Quote:
Originally Posted by GQ2003
You guys are funny. So I guess because they were able to take advantage of the ineptitude of franchises like the NY Knicks, the Sacramento Kings, the Phoenix Suns and the Atlanta Hawks that our experienced GM is beyond criticism. How many drafts have the mavs completely bombed while teams like SA, Miami, GS and Toronto find and develop diamonds in the rough while drafting after us more often than not? I guess you were happy with them blowing up the championship team AND passing on the likes of Giannis/Gobert so that we could draft Shane "the next JJ Barea" Larkin and chase after Deron Williams and Dwight Howard? Or wasting away all of Dirk's years after the championship? They get credit for doing what it took to grab Luka and KP but forgive me for not throwing blind trust into a front office that constructed a team that brought the franchise its first title in 30 yrs only to immediately blow it up before they even had a chance to defend it.
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Who exactly said Donnie Nelson was beyond criticism? I've been here almost as long as you- going on 16 years- I've seen no shortage of disdain for the Cuban/Nelson brain trust over the years, for all of the reasons you just mentioned, plus several more.
The general consensus about Donnie Nelson seems to be that he's great at trades, awful at free agency, and average to mediocre at drafting. Specifically, he has a great eye for European talent, but not so much with everyone else, and more importantly that he and Cuban have wasted a lot of potentially good years by not valuing the draft as a whole, and consistently trading away picks for washed up veterans.
In Donnie's 20+ years, I'd probably give him about a B+. There's been a lot of success, but some pretty glaring failures too. The B+ is probably a bit generous, but I'm giving him some leeway because the future looks pretty bright right now.
EDIT: as for passing on Giannis, blame Cuban for that one, not Donnie. Donnie was extremely high on Giannis and lobbied Cuban hard to pick him. Cuban overruled Donnie on that one, and that was a far worse mistake than "blowing up the championship team" as far as I'm concerned.
On that note though, people say the Mavs "blew up the championship team" a lot, but that line has always struck me as slightly revisionist.
Letting Tyson Chandler go =/= "blowing up the championship team." The Mavs kept the 2011 roster largely intact, and indeed, the 2012 roster-on paper at least- was really, really good. If Lamar Odom didn't turn out to be a washed up crackhead, they might well have made a deep run that year. They didn't lose Tyson Chandler and bring back nothing in return. They replaced him with the reigning sixth man of the year, and also added a still very productive Vince Carter. But unfortunately, Odom did turn out to be a washed up crackhead, and it destroyed their season. After that, the team blew itself up because they were old as f***ing dirt.
I'm not saying letting Chandler walk was a good decision. It wasn't. But the "blew up the championship team" thing is a big overstatement.