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BRAVEONAWARPATH

By BRAVEONAWARPATH
in The Tailgate

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No Excuses

No Excuses

Posted
Posted (edited)
I can't disagree more with people who say Ernie has sucked in the draft. I hear that bull**** on 106.7 everyday.

If he hasn't sucked, then what has he done? His draft picks: Peter John Ramos, Andray Blatche, Vladmir Veeremenko, Oleksiy Pecherov, Nick Young, Dominic McGuire, Javale McGee, In the Leonsis era: Wall, Booker, Seraphin.

I give him no credit for Wall because a monkey would have made that pick. Seraphin and Booker look to be good prospects but it's too early to crown them.

The rest of his draft picks, none of them are contributors on a winning team. Two are no longer in the NBA. McGuire is an end of the bench player. Blatche has proved incapable of contributing effeciently and having a positive impact on the court, as a back up or as a starter. I'm extremely frustrated with McGee but the book is still out on him. He could turn his career around but if I had to bet money right now, I'd say he'll go down the career path of the likes of Stromile Swift etc. Nick Young is the only player who seems to have finally found a role in this league.

Ernie is an average GM. I don't want to get rid of him for the hell of it. I want him gone because this franchise needs new direction. I'm not a fan of Dumars, especially after the horrendous contracts he gave out and how awful the Pistons rebuilding has been.

I want Kevin Pritchard. Pritchard would work wonders with Leonsis opening the check book. He's an aggressive GM who utilizes modern metric systems to evaluate collegiate and pro talent.

In thinking about it, I wonder how much EG was handcuffed by Abe Polin? Not for nothing but EG has done a GREAT job since Leonsis took ove

It's easy to blame Abe for EG's mistakes (the only one I blame on Abe is Etan Thomas) but then why credit Ernie for any of the good moves? I think it's hypocritical to blame the owner for the poor managing but then give praise to the GM for the good moves. Ernie's biggest blunder has been the trading a top 5 lotto pick for one year rentals of two average NBA players. I understand that Abe wanted to see one last winning season before his death, but he wasn't dictating to Ernie on his death bed to go after Mike Miller and Randy Foye. That was Grunfeld getting bent over on what turned out to be one of the dumbest trades ever. I feel pretty confident in saying that a better GM would have gotten more out of that trade; how Boston turned its #5 pick into a HOF player like Ray Allen and all we got was a draft bust (Randy Foye) and an injured swing man (Mike Miller).

I'll hold off on calling it "great". Under Leonsis, Ernie has been making moves to fix the monster that HE created. Until then, the horrible product we see on the court is the creation of no one but Ernest Grunfeld. I'm not as optimistic as some of you are that Ernie will make the right draft choices, the proper trades and the right FA acquisitions to get this team back to respectability. I also know that Ernie has done a good job of killing the Wizards market appeal to future FA's and current players with the way he sold out Gilbert. Gilbert was an idiot, but I've never seen a franchise cut ties with its superstar the way we did. With Abe's death and no ownership in place, that was Ernie's moment to make better of a situation that got ugly fast. Instead of keeping Gilbert's trade value and image safe, he sold him out, cut ties with him and threw him under the bus in attempts to get out of a contract that he himself signed off on. Word spreads fast in the league and I doubt any superstar would want to sign with a franchise that has a GM who throws players under the bus to save his own image.

Edited by No Excuses
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DCchillin89

DCchillin89

Posted
Posted (edited)

For the Dumars supporters, one word: Darko.

Grunfeld's been better since Ted has taken over. Wall was a no brainer. No one knew about Seraphim, so we bash him, but he has equal the upside as Ibaka and could end up like a Nene type player once he gets some polish. Booker's never going to be a star, but he'll be consistent and that's hard to get at the tail of the first round. If he can be a Maxiell type of guy, occasionally start and be a great 7th man, that's solid.

I just wish we never gave Blache the money. He's a dope and plays pick up basketball. I hope we get either Terrance Jones or Jared Sullenger in the Draft. Nick Young is a scorer, not much else, but he can shoot from wherever, pair him up with a defensive athletic swing man, and we're on to something. Here's to getting more ping pong balls

Future lineups

Wall

Young

Terrance Jones

Blache - Find a Replacement/Booker

Seraphim

Wall

Young

Rashard (until his deal is up)/Blache

Sullenger

Seraphim

---------- Post added March-3rd-2011 at 03:51 PM ----------

I agree with Vishal and on the whole, Ernie has done a below average job with trades (the 5 for foye and miller, trading caron, deshawn, brandon and antawn for no young parts), signings (Gil's horrendous contract, blache) and drafting (Pecherov instead of Rondo, can't really blame him for blache. He's still around and that's good for a second rounder). Those are the 3 main criteria for a GM and he hasn't done well in any category. His best move was Wall and any of us could've done that.

I'd want Pritchard. Portland was dumb to get rid of him

Edited by DCchillin89
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RonArtest15

RonArtest15

Posted
Posted
If he hasn't sucked, then what has he done? His draft picks: Peter John Ramos, Andray Blatche, Vladmir Veeremenko, Oleksiy Pecherov, Nick Young, Dominic McGuire, Javale McGee, In the Leonsis era: Wall, Booker, Seraphin.

I give him no credit for Wall because a monkey would have made that pick. Seraphin and Booker look to be good prospects but it's too early to crown them.

The rest of his draft picks, none of them are contributors on a winning team. Two are no longer in the NBA. McGuire is an end of the bench player. Blatche has proved incapable of contributing effeciently and having a positive impact on the court, as a back up or as a starter. I'm extremely frustrated with McGee but the book is still out on him. He could turn his career around but if I had to bet money right now, I'd say he'll go down the career path of the likes of Stromile Swift etc. Nick Young is the only player who seems to have finally found a role in this league.

Ernie is an average GM. I don't want to get rid of him for the hell of it. I want him gone because this franchise needs new direction. I'm not a fan of Dumars, especially after the horrendous contracts he gave out and how awful the Pistons rebuilding has been.

I want Kevin Pritchard. Pritchard would work wonders with Leonsis opening the check book. He's an aggressive GM who utilizes modern metric systems to evaluate collegiate and pro talent.

It's easy to blame Abe for EG's mistakes (the only one I blame on Abe is Etan Thomas) but then why credit Ernie for any of the good moves? I think it's hypocritical to blame the owner for the poor managing but then give praise to the GM for the good moves. Ernie's biggest blunder has been the trading a top 5 lotto pick for one year rentals of two average NBA players. I understand that Abe wanted to see one last winning season before his death, but he wasn't dictating to Ernie on his death bed to go after Mike Miller and Randy Foye. That was Grunfeld getting bent over on what turned out to be one of the dumbest trades ever. I feel pretty confident in saying that a better GM would have gotten more out of that trade; how Boston turned its #5 pick into a HOF player like Ray Allen and all we got was a draft bust (Randy Foye) and an injured swing man (Mike Miller).

I'll hold off on calling it "great". Under Leonsis, Ernie has been making moves to fix the monster that HE created. Until then, the horrible product we see on the court is the creation of no one but Ernest Grunfeld. I'm not as optimistic as some of you are that Ernie will make the right draft choices, the proper trades and the right FA acquisitions to get this team back to respectability. I also know that Ernie has done a good job of killing the Wizards market appeal to future FA's and current players with the way he sold out Gilbert. Gilbert was an idiot, but I've never seen a franchise cut ties with its superstar the way we did. With Abe's death and no ownership in place, that was Ernie's moment to make better of a situation that got ugly fast. Instead of keeping Gilbert's trade value and image safe, he sold him out, cut ties with him and threw him under the bus in attempts to get out of a contract that he himself signed off on. Word spreads fast in the league and I doubt any superstar would want to sign with a franchise that has a GM who throws players under the bus to save his own image.

I agree with most of what you said...but what I was getting at was that since Abe's passing, EG has done a great job with the roster. He's shed salaries and added some intriguing young talent. Now, none of us know exactly what went on behind the scenes when Abe was around. This is why I was wondering about EG being handcuffed during the Polin days. We had opportunites to add depth to the roster in the 2nd round in the previous couple of seasons (Blair, Walker) but either passed on the player in favor of someone else, who's rights were then sold. I'd like to think those moves weren't so much Grunfeld, but rather the Polin's trying to save a couple of dollars...but who knows?

Honestly, as much of a mess as Gilbert was....I don't think that superstars would think twice about about signing here if the money is right despite what Grufeld did to save face. At the end of the day it's about the dollar. There have been PLENTY of terrible GMs/Owners in the course of the NBA's history who haven't had problems luring FAs to their cities. Again, if the money is right a lot of people can put aside some of their feelings just in order to get paid.

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No Excuses

No Excuses

Posted
Posted
I agree with most of what you said...but what I was getting at was that since Abe's passing, EG has done a great job with the roster. He's shed salaries and added some intriguing young talent. Now, none of us know exactly what went on behind the scenes when Abe was around. This is why I was wondering about EG being handcuffed during the Polin days. We had opportunites to add depth to the roster in the 2nd round in the previous couple of seasons (Blair, Walker) but either passed on the player in favor of someone else, who's rights were then sold. I'd like to think those moves weren't so much Grunfeld, but rather the Polin's trying to save a couple of dollars...but who knows?

The 2nd round pick stuff was interesting. The year we sold our pick (the Blair draft), I agree with you. I was furious at the ownership for being cheap and selling that pick. But a few weeks later we sign Fabricio Oberto. This made me think.

By drafting Blair, we would have had to pay him around 360k and 2nd round picks get non guaranteed contracts so there was no downside. If his knees were a lost cause, we could have simply cut him without any financial loss. But we turned around and signed Oberto to a one year contract around 850k. So we obviously were not being financially stingy.

That's not ownership cutting costs. That's piss poor management by Grunfeld.

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Going Commando

Going Commando

Posted
Posted

That's sad news.

There's also been a lot of losing recently. This is kind of the nadir of the season for us. Time for a distracting hypothetical:

If you all could go back to 2009 and un-trade the 5th overall pick, what would you all do with it? Use the benefit of hindsight as well as the knowledge that we get John Wall in 2010.

I'd spend it on either DeMar DeRozan or Stephen Curry. I can't decide which right now. I can see a compelling case made for either.

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Gator Bait

Gator Bait

Posted
Posted

On a related note, if Ernie does end up being fired, how about Dumars as his replacement? There's a possibility he's gone when new ownership takes over in Detroit.

I'm shocked to see you say that. Dumars dismantled a perinatal playoff team and contender (traded away Billups) so he could use the cap space to overpay for Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva.....has to be the worst series of moves I've ever seen by an NBA GM.

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Gator Bait

Gator Bait

Posted
Posted (edited)
If he hasn't sucked, then what has he done? His draft picks: Peter John Ramos, Andray Blatche, Vladmir Veeremenko, Oleksiy Pecherov, Nick Young, Dominic McGuire, Javale McGee, In the Leonsis era: Wall, Booker, Seraphin.

I give him no credit for Wall because a monkey would have made that pick. Seraphin and Booker look to be good prospects but it's too early to crown them.

The rest of his draft picks, none of them are contributors on a winning team. Two are no longer in the NBA. McGuire is an end of the bench player. Blatche has proved incapable of contributing effeciently and having a positive impact on the court, as a back up or as a starter. I'm extremely frustrated with McGee but the book is still out on him. He could turn his career around but if I had to bet money right now, I'd say he'll go down the career path of the likes of Stromile Swift etc. Nick Young is the only player who seems to have finally found a role in this league.

.

SERIOUSLY??? really? be real man.

You call out Ernie for drafter Party Peter John, Blatche, and Dmac? How often does a second round pan out? The whole draft is pretty much the luck of the draw in the NBA.....very rarely are there "sure things" like LeBron, Dhoward etc....

players bust all the time. All three guys listed above were 2nd round picks....and even though everyone hates on Blatche, he has to be considered a success as a 2nd round pick. I think people treat him as if he were a lottery pick or something.

Nick Young was never really given much of a change in the past....he is actually looking like a success now that he has actually been given consistent minutes every night. Booker and Seraphin are too early to judge, but they are both showing promise.

Wall was not the clear cut number one of the draft as you said he was....there were many fans and analyst that had Evan Turner going #1 overall. This draft was much like Durrant/Oden and Rose/Beasley.....Ernie didn't make the mistake Portland made.

---------- Post added March-5th-2011 at 10:39 PM ----------

Well, MJ wasn't so hot nor McHale.

as stated in the book of basketball by Bill Simmons....star NBA players always make really ****ty GMs...add zeek to that list as well. McHale was probably the worst of all time...MJ was also very bad. Dumars made his best attempt to follow with that free agent class two years ago.

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No Excuses

No Excuses

Posted
Posted (edited)
SERIOUSLY??? really? be real man.

You call out Ernie for drafter Party Peter John, Blatche, and Dmac? How often does a second round pan out? The whole draft is pretty much the luck of the draw in the NBA.....very rarely are there "sure things" like LeBron, Dhoward etc....

players bust all the time. All three guys listed above were 2nd round picks....and even though everyone hates on Blatche, he has to be considered a success as a 2nd round pick. I think people treat him as if he were a lottery pick or something.

Nick Young was never really given much of a change in the past....he is actually looking like a success now that he has actually been given consistent minutes every night. Booker and Seraphin are too early to judge, but they are both showing promise.

Wall was not the clear cut number one of the draft as you said he was....there were many fans and analyst that had Evan Turner going #1 overall. This draft was much like Durrant/Oden and Rose/Beasley.....Ernie didn't make the mistake Portland made.

I'm calling him out for being a piss poor drafter, no matter where he drafts. Quality teams find talent in the 2nd round. Who the hell said you find Dwight Howard in the 2nd round? You know who you find though? Guys like Paul Milsap and Glenn Davis. Quality role players. Blatche is not a success by any means. He is a guy who has been given repeated chances to prove himself. Two contract extensions, based purely on potential. He has never posted an efficient season on the court.

Out of a grand total of 6-7 seasons he's had one good stretch of 30 or so games, even in those he wasn't world beating, but rather just showing glimpses of possibilities. Just the way Mike Shanahan said last offseason, rather cut a draft pick who sucks than continue to put up with their crap despite poor performance (in Dray's case, he's an idiot on the court and off the court). So far in his career with the Wizards, he's gotten shot while clubbing, gotten in a fight with his teammate off the court, gotten arrested for soliciting prostitutes and gone broke to the point he had to sleep inside Verizon Center. Yeah great success ...

Again, Nick Young is the only good draft pick he's ever had. No one else. His draft record is absolute garbage. He picks low IQ players with untapped talent and sucks fans into thinking he's doing some kind of a marvelous job. What separates the good franchises from the average to bad ones is the management. It's comical watching people defend Ernie's drafting by saying the NBA is a crap shoot. Such a crap shoot that in his 6+ years as a GM of this team, he's only drafted one player who shows the ability to produce positively on the court (Nick Young).

Your comment about the Wall/Evans thing is a complete distortion of what happened. Everyone and their mother knew on the night we won the lottery that Wall was DC bound. Hardly any draft site, analyst etc. had Evans rated over Wall. You want to pat the guy on the back for making a pick that anyone with a brain would have made? :ols:

Edited by No Excuses
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Warhead36

Warhead36

Posted
Posted

Grunfeld has been hit or miss, but is there anyone out there we could get that would be better for sure? Sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. This isn't like the Skins with Vinny Cerrato who absolutely had to go.

Here are some of the good things Ernie has done:

-Signed Gilbert Arenas in 2003 before he exploded(although negated by resigning him to that monster deal after injuries)

-Resign Brendan Haywood for dirt cheap

-Trade Kwame Brown for Caron Butler, who gave us a couple All-Star seasons

-NOT give big $ to Larry Hughes and Jared Jeffries, who turned out to be busts and not anywhere near worth the $ they got

-Nick Young, Javale McGee, and Andray Blatche have all been good draft picks based on where they were taken(mid 1st in Young and McGee's case, and 2nd round in Blatche's)

-Acquire Kirk Hinrich for basically nothing, and then flip him for more young prospects/picks

-Unload Jamison and Butler for cap relief

-Got rid of Arenas(Shard's contract isn't great either but at least it expires earlier and I believe pays less year to year)

Sure he has made some mistakes, but we have new ownership now, and EG has done a great job in completely rebuilding this team since Leonsis has taken over. I don't think EG should get fired just yet, I think Leonsis will give him a chance to build the team the way he wants it built(with mostly draft picks and young homegrown guys, aka the Caps model). We probably should have fired Flip Saunders last year though, he's not the type of guy you want coaching a young and rebuilding franchise.

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ACW

ACW

Posted
Posted

Don't forget getting rid of Quinton Ross (who?) for Yi and $3 million (Yi hasn't done much, but that cash...).

---------- Post added March-6th-2011 at 05:21 AM ----------

I had to look it up: Zeek=Isiah Thomas?

Oh, and we won a game :)

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No Excuses

No Excuses

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Posted (edited)

You guys can get happy by Ernie's mediocre moves and call him "great" for building teams that were barely .500. When he builds another sub .500 team, I'll sit here and continue to laugh as people once again call him "great".

What a marvelous rebuild he's leading. This team with all the players he's brought in, all the great draft picks he's had and all the wonderful trades like Yi he's made is 4 games better than the Cleveland Cavaliers who lost 29 games in a row. I'd imagine with all the young talent he's drafted in the past that has now been in the league for 3+ years, we at least would see some sort of winning. :ols:

The guy's draft record rivals that off Vinny Cerrato. He's had one draft pick turn out to be a solid NBA player but somehow fans are content with that. :ols:

His free agent signings have been so awful that we struggled to dump them off and eventually had to wait till they were expirings. Continually picks high potential, low IQ players who are somehow supposed to be "good picks". Newsflash: every player drafted at every spot in the draft has some sort of potential. Ernie isn't doing something novel that some other GM can't do.

With the way you guys tout his moves, I'd think we had R.C Buford as the GM. A guy who can't draft, over pays in free agency for mediocre talent and at best his teams peaked at a couple of games over .500 is the guy you want leading the rebuild? Fine, go right ahead. I don't doubt that with Ernie at the helm we won't become a playoff team. I doubt that under him we will never have a team that is capable of contending and that is not the person I want in charge for this process.

Most of all, the guy is a weasel who saved his tail last season by dumping the franchises problems onto Gilbert. Gilbert getting in trouble was the best thing that could have happened to Ernie because this team was complete trash before gun gate. For some reason, people get this idea that we failed last year due to Gilbert's stupidity. The reality is that last years team was supposed to be Ernie's brain child, his best product as a general manger. Before gun gate, our team was playing like **** and the stupid trade he made over the offseason was beginning to look like a massive failure. Gun gate allowed him to wipe everything clean. Believe me, if Gilbert never gets in trouble, that team would have never been broken up at the trade deadline. Ernie should have been called out for building a colossal of a failure but now everybody is happy with his "great" rebuild. :doh:

That team last year before Gilbert's incident was supposed to be what Ernie envisioned as a contender. I'll leave this as my last post ever about Grunfeld. No point in circular debates, we'll see what happens over the course of the next few years.

Edited by No Excuses
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