Two phone joe

Hiring 20 years of Detroit front office trauma

As a fan, I would actually argue the king losing on the margins is the Bulls. It’s like their calling card.

They sell their second round picks bc there’s not value, they leverage their future for mid stars (Vucc, Boozer), fail to ever get returns for expiring contracts/assets, consistently flub picks but do just ok enough to rationalize it, make bad contracts like Patrick Williams or Boozer that don’t destroy your team but make it hard to do much, consistently fail to get the value of their trades, keep coaches for entire seasons longer than they should just because they’re under contract, waste years on “development”, value project players over draft picks so are always swinging for home runs like MCW/OPJ over a solid asset, etc.

Like the Bulls have been a fairly bad team post-Jordan save for one little short Rose/Jimmy era. You can rarely point to one thing they’re doing wrong. It’s the aggregate of all their dumb decisions. There is no one better in the NBA at losing on the margins than the Bulls. We’re a major team & you barely even hear about us because even our mistakes seem underwhelming at first glance .

To think that he once ran DC Assault with Curt Malone a few years after playing just one year of Juco Ball.

One thing I appreciate about Troy Weaver is that there aren’t many rags to riches stories in the NBA front office. He is an excellent scout, but it just sucks that he isn’t quite getting some of the right details in the deals the Pelicans have committed themselves to, so far.

Great swap for us. Trajon to Troy

Kinda how it goes with sports beat writers. It’s just way too easy for a team to limit access for these writers if the team doesn’t like what the writer has to say. Makes it so they have to be very careful in what they publish and how they publish it.

Make Dua for Dua Inshallah

The freedom to do anything critical is decreasing all the time across all of journalism. I was very surprised Pablo Torre was able to do his reporting.

Legitimately feel bad for ya. Ya deserve way better. I’m a Houstonian but I’ve lived in the PNW and 1 ¹⁄₂ years in Louisiana wheeeeen Katrina happened. That saints run was magical. That organization is run well at least back then, I barely follow football. Wish ya were competitive as new Orleans seems like a city that would support the pels more if they were ran with anything above a lukewarm iq

Yep Weaver is a terrible GM. He doesn’t know how to build a team that can win.

To your point, trading pieces like Trey and Herb last year would have made a ton of sense, especially as competing teams are always looking for good players on longer-term manageable contracts.

They both still have multiple years left, so maybe this is the year they get traded, but risking an injury that could drop their value, all while you are absolutely not competing for anything anytime soon, seems like a bad call.

Fans don’t get into seats because they suck ass. Arena had no trouble getting loud as hell in 2022 and the playoffs.

It’s just a Gayle Benson problem. She is likely pretty cash poor which is half of the problem, but she just has negative ball knowledge.

I think she cares and would like to improve the team, but she doesn’t have the funds to start throwing at our problems nor does she have the know how to help us improve in other ways.

This is fine if you are the Saints because we have Mickey Loomis. That is her dream scenario. Someone she can hand the keys to that knows what they’re doing. That is what she hoped Griff would be, and that’s what is probably still hoping Dumars can be.

She just likely isn’t tuned in to any of the discussions going on. She’s not on the internet. She isn’t doing interviews.

She sees Dumars as a Hall of Famer Louisiana native with experience running a team and that checks most of her boxes. She isn’t knowledgeable about basketball in general enough to dig into his track record as an executive previously.

She just needs some people around her that know what they’re doing, and so far that has seemed to be a struggle.

You won a ring this decade you’re not a fucking poverty franchise go away

Hey! You can’t call yourself a poverty franchise if you have a Trophy!

Hey man, if Joe Dumars had to trade Giannis, the picks would have probably been going to Miami too.

You wouldn’t last a day with an actual poverty franchise

Yeah, Griffin tried to be a forward-thinking FO executive.

Fatass Zion, meanwhile, fucked up Aaron Nelson’s career.

Facts

The bad decision wasn’t that bad because they’re bad.

I mean it’s paying a guy $6 million more than he’d get on the open market. He hasn’t been an NBA level player and wouldn’t get more than a minimum (if that) if he were a free agent. And that was true the season before when they picked up that option. But the point isn’t that any one move is egregiously bad, but they are all just little mistakes that add up to real negatives and hurt you.

4th year option for Hawkins is terrible, he’s not an nba level player on your books for 7mil

Jordan Hawkins looks like a make a wish kid out there

The DJ thing not a big deal either. They lose some money but who really cares. A favor for a vet with some pull isn’t that bad

There was room for improvement by firing Griffen, they just hired someone way worse

It was pretty badass when he played the piano for the schedule reveal.

Dolan and MSG had to pay over $11M because Thomas personally created a hostile work environment, including sexual harassment and wrongful termination. Less importantly, the Knicks were largely garbage while he was involved.

Dumars stinks, but Thomas is one of the worst executives in NBA history.

Because its owned by the same team owner as the New Orleans Saints. You can choose not to believe her I guess, but she has said that the team isn’t for sale and also isn’t moving.

This is very similar to what Weaver did in Detroit, and there was no conspiracy at play there. Never subscribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Doesn’t the owner also own the Saints ?

Do you think the old lady who owns the Saints is trying to relocate, or do you think the guy who was bad at running the Pistons is still just bad at running basketball teams?

Found the guy dumber than Dumar and Weavers

Occam’s & Hanlon’s, dingus.

Is this a clanker hallucination? That absolutely did not happen.

The Pelicans have never been the #1 seed in the West

That was before they let go of Griff

What do you mean in regards to the Luka trade?

It’s not Deandre jordan getting an extra 3 million, it’s the pelicans structuring the deal in a way that just pisses 3mm away for their ownership for literally no reason (unless they think DJ is going to be a hot commodity next year.)

The small stuff matters in the NBA

Can you rationalize and defend each decision? Sure if you try hard enough.

But if you were a neutral observer of any team in the league you’d note the same and rightfully question if a team can’t nail the small stuff, can they be expected to nail the big stuff?

Them consistently screwing up the smaller things is the whole point of the thread. If you can’t trust them to be able to win things on the margins, I don’t know why you’d be able to trust them with significant moves either