I can understand the sentiment and part of me kind of agrees with it ... but it's mostly an emotional response. From a purely business driven or competitive standpoint, Rudy Gay isn't the same caliber of player, but having a pretty good player on your roster who can score and his health at least gives you a movable asset if you get tired of him. What can you do with Roy's contact except eat it? Ultimately in sports, the most important ability is availability.
Pritchard's role is unclear, but in terms of player acquisition... who have they acquired? David West was a good get, but he's the only new guy who's started more than one game... and he came as the result of $10m in salary cap space. I think any criticism of Pritchard seems odd to you. Whomever we want to blame, the cupboard is pretty bare right now. Cho might deserve some blame, and Buchanan does, but KP seems to be responsible for the lion's share of the success or failure of the current team. Ed O.
If this is being looked at in hindsight, my point is it wasn't the draft pick taht was a mistake, it was the extention. But for the same price for the first 4 years, I take Roy over Gay . . . even knowing I only get Roy for 4 years and can extend Gay and get Gay for more years. I thought Roy's value to this club at that time was exactly what the franchise needed, and they got all that on a rookie contract. I would love to draft another Roy, even if only for 4 years. The extention was obviously a mistake, and if Gay blows up and becomes a multiple all star while leading his team beyond the seoncd round than I'm eating crow . . . but the draft pick of Roy was probably the second or third best draft pick the Blazers have done in the past 5-8 years, even given his short career (of course, IMO)
To me, that says more about the sad state of the franchise in terms of ownership than it says anything about Pritchard. Since he left, the team has gone backward. Cho is tough to evaluate, although had Roy not completely disintegrated physically in almost no time at all, last year's acquisition of Wallace seemed smart at the time. As for the David West acquisition, somebody evaluated how he fit into the team, and Indiana has certainly improved with him in the line-up compared to last season. The Felton move, IMO, was in part because Paul Allen wanted a faster tempo, and the Crawford move, IMO, was desperation to try and somehow replace what Roy gave the team on the offensive end. Outside of LMA, is there a contributing player on this roster that anybody expects to be in Portland two years from now? Batum seems likely, but Portland may have to overpay for him, based on what he shows at times. The relates back to another thread, but what is the long-term plan? Is Oden even a part of it? Is there anybody within the organization with the job security to think about a long-term plan at this point? I just don't see it.
It's fair to put a lot of the current state of the Blazers on Pritchard. Management is a bottom-line position in terms of evaluating after the fact. That said, I largely (not completely, but mostly) liked Pritchard's process and to me, that's the most important thing: having (in my eyes, at least) an intelligent process that you execute. Sometimes things still don't work out and you cash out a loser, so to speak. If people have a negative impression of Pritchard based on the end results, I can't entirely blame them. But I think the Blazers had a smart and dedicated GM in Pritchard who did many of the right things, at the time based on the information available then, but didn't get the right results. That position doesn't have any cognitive dissonance to me.
I'll also go back to my opinion that if KP takes Rudy Gay, he gets fired a long time prior to 2010, because LMA wasn't ready to be an All-Star, and Gay had the opportunity to be a franchise player with Memphis and failed. Are we even talking about 3 first-round exits with Gay instead of Roy? Would LMA have been traded years ago because the team didn't have Roy to lead it to wins? Questions to consider for those who would go back and take Rudy Gay. Why not say Rondo should have been the pick over both Roy and Gay, if we get do overs?
I'm not sure what results he should be measured on, though. He took over a roster that had no NBA talent, and within a few years, had that team winning 54 games. I agree with you 100% about the process, though. A process brings stability, and the great organizations in the NBA have both a process and stability.
For what it is worth, KP gave a tweet out to LA for making the all star team. Something tells me he is still close to players he knew during his Blazers days. Not sure if that means anything, but I think it tends to say he has a good report with athletes.
More than the blame I give him for a team's performance 1.5 seasons after he's been fired. Of the current players on the roster, Pritchard was around for LMA, Camby, Oden, and Batum. I'd argue that those are 4 out of the 5 best players on the team, because when Oden's been healthy, he's been a very good NBA player. Cho brought in Wallace. Since then? It's hard to say who is making the moves, isn't it?
That was one of the criticisms of KP, though. That he was too close to players, and it clouded his judgement on contracts. From a business standpoint, it's a valid concern, IMO. Then again, he traded Blanky and Outlaw, "his guys", to the Clippers for Camby, which has clearly been a great trade for Portland.
The early results were great, but not getting past the first round and the current so-so team with no huge upside (which is obviously not all on Pritchard, as the organization hasn't done much good since) can reasonably be seen as unsuccessful. I think most people would evaluate GM "success" (ultimately, not immediately) as building a contender. Which Pritchard almost did. They were on the verge of it when they lost to the Rockets in the playoffs. If Oden had not continued to get hurt and Roy had remained healthy, I have little doubt that the Blazers would have been long-term contenders.
I don't know the answers to your questions, and I tend to agree with most of what you've posted here. I will point out that part of the reason the team went backwards after he left is because he didn't go a good job of adding players through the draft his last couple of years as Blazers' GM. He might have had his hands tied and been forced to pass on Blair or to draft overseas guys instead of players that could help... I dunno. Ed O.
Good point. I like his rapport with players because I think it attacts more players to want to come to the organization, but it did get him into truble as a GM.
I agree that the process was good, but there's some expectation that some of the moves would pan out, right? I liked his approach GIVEN he was using information and expertise I did not have... which, presumably, he was. It's just that the expertise and information led to a series of wasted picks and wasted millions of dollars. I would love to have someone with a process similar to KP that was able to use better source information or make smarter decisions to get better results. Maybe I'm asking too much, because the NBA is a tough thing to succeed in and many other teams want to do the same thing. Ed O.
I might be drawing a blank, but which players came to Portland because of anything other than money? Ed O.
While I'm generally on PapaG's side in this thread, I think it's unfair not to point out that KP was also responsible for Armon, Babbitt, Claver and Pendy/Dante/Not Blair, which constitutes two of our bottom 5 players, one guy who's never been here (but had two season-ending injuries), one guy who's getting spot minutes in MEM, and one guy who's not in the league (who also has had two major injuries). Granted, you could say those were all guys picked between 16 and 33, but... And I think all 29 other teams (including HOU with Ming and SAS with Duncan) would've picked Oden, and that's what everyone was reporting during the Summer of Honk. Now, MM's point that maybe all the teams didn't see the medical records is valid (I don't know one way or the other) and that if SAS would've seen major knee red flags or whatever they would've gone safe, I don't know. But it's revisionist to say that we gambled and more than a couple of teams wouldn't have taken Oden.
I will say that passing on Blair is probably the most ironic decision in Pritchard's Portland career. He built his team by taking risks, especially on health...yet passed on Blair presumably for health reasons (I don't know for sure that that's why, but it's probably why he, along with essentially every team in basketball, passed on him). Did he feel burned by health risks and went overly cautious? Did Paul Allen feel burned by Pritchard's gambles on health risks and restrict him from that sort of thing? It would be interesting to know what happened with that. Not because it matters greatly (Blair is a nice player and would have been great value in the second round, but he's not a franchise-changer)...just because it clashes so oddly with Pritchard's history up to that point.
Under KP's watch, I don't know (if any). Mainly players would come because of PA's money (although Camby was very active about not being traded and Crawford came here for less money). But I do think having a GM that has good relations to players helps small market teams that can't outbid other clubs. Not trying to say KP did this, just that I think it would help a small market team (Blazers without PA) Personally I think Indy is doing a good job right now . . . how much of that is KP is a good question as he isn't even GM. KP talks a good game. I don't know if it comes across cheesy or sincere to players, but if you don't have the bankroll, hopefully you have a persuasive GM.
Well, some of the moves did work out. Batum worked out as health risk. Aldridge wasn't a health risk, but Pritchard took a risk by trading up for him. I think Pritchard aimed for upside all the time and the expectation should be that a couple would work out (because who drafts four or five stars in a short time)? The main problem is that the two best talents (Oden and Roy) were the ones who succumbed. If they were the ones who panned out, nothing else would matter. I don't know if it's asking too much, but I think it's asking too much in the period of time Pritchard was with the Blazers. It's not like he was a long-term entrenched GM who never bothered to refine his system over a decade. He was around for like 5 years, and it took several years before anything was really known about the results, which is when he could have begun adjusting. He was gone soon after, though. Maybe Indiana will reap the benefits of Pritchard's learning. I'd rather Pritchard had been retained and allowed to work on his process/system/what-have-you here. Because while he had not yet been wildly successful, I still think there aren't many GMs who are likely to be better.
