As I've grown older, and begun to think about a career I am heavily considering pursuing one in basketball. The general manager of a National Basketball Association (NBA) team is responsible for all player and personnel management. He is the one who decides to sign free agents, trade players, hire coaching staff, and makes sure the team stays within the financial contract restrictions of the NBA so that his team can continue to build towards a successful future. The general manager (GM) is the architect of a team and deserves just as much credit for its success (or failure) as the players and coach. This is by no means an easy job, but it is one I believe I want to pursue. There are many responsibilities and professional sports is a high pressure business. Everyone is expected to win and only one team can each year. Its up to the GM to make his team the one that comes out on top.
There are a few NBA GM's who are very good at their jobs. Mitch Kupchak of the Los Angeles Lakers, Sam Presti of the Oklahoma City Thunder, and Masai Ujiri of the Denver Nuggets, to name a few. That being said. It is my honest opinion that right around 75 percent of general managers in the NBA are completely incompetent and horrible at their jobs. Why do I believe this? The NBA is different from a lot of major sports currently in one huge way. There are only three teams that experts consider legitimate threats to win the championship of the league at the beginning of the season. Those teams are the Los Angeles Lakers, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Miami Heat (all have great general managers). In many other professional sports leagues there is a sense of parity. Eighty percent of teams and their fan bases believe they have a real shot at a championship at the beginning of every season. This is not the case in the NBA. It is the three elite teams and everyone else. The reasons for this are many, but all of them lead back to piss poor management by mediocre teams. The league has become filled with super teams such as Miami, Los Angeles, and Oklahoma CIty. This is the result of good general managers taking advantage of mediocre ones in lopsided trades. The best management make great draft picks. The unskilled managers make the wrong draft picks and give bad players too much money, perpetually keeping their teams in the cellar of the league. If the bottom tier teams had better management, it would help them greatly achieve the level of success of the top franchises in the NBA. But, the mistakes continue to happen.
It is my honest opinion that if I took over the Charlotte Bobcats today (the worst team in the league for the past two seasons), I could make them into a playoff team in the next 3 seasons. Their management, which is ironically run by arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan, has not achieved anything since the franchise was created less than ten years ago. They continue to make head scratching decisions as do other teams in the league. The examples are many. The Lebron James free agency debacle a few years back, the Chris Paul trade drama last season, and most recently a lopsided Dwight Howard trade that made one of the leagues top teams, the Lakers, much better and possibly ruined the future of the Orlando Magic, a team that people believe will be in the bottom of the league for years to come.
In this blog I will vent my frustrations and the frustrations of many NBA fans with the majority of NBA management. I will review trades, free agent signings, and other NBA happenings. I love basketball and believe myself to be very knowledgeable on the topic. Feel free to comment on my posts and give your opinions of the topics I bring up. this should be an open forum for all people who believe themselves to be knowledgeable at basketball to give their "expert" opinions.
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