How will KP be remembered in Portland? As a Mega-trader: he traded much more often that Trader Bob. Someone who changed our culture: Jailblazers to Role Model Roy Blazers Big Spender: We bought a lot of picks for cash. Great Talent evaluator: Deft tradesman: He thwarted other teams draft plans on multiple occasions (e.g. Roy, Batum) Mistreated Man: He should not have been let go, especially the way he was. He was fired for non-basketball reasons, and I don't think we'll ever really know why. I don't really feel bad for the guy since I think he'll come out of this better than we will. However, he'll also be the guy whose explicit plan was to stockpile assets and use those assets to make a great trade. Unfortunately, he never made that great consolidation trade we've been waiting for for several years now. Fair or not, he'll also be remembered as a GM who was too in love with his players.
The Culture Changer and Mistreated Man. As someone on the radio said, having him work in the war room today after news of the firing came out made him into a martyr.
As a draft specialist who was very good and developing a quality young base. As a GM who had the ability to surround himself with quality evaluators of talent. He will certainly be looked back on as someone who did a good job. Possibly as someone who put too much emphasis on culture and cake baking.
It really depends on what the players he has drafted, acquired actually do. As of right now we have a talented team, but they have not made a deep playoff run. He could easily go down as the guy that dropped the ball on the Oden pick. I know the whole, 29 other GMs thing, but let's be honest there was only ONE GM that had to make that decision and it was KP. That is really the bottom line on the issue, heck 28 of the GMs had little or no reason to even look into Oden's medical records. They probably couldn't even get access since the Oden camp knew they were either going to Portland or Seattle. Picking LMA was not really that big of a coup, it was the logical safe pick. The Brandon Roy pick was very good, but that seemed like a major pick by committee, and that could very well be the status on the Oden pick as well. Overall though if you look at the players he has picked outside of Roy and LMA it has been pretty bland. Sergio, Rudy, Bayless, Joel Freeland, Omer Asik, Taurean Green, Josh McRoberts, Patty Mills have all been a bit underwhelming, and they cost around 15 to 20 million to obtain and or sign/trade/waive. Now Batum, Dante, and JP are nice picks. Batum clearly being the prize of the bunch. The jury is still way out on Claver & P Kop. The Darius Miles fiasco around the medical retirement might be KPs biggest blunder, he and cap wiz Penn really made a bad situation worse with that move. The Zach Randolph situation might have been dealt with better, but again it is hard to fault KP when he is picking up another persons pile of shit. That said there is hardly a GM worth his salt that doesn't have to clean up a little mess left behind, and perhaps KP could have done better. He should have gotten more for J Jack and the pick than Bayless IMO. I don't know if KP will really have a legacy to be honest, because this team is still going to need a major move to make it to the next level, and we now know that whatever the move it will have nothing to do with KP.
