Source: Yahoo Sports How do you feel about his overall body of work as GM of this team? Where do you rank him All-Time for Warrior GMs? Will Nellie be next to leave?
Really sad the treatment Mullin got. I remember him fondly as a player. I also remember when he first came into the front office to be groomed by Garry St. Jean (?). People wondered if he could do the job. Well getting the Warriors back to relevance and into the spotlight with the "We Believe" team is all you have to bring up to know that Mully did a great job. Was it all him? Probably not but he was the person in charge so he gets most of the credit. Now look at the team, a shambles. Whereas people around the league respected and wanted to have the energy that the Warriors had in 2007, now the Warriors are simply bad. That's Rowell's/Nellie's fault. A sad day for the Warriors.
We all knew this was coming, but it doesn't change the feeling somehow. I don't think Mully will have trouble securing another job. Maybe when he cleans things up somewhere else, Cohan will finally get it. Sad day to be a Warrior Fan. I think we should take out a full page advert thanking Mullin for his time, the same way JRich did for the fans the year they missed the playoffs by 1 game.
Here's a list of his moves, sorted by good and bad, that Marcus Thompson published back at the beginning of the season: http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_12128963 Add to that these other moves from last offseason: Good- Signing Ronny Turiaf, discovering Anthony Morrow (I don't know if I really think that was Mullin as much as it was Morrow lighting it up from Summer League through training camp and securing a spot on the roster, Mullin did actually sign him and even better got usa team option for the second year which turns out to be awesome PLUS he'll be restricted after next season so we can match), re-signed Monta to flat-rate 11 mil a year contract, re-signed Beans to flat-rate 9 mil a year contract (with incentives). Bad: signing Mags to his current contract, trading Harrington for Craw (do you guys think this is bad? neutral? maybe even a good move?) Based on that body of work its really hard to judge this. I'm really not that upset that hes leaving but I have had like 9 months to cope with this since we all knew it was happening at the start of last season. On the one hand he did get us Baron, Jack, Monta, Biedrins, Randolph, Beli, Wright, Turiaf, Azu, Barnes, Morrow. One could argue that guys like Barnes, Azu, and Morrow were products of Nellie's system than they were Mullin's genius though. On the other hand, he COMPLETELY whiffed on the Diogu and POB picks and gave away antoher 1st in the Marcus Williams deal.. Hes given out a lot of crappy contracts and seemed to be getting better but then he tried to re-up Baron and then did actually sign MAgs to a crappy contract. I will say this; I take Rowell's side on both of the issues that he overruled Mullin on this summer- declining Baron's contract and punishing Monta. We dodged a bullet by not re-signing Baron. Dude was HORRIBLE for LAC. Some argue that he would have kept his act together here but I find it hard to believe. He really only kept it together health and effort-wise the year and a half or so prior to his contract ending. Not a coincidence. Thanks for the memories BD but no way in hell am I giving you a 5 year contract because you're flat out lazy and I can't trust you to keep yourself in shape. As for Monta, I agree with Rowell punishing him. We sent a message to him and the team that you can't do whatever you want and get away with it AND that no one is above the team. Plus with the economy in the shits and a lot of NBA teams struggling financially I'll bet that few million we saved was a good thing for the organization, Monta shouldn't get paid for an injury he sustained when violating his contract. Overall, Mullin seems to be able to find a lot of nice talent but he also makes a pretty good amount of really bad decisions, especially when it comes to negotiating contracts. He is often attributed as being a guy who is close to the players and a "player's GM" of sorts. I think this can hurt him though when hes negotiating contracts or doling out punishments. Hes just not shrewd enough and it hurts his team financially.
As for Larry Riley, here's his draft history: As director of player personnel for the Vancouver Grizzlies from 1994-2000: 1995: #6 overall pick- Bryant Reeves 1996: #3 overall pick- Shareef Abdul Raheem #22 overall pick- Roy Rodgers 1997: #4 overall pick- Antonio Daniels 1998: #2 overall pick- Mike Bibby 1999: #2 overall pick- Steve Francis I have no idea if he was involved with drafting in 2000 because his last season with Vancouver was 99-00 but they picked Stromile Swift #1 overall. Seems like a pretty decent group of picks. He got a lot of good players for the Grizz, their team always really sucked though (not surprising I suppose from an expansion team. He also did some college scouting for the Bucks from 88-89 to 93-94.
This is just total BS treatment of Mully. This one just pisses me off every time I read it (and I am over it, but still...): "Mullin and Davis were thought to be close to a contract extension before Rowell vetoed it." It's not that I disapprove of the move; I actually think it was in the best interest of the franchise to not sign Baron to a long-term extension at the time (but this was assuming he would play out his contract and not opt out). What really pisses me off is Rowell signing Maggette and Sjax.
I don't think you put Maggette on Mully. As for whiffing on picks, everyone does it. Dumars on 'Melo and he's still hailed as a great GM. West has even had his moments. Looking at where the W's were before, during, and now?
Seriously? That list looks pretty bad to me. I'm not sure who else was in those drafts off the top of my head but the only 2 picks who I'd consider pretty good were Shareef and Francis. A #6 on a C who was out of the league in a couple years, and 3 consecutive top 4 picks on combo guards, or maybe I should call them shoot first PGs. I'll be pissed if the next few Warrior drafts look like that.
Francis was a horrible pick in that draft (#2 overall????), not to mention that he stated that he did not want to play with the Grizz... Look at that draft, and tell me that he made a good pick Riley's a joke. Mully was aggresive Sure, but he proved time and time again that he could clean up his mess when he was off. The Warriors have missed the playoffs every year except 1 since Cohan took over. The one guy that was in charge of decisions that were not one of Cohan's crew that lead to the playoff birth was Mully. 1999 Draft Elton Brand Steve Francis Baron Davis Lamar Odom Jonathan Bender Wally Szczerbiak Richard Hamilton Andre Miller Shawn Marion Jason Terry Trajan Langdon Aleksandar Radojević Corey Maggette William Avery Frédéric Weis Ron Artest Cal Bowdler James Posey Quincy Lewis Dion Glover Jeff Foster Kenny Thomas Devean George Andrei Kirilenko
I'm not that into blaming GMs for who they didn't draft. If you wanna play that card you can blame Mully for missing out on Al Jeff, Josh Smith, Kevin Martin instead of Biedrins. We still ended up with a good player though. Then we passed on Bynum, Granger, Nate Robinson, David Lee, Jason Maxiel, Brandon Bass, Turiaf but instead we got Ike who is horrible. There's a ton more guys from that class who are at least contributing too, meanwhile Ike is close to being out of the league. Then we took POB over Rondo, Millsap, Powe, R. Brewer, Kyle Lowry, Craig Smith. Riley drafted a 3 time all-star in Francis. Big Country had a couple of 16/8 seasons early in his career before he ate himself out of the league, Mike Bibby should have been an all star a few times and was huge in Sacramento's great teams, SAR was an all-star and had 7 straight seasons of consistent 20/9 production. The Antonio Daniels pick looks bad at #4 but besides McGrady the picks that followed were also horrible (note that we also passed on T-Mac for Foyle lol). He actually drafted guys who were good players in the league, all-stars, legit starters. Thats a hell of al ot more thna we were able to do with similar picks in the 90s. Mully was hit and miss with his drafts. He got us some very good players but he also drafted two guys who are on the brink of not even being in the league anymore (POB couldn't even get through his rookie contract!). The jury is still out on guys like Beans, Monta, Randolph. I'm glad he got them but they're not guaranteed to be all-stars or anything no matter how high we are on them (remember how high we were during the rookie-soph game with Arenas, JR, and Murphy?).
Riley's picks were horrible . I'm sure there were better picks, but he's Don Nelson's right hand man. He will be taking directions from Nelson in Maui on who to pick. Nelson has a better track record, in terms of picks, but he ends up dealing the picks away because he can't wait. If that's not bad enough, then there's Rowell who'll want to get his two cents in. Eventually, he and Nelson will have a falling out just like he did with Mullin. Maybe we'll get lucky and the Warriors will move just like the Grizzlies did from Vancouver and we get another team. I've miss Mullin already and have missed him since last season.
Basically this is how I felt about the Mullin era. The guy whiffed bigtime with free agency, signing players and especially re-signing players, but did a good job with his connections in the league to accomplish good trades and did an above average job in the draft. Money, and handling it, was his worst weakness because he probably felt close to the players and wanted to reward them rather than be just their business acquaintance while paying them. No doubt he deserved better than what happened to him, though, because he took good risks that others would not have been willing to take, and at least got us to the playoffs, even if it was just a sniff of it. As for Riley, he's stuck in a poor position between Rowell and Nelson. It'll be hard to accurately gauge how well or poorly he does because there's always going to be someone else to blame. There are alot more qualified candidates, but he's probably a "safe" choice, and the front office should be stocked with many intelligent basketball people, although you want the GM to be at least smart enough to listen to those people and to make the final call. (Though again, with Rowell, is he really making the final call?) The worst GM's right now are probably Mike Dunleavy or Chris Wallace (trying to be objective about their signing histories and luck), but some GM's that people thought were horrible were able to redeem themselves simply through the help of one draft pick or free agent that led them to victory. The Clippers and the Grizzlies (along with us) are considered having the worst owners in the NBA, which speaks to other factors that hinder us. The point I'm trying to make is that sometimes it depends a bit on luck, or the owners, or the situation, no matter how skilled a GM is, to break through a certain point.
Mullin turned out be getting better and better, but for every good trade or good draft he did, he seemed to undo everything with his horrible free agent signings. He gave guys like Foyle, Fisher, Dunleavy, Murphy way too much money.
The part I have to agree with you guys about Mullin is the money part. He was horrible with his re-signings and long-term contracts. Also, I agreed with Rowell about punishing Monta. Mullin needed to get that in order to improve his being a GM and improve his ability to work out better contracts. Still, I judge the man for his results which was get us to the playoffs and then just miss it. He also got us under the cap, too.
Maybe it's because it's pointless to criticize Mullin now that he's gone, but I can't find one journalist that supports Rowell or Cohan. They all support Mullin, despite most admitting to him making several dumb moves. I did like that article, too.
Yes. It makes me want to burn Cohan, Rowell, and Nelson in effigy. (Still, Mullin was terrible when it came to the money and needed to improve in that area.)
Yes, I am biased, but I have a hard time clumping Nellie in with Cohan and Rowell. Nellie is just an employee, from my point of view. Yes, he probably has influence over front office basketball decisions, but he's not the one that ousted Mullin.
