Here is the difference between the drafting philosophies of Bob Whitsitt and Kevin Pritchard. Both looked for bargains in the draft. Whitsitt took chances on players who fell in the draft due to possible future personality conflicts. Pritchard took chances on players who fell in the draft due to possible future injuries. You can accuse Pritchard of knowing in advance about a tendency toward injuries (just as you can criticize Whitsitt for taking a chance on Shawn Kemp, who used cocaine), but each GM was following his own gambling strategy. Each strategy produced a few "finds" who later reverted to the tendency that had made them drop to us, so they became busts (as Roy will be known, shortly). For a GM to beat the competition, he needs a gimmick (= a gambling strategy about what he's willing to sacrifice that other GMs value more than he does). So a heady discussion on Pritchard should be a discussion on his strategies/gimmicks (for example, he took chances in the draft on injuries). (His #2 gimmick was to not play Lafrentz and Miles, who both could have played a little, in order to cash in on rarely-used medical rules in the CBA.) (Another of his gimmicks was to fill the roster with youth, which he could do because he had a coach specializing in youth. McMillan doesn't look so good when the roster already knows discipline and needs actual coaching.) (Also, the common gimmick of all Paul Allen GMs is to get better players than they give, by taking on big contracts or throwing in $3M. Then we give credit to the GM, but Allen deserves it.) I just listed 4 Pritchard strategies in the preceding paragraph. A real discussion about him would be about his strategies.
I KNEW those 6 words would garner all attention to the detriment of the rest of my post. <kicking myself> Why bother writing a nice long argument if you include 6 words that make the reader forget the rest of the post. I don't know, I just did it. So anyway, did I miss any of Pritchard's main strategies, gimmicks, methods, whatever you want to call them, in his quest to evaluate and acquire talent? I'm just saying, these major injuries result from that strategy. Without it, we'd have fewer injuries, but also worse players. (Although I think by now we'd have the same quality of players, because over time, a couple extra trades would have been made.) Camby and Batum are the currently uninjured players who have a high tendency to get injured. I expect their time will come, too. Hopefully not this season.
Examples? It's obvious to me when I'm being humorous. If it's not obvious to you, then you need to raise your humor IQ. I'd estimate that my posts are about 67% humorous, 25% serious basketball just like I wrote in this thread, and 8% political on the off-topic board (of which probably 60% are humorous themselves). So should I lower myself to your muddy level or should you little people raise yourselves to my level?
Nash/KP came in with the mindset that we had to put a huge emphasis on character when drafting players, they learned from the mistakes of Bob Whitsitt. Cho has to have the mindset that he has to put a HUGE emphasis on the health of the guys we bring in. You can't ignore the red flags from the pre-draft physicals.
Good answer, very ambiguous... are you saying that there was not one GM who would have passed on Oden, or that that there were multiple GMs who would have passed? barfo
How come when I twist logic like that, and I'm sitting here laughing at my accomplishment, the morons think it's crazy? It takes HARD WORK to sound crazy. We didn't have video games. We had to walk in the snow talking to ourselves, warming our hands by rubbing our chest hair. Young chicks like Minstrel don't appreciate the value of my manly work. Walk a mile in my shoes and rub your chest hair, because then you'll have to buy me new shoes. And get me one of those tight little red miniskirts too.
M'kay. There's a difference between not being able to play at the NBA level and not being able to play because of injury. Who predicted before he was drafted the litany of injuries he's suffered. There were some red flags (broken hip as a youngster, one leg shorter than the other), but none of them have impacted him. They've been other injuries. My guess is you were still trying to wash off your Sharpie moustache in June, 2006.
