Rob Pelinka Discussion: President Of BBall Ops + GM + Extension

i've been over this a lot, but i just kind of don't believe in great basketball gms as a concept. i do believe in bad ones, and rob's not that.

but the idea that one guy can just outmanage the other guys given the same resources/circumstances...i don't believe it. all of these guys operate with different directives, and very rarely does anyone actually innovate in a way that confers a huge advantage.

rob's big mistakes (e.g., westbrook) come from the same place as his big successes (e.g., AD and luka).

 

but much like svtzr's list, you can make a similar list for pretty much every gm, including sacred cows like ujiri, morey, presti, etc. name your great gm, and someone can create a list of really bad moves over time, imo. the really bad gms get fired quickly and don't work again. everyone else is roughly the same and dealing with different circumstances at different times, thus look different in ability.

for example, as we've been over many times, THT/caruso was a false choice that say, lawrence frank never has to make. if rob gets no credit for lebron, AD, luka because the lakers market did it or whatever, then he shouldn't be hung out to dry for having to make luxury tax cuts that his competitors basically never have to. that's what a good chunk of the wasted assets come from above, btw--letting the expiring contract chain end for luxury tax purposes. you can't tell me rob doesn't understand that kicking the can down the road is better for asset management than just letting it go to dust. that's ownership.

the utah jazz suck and have sucked for years. they look like they're going to suck for some time going forward. is danny ainge a bad gm? i don't think so. i think he's mediocre, like basically all of them, including rob.

edit: btw, the list in the tweet is a good list. those are all really bad moves. they even left out the randle mismanagement, which is nearly on par with the others. we let our fairly productive lottery pick walk for a two-year MLE or whatever! letting lopez walk on a vet min, too...yikes.

 

I've asked in the past this last year and no one answers .... what is everyone's rock solid thesis that most everyone here just says/assumes Kurt is some bumbling fool? Leaving whatever coaching success out of it as teams and what style of offense (triangle elsewhere) he was supposed to be coaching, regardless of roster construction, are contributing factors. Lots of smart people weren't great coaches. Phil didn't suffer fools. Yet he spent years and years working with Kurt.

If allegedly it was all just to make Jeanie's long time business partner and close friend Linda happy, why did he take him to NY to assist Fish coaching? Wouldn't Linda have been happier with Kurt in LA .... you'd think?

 

this last part is really important for me--it's really not hard to be a gm outside of la, imo. we're basically the only place in the league that has zero tolerance for non-contention of any length. if i'm a gm, i'm making the same cash in a place where finishing 4th is totally badass instead of soul-crushing? i'm taking that job. 10 times out of 10. iow, i'm not sure our job is as desirable as you're suggesting.

totally agree here. rob needs a dennis lindsay (a person with connections and knowledge who is ok working as part of a team without full control), and i've been saying that forever. what he didn't need was a magic johnson--a guy who shared power and did little work.

but imo, this comes back to ownership again--we could definitely poach one of these long-time league insiders to be the gm under rob's presidency, and we'd be better off for it. but that costs money. and yes, i think rob's experience with magic makes him pretty wary of having another cook in the kitchen, which is unfortunate. we need one. and not rambis, as you said. we actually need an outsider--a non-laker. someone who's built their own relationships their own way.

 

I used to be as hard a core UCLA Bruins fan as I was a Lakers fan. But the fan base sucked the joy right out of it for me. I have spent some time watching other college teams in San Diego. UCSD and SDSU both have really appreciative fan bases. They can have bad years, people still root for them and are generally positive. It is fun to go to games. SDSU has had some good teams and we even got lucky to have Kawaii for awhile. The coaches for our teams are well liked and there is not a ton of pressure for them to do a lot better.

UCLA, on the other hand, has a fan base who almost unanimously feels like the team and coaches owe them another Wooden ERA. Everyone thinks the Bruins should win it all every year and when they come up short, they want everyone fired. We have had some really good coaches get fired because they couldn't reproduce a "Wooden Run". The truth is, they can't really attract the best talent in any capacity anymore and it is not a fun job. Anyone who coaches at UCLA knows that they haven't really won anything for years, has not been able to attract the 5 star talent and that despite that, the expectations are as high as they are for Duke. Win or get fired. I haven't seen anyone last long enough to really build a solid system.

The Lakers suffer from that a little as well. We tend to have a fast turnover for coaching and our team depth. That makes it very difficult to build continuity and I would argue that continuity and team depth is what is currently winning championships in the NBA. We need a system that works, that has the right coaches and that we can develop for, not a rotating group of coaches and front office people who want to continuously reinvent the wheel every 3 years.

 

yeah, i'm not sure if the blame rests with the fans, as the organization doesn't have to buy into that vision, but that level of pressure doesn't help. the media scrutiny is absolutely insane, too. anything lakers-related is just clickworthy because the haters gobble it up as much as the fans do (mostly because the news is largely negatively slanted).

i agree that continuity is good, though, and i'm hoping that jj and rob get to work together for at least a few years.

all that said and repeating the above: having the exact same brain trust isn't necessary for general continuity. our version seems to be that jeanie and the rambii and tim harris and maybe rob will be here forever no matter what, with a rotating cast of coaches. but you can add voices to the upper levels, too. you just have to be clear about your organizational chart. when magic was here, i think it was pretty unclear who was doing what exactly, and that kind of thing doesn't work. but having rob as president and an outside hire as gm could totally work, imo.