I was watching some of the old Bulls/Pistons games from the early 90's with my friend, and we were laughing when we saw John Paxon guarding Isaiah Thomas. It's funny to see these two playing against each other, then looking online today and seeing that these same two players are discussing trades together. So that got us thinking, which players that we see today would make good GM's? These are some of the ones we thought would: Tim Duncan Jason Kidd Yao Ming (he's so nice, who could say no to a trade offer from him?) Scottie Pippen David Robinson (I know he's retired already, but still....) Grant Hill So who else can you see in the front office one day? oh yeah, we were also laughing thinking about if someone like Iverson got a GM job...."$50 million!? $50 million? Man I'm up here tryin' to put together a contender and you talkin' bout $50 million? Man yo' a$$ is traded, live yo life to the fullest."
steve kerr brent barry derek fisher grant hill jameer nelson steve nash paul pierce bryon russell jason kidd and...shaq
How would any of us know? You can maybe see future coaches when you watch games, but being a GM is totally different.
I think players often make poor GM's simply cause they have a difficult time looking at basketball from a business perspective. Ya, Jerry West is a great GM but for every West, there's at least 2 of Isaiah Thomas.
Thomas is a joke. Joe Dumars isnt the GM, but he is the President of Basketball Operations. Is Pres of B O higher than GM?
wasn't even looking at that - just went through the player list of nba.com/players and picked out those who i thought could be smart GM's. no bias -- but yeh, it'd kinda weird that the list came out that way. prob cuz i just cant see too many 7 footer GM's.
www.BasketballReference.com has similarity scores on their player pages, so I just checked all the pages of the players who are now GMs. Several GMs didn't have NBA careers. Several others had the kind of stats that aren't found in today's NBA, like Billy Knight and Geoff Petrie. Several others were NBA superstars (Bird, West, Thomas, etc.) -- nobody's really similar to them. A few were basically scrubs that plenty of people have similar stats to -- Mitch Kupchak, for example, is nearly a dead ringer stats-wise to Alan Henderson, Gary Trent, and Othella Harrington. Travis Best, Lucious Harris, and Howard Eisley look pretty much like John Paxson. A few were more interesting, and made this whole exercise worthwhile to me: Kiki Vandeweghe = Shareef Abdur-Rahim Danny Ainge = David Wesley or Damon Stoudamire Joe Dumars = Latrell Sprewell = Chris Mullin Allan Bristow = Travis Best So -- do I think Travis Best and Latrell Sprewell are going to be GMs? Uh... sure.
Brent Barry, definitely. He is so smart. He actually discovered the metallic element Beryllium in 1828, which was awesome because he had to build a time machine by constructing two singularities and creating a wormhole by combining them together. Yeah man, he can GM all right.
Not sure about GM. But Iverson can never be a coach. Can you imagine him trying to get his young players to come to "PRACTICE!?"
Duncan as coach will be like Bill Cartwright as coach. Too softspoken to light a fire under his players. Although... he does have the "game face." So he should be good at GM. Player's Agent: "6 years, $50 mil" Duncan: =| Agent: "okay... i see you're playing for real huh? 40 mil sound okay?" Duncan: =| Agent: "okay, okay, how about 3 years guaranteed, with a fourth year team option?" Duncan: =| Agent: "what?? any more you'll cut into my... you don't care do you. okay. veteran's minimum" Duncan: Deal.
Seen any Tim Duncan commercials lately? By the way, Duncan may be soft-spoken. But he's not David Robinson "nice." He's kinda sarcastic and blunt. Reminds me a little bit of Bird. I actually liked Bird as the Pacer coach. I'd have to see Duncan as an assistant first to make my mind up. But I'm not counting him out.
saleem and LiLStevie3, Absolutely! One day he'll be a coach. And a very good one, at that! The "Little General!"
