EVERY GM relies on their scouts. Scouts bring them lists of players to analyze that they think are worth it.
It’s virtually impossible for a GM to say “fuck my scouts, I’ll take who I want” since 99.99% of the time the scout is the person who originally found the player. The job of the GM is to make close decisions based on the data gathered by scouts. I.e. We have 3 players we are really high on. Scouts all have them ranked differently. Who do we pick? Up to the GM.
I highly doubt they hired Neil and said, “oh by the way, know who we are drafting so your first act as GM is being a yes man and not actually building the team you want — you were hired to be a face pretty much.” Give me a break.
What I think is reasonable is … he was hired, they came to a mutual decision “hey we’ve been looking at X, what do you think?” “Oh yeah we been looking at him too, looked great. And we really need a PG. let’s bring him in and see how he looks for a workout in front of me.” After the workout, GM approves, when he easily could’ve said “hmm, let’s look at centers” or some bullshit.
Scouts get credit.
Neil gets credit.
Ownership gets credit.
They all work together to make that decision. The reluctance of some people in this place to acknowledge anything positive by Neil is laughable. (And I don’t even like the guy). It’s not all or nothing. It’s a basketball “organization” for a reason. And the GM has so many duties, do you really think he has time to personally scout every player? Of course not. Shit in the last dance I believe Jerry Krause (old clip) mentioned something about how heavily he relied on his scouts.
