now that i think about it, he made great trades, great drafts, and good scouting. He got blamed for us losing all of the time, when it wasnt his fault. why was he made out to be the scapegoat?? same with musselman, he was great, but made the scapegoat saying he didnt develop young playrs when monty is worse than he was. at least Muss let pietrus play some, while biedrins is getting NO PT
He wasn't bad, he just wasn't great either at putting together a team or getting a coach who understood half court sets (these can be effective for us when we've kept the same team around for a while like the Sacramento Kings). I'll wait 3 more years until I pass judgement whether St. Jean was better than Mullin. Mullin doesn't seem to be off to a good start I'll tell you that. I can't say if Biedrens is NBA ready. If Dale Davis is owning him in the post in practice, it's not a good sign that he's ready to play. Biedrens probably knows it himself.
Misunderstanding and misfortune. 1st, You can't believe how many fans still believe that Saint drafted Fuller over Kobe or Foyle over McGrady or even made the Webber trade, when his real control started after PJ was fired after 2000 season. But, since he wasn't exactly outspoken or made a lot of noise, casual Warriors fans don't know when he was hired or gained real control, and tend to think that he made all bad moves. Also, although he didn't have a real power, he was hired as a GM after Foyle draft, so that doesn't help his reputation either. 2nd. Injuries. Compare to last few year's injuries, this year's injury was rather tolerable. When it was the worst, we had Jamison... and Porter was our second option. We had so many people injured, we had to get a special permission to sign 10 day contracts + about couple more people in IL. And, we still had like 8 or 9 men on the bench time to time. In his regime, only healthy year was two years ago. 3rd. Draft. Saint did well in terms of draft. However, our position was always worse than our record. I guess best example was when we drafted Dunleavy. When we had worst record and there were two top players in that draft, Yao and Williams. And, we ended up 3rd... 4th. Nuclear waste left by previous regimes. When Twerdzik was out, our best young player was Sprewell, Marshall and Smith. When PJ was out, Spree just choked the coach, and he needed to get rid of it as soon as possible. To make things worse, we were never in the situation to clear caproom to begin with. At the end of his era, he cleared up a lot of salaries and was looking for possible 20 mils caproom this year... Until Mullin ended that mirage. 5th. He never received full support from Cohan. For example, after Mullin officially became a GM, Cohan allowed Mullin to spend 200 mils in this offseason. Also, Cohan made Jamison trade without Saint's approval, and basically was unofficially fired at that point. 6th. Western conference. OK, enough with positives. These are negatives. 1st. Saint failed to create a winning ball club. Saint was good at stockpiling young talents. In a theory, he gathered Arenas at PG, Richardson at SG, Jamison at SF, Murphy at PF, Dampier at center, and in bench, we had Speedy, Boykins, Hughes, Dunleavy, Cardinal, Fortson, Foyle, and few more. Certainly, we can't keep all of them, but those are quite impressive collection. However, he is not West, and he failed to show how to assemble a winning team. Maybe, the team was bound to be a winning team under Saint and Muss, but it was cut before we see the end of it. 2nd, Saint overpaid many players. OK. Bad team has to overpay players to keep it. We see under Saint, Mullin and everywhere. But that doesn't mean those contracts don't take it's toll. Dampier was paid 8.5 mils per year, Foyle was paid 4 mils per year, when he didn't show much. Caffey was paid 5 mils, then he disappeared, Fortson was paid 6 mils, and after great 10+ game or so, he disappeared, and even Jamison was overpaid, even if he was proven 21/7 guy. 3rd, Saint didn't make many positive moves to improve his PR. People want a blockbuster trade, and you see fan made "let's trade 8 team 30 players trade, which bring us Shaq, Duncan and Garnett". Granted that we really never had any asset to make those blockbuster trade, but besides Hughes trade, he never made any eye-opening trade. 4th, no matter the reason, Saint failed to make this club a winner over 3 years. If your boss doesn't trust you, fans are screaming for your neck, and you didn't produce any noteworthy product in 3 years, that's a good reason to be fired, no matter what you really did...
Well, when you do same thing for years, you get good at it . You should have seen my best days of defending Saint against seemingly millions of fans in espn. Ah, those days . Seriously, it's not like I believe Saint is the best thing since the eath cool down. I give him 77 pts for what he did with Warriors. But, it really irritates me to see him getting very short end of the stick just about every time, especially when they blame Saint for something that actually didn't happen. I mean, even now a day, I see people blaming Saint for drafting Smith, Fuller and Foyle, when he wasn't even hired by Warriors then. If Saint did what Mullin did, he would have to flee for his life. Now a day, I don't go full defense mode (and it's not like somebody is pushing my button anyway), but I am more than willing to write down what happened, and that usually do the defense for Saint...
I respect you man, I could do the same with JR and Pietrus. Fisher would be pretty hard though, i can only think of 2 good things about him...
Also Kwan, have you seen the new generations of trolls at Yahoo and ESPN? The yjust piss me off so bad... Custodian and the guys from JBB are the only ones I respect from those places
Well, I never go to Yahoo, so I have no idea in there. Trolls are always thriving in espn, only reason I don't post in espn is because I don't want to go against newwarrior and gswhoop about Mullin, since nothing good ending will come out from doing so...
^Yeah Yahoo has one troll named "Your Team Sucks It" He had a post about how much the Warriors suck. Idiot. I hate trolls
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Kwan1031:</div><div class="quote_post">Well, I never go to Yahoo, so I have no idea in there. Trolls are always thriving in espn, only reason I don't post in espn is because I don't want to go against newwarrior and gswhoop about Mullin, since nothing good ending will come out from doing so...</div> Well I remember Kwan and Wtwalker shed some light on the mysterious Vince Carter for Antwan Jamison swap, which was hard to understand unless you tuned into the Warriors during that time. I remember since Chokegate, it was like "Oh sh-- it's over. This franchise is going to sink to an all new low (which it did and I eventually stopped following for a while until Jrich got drafted in 2001 and ball became more exciting at least)". While I would like to think I was one of the more positive warrior fans, the whole point is, when it looks bad on the Warriors, it usually is bad... so I don't think I'm being negative if I'm calling out the Warriors moves this year based on it looking mediocre on paper and worse in reality. I mean I was positive enough to give Mullin the benefit of the doubt before the season started or before he actually did anything. After those moves... even though I wasn't enthused, I attempted to justify it. "Oh yeah, Foyle could average something Ben Wallace-like" because of his excellent per 48 minute stats in 2002. Tee-Hee!" My Laker Friend at the time, "Dude, Foyle Sucks, your GM is crazy". My other friend standing next to him who is not a Lakers fan, but a Warriors fan <Nods Head>. Doh! I mean you re-sign Foyle for a lot of money for many years and don't even explore potential like what Joel Pryzbilla is doing for Portland and Chris Mihm for the Lakers this year... I'm like... does Mullin know what talent and player value is and what can be gained if they can be traded later because they have demand? I thought those were two of six players of interest we could definitely obtain ifMullin would jump straight for because they're young, big, a little more polished and they've got presence, but man I guess he wasn't as good as I thought. BTW, I read you loud and clear about engaging in head-to-head arguments against some of those guys. Actually, I only disagree with one of those two guys you mentioned. I don't mind disagreements, but things just get out of hand there. Way too out of hand. And then when there's no mods around, you know the rest. You gotta love nfmos, though, because he is always up for the challenge. He signed up for our JBB forum, but there's no enemies in sight.
A couple of summers ago, Kwan posted a great play by play of the St regime. I wish I would've copied it. People look back with 20/20 vision. In reality you had to look at the roster and the circumstances of each move he made. (i.e overpaying Jamison just to change the stigma of the organization after the Sprewell incident). People forget how bad it was in those years.
For years Kwan has laid out the St. Jean "Dynasty" and he's right. He wasn't that bad. Signing Jamison to 86 million dollars was the only option he had. We had no one else worth a damn. If St. Jean signed Fisher and Foyle to those big deals, I really think he would be murdered. After all the grief fans gave him he's probably in the witness protection program now.
I remember Kwan's analysis of the St. Jean Regime. That was a pretty good one. And I think I purposely forgot how bad it was before 2001, because of how terminally ill the team has been since the Sprewell and Webber debacles... There was just tremendous pressure for St. Jean to have turned the franchise around with the time he had there.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting custodianrules2:</div><div class="quote_post">BTW, I read you loud and clear about engaging in head-to-head arguments against some of those guys. Actually, I only disagree with one of those two guys you mentioned. I don't mind disagreements, but things just get out of hand there. Way too out of hand. And then when there's no mods around, you know the rest. You gotta love nfmos, though, because he is always up for the challenge. He signed up for our JBB forum, but there's no enemies in sight.</div> Yeah I havent been able to post as much on this site since its blocked by my work's filtering software So I have to do my daytime posting on the ESPN board, which sometimes leaves me in a bad mood with customers! I guess my thing with our team is that I am really starting to realize that the problem isnt Monty, Muss, Adelman, Cowens, PJ, or any of the coaches we hire. It isnt Webber, Sprewell, Jamison, Fuller, Chris Porter, Vonteego, or even Dunleavy. And it isnt St. Jean or Mullin. These are not/were not causes of our problems, they are only the symptoms. The true cause to me lies directly in the disinterest of our owner in truly fielding a quality franchise. Like I posted earlier in the ESPN forum, I really think that Cohan's only concern with this team is revenues and expenses. Of course its perfectly fine for a owner to make that his priority, but to me it seems that the only reason Cohan even attempts, or pretends, to make the team better is so that he could maintain enough interest to keep filling the Arena. He isnt going to the practices to see how his employees are developing, he doesnt ask questions to determine team morale, he probably just stays up in his office poring over spreadsheets. I remember Arenas saying that the time he met Rowell and Cohan to discuss him staying in Oakland was only the first time he even met Cohan. Im not asking Cohan to be on the court yelling at refs like Cuban, but shouldnt he at least try to get to know his highest paid employees? Sometimes it feels that all the moves this team has made in the last 10 years werent made within some blueprint Cohan has for the franchise, but instead were made to constantly churn some new sort of hope for fans every summer. And because of the lack of direction coming from the top, quality coaches, players, and even GM's have never been given a true opportunity to shine here. Good coaches are only respected if the players know that the coach has basically the final word as far as basketball decisions go. I compare it to the Al Davis situation next door, where the Raiders have gone through years of undisciplined players like James Trapp, Darrell Russell, Phillip Buchannon, etc., mostly because the coaches were never seen as the final word. Players would disrespect the coaches if they were cool with Davis, because they knew who was really in charge. In the Warriors case, even though Cohan is hands off, players have seen that if they complain, coaches get fired. I really dont think players would have come out so publicly against Muss last year if they knew he had the blessings of Cohan, Rowell, and Mullin. Also, GMs need support. How was St Jean supposed to work for someone who was consulting and making trades behind his back, and then leaving St Jean to speak at the press conferences? And players will often times put only as much effort into a team as they see the management putting into it. When they see 9 coaches in 11 years, and no playoffs in 10, how motivated can they really be? Especially when the only coach who actually played whoever it took to try to win every game...was actually canned because he didnt play the younger players enough. Why, as a player, should you leave everything on the floor every single game, when the franchise has determined that they dont want a coach who does that? Argh Argh Just thinking about this team frustrates me so much. The last 2 summers have depressed me so much after finally starting to see some hope. The Jamison trade, losing Arenas, firing Muss...each of these events were like punches to the stomach and I just lost so much trust in our direction with each move. And the fact that we have a rookie GM and his rookie staff, rookie coach, and even some rookie assistant coaches, preaching for us as fans to be patient enough to see our young talent develop in a few years or so....Im sorry if sometimes it just seems a little too much same-ole, same-ole. But...I will try to remain positive about the players, but just remember, whenever Im negative about the players, its not them personally Im mad about, its the circumstances that have led us to place such high expectations on players that probably arent worth them. I dont dislike Dun as a player, I just wish that our starting SF was still Jamison. I dont hate Monty, I just wish that Muss was allowed to at least fulfill his contract. And I dont hate Mully as GM, I just wish St Jean at least got to finish what he started with Jrich/Murphy/Jamison/Arenas before Undercover Cohan started listening more to his "special assistant" than the man actually paid to be the GM.
Nfmos, that's probably a very common relationship that Warrior fans have with their team and their understanding of the organization. I am not a fan of Cohan either, even though there was evidence he wasn't afraid to spend (and that's all he really needs to do) he looks like he interferes with basketball operations. There is definitely not a game plan or a winning philosophy about his organization when he's the most invisible owner in the nba and he hires a lot of boneheads to run the team. I understand the frustration that when we've gone through a change, the change has never proven to be good. So natural instincts tell us it won't be good, especially if it was working better for us than in earlier seasons (Hey, we've missed the playoffs for 11 straight years and we're probably going for the record for most consecutive playoff absences if we haven't broken it yet). There's definitely opposing views of what steps to take since we don't have a solid franchise player which to build from. It's like, If something had been working for us earlier, we might as well just continued course, rather than just undo everything and start over again. The other side is like we know the old team without Arenas wasn't going to work out here in the West, anyway and they needed Arenas to make everyone better (even if it was in a selfish-ballhogging way he has come a long way in impacting the game for the good of the team) so trade Jamison and pray for something good in the free agent market. Whoops that didnt' work!! The biggest problem I have with the warriors is that they don't play any defense, they didn't have a particular game style that free agents would look at and say, "hey I'd like to play for that team", and they never find suitable replacements for players that leave that can play both ends or have some upside to be able to trade with. Such is the nature of an organization that is known for losing and is the lowest valued franchise in the nba.... the proverbial Siberia or 9th hell of the nba. If this continues for the next two years, Richardson our only legit star, will probably want out.
There are a few things about Saint Jean's reign that wasn't very good at all. One, which Custodian mentioned to in another thread is that Saint always drafted the players in the same position into what they already had. For example he brought in players like Murphy when they already had Fortson locked up for many years, who was actually playing well. They drafted Dunleavy when they already had Jamison at the SF. They drafted Pietrus when they had Dunleavy, JRich, and Jamison still on the team. They moved Hughes from the 2 to the 1 to something else, to a trade. And his incapabilities to work with situations like Marc Jackson's contract and that huge thing was another disaster that might not be totally Saint's fault, but still happened under his time here. Add that he was very poor at signing players to decent contracts is another area where Saint showed weaknesses. And after a while it just built up and didn't equate to too much, until the last year or so, where they had some hope, even though they have now ruined all of that and are back to where they were about 5 years ago or so. Maybe Saint wasn't the worst GM, but he had his flaws still. Yeah he brought in some good players, but they were mostly duplicates of what the team already had. And then he would over pay the other players, which also didn't always make too much sense...
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Clif25:</div><div class="quote_post">There are a few things about Saint Jean's reign that wasn't very good at all. One, which Custodian mentioned to in another thread is that Saint always drafted the players in the same position into what they already had. For example he brought in players like Murphy when they already had Fortson locked up for many years, who was actually playing well. They drafted Dunleavy when they already had Jamison at the SF. They drafted Pietrus when they had Dunleavy, JRich, and Jamison still on the team. They moved Hughes from the 2 to the 1 to something else, to a trade. And his incapabilities to work with situations like Marc Jackson's contract and that huge thing was another disaster that might not be totally Saint's fault, but still happened under his time here. Add that he was very poor at signing players to decent contracts is another area where Saint showed weaknesses. And after a while it just built up and didn't equate to too much, until the last year or so, where they had some hope, even though they have now ruined all of that and are back to where they were about 5 years ago or so. Maybe Saint wasn't the worst GM, but he had his flaws still. Yeah he brought in some good players, but they were mostly duplicates of what the team already had. And then he would over pay the other players, which also didn't always make too much sense...</div> Hey Clif! How ya doing? Long time no see? Also St. Jean's biggest problem was choosing between drafting for need or drafting for the best potential player at that draft position. Obviously Troy was a good safe pick for a big man wheras Jrich was supposed to be the risky future all-star player. Arenas was the steal of the draft. He should have been a first rounder. I guess it's hard since not only is the franchise positioned to overpay for it's FA's or not get the best bench players since all the quality FA's go to playoff teams with franchise players, it's been tough to choose between using your picks to find upgrades over your existing guys that could be stars or settle with more role players. It is definitely not easy with a reputation as bad as the Warriors. If it hadn't been for their mediocrity and front office bumbling, their franchise wouldn't have to overpay players to stay, overpay FA's that may not have that much talent, but a winning personality because the team probably might not win a whole lot... What better guys to have on our roster than guys who've already won rings, have always positive attitude, and can mentor your young guys. Oh well that's the mentality.... It definitely sucks. But you gotta like the fact that even though we draft duplicates of the players we have, they are at least players that are going to have considerable value in the future. The w's just never capitalize because they have very little leverage in trades.
