KP's blunders

[Fez Hammersticks]

Ok, we really don't know what KP allegedly did to get on the bad side of Vulcan and Mr. Allen but lets list some of his blunders:

*Greg Oden over Kevin Durant
The favorite argument is 'any GM would have taken Oden at #1.' When you consider his pre-draft physical, I disagree. It's quickly developing into the the franchises' second biggest blunder in this teams history after the Bowie/Jordan draft.

*Josh McRoberts (#37) over Marc Gasol (#48)
The second round is a crapshoot but McRoberts showed during his Soph. season that he should have went undrafted. He's just not an NBA player.

*Joel Freeland over Paul Milsap
Oops.

*Offering Hedo Turkoglu a massive contract
Even the Orlando Magic GM said we dodged a bullet. As good as Hedo was for the Magic they weren't willing to offer him anything close to what KP had on the table.

*Spending millions of Allen's money for the rights to Sergio Rodriguez.

*Taurean Green over Ramon Sessions.


Am I missing any?

 

[Natebishop3]

Trading Randy Foye for that talentless scrub Brandon Roy. Oh what could have been...

 

[Denny Crane]

The only one you can really pin on him is the Oden over Durant pick.

At 37 or 48, lots of GMs didn't pick those guys.

 

[Natebishop3]

I would add the Zach Randolph trade to that list.

 

[LameR]

You can't go back through and say "We picked Josh McRoberts over Marc Gasol! What were we thinking!?"

Revisionist history is fun, but it's stupid to blame someone for making that pick, or going through with a thread like this. The only legit comparison you can make is Oden and Durant because that was an actual debate at the time (although not much of one). Poor thread.

 

[Shooter]

You could make a similar list of "blunders" for every GM in the NBA . . .

 

[Trader Ed]

Trading Randy Foye for that talentless scrub Brandon Roy. Oh what could have been...

Boy, you think Minnesota and Boston may be kicking themselves about now...

http://www.nba.com/blazers/news/Trail_Blazers_Land_Brandon_Roy-183312-1177.html

 

[RoyToy]

Only ones that make sense are Greg over Kevin and the Hedo contract. Everything else is bleh.

McRoberts over Gasol - Pritchard had just drafted Oden and had Przy under contract for the next 4 years. Don't think he was looking at centers, not too mention faulting him for not taking Gasol in the 2nd round would be ridiculous anyways.

Freeland over Millsap - 2nd round picks....

Took a chance on Sergio...just $...who cares, Allen has more than any owner in sports I believe. Not sure how much the Nets Russian owner is worth.

Green over Sessions - 2nd round picks, plus I think Green might have been a McMillan guy. Had the same sort of game as Blake, aka stand in corner and be a 3pt shooter.

 

[e_blazer]

 

[illmatic99]

LOL @ your use of the word, "blunders." I mean, Taurean Green?! Come on.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

KP's biggest blunder,

Agreeing to ABM's Meet and Greets.

 

[Loyalty4Life]

My biggest blunder was reading this thread.

 

[ehizzy3]

what a shitty thread

 

[axs88]

give me a fucking break

 

[ebott]

The only way you can call something a blunder is if someone thought it was a bad idea at the time. Nobody was saying anything about many of the blunders the OP presented. So here's some things that I would put in the blunder category...

The Darius Miles medical retirement situation.
Trading Zach Randolph for nothing.
Drafting Durant over Oden.
Drafting Victor Claver, Dante Cunningham and Jeff Pendergraph over Dejuan Blair.

 

[yenniedn]

My biggest blunder was reading this thread.

+1

what a shitty thread

+2

Trading Randy Foye for that talentless scrub Brandon Roy. Oh what could have been...

+3

You can't go back through and say "We picked Josh McRoberts over Marc Gasol! What were we thinking!?"

Revisionist history is fun, but it's stupid to blame someone for making that pick, or going through with a thread like this. The only legit comparison you can make is Oden and Durant because that was an actual debate at the time (although not much of one). Poor thread.

+4

You could make a similar list of "blunders" for every GM in the NBA . . .

+5

Boy, you think Minnesota and Boston may be kicking themselves about now...

http://www.nba.com/blazers/news/Trail_Blazers_Land_Brandon_Roy-183312-1177.html

+6

+7

give me a fucking break

+8


Plus my own contribution to this thread: jesus fucking christ just give it fucking rest.

 

[ironcrotch]

i would like to petition for a reduction in rep points

 

[chris_in_pdx]

*Greg Oden over Kevin Durant
The favorite argument is 'any GM would have taken Oden at #1.' When you consider his pre-draft physical, I disagree.

*edited*

 

[Minstrel]

The only way you can call something a blunder is if someone thought it was a bad idea at the time. Nobody was saying anything about many of the blunders the OP presented. So here's some things that I would put in the blunder category...

The Darius Miles medical retirement situation.
Trading Zach Randolph for nothing.
Drafting Durant over Oden.
Drafting Victor Claver, Dante Cunningham and Jeff Pendergraph over Dejuan Blair.

I agree with the Randolph trade pick.

Whoever chose to send that Miles letter (no idea if it was Pritchard) made a PR blunder, though I doubt it has materially hurt the team.

I don't think Oden over Durant (as I assume you meant) was a blunder. At the time, there was virtually no reason to make any other pick. No one really felt Oden was a health risk, he was considered the BPA and he filled a major need. He's shown, when he's played, that the talent evaluation was probably correct. Not predicting unpredictable injuries I don't think falls under "blunder."

As for Blair vs. Claver or Cunningham or Pendergraph, well, I would have selected Blair at every one of those picks (as he kept tumbling), but I don't think the difference between what Portland got and Blair is enough to count as a blunder. Your mileage may vary, though. Blair's production is very nice, but his defense seems to be tremendously bad.

 

[jlprk]

Let's cut to the chase. The issue isn't his signings, or whether he should be fired (like the irrelevant poll thread asks). The issue is, should Vulcan should cave in to Pritchard and give him the big extension and raise he has sought since last summer? Has his performance been to be the best GM in the NBA (trading, signing FAs, drafting, financial management, knowledge of the CBA, statistical knowledge, arena management, etc.)? Because that's how he wants to be paid. His agent has been pushing this since the summer, and is amping it up as revenge for his client Penn being fired. His agent would love to market the two as a duo to teams, but that won't happen.

 

[Rhal]

The only reason people are even talking about KP blunders is because of how people feel about the Oden vs Durant debate. No matter how many ANALYSIS(which I really doubt anyone on this board is... and no Simmons is not a good source) say that almost every GM would have taken Oden over Durant. People here are just feeding off the negativity they feel when the blazers don't play very well and trying to make the fact that we have had an injury ridden season and are not performing to what people thought, then add in the fact Oden (even though he was playing at an all star level when the injury happen) went down with another season ending injury, they are just trying to salvage any sense of self worth they have even though they cheered and told there friends 10000 different reasons why Oden was better then Durant.
If this sounds like a drunken ramble it is... but atm thats how I feel when I see all these negative posts about KP.

 

[ebott]

I agree with the Randolph trade pick.

Fo sho'. It would be really nice to still have Zach Randolph on this team. I firmly believe that a team can survive having one headcase. But one has to remember that Miles was still on the team. Maybe part of the reason we were so quick to get rid of Zach was because we knew we were going to hang Miles out to dry (not saying it's a bad thing.) and Zach would make a big fuss about it.

Whoever chose to send that Miles letter (no idea if it was Pritchard) made a PR blunder, though I doubt it has materially hurt the team.

It's much more than the letter. If we had dumped Miles successfully, either by medical retirement or finding some sucker to take him off our hands, we would have had more than twice as much cap space this summer. But we didn't. We bungled the thing such that another team was easily able to screw us out of that cap space. The letter was just the icing on the cake.

I don't think Oden over Durant (as I assume you meant) was a blunder. At the time, there was virtually no reason to make any other pick. No one really felt Oden was a health risk, he was considered the BPA and he filled a major need. He's shown, when he's played, that the talent evaluation was probably correct. Not predicting unpredictable injuries I don't think falls under "blunder."

The reason I put Oden in the blunder category is that I remember A LOT of reports about Oden having knee problems before the draft. I wrote off all those reports as jealousy. GMs were angry that they didn't win the lottery and we were gonna get Oden. So they made BS claims that Oden had health problems. But here we are three years later and we've got the puddin' and there's plenty of proof in it.

As for Blair vs. Claver or Cunningham or Pendergraph, well, I would have selected Blair at every one of those picks (as he kept tumbling), but I don't think the difference between what Portland got and Blair is enough to count as a blunder. Your mileage may vary, though. Blair's production is very nice, but his defense seems to be tremendously bad.

Long term Blair's knees might give out on him or one of the guys we drafted will turn out to be better. But right now it looks like a horrible blunder. I've heard a lot of people talk about what they were thinking on that draft day. Almost all of them said they were shocked when we didn't take Blair at the Claver pick, they held their breath until the Pendergraph pick and then again until the Cunningham pick. Seemed like a missed opportunity then and I haven't seen anything to prove me otherwise.

 

[Minstrel]

It's much more than the letter. If we had dumped Miles successfully, either by medical retirement or finding some sucker to take him off our hands, we would have had more than twice as much cap space this summer. But we didn't.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. How did they blunder in trying to dump Miles? Normally, it is not possible to dump a player at all. Portland tried to exploit a loophole, but it got thwarted by someone choosing to pick him up. There was no mistake made there by Portland...there was no way to prevent a team from doing that. Portland took the only shot available and it didn't work because the CBA has built in safeguards against that kind of exploit.

"Finding some sucker to take him off our hands"--that's like saying, "Pritchard blundered by not finding some sucker to hand him a free superstar." Sure...it would be nice to get magical results, but it's not a blunder when magic doesn't happen. Miles' contract was crap...short of magic, no one was going to just "take him off Portland's hands," freeing up that cap space. At most, a team may have swapped another bad contract for Miles.

The reason I put Oden in the blunder category is that I remember A LOT of reports about Oden having knee problems before the draft.

Can you link one of those, from a credible site/source? Because I read no credible source saying that Oden was viewed as any real health risk.

 

[Fez Hammersticks]

Just this week on the telephone, there was an Eastern Conference executive studying Greg Oden’s pre-draft physical in his office. Even now, this report still didn’t look like the body of a 19-year old prospect, but that of an older, worn veteran.

“From our (trainers and doctors), there were red flags everywhere,” he said.

The executive started listing the troubled spots – the bulging disc in the back, wrists, the ankles, the hands, a right leg that was an inch longer than the left, and yes, the knees. He wasn’t alone. Several pulled files this week with news of impending knee surgery, and kept wondering if maybe the breakdown of his body was just a matter of time.

LINK

 

[Minstrel]

LINK

The next line in that same link:

"Despite it all, this executive believed the Blazers had done the right thing drafting the 7-footer over Kevin Durant."

So your star witness in the "Oden was known to be damaged goods" case thought Oden was the right pick. That isn't particularly compelling that there was good reason reason to pass on Oden for Durant.

But thanks, at least, for coming up with someone credible who thought there was some real risk.

 

[MIXUM]

this fez guy is ok with me.

i see chris is crying as usual

 

[Nikolokolus]

LINK

The next line in that same link:

"Despite it all, this executive believed the Blazers had done the right thing drafting the 7-footer over Kevin Durant."

So your star witness in the "Oden was known to be damaged goods" case thought Oden was the right pick. That isn't particularly compelling that there was good reason reason to pass on Oden for Durant.

But thanks, at least, for coming up with someone credible who thought there was some real risk.

I think the only gripe I have is with KP possibly overselling that line about "Greg's knees are pristine", when you go back and look at the things that were said in the pre-draft camp and slightly thereafter, it starts to paint a picture of some legitimate health concerns ... at the time I distinctly remembered thinking to myself that those other team execs were possibly grinding an ax in the hopes that it would depress Oden's stock and the he might fall to them, but now I'm not so sure; it looks like there were a lot of real red flags.

There's no way to properly answer this, but did KP have the blinders on because he wanted Greg to be healthy -- talking himself into the physical being 'no big deal?'

 

[Luther]

-Traded Tyrus Thomas and Randy Foye for BRoy and LMA...
-Bought Rudy Fernandez for 3 mil.
-Traded trash for Batum
-Traded trash for Bayless
-Signed Andre Miller
-Juwan Howard
-Traded for Camby
-Picked Dante Cunningham and Pendergraph.......

I think the good far outweighs the bad. I'm sure I'm missing a few.

 

[BlazerWookee]

-Traded Tyrus Thomas and Randy Foye for BRoy and LMA...
-Bought Rudy Fernandez for 3 mil.
-Traded trash for Batum
-Traded trash for Bayless
-Signed Andre Miller
-Juwan Howard
-Traded for Camby
-Picked Dante Cunningham and Pendergraph.......
-Traded trash for Channing Frye

I think the good far outweighs the bad. I'm sure I'm missing a few.

Fixed...

 

[Masbee]

The only reason people are even talking about KP blunders is because of how people feel about the Oden vs Durant debate. No matter how many ANALYSIS(which I really doubt anyone on this board is... and no Simmons is not a good source) say that almost every GM would have taken Oden over Durant. People here are just feeding off the negativity they feel when the blazers don't play very well and trying to make the fact that we have had an injury ridden season and are not performing to what people thought, then add in the fact Oden (even though he was playing at an all star level when the injury happen) went down with another season ending injury, they are just trying to salvage any sense of self worth they have even though they cheered and told there friends 10000 different reasons why Oden was better then Durant.
If this sounds like a drunken ramble it is... but atm thats how I feel when I see all these negative posts about KP.

Interesting theory. Doesn't match facts, but interesting.

I have been questioning KP since the Zach trade. I hated it. Talked myself into thinking the team was doing the best thing for the team as they had inside info that Zach would soon get busted for something, would bring yet another scandal on the team, be suspended from playing for a lenght of time, and become thus untradeable. We now know that was true, so I stand by my reaction that the trade wasn't very good.

As for the Oden thing. I have never questioned or blamed KP for choosing Oden over Durant.

Time for you to formulate a new theory.