If there is one thing I wish Olshey did, it would be picking Kyle O'Quinn over Will Barton in the 2nd round but that's small potatoes. I don't mean to derail but Olshey is a damn good GM... Let's not forget two days before he got fired KP traded Martell Webster for the 16th pick and took Luke Babbitt (Could've had Seraphin or Bledsoe)... Then proceeded to take Elliot Williams at 22 and Armon Johnson at 34, passing up on guys like Pondexter and Stephenson who are still contributors in the NBA. That was 2010... 2011 shit on 2010 even because Rich Cho and Co. sucked ass... Because we fucking traded Andre Miller for Felton and took Nolan Fucking Smith over guys like KENNETH FARIED, NIKOLA MIROTIC, REGGIE JACKSON and JIMMY FUCKING BUTLER(Jimmy may have been a stretch but still...!)! Oh, then.. We took Jon Diebler over Isaiah Thomas... We fucked 2011 up BAD. Olshey has been a breath of fresh air.
Listing CJ and Meyers as a con? They finished the season really strong and had tremendous playoff performances.
BUT WE DRAFTED MEYERS (11) OVER DRAYMOND (35)!!!!!!!!!!! AND CJ (10) OVER GIANNIS (15) AND GOBERT (27)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HORRIBLE PICKS!!!!
I think he's been brilliant. He's used what he had available to fill the team's needs, and without hindsight, I don't see he could have been better. He's not afraid to trade. I don't dislike a single move he's made. Afflallo was an outright score. His draft picks have been quite good. It takes time to develop young guys into solid rotation guys, especially when you have a solid starting 5 and are in the hunt. The mix of vets and young rising stars is to be expected. Bulls GM won exec of the year, then drafted Marquis Teague over Draymond Green, even though his coach and assistants wanted Green. He was actually on their radar. Drafting in the mid to late first round is what you get for winning basketball games.
Things kind of magically came together for T-Bob since he got Wallace for old man Strickland, got Rider for scraps, got Sabonis to come over, and we went from crap to contender.
No I knew Lillard should be 6th and wanted to trade our pick and a player for the team before Detroit for him.
I think you can choose any pick in any draft by any team and say with hindsight's lens, "BUT they could've drafted this guy instead!" So I don't read a ton into that unless it was an out of nowhere pick when there's an obvious NBA-ready player there. Gobert wasn't overly hyped, Antetokounmpo has a lot of potential, but so has Batum for the past 7 years. I also don't think anyone was seriously considering Draymond Green as a DMVP player coming out of college. I also think Meyers is a pro (and I have been one of his BIGGEST haters in the past), and McCollum is still TBD (same as Antetkounmpo), but we've seen him put things together for small strings of games. Also think T-Rob isn't really a con, we didn't lose much in that process and he was a good energy guy who was solid at rebounding (both from PF and C), but he just wasn't the right fit with our team having wanted to contend in the very near future. You can't do a ton of player development when that player isn't gonna get chances in games. Also think Will the Thrill was a fun entertaining player, but we put on homer goggles with him very often because of that. He's not realistically going to be a great starter, but is a good chaos-bringer off the bench. Not trying to be overly-critical, but just pointing out some thoughts. I actually really like this thread idea and interested to see people's responses. It's interesting to look at stuff like this too because oftentimes injuries can't be expected, but when they do happen can completely implode whatever plan was in motion. We look at our team from this last year, and the way the team, specifically the starting line up meshed together was incredibly. Yeah, we needed a bit more bench production as usual but Blake, McCollum, Wright, Freeland, Leonard, and Kaman gave us a lot of different looks and abilities, even if just for spurts. Take Wes out of the equation and our starting line-up all of a sudden doesn't work as well together, the energy goes down, the rotation gets messed up, and we sputter toward the end of the season and even in the playoffs. Is that Olshey's fault? To some degree, it's his job to put a team together that can overcome injuries and have production in various forms, but I also think the cohesion of that starting line-up and the incredible fit allowed them to be significantly better collectively than just the sum of their individual parts. That's not to mention the heart and hustle that Wes played with was sorely missed, and the contagiousness of him being the catalyst for those attributes bleeding onto other players was something I think we all underestimated a bit (including myself, who can confidently say Wes has been my favorite player to watch and root for the last couple years). So, anyway, sometimes it's hard to predict how much a situation will impact the team, and those are difficult scenarios to plan for how to come back from.
Here we are, 3-4 weeks before Olshey's legacy is settled either for good or bad, and this thread runs NOW?
I'm not as high on Olshey as the rest of you. I think he has played it safe for the most part and done things more from a default perspective as general manager and to me has shown very little risk and creativity any one of his off seasons. One thing I thought he brought was a stable force to the team which helped with chemistry but that was anything but visible last year. This team had a lot of problems for supposedly liking each other. I think he is way overrated by many of you. No offense of course.
Off of reports? I think I read that he is close to one of them...Alonzo Gee which shocked me. I just don't think it' as good as reported. These guys should be giving up themselves for each other.
I know that's not true because he's close to dorell wright and wesley Matthews and that's just off the top of my head.
