FreeDarko Presents: The Disciples Of Clyde NBA Podcast

Recent [questionable] decisions made by the Grizzlies, Pistons, Lakers and Timberwolves have me again wondering about the organizational values of NBA teams. It’s a comfortable place that I never should have left . . .

I was disappointed last year when ESPN’s Bill Simmons did not make more of a fuss after his campaigns to become the GM of the Milwaukee Bucks and Timberwolves were only treated as a clever column gimmick and not as a reasonable idea. I never expected Simmons to be hired, of course, or even be given an interview because that would have embarrassed the team; I do believe, however, that he should have spent six months using his bully pulpit to vent considerable outrage that NBA GMs are brought in from a talent pool that keeps yielding people who suck. One of the reasons that I look forward to a Sports Guy column is that his writing often catches the sports zeitgeist of the moment and articulates it for the masses. Right now, as it was a year ago, the zeitgeist of the moment in the NBA is that the product is not as good as it should be because so many big decisions are made by people with so little ability to do anything but flail.

There are often no real plans from NBA front offices, no organizational values on display and no new ideas to avoid repeating past mistakes. Bill Simmons could have hit us over the head with that fact repeatedly instead of landing a few glancing blows. It was a missed opportunity.

I do not mean to criticize Bill Simmons, however, for going too easy on NBA GMs. He has obviously gotten a ton of mileage out of criticizing them, possibly to the degree that his highly visible use of dead-on critique and humor over the last decade has helped spawn an entire internet culture of basketball fans looking for every opportunity to jump up and down and cry “stupid” after every shaky decision. I, in fact, find the columns and blogs written on the day of a truly ridiculous trade or signing to be one of the most entertaining aspects of following the league; and even though a JE Skeets or [our very own] Bethleham Shoals may write the best bad-move-response-piece on any particular day, part of the humor/insight medium that they work in must be credited to Simmons.

And there’s also the small matter that Mike Dunleavy and Chris Wallace see Simmons’ face when they cry in the shower.

(In other words, he’s got my respect on the bad-GM-bashing front.)

That all being said, he took his foot off the gas too soon on the Milwaukee Bucks and Timberwolves issues. He should not have let this issue go. He should have written six columns a week about his outrage at not being given an interview, ignoring pleas from ESPN brass about diversifying his writing topics. He should have gone down in flames and self-destructively allowed the anger to consume him the way Joba Chamberlain being removed from the Yankee bullpen consumed Mike Francessa.

I am not, by the way, someone who actually develops “anger” as it pertains to sports. Not really. Life is too short and anger isn’t worth the effort. I do enjoy, however, controlled outrage, intellectual outrage, incredulous outrage because . . . well, I’m a know-it-all. So are you. If you weren’t than you would be bored to death by my podcast and writing.

The source of “anger” that I wish Simmons had attacked was the idea that an informed outsider, such as a popular and clearly knowledgeable columnist, was somehow not capable of making NBA roster decisions. I recall that Simmons had guests on his podcast that told him that being good at the NBA Trade Machine is not the same thing as running a team. To that I say (and I wish he had yelled) “why the @#$!@# not?” Why can’t a smart person who understands basketball ever even sniff a job as an NBA decision maker when the Paxson and Babcock brothers seem to have no such trouble? Who is more likely to make an ill-advised decision regarding a multi-year contract to an overrated center: Bill Simmons or John Paxson?

I submit that if Bill Simmons or DOC favorite Kelly Dwyer was the GM of the Grizzlies right now then Zach Randolph and Hasheem Thabeet would not be next year’s starting frontcourt which, I also submit, would make them better.

In case you don’t know him yet, Yahoo’s Kelly Dwyer is a guy that Dan and I have accused in the past on our podcast of secretly being one of the best NBA writers on the planet. There are many quality hoops writers, of course, but not all of them have a central theme and set of values that are on full display in their writing over several years. Take a look at Dywer’s “Behind the Boxscore” column during the season and his review of each offseason move and you will quickly get a good sense of those values: he is cynical of everything (in a good way), he looks at raw numbers when forming his opinions and he compares production to salary. I don’t know the man personally and he could turn into Martin Sheen’s character in The Dead Zone the second he was given a little power, but I have a feeling that if Kelly Dwyer was named an NBA GM tomorrow he would probably be the type of boring GM who hoarded his assets, chased mostly bargain free agents, and only paid a high price for very good players. Would he make mistakes and miscalculations? Of course he would. But I doubt that he would make any moves that were universally regarded as being ridiculously stupid. The casual fans of his team would be bored by the lack of dramatic moves and an underutilized payroll, but after two or three years they would look at a roster with the fewest salary albatrosses in the league and thus the most flexibility.

Take a look at the measured, reasonable reaction that Dwyer had to the Mike Bibby contract.

“At this point, in 2009, he’s OK. He’s 31, 15 and five assists, league-worst defense. Six million a year may not seem like the end of the world, but you watch this guy drag up the court in 2010-11, knowing that he has a year and a half left. You make sense of this, even when he expires in 2012.

“This is the easy way out. This is where you go when you are tired of thinking. It’s not the worst re-sign in NBA history, but it is a cop out, a lazy move, an uninspired turn. You just bid against yourself to keep Mike Bibby around. That shouldn’t be applauded.”

Does this sound like a stick in the mud? Perhaps. Does it sound like someone who is going to waste, or even risk, an owner’s money without serious reservations? Hell no.

I would not expect a movie buff to produce or direct a big budget Hollywood movie. I would not expect a non-engineer to suddenly head the R & D department of a manufacturing company or a day-trader to ably run a multinational corporation. I would expect, however, that a lifelong basketball fan who is also successful in another field, such as a writer or a capable business executive, to have a reasonable shot at success as an NBA GM.

Look at every team that is trying to get cap space every year. Why do those teams have problems getting salary cap space? Because guys like Antoine Walker and Greg Buckner (who is still in the league, by the way) are contracted to earn millions dollars a year to play basketball in the NBA despite the fact that they have little value as basketball players in the NBA. In other words, friends, someone who simply avoided spending assets foolishly could be ahead of the game. It is that simple. They would not have to draft well or make brilliant trades, they simply have to be incredulous about spending good money on middling players. “Two million dollars a year for Greg Buckner? Forty million for Tariq Abdul Wahad? Why, exactly?”

The thing that amazes me about NBA GMs is that they are often simultaneously reckless and petrified of making mistakes. The same team that gives Gilbert Arenas 111 million dollars after two years of not playing (reckless) hires Flip Saunders because he is a known quantity (petrified of making mistakes); the same team that gives Beno Udrih and Mikki Moore long term contracts (reckless) insists on paying their coach the lowest salary in the league (petrified); the same team that gives injury prone Corey Magette 50 million dollars (reckless) is afraid to give injury prone Baron Davis 50 million dollars (petrified); the same team that pays Ben Wallace 60 million dollars and Luol Deng 71 million dollars (reckless) is afraid to trade assets for Pau Gasol or Amare Stoudemire (petrified); the same team that brings in Ron Artest on a multi-year deal (reckless) is afraid to gamble on 24 year old Trevor Ariza’s future (petrified).

In fact, contradictions such as the ones listed are often present in the same decision: we need a dominant center to win in the NBA (a conservative opinion that goes back to George Mikan) so we’ll trade unconditional draft picks and cap assets for (and give a long term contract to) the worst rebounding center anybody has ever seen who also has a weight problem and motivational issues and a heart irregularity that will make it impossible to get insurance on his contract (reckless).

This silly duality is not unique to basketball, of course. I always find the passions displayed about politics to be infuriating because people mistake opinions for values and talk themselves into feeling enmity for a large portion of their fellow Americans, probably because the word “values” carries more weight than the word “opinions”. The word “opinion,” however, is often the most appropriate word since many of the values that people base their lives upon often contradict one another; for instance, people who want minimal government intervention in day to day life also want that same government to care that two gay guys want to get married. Does that make sense? Of course not.

It is an “opinion” that a troubled and expensive player could help your team. It would be a “value”, I would submit, that your team would not pay excessive guaranteed money (and trade and expiring contract) for someone who three other teams in a row were desperate to unload; or, for someone who has had unsettling legal troubles in the past; or, for someone who is regarded as a “selfish” player; or, for someone who is named “Zach Randolph”.

As an aside, I happen to think that Zach Randolph is among the most gifted players in the sport. If he was never traded from the Knicks, and managed to stay out of trouble, I believe that he would put up incredible numbers in Mike D’Antoni’s system. I believe that he would be a star on a good team that played unselfishly. People forget this now, but Randolph had a great attitude at the beginning of last season and his game fit perfectly. He can shoot and demonstrated the ability to make quick decisions. But Randolph has also made his bed in the past and now his reputation has to lie in it. Trading an expiring contract for him was foolish. It was foolish for the Clippers and it was even more foolish for the Grizzlies. Even if it works out, it only validates a risk that was disproportionate to the possible reward. You don’t have to be a longtime NBA insider to understand that.

Tags: Bill Simmons, kelly dwyer, sports guy

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 10:29 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.