Bob Whitsett vs. Kevin Pritchard

This is also... almost fair

Patterson does share a huge amount of blame for those dark years. Many stupid decisions were made, but hiring proven GM loser John Nash (reportedly his 3rd choice) might have been the worst. Nash's bumbling mismanagement of the roster and wiffs in the draft led to three progressively worse seasons capped by the worst record in the league in 2005/6. But then of course the club/Patterson decided to allow Nash to pursue other opportunities rather then offer him a new contract. As both President and GM, Patterson presided over the Roy & Aldridge draft. That was a pretty great day for the franchise and one that he deserves a good chunk of credit for. Dude also eventually hired KP to be the new GM...

STOMP

 

Wallace and Stoudamire were only in their 4th pro season (a shortened season, no less) when they reached the WCF in 1999.

 

Problem with KP is that he HASN'T let it bake. Jarret Jack has turned into an exceptional point guard in Toronto but he and the fans just weren't patient enough to let it happen. When Outlaw gets out of L.A. this fall, I'm sure he'll flourish with the right team and in 4 years or so, he could be a veteran playoff assassin that we didn't hold onto. And then there's Frye and Sergio...

 

struggling to make the playoffs is not an accurate way to describe the current situation. portland will almost definitely make the playoffs.

 

implying that pritchard has only had success because he has been lucky to have good draft position isn't really true with all the moves he's made on draft day.

 

That's not really what he said. He said KP hasn't done much for 51 weeks of the year and does all his damage around draft day. Which is mostly true. He's done a fantastic job of jockeying to get the picks he wants, and the guys he's drafted have surpassed expectations at the time in most cases.

For the rest of the year, meh. He did the Miller and Camby deals this year, which I really liked. But he was saved from his own incompetence by failing to land Turkoglu. A pretty mixed and small record.

That said, if I had to pick a GM to be really damned good for one week out of the year, I'd pick the week before the draft. Especially as bad as we were when he came here.

 

Miller > Jack.

 

Whitsitt operated under a different mantra. At that time, the checkbook was completely open. Me thinks he'd have a bit more difficult time managing under Vulcan's current economic model.

 

But PRITCH had Raef LaFrentz EC + all the imaginary cap space cleared from the ZBO trade to work with.

Not to mention CAP GENIUS TOM PENN!!!!

 

Bob Whitsitt set the bar so high it's pointless to try to hold others to that impossible standard.

http://whitsittenterprises.com/

Some quick math will show the comparable win/loss, and playoff records if you want to try, but KP falls not only far, far below Bob, but also quite short of the accomplishments of Bucky Buckwalter, and obviously Stu Inman who built our Championship team.

Both Bob and Bucky were named NBA Executive of the Year.

After building the Sonics team that eventually lost to Chicago in the Finals, Bob inherited a disgruntled and aging Blazers team on it's downslide and turned it around immediately with several trades, reaching the WCF twice a few years later.

Here's the team Bob inherited:

(There is great irony in the bolded part)

1993-94: A Team In Transition
In 1993-94 the Trail Blazers continued their slow decline and their rebuilding for the future. Rod Strickland (17.2 ppg, 9.0 apg) replaced Terry Porter as the starting point guard, and Jerome Kersey gave way to Harvey Grant, who came over from the Washington Bullets in an offseason trade for Kevin Duckworth. Chris Dudley was signed as a free agent to provide rebounding and defense, but an early ankle injury knocked him out for most of the year.

A true indication that the team was in transformation was that Clifford Robinson (20.1 ppg) replaced Clyde Drexler as the club's scoring leader. Robinson also earned his first trip to the NBA All-Star Game. However, a team in transition is rarely a team in ascension, and the Blazers slipped below 50 wins (47-35) for the first time since the 1988-89 campaign. In the playoffs they managed a single first-round win against the Houston Rockets, who went on to win the NBA title.

After the playoff loss Rick Adelman (291-154 with the club) was fired and replaced by P. J. Carlesimo, who had been coaching at Seton Hall University. The 1993-94 NBA Executive of the Year, Bob Whitsitt, stepped down as general manager of the Seattle SuperSonics and moved south to join Portland's front office.

 

Good point. The cake was yanked out of the oven while still too gooey to be frosted, and now we are left with an unappetizing plate destined for the dumper.

As with all previous attempts at rebuilding through the draft, KP/Allen lost their patience and threw it all away. I warned of this when the "rebuild" fire-sales began and, as usual, I was right.

This is by far the softest Blazers team since their inception, and that's saying a lot.

Scrappy indeed!