Quote:
Originally Posted by fredr123
Recently, ESPN's The Sports Guy has been making a push to be considered for the open General Manager position with the Minnesota Timberwolves. He's been talking about it a lot this week on his podcast and has been interviewed by a number of other sites as well.
If memory serves, he made a similar albeit less enthusiastic pitch to be the Bucks GM before. This time it seems a little different.
His argument for why he'd be an effective GM kind of goes like this:
1. He knows basketball (and will never pass on an opportunity to tell you about the 700+ page book he's written about the NBA)
2. He knows what it's like to be a fan and will be looking out for their interests
3. He understands what it takes to build a championship team (three franchise character players and a bunch of role players with good attitudes who want to win) and has the patience (because of his other career) to stick to the plan
4. He would bring instant attention to the small-market T'Wolves
What do you guys think of going so outside the usual pool of GM candidates and actually selecting someone like Simmons for a front office position?
http://twitter.com/sportsguy33
http://slamonline.com/online/nba/2009/05/the-sports-gm/
http://query-origin.andohs.net/8000A...mons090508.mp3
http://podloc.andomedia.com/dloadTra...ons090506a.mp3 |
I love Bill Simmons and think that this idea actually has a lot more merit than people might think at first, but the main flaw that I see in it is that a big premise of why he would be a legitimate choice is that they hire duds anyways so he can't do worse and he brings some media attention to a team that needs it. (That is a simplification of his argument but is in a general sense what he is saying.)
He isn't saying he should be GM of the Lakers, Celtics, Magic etc. teams that are run well but teams that have bad GM's and that he figures aren't likely to hire a good GM anyways. I just can't see a team admitting that they can't hire a good enough basketball guy so they are going for the publicity of hiring a writer.
His plan to me also seems like a recipe for building a mediocre team but not a great team because as much as he may love basketball he likely does not have the same ability to scout talent as does a Ainge, Presti, Auerbach, Jackson, Dantoni, Popovich etc.
I do think that basketball is the one sport where this could actually be legitimately possible because with the small roster and even smaller number of guys that actually fill out a roster you don't need to have the scouting skills needed in other sports.
The Sports Guy for GM?
