and Worst CD moves: Best: (no particular order) 1. Trading for TMac. 2. Trading for Drexler. 3. Drafting Robert Horry and Sam Cassell. Worst: 1. Trading Richard Jefferson and 2 1st Rounders for Eddie Griffin. 2. Trading for Pippen. 3. Giving bad contracts to Maloney, Mooch, MoT, Shandon Anderson.
I agree with the majority of posts. We could probably do better in the drafting/youth movement department, but CD is a helluva face to attract players. He's been great these past two offseasons.
We don't want to do better in drafting/youth movement department. If we are doing great in that area, it means we are losing because we have no foundation to our franchise and we are searching for a new one. We are about winning and winning now.
Paragraphs rule! Didn't CD bring in Barkley, Drexler and Pippen? We know he brought in TMac. That's a pretty good list of names... no matter how much we hate Pippen.
Alot of those were Rudy T's call. I wish people would realize that Rudy had final say so on personnel decisions when he was here as head coach, Les empowered him with that decision making, even if CD had the GM title...or Bob Weinhart, or Steve Patterson, etc.
EG and Pippen turned out to be disasters, but it wasn't at all CD's fault. Getting players on the roster is CD's job, and he did just that. Who knew EG would going on a shooting rampage and Pippen would start crying? Giving fat contracts to scrubs, on the other hand, can't be defended...you left out cato btw...which seems to be his biggest shortcoming thus far.
a. CD has made some questionable signings, trades, drafts in the past. b. CD has been unbelievable this past year plus and has transformed us into a contender. while i was never much of a criticizer, no one who was really has to eat crow b/c good moves now don't make the old bad moves suddenly good moves. c. CD wasn't the gm that built the first title team and didn't draft horry and cassell or trade for drexler. i'm not really sure when he became the gm.
Hindsight's 50/50. People were optimistic about MoT and Shandon. The subsequent contracts spoiled fans expectations, but that was the mark of loyalty this team has with its players.... ...Which is what makes Houston the attractive location it is right now. He has been great for the past 2 offseasons, but his draft picks are questionable. Not a big deal because JVG doesn't play rookies that much.
I'm sure he would have said something similar about how Billy Knight "showing him around the city of Atlanta" was the main reason he signed with the Hawks, and so on. I'm not saying he's a bad GM - we could do much worse, even when it comes to drafting (see Clippers, LA). But I think almost any GM in CD's position would have been able to get Swift for the MLE and DA, so he shouldn't be given all the credit for this offeason. Oh - and let's see how Swift plays before we call CD a genius.
i agree. T-mac was a huge pickup for us, but this year is really what counts, we'll see how well he did after the first round of the playoffs, if we dont make it to round 2, then it was all useless.
CD's job is to supply the coach with the best talent available under the salary cap. If we don't get past the first round its JV fault. CD has done pretty good with what he has had to work with.
