Or the Lakers(Lebron)who also wanted Griffin.
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And on that note, the 76ers, who look to he doing alright but is another job he turned down.
Can’t get the job done? What are you talking about?! The guy helped bring a championship to Cleveland. How can you just ignore this because of a bad draft pick and a young superstar having an ego wanting to go somewhere else. Yet you would rather the Clippers assistant GM who has done nothing. But he worked under Jerry West? Makes a ton of sense..
Yea I definitely agree. Griffin seems to have brought a lot of credibility to this franchise over night. I think what Perk said is somewhat of a big deal because he’s obviously not the only guy to feel this way. Really helps for a small market like us to have many players backing Griffin.
READ! My comment doesn't say "can't" it says "if he can".
Griffin just got an mathematical improbable amount of 1st overall picks combined with LeBron wanting to come back home. That wasn't his greatest. This isn't to say Griffin can't be the man. My line of thinking is with all the talent in the front offices personnel around the league why this guy? Griffin resume just isn't that impressive even with the title.
Ok my bad I read that wrong.. But how can you act like Griffin doesn’t have an impressive resume? He got 2 1st round picks which he then flipped for one of the best big men in the NBA. He put together a team that beat the defending NBA champions who came off the best regular season record ever. Look how many teams out there are consistently at the top of the lottery yet can do ish with it. Only thing negative you really have to say is he drafted Bennett.. You are ready to hire someone who has done nothing and you know nothing about but hey he worked for Jerry West. Griffin has great relationships all around the league which is one of the most important attributes to his job. Clearly knows how to put a championship team together.
Some people will never be satisfied.
The same argument could be the other way around. Keeping Gentry this long is hardly a sign of ambition. If anything, the Pelicans have shown me nothing to get excited about. I’ll let things run their course, but I can see Griffin being a very “meh” appointment. We shall see
Another interesting topic I can bring up and watch you guys debate over for half a page before it evolves into an argument of semantics for 3 pages......is this season proving that Cleveland's championship was way more than just Lebron?
I always felt like that Cav's team was a poop that had James on it and he single handedly won a championship. But here we are, just a couple of seasons removed and the dude can still turn it on, and this Lakers team that is supposed to be decent (they weren't last place the year before him and had another year exp for its young players) couldn't even make the playoffs.
Griffin only good because of Lebron.
Guess the same could be said for Steve Nash
http://arizonasports.com/story/14884...ht-jason-kidd/
Point is Griffin has been successful without Lebron
I think right now Gentry is a very solid option going into next season. I would rather us not get desperate and hire someone jus to show we are making moves.. I think Gentry’s system could flourish adding guys like Tatum and Brown to go with guys like Jrue and Frank. IMO his system thrives with multiple ball handlers and scorers with capable bigs. We simply need to make moves to fix the defense which is what will excite me. I’m fine with Gentry getting another year. He is very close with Gayle Benson and I have a strong feeling he will retire soon and take on a role in the front office which I would love. I know Gentry and his wife absolutely love New Orleans and consider it home. I might just know a next door neighbor or something..
I mean, it's super unfair to say that Cavs team was poop and Lebron won a ring with it. Sure, Lebron was superhuman during that run, but Kyrie Irving was still there. He averaged 25 points per game and shot 44% from deep in the 2015-16 playoffs, and that year Lebron played 76 games. This year, he didn't have a sidekick: who on these Lakers is the Kyrie Irving? There just isn't one. And Lebron got injured for like 20 games, and instead of holding it together and maybe going .500 in that time, the Lakers crumbled and lost like 10 games in a row or something. The Cleveland team wasn't good but it had some stuff on it. This Lakers team is just bad, has had a ton of injuries, and doesn't really have any stuff on it.
See I just don’t agree with this. Obviously yes Lebron is a huge factor but you have to build the right team around him. Griffin did everything in the Cavs power to assemble as good a team around Lebron as he could. Again Lebron was absolutely amazing as a huge factor but they could have had a couple younger players ever better that just didn’t fit as well with Lebron. They had a Super Star along with 2 All Stars.. That is the maybe the best recipe for a championship.. Nice mixture of vets and young pieces ready to get paid with bigger roles on future teams is exactly what you want and what they had. Outside of maybe Curry there wasn’t a better PG in the NBA imo to play with Lebron then Kyrie during his breakout year. Acquiring Love at the time was a great move and such a good fit for Lebron. JR Smith was in the prime of his career as one of the most athletic SGs in the NBA who could absolutely light it up from 3pt.
Sure Griffin could have gotten a better player or 2 but he did a great job assembling the right team. When he was there all that team did was win and break records. When he left it started to fall apart from the top. They beat the greatest regular season team in NBA history. You don’t just do that with a bunch of scrubs. Went to 3 straight NBA Finals taking the Warriors to 6 in ‘15, winning an NBA championship in ‘16, and then lost to a revamped Warriors team that felt they needed to add Durant.. No telling what he could have done with that team had he stayed in control. I think those teams were better then they get credit for.. Their poop stain is mostly due to how bad they were at times in Lebrons last season and fell apart. Griffin was not arround to make the necessary changes and deserves 0 blame for that.
This post just says Griffin isn't totally incompetent. Sad to say in a lot of ways that is a step up from like a 1/3 of GM/POBO. Unfortunately I don't see his resume as a clear step up over Demps. I believe Demps was competent enough at his job if you gave him LeBron James and 3 1st round picks in 4 years he too could have won a championship and I'd say the same for the majority of front office personnel in the NBA.
I've been pretty consistent pointing out that the way the NBA is setup if we are going to build a championship team the bulk of the core will be via the draft. Looking to do it via trades and free agency was the thing that IMO killed Demps almost on arrival. I'm looking at Griffin draft history (especially with said #1 overall picks) and it's not that impressive. I'm hearing him talk about team building and it's seem counterintuitive to the draft model. Maybe he's trying to avoid being label a tanker, but tanking is the best way for franchisees in our position to acquire cheap high end talent. If Griffin doesn't get this than he's IMO no better than Dell Demps who I long championed firing years ago.
Extremely good hire!
This makes me feel good about the Pelican's future in NOLA.
I was critical of Griffin for the Bennet pick as well until I did a bit of homework. Griffin was not the GM when that pick was made, Chris Grant was.
Griffin was in the room, I think Griffin was leaning towards taking Bennett, and I think even Griffin admitted that he was sold a false bill of goods about Bennett. But Griffin was not the GM who made the pick.
Griff also has said that every move he wanted to make in Cleveland was changed the second LeBron came back. From that point forward, it was all about winning from year-to-year rather than preparing for the future.
Where have I dissed Griffin? I have reserves about his qualifications based on his last stop. I actually appreciate the link you post and clearly missed it. I have no problem giving credit where it's due when it's due.
This doesn't negate my point about your other post being nonproductive. At this point we all have to just hope he's the guy for the job. Doesn't mean that we all have to view this as some homerun.
West has a history of excellence over a long period of time.
He GM'd the showtime Lakers that won 5 rings. He also pulled off the trade that acquired Kobe Bryant and signed Shaq, becoming the architect of another 3 rings.
Then, he took over the Grizzlies and led them to their first ever playoff appearance, winning another Executive of the Year award.
Then, in 2011, he became the head honcho of the Golden State Warriors. Steph Curry was already there at that point, but it was West who was their executive when they drafted Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, and also when they acquired KD.
Since 2017 he's been working in LAC, who (in case you haven't noticed) have constructed a roster robust enough to stay a playoff team despite losing CP3, DeAndre Jordan, Blake Griffin, and JJ Reddick while they essentially re-set for a rebuild.
Jerry West has been at the front of NBA excellence for decades and decades. You'd be nuts not to appreciate him.
He didn't say that though. He said 'a lot of the old guard' not that there was nobody. Jerry West is awesome, and he's proven it by continually adjusting for the NBA through various decades and continuing to provide high quality insight and foresight. That doesn't mean everybody can.
Take Magic Johnson for example. Nobody can deny that in the 80s, his basketball IQ was through the roof, but he just doesn't know how to construct a 2019 roster, and that was evident from last summer when he signed Lebron and then proceeded to sign Javale McGee, Michael Beasley, Lance Stephenson, and Rajon Rondo. Just terrible roster construction.
I'm pretty sure daThrone would agree that Jerry West is a great executive. But Jerry West is Jerry West, and other guys are other guys, and being able to adjust and change things up for decades isn't a common skill.
We can argue on this for sixty more pages. Griffin is much better than we had before. We can all agree on that.
Nope.
We'll see. I liked Dell. He put the pieces in place. Other factors always knocked them off the board but he did his part. I like Griffen, too. Just that the jury is still out on if he's better.
You can, but you're also not evaluating fairly. I dislike Dell, and I'm glad he's gone, but let's not pretend that Ian Clark, who was signed to a minimum and was just there to bulk out the bench, represents the peak of his powers.
Solomon Hill was a major blunder. Obviously Omer Asik was a terrible move. Ajinca wasn't a good move either. Eric Gordon obviously ended terribly. Sure.
But the Demarcus Cousins trade was a great trade. Sure, looking back on it we know it was a bad move because Buddy ended up blossoming in Sacramento and Boogie left, but there was pretty much nobody on this site who was upset about that trade the day it happened. It was a good move to make at the time.
Niko Mirotic was a great trade, that worked really well for us and was a huge part of our playoff trip last season. Getting him was a brilliant move.
Bringing back Emeka was a good choice that worked out well for us. Some people (not me) think that the Rondo signing was brilliant. Bringing in Randle this season on a cheap deal was a good signing, and Payton ended up being a good move as well. Pulling Kenrich off the trash-heap was a fantastic move.
Yes, I totally agree that Dell Demps did more bad than he did good, and that's why I'm glad that he's gone. But if someone were to just look at the last two or three seasons, Demps would come out looking probably okay. Cousins, Mirotic, Rondo, Randle, Payton, these are all names, and Dell got them.
If you're trying to discredit Dell Demps using him letting QUINN COOK go, you're doing it wrong...
Okay fine. The complete history
https://www.basketball-reference.com...empsde01x.html
https://expo.nola.com/sports/g66l-20...demps-era.html
Jimmertime! Ishhhhhhhhhhhh
We shall never forget
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zRMCDDIWZE
On this Easter be grateful for everything Jimmer gave us.
I mean, I see a lot of good in there. There were a few missteps, some of which are even more glaring in hindsight. But there were solid moves that we’re attempts to put together talent. We came up short in two eras, often as much due to injury or timing as anything else.
I never thought dell was as terrible as some here wanted to think. It was time to move on for sure, but he wasn’t awful.
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I agree with a lot of what you said. What I like about Griffin is his ability to run a team and develop great relationships. He is going to bring in a GM who he believesis the best at doing that job. I like him much more as POBO for us then I would as GM. Not that I don’t think he would be a good one but POBO fits him perfectly and I just don’t see many who would be better in that role for us. His formula in Cleveland was some luck but he still built a championship caliber team the entire time he was there.
Dell problem IMO wasn't that his approach was terrible in general it was that it just didn't fit this team. Free agency and trades just gives a non glamor market team such a small window of success. That narrow window made us especially susceptible to injuries. And we just had a bunch on injuries. At that point Demps just kept doubling down. The biggest mistake was the coaching hiring given the roster he'd already built. He had run and gun players like Ryan Anderson and Tyreke Evan's for a slow pace coach like Williams and slow footed Asik and Ajinca for a fast pace coach like Gentry. All in all his plan didn't maximize the the limitations of the market and the NBA rules.
I mean he had some validity to that. He was able to get Jrue Holiday for picks that have amounted to nothing. Cousins was a good move too before the injury changed everything. Niko was an absolute steal saying as we turned a mid/late 1st into 1 year of Niko + 5! 2nd round picks (1 in the Niko trade with Chicago and then 4 more when we traded Niko). The only 1st round trade that could be argued was a bad move was Asik but I still think at the time it was an understandable move.
If the players like Griffin. Which all signs are they do then he should do well getting us talent.
Go find me a GM that exist who didn’t make a bad pick. You are solely judging the guy on 1 bad pick and he wasn’t even the GM who took Bennett. He went to 3 straight NBA Finals while beating the best regular season team in NBA history.. Had the Warriors not signed a 4th all star who is a top 3 player then the Cavs very well might have won 2 in a row. You are ignoring everything he has done over a draft pick that wasn’t even him? Who is a clear better POBO out there? You were vouching for an assistant GM to take over that nobody knows anything about and your reasoning was he worked for Jerry West for a couple years.. We still have yet to hire a GM so pump the brakes a little.. If anything you are being a hypocrite. When somebody brings up you wanting Drummond over AD you say it was just one miss but you are right on a lot more then wrong.. Yet you can’t get over a player being picked and again it wasn’t even Griffin..
I 100% agree.. IMO Dell did a very good job building the team how he was asked to do. We just could never find that 2 way scoring wing to get us over the hump and to the next level. That was something that would have had to come in FA most likely. Looking back the best option would have probably been to gut the team during ADs first few years here to hopefully hit on a lottery pick or 2 and then go make moves to acquire someone like Holiday. We didn’t give Dell that option and asked him to win right away. No guarantee he would have been successful the other way but at least would have had the chance to do it his way. We got stuck in that situation as a middle of the road team with a superstar in a small market with a GM trying to keep his job and the only possibility to improve to the next level was landing a star FA.
Hugh Weber(Hockey Guy now) hired Del Demps not Gayle Benson. Dell greatest achievement Ish Smith, Lance Frygate Thomas, Jimmertime, Grevies, Brian Roberts and so on.
1st thing 1st I don't get paid millions of dollars to be a talent evaluator nor do I have the deep pockets of an NBA franchise to lean on for information about any prospects. So comparing me to a front office person is disingenuous at best.
Next I don't mind people talking about the Davis vs Drummond discussion. If you talk enough sports you're bound to be wrong(if you're honest with yourself). However people want to randomly bring it up totally out of context to make a pointless point.
As far as Griffin I just pointed out other picks that I consider poor considering the other players that were available. So it's not just one pick. The Bennett situation falls on the guy on top. That's the game when you carry the title you get the credit and the blame. Drafting the biggest bust in the NBA history is something he has to own.