Prince. Im super intrigued about one of the nbas best defensive teams having their two best defensive smalls team up as coach and gm. You know they will be on the same page for what they believe it takes to win and gather a group of players that better fits their vision.
It sounds like Prince is considered a long shot if considered at all. Eversley (from Nike), seems to be the early leader in the clubhouse, He has a great connection with players around the league and is very tight with DeRozen who is one of Dame's best friends. He is well thought of and people in Chicago don't like the idea that he could go. He is currently in the #2 position for the Bulls (behind Arturo), so this would be a step up for him if he were GM and Pres of Basketball Ops. https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/spo...-be-considered-for-blazers-lead-exec/2699657/
I have nothing to go on but SAR's career as a Blazers executive fucking better be better than his career as a Blazers player. In general, I'm not sure about hiring ex-players. Jerry West: great! But even smart guys like Steve Kerr were shitty GMs. Let the rest of the population, the wanna-be players, have a shot! (I will exempt Shane Battier from this, for very good reasons that I'm not going to share.)
James Jones has been a far better GM than he was Blazers player. I see no parallels and don’t understand how the two different positions equate Sean Marks was a complete scrub, seems like a good GM. Dumars was a good player and good GM
The type that seem to succeed (West aside) are the non-stars. Guys who do all the little things. James Jones was far better for the Blazers than SAR - if you look beyond scoring to impact on winning. Jones was a +/- king. This is why I want to see what Battier can do. (Dumars was good in a very limited window. His assembly of the Sheed Pistons was great, but a lot of his moves before and since (and even during - drafting Darko, for example, one of the all-time terrible picks given the context) make one wonder if that was more luck than judgment.)
I wish I could feel happier about Olshey's firing, given that we've been wishing for it for so long. BUT. He leaves us with a mess. And he wasn't even that terrible. I say he was solidly middle of the pack as a GM, largely because he was super cautious and thus didn't tend to make egregious blunders (sort of the opposite of Trader Bob). We could easily do a lot worse (see Blazer GMs immediately before him), and given the people in charge of choosing, it's not all that unlikely. Why the fuck would we look at people from Chicago and New York? They've got flash-in-the-pan success surrounded by decades of mediocrity. Get me someone from Miami (amazing finders of diamonds-in-the-rough), Utah (the model for small markets, consistently good) or Toronto (league-leading player-development).
The only thing I would quibble with is the "middle of the pack" evaluation. His worst mistakes in free agency involved re-signing his own players. Of course, those were also the only free agent signings he made that weren't minimum wage dumpster diving. His drafting was hit or miss - but he limited the big mistakes by trading the picks away. His trades were also hit or miss, but they never involved top tier players anyway. His payroll management really was that terrible. If you looked at the numbers during his tenure, I have no doubt we would have one of the worst ratios of dollars spent to wins. For the record, I do share your fears about the next hire. An astute organization would have a "do not hire from this team!" list. The words "vulcan" and "astute" are rarely used together in a sentence.
Ainge left his last job due to health concerns. He shouldn't be the leading candidate on any list - including "organ transplant candidate."
If Okafor was 6'3" with the same limited skill set, how many draft picks would Olshey have traded for him? OK, I need to stop dancing on the grave. It is unseemly, undignified, and likely unsanitary.
This could be a new 'screw in the lightbulb' series of jokes: "How many draft picks would Olshey trade to do X"? And the answer is always: "all of them" barfo
Dwight Jaynes is desperate for another old white guy to take the reigns so he can relate to him......sad
