Posted by fishmike:
Posted by TMS:
that's true, he's not responsible for Pau Gasol, but tell me who else you'd prefer to go after to replace Isiah, fish... at least West has a championship pedigree as an NBA GM.
& please don't say Kiki Vandeweghe. 
Dude.. I would LOOOOOVE Wesst to be GM here. I still think he's a great GM. My point is West as made moves that havent worked out, but I cant say any of them are actually bad moves. Also I applaud that after 3 playoff sweeps he recognized a need to go in a different direction, even knowing it would cost them wins.
I'm trying to just point out there is a difference between moves that dont work out, and bad moves. West hasnt done a good job because his moves have not worked in Memphis. Isiah has done a BAD job because he's made BAD moves.
you mentioned what West had to work with when he got there. Isiah had zilch, including the benefit to sit back and wait for cap room and use of draft picks. He's acquired a nice young, deep nucleus of 26 and under guys like QRich, Curry, DLee, Jefferies, Frye, Balkman, Crawford, Nate.
The only real missteps were Marbury and Francis and Brown - and those are huge misteps, but I think the Marbury one was a function of Dolan demanding he make the playoffs in year one. And the Francis deal was part of trying to work with Brown, which is the biggest, least forgiveable mistake. Isiah's main problem has been working with coaches. And maybe he just needs to be the coach, maybe he's too hands-on to sit back and let someone else coach his roster. He clearly has a vision as far as how to play and Brown didn't agree with it at all, Herb did a decent job at it, without getting wins (remember how Tim Thomas' and Mo Taylor's number sky-rocketed with Herb? he was running a lot of the same post stuff for those guys that is being run for Curry), Lenny had a different system that worked pretty well, but he also had a totally different team.
Again, for the questionable moves, at the end of the day we have a promising young nucleus - including a legit front line. Our backcourt leaves things to be desired, but most of that is Marbury and Francis looking a lot older than they are the last year or so.
12/11/2006 2:25 PM
