Bob Whitsett vs. Kevin Pritchard

[BGrantFan]

I loved that Whitsitt didn't let fiscal responsibility or player character get in the way of building a winning team. The team was fun to watch, had a swagger, and won games.

I didn't love that while building the team, Whitsitt had put the team in cap hell after the title window had closed. He seemed to be gunning for one title, and when that didn't happen, there was no Plan B. What was witnessed in the latter Whitsitt years, and the Nash and Patterson years, was the direct result of gunning for one title. Had we seen that title, I'd judge Whitsitt in a very positive light. Since we didn't, and since he basically went all in and then lost, I view his as a reckless gambler who hamstrung an entire organization for more than a half decade.

 

[oldmangrouch]

There is only one "character" trait I really care about, and that is showing up every night and playing hard. Who of the current Blazers exemplifies that? Miller, the "mercenary".

Bravo for life's little ironies!

 

[hasoos]

I agree--it was fun. We were the team with no superstar who managed to excel in a league with a strong bias towards superstars. We were the team that didn't have to dip into the lottery to reload. We were the team that people liked to root again, but we did a good job of winning in spite of that.

I'll take Golden Boys of the league, too, of course. Whatever it takes to become elite again.

Ed O.

Plus nasty players get it done. Half the problem with the team now is it is just too god damn nice. No killer instinct. Nobody plays with anger. Nobody tries to get into the other teams head. Nobody talks junk. Nobody lays the opposition out with a mean pick. At least, nobody who plays significant minutes.

 

[Public Defender]

Pritchard is only now in the position that Whitsett was for most of his tenure: KP has a good team, and he's got to make it championship-calibre.

Whitsett had 2-3 seasons when the Blazers had a window. The 2000 WCF collapse basically undid all of Trader Bob's very good work, but Whitsett is due a lot of credit for building one of the best Blazers' eras since the team began.

What KP has done to date, Whitsett didn't have to: take a miserable team, and make it better. Plus, KP had an additional mandate: don't bring in any more numbskulls (and get rid of the ones here right now).

I'd say KP and Whitsett both did quite well at the jobs they were assigned. Whitsett ultimately failed to reach an NBA Final, even with a team stacked with talent, paid to the gills, and with character as no concern. KP's job could be harder, since Paul Allen is less willing to spend gobs and gobs of cash (the next CBA may make that harder as well), and the Blazers are more concerned about character.

For that reason, I believe that if KP can get the Blazers to a Western Conference Final, I will consider him a better GM than Bob Whitsett. If he can't then he's at best his equal, but probably not even that.

 

[Ed O]

I didn't love that while building the team, Whitsitt had put the team in cap hell after the title window had closed. He seemed to be gunning for one title, and when that didn't happen, there was no Plan B. What was witnessed in the latter Whitsitt years, and the Nash and Patterson years, was the direct result of gunning for one title. Had we seen that title, I'd judge Whitsitt in a very positive light. Since we didn't, and since he basically went all in and then lost, I view his as a reckless gambler who hamstrung an entire organization for more than a half decade.

This is ... almost fair.

PatterNash made a series of TERRIBLE decisions. The Rasheed Wallace deal was horrible. Extending Theo made it even worse. Not getting value for Bonzi was bad. Their drafts were horrific. Extending Zach and Miles was stupid.

The cupboard was not bare when Whitsitt left. He definitely made his share of mistakes, but PatterNash were a blight on the franchise and neither rebuilt the team nor kept it competitive NOR saved Paul Allen money.

A chimpanzee throwing darts at a board could have done no worse.

Ed O.

 

[BGrantFan]

This is ... almost fair.

PatterNash made a series of TERRIBLE decisions. The Rasheed Wallace deal was horrible. Extending Theo made it even worse. Not getting value for Bonzi was bad. Their drafts were horrific. Extending Zach and Miles was stupid.

The cupboard was not bare when Whitsitt left. He definitely made his share of mistakes, but PatterNash were a blight on the franchise and neither rebuilt the team nor kept it competitive NOR saved Paul Allen money.

A chimpanzee throwing darts at a board could have done no worse.

Ed O.

Good addition to my post. You're right, Nash and Patterson were inept. Whitsitt was not inept, yet he put the franchise in a very bad situation that the inept PatterNash (love that, btw) exacerbated instead of improved. Cupboard bare after Whitsitt? I suppose not. Cap hell with little hope of improving a declining roster with the linear thinking of PatterNash? Yes. I thnk I've erased a lot of those seasons from my brain's database, but I at times have what seem to be fantastical nightmares about Sebastian Telfair being the future face of the franchise, Charles Smith starting a season at shooting guard, and two Russians I've never heard of on the wings.

 

[maxiep]

Sure, as an A's fan, I agree. But Yankees fans are pretty happy. I imagine if Portland could and did bring in LeBron James and Chris Paul and won 4-5 titles, I'd be quite happy even if a lot of fans from other teams considered the Blazers high-spending scum.

It wouldn't feel right to me. I recognize that puts me in the minority, but most of the fun of winning comes from the building of the team from an embryonic stage.

 

[Rastapopoulos]

I had a love-hate relationship with Whitsitt. I hated a lot of his moves - sometimes I was totally wrong (I hated the Strickland-for-Sheed trade), sometimes I was right (I hated the Kenny Anderson signing). But for a while there he was unbelievable. He started with an aging team with a bloated payroll and managed to completely rebuild it without dropping out of the playoffs. That's practically unheard of. Even the vaunted Jerry West, with the HUGE big-market allure of LA to attract FAs couldn't do that.

But...

His jump the shark moment was the Kemp trade. In retrospect, if he hadn't tried to get something for Brian Grant, and had just let him walk and promoted O'Neal, maybe things would've been better. Or maybe if he'd've replaced Dunleavy, because it was plain that Dunleavy had given up on O'Neal. I dunno.
Whitsitt summary:
Perhaps the greatest trader ever (Pippen, Steve Smith, 'Sheed, got Bonzi for nothing)
Underrated drafter (Z-Bo, drafted ALVIN WILLIAMS deep in the second round)
Got Sabas to come over.
Overall negative on the FA front (Brian Grant, love him, but we did have Sheed, but Kenny Anderson and others weren't so hot)
Couldn't stop tinkering.

Best that can be said for him: he spared us the pain of rebuilding for 5-6 years.
Also the indirect cause of one of the most painful sports memories I'll ever have - the last quarter of that '2000 game 7.

BUT: not being Ed, I can't really say I loved that Blazers team (apart from Sabas), whereas I unequivocally loved the Clyde Blazers, and I'm raring to love the current bunch.

Whitsitt is better than Pritchard at some things, no doubt. And we don't know that Pritchard could do what Whitsitt did, because Nash did the demolition job before Pritchard was hired. But I'm very happy with Pritchard, and can't honestly believe the amazing whining about him on this board.

 

[Minstrel]

I had a love-hate relationship with Whitsitt. I hated a lot of his moves - sometimes I was totally wrong (I hated the Strickland-for-Sheed trade), sometimes I was right (I hated the Kenny Anderson signing). But for a while there he was unbelievable. He started with an aging team with a bloated payroll and managed to completely rebuild it without dropping out of the playoffs. That's practically unheard of. Even the vaunted Jerry West, with the HUGE big-market allure of LA to attract FAs couldn't do that.

But...

His jump the shark moment was the Kemp trade. In retrospect, if he hadn't tried to get something for Brian Grant, and had just let him walk and promoted O'Neal, maybe things would've been better. Or maybe if he'd've replaced Dunleavy, because it was plain that Dunleavy had given up on O'Neal. I dunno.
Whitsitt summary:
Perhaps the greatest trader ever (Pippen, Steve Smith, 'Sheed, got Bonzi for nothing)
Underrated drafter (Z-Bo, drafted ALVIN WILLIAMS deep in the second round)
Got Sabas to come over.
Overall negative on the FA front (Brian Grant, love him, but we did have Sheed, but Kenny Anderson and others weren't so hot)
Couldn't stop tinkering.

I fully agree with this evaluation. Whitsitt's flaw was too little "let it bake." Sometimes, you either have the right team or none of the possible moves would benefit the team. In those cases, moves are counter-productive.

In general, I agree with Whitsitt's "optimize talent level" approach, and I think Pritchard has that, too. I think Pritchard has a better level of patience, though, which I think will translate into a longer "good stretch." But it remains to be seen.

 

[Fez Hammersticks]

I'm not too high on Pritchard. After the Roy draft he's been very mediocre. His legacy hinges on the creaky joints of Greg Oden.

 

[STOMP]

This is ... almost fair.

PatterNash made a series of TERRIBLE decisions. The Rasheed Wallace deal was horrible. Extending Theo made it even worse. Not getting value for Bonzi was bad. Their drafts were horrific. Extending Zach and Miles was stupid.

The cupboard was not bare when Whitsitt left. He definitely made his share of mistakes, but PatterNash were a blight on the franchise and neither rebuilt the team nor kept it competitive NOR saved Paul Allen money.

A chimpanzee throwing darts at a board could have done no worse.

This is also... almost fair

Patterson does share a huge amount of blame for those dark years. Many stupid decisions were made, but hiring proven GM loser John Nash (reportedly his 3rd choice) might have been the worst. Nash's bumbling mismanagement of the roster and wiffs in the draft led to three progressively worse seasons capped by the worst record in the league in 2005/6. But then of course the club/Patterson decided to allow Nash to pursue other opportunities rather then offer him a new contract. As both President and GM, Patterson presided over the Roy & Aldridge draft. That was a pretty great day for the franchise and one that he deserves a good chunk of credit for. Dude also eventually hired KP to be the new GM...

STOMP

 

[KingSpeed]

The Whitsitt teams that were title contenders weren't "young." Grant, Wallace and Stoudemire were all, by that point, prime veterans. .

Wallace and Stoudamire were only in their 4th pro season (a shortened season, no less) when they reached the WCF in 1999.

 

[KingSpeed]

Problem with KP is that he HASN'T let it bake. Jarret Jack has turned into an exceptional point guard in Toronto but he and the fans just weren't patient enough to let it happen. When Outlaw gets out of L.A. this fall, I'm sure he'll flourish with the right team and in 4 years or so, he could be a veteran playoff assassin that we didn't hold onto. And then there's Frye and Sergio...

 

[rocketeer]

So far, KP's team has been bounced in the first round. Now struggling to make the playoffs.

struggling to make the playoffs is not an accurate way to describe the current situation. portland will almost definitely make the playoffs.

 

[rocketeer]

Pritchard has done very little other than on draft day, while Whitsitt demonstrated that he was able to improve the team in other ways than landing in the lottery.

Ed O.

implying that pritchard has only had success because he has been lucky to have good draft position isn't really true with all the moves he's made on draft day.

 

[mook]

implying that pritchard has only had success because he has been lucky to have good draft position isn't really true with all the moves he's made on draft day.

That's not really what he said. He said KP hasn't done much for 51 weeks of the year and does all his damage around draft day. Which is mostly true. He's done a fantastic job of jockeying to get the picks he wants, and the guys he's drafted have surpassed expectations at the time in most cases.

For the rest of the year, meh. He did the Miller and Camby deals this year, which I really liked. But he was saved from his own incompetence by failing to land Turkoglu. A pretty mixed and small record.

That said, if I had to pick a GM to be really damned good for one week out of the year, I'd pick the week before the draft. Especially as bad as we were when he came here.

 

[MickZagger]

Problem with KP is that he HASN'T let it bake. Jarret Jack has turned into an exceptional point guard in Toronto but he and the fans just weren't patient enough to let it happen. When Outlaw gets out of L.A. this fall, I'm sure he'll flourish with the right team and in 4 years or so, he could be a veteran playoff assassin that we didn't hold onto. And then there's Frye and Sergio...

Miller > Jack.

 

[ABM]

Whitsitt operated under a different mantra. At that time, the checkbook was completely open. Me thinks he'd have a bit more difficult time managing under Vulcan's current economic model.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Whitsitt operated under a different mantra. At that time, the checkbook was completely open. Me thinks he'd have a bit more difficult time managing under Vulcan's current economic model.

But PRITCH had Raef LaFrentz EC + all the imaginary cap space cleared from the ZBO trade to work with.

Not to mention CAP GENIUS TOM PENN!!!!

 

[MARIS61]

Bob Whitsitt set the bar so high it's pointless to try to hold others to that impossible standard.

http://whitsittenterprises.com/

Some quick math will show the comparable win/loss, and playoff records if you want to try, but KP falls not only far, far below Bob, but also quite short of the accomplishments of Bucky Buckwalter, and obviously Stu Inman who built our Championship team.

Both Bob and Bucky were named NBA Executive of the Year.

After building the Sonics team that eventually lost to Chicago in the Finals, Bob inherited a disgruntled and aging Blazers team on it's downslide and turned it around immediately with several trades, reaching the WCF twice a few years later.

Here's the team Bob inherited:

(There is great irony in the bolded part)

1993-94: A Team In Transition
In 1993-94 the Trail Blazers continued their slow decline and their rebuilding for the future. Rod Strickland (17.2 ppg, 9.0 apg) replaced Terry Porter as the starting point guard, and Jerome Kersey gave way to Harvey Grant, who came over from the Washington Bullets in an offseason trade for Kevin Duckworth. Chris Dudley was signed as a free agent to provide rebounding and defense, but an early ankle injury knocked him out for most of the year.

A true indication that the team was in transformation was that Clifford Robinson (20.1 ppg) replaced Clyde Drexler as the club's scoring leader. Robinson also earned his first trip to the NBA All-Star Game. However, a team in transition is rarely a team in ascension, and the Blazers slipped below 50 wins (47-35) for the first time since the 1988-89 campaign. In the playoffs they managed a single first-round win against the Houston Rockets, who went on to win the NBA title.

After the playoff loss Rick Adelman (291-154 with the club) was fired and replaced by P. J. Carlesimo, who had been coaching at Seton Hall University. The 1993-94 NBA Executive of the Year, Bob Whitsitt, stepped down as general manager of the Seattle SuperSonics and moved south to join Portland's front office.

 

[MARIS61]

Problem with KP is that he HASN'T let it bake. Jarret Jack has turned into an exceptional point guard in Toronto but he and the fans just weren't patient enough to let it happen. When Outlaw gets out of L.A. this fall, I'm sure he'll flourish with the right team and in 4 years or so, he could be a veteran playoff assassin that we didn't hold onto. And then there's Frye and Sergio...

Good point. The cake was yanked out of the oven while still too gooey to be frosted, and now we are left with an unappetizing plate destined for the dumper.

As with all previous attempts at rebuilding through the draft, KP/Allen lost their patience and threw it all away. I warned of this when the "rebuild" fire-sales began and, as usual, I was right.

This is by far the softest Blazers team since their inception, and that's saying a lot.

Scrappy indeed!