OT: NBA insanity-Magic tell Howard he can make coaching, GM decisions
According to ESPN's lead crawl, The Orlando Magic have told Dwight Howard that if he forgoes free agency and signs an extension with them, he can decide the fate of their General Manager and coach. Further words fail me at this stupidity.
That sure did work well in Cleveland.
win on his own and he knew it, but Dwight I think is a different breed of star and thinks he is the man so it may help him want to stay in Orlando???
as of the wonderful effect it had on team chemistry and composition that last year. You've not only undermined your current coach and GM, you've already undermined their successors.
Different breed of star? D12 has been a distraction since last year and has on many occasions asked to be traded. He has specifically suggested he wants to be traded to Brooklyn (NJ), Los Angeles, or Dallas. LeBron did admit to loving the MSG atmosphere (what basketball fan doesn't consider MSG to be a basketball Mecca of sorts), but he never demanded a trade or asked out.
This is another example of people making off-base comments to disparage LeBron. Yes, the Decision was ego-centric and one of the worst PR moves in sports history, but it is no reason to judge his basketball stardom so harshly. Jordan didn't win until his 7th year, and he won with Scottie Pippen, a HOF player and 7-time All Star. NOBODY wins alone. The Magic and Bird teams of the 80s were absolutely STACKED with talent, including several HOF players and even more All Stars.
Seriously, look at those rosters and compare that to the likes of Mo Williams, Anthony Parker, Antawn Jamison, Anderson Varejao, and Delonte West as the core of the end of the LeBron era and the Larry Hughes, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Drew Gooden, Sasha Pavlovic, Damon Jones, and Donyell Marshall core he took to the Finals a few years earlier. Nobody wins titles with those scrubs.
Now, name one star playing now who won a championship "on his own". Answer is ZERO. To run down the champs since MJ: Kobe needed Shaq for 3 and then Pau for 2, Duncan needed D-Rob (NTDR) for 2 and Parker and Ginobli for 2 more, D-Wade needed Shaq, Garnett needed Pierce and Allen, and Dirk needed Kidd, Chandler and Terry. The outlier, Detroit, had no true star and won with incredible chemistry and team defense. Superstars elevate already-good teammates, but cannot summon a championship over 29 other teams without a strong supporting cast.
/end rant
don't need 3 most are cool with just 1... not Lebron he needed 2 and probably wanted more. I just think he is soft in his heart and knew he couldn't have a team built around him so he went to ride on Dwayne Wade and his stardom.
I'm assuming you must think the only correct choice for him would've been to join Amare in New York and trust the GM to sign quality role players to play with him. We'll never know how that would've turned out, but if past and present disfunction in NY is any indicator, I doubt it would've worked. As it stands now, he has 4 more years with a team that should win at least 2 titles now that they have solid role players.
Take issue with two top-5 players on the same team if you want, but watching those two play together this year has been magnificent basketball. Last year's "hero ball" of taking turns shooting isolation jump shots has vanished. You don't have to like LeBron, but if you're a hoops fan you should do yourself a favor and watch this year's Heat play. LeBron has been unbelievable on defense and (as always) in transition. He can guard anybody in the league pretty effectively outside of a couple of dominant centers like Dwight Howard.
Basketball wise I still don't get how Lebron didn't go to Chicago...
C:Noah
F:Boozer
F:Lebron
G:Bogans 11/Rip 12
PG: Rose
Bench
Deng
Gibson
Asik
Watson
DEAR LORD! As a Bulls fan I love this team but add Lebron and they win the title last year imo. Maybe the Jordan shadow thing but you win one and no one cares. Bill Simmons called even said the Bulls were the no brainer. The Bulls did tell him in the visit that it was all basketball and no BS. No friends can have jobs on the team, no they cant come on trips and walk into the UC. I'm sure that turned him off since he got to support his leeches. Pat told him bring them all.
As for Howard, again. The Bulls have made an offer but he has stated he won't sign a long term there... This tells me A.He doesn't want to play second fiddle to Rose and B.He isn't that concerned about winning Rings. The Magic have said they like the Bulls offer a lot but Howard is being Howard.
I still say the Knicks should dump Mello and Chandler for Howard. The Magic can't say no to that. Throw in Turk and be done with it. Mello is a cancer to a team and the Knicks should offer him up.
P.S I love the NBA
although I think a few of the guys you dismiss as "scrubs" are useful players, you can't add any one player to them and get a championship team. (Well, maybe if Wilt could be 25 again.)
But one of the reasons that particular collection of players had been accumulated towards the end of his stay was that LeBron had been given de facto GM duties and his talent at personnel evaluation isn't quite on par with his talent on the court.
Just one example:
It’s been well documented that the Cavaliers’ infatuation with Antawn Jamison has been rekindled. What’s been underplayed is the reason behind it: LeBron James is the one driving the team’s pursuit of Jamison, according to a source, and Cavs GM Danny Ferry – as usual – is trying to appease the King.
http://ken-berger.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/11838893/19891570…
that the Magic really want to keep Dwight around for the next 7 to 10 years? LMAO Well it is a first coming out and stating this so maybe it will pay off, what else can they do not much more . Pulling out all the stops which is smart IMO. But sadly I don't think this is gonna help one bit at all.
It's weird to see the words "Insanity" and "NBA" together without the "L"
GOSH where have you been? Linsanity was SO last week.
The Magic are denying this report (which I don't think makes it any truer or falser).
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2012/03/espn-dwight…
March 14th, 2012 at 10:41 AM ^
is that along the same lines as funner? LOL.
to give that much authority to a player is foolish.
It boggles the mind that the NBA can provide such great spectacle and still be such a boring enterprise as a whole. If they think they need Howard that badly then I'd give him the coaching decision. It would give him ownership of the situation; hence loyalty to "his" coach's decisions. This as opposed to giving a player authority to decide on a GM...this basically says that a GM can be an idiot and a team can still be successful...this can happen with the right mix of high draft picks and luck...see Jerry Reinsdorf...but it ain't gonna happen often. Screw the NBA.
When Sloan had a major issue with DW and took it to ownership, ownership sided with Williams. Sloan figured it was time to hang it up.
He wasn't fired..He walked
business model. What could possibly go wrong with a player having the ability to fire a coach and GM and bring in their own guys?
I wonder which non-supervisory employee passes decisions on the CEO and board of directors at Amway, where the Magic owner made his money.
at amway increases the value of the company by 10-20% just by showing up to work every day? Awful analogy.
If I was worth that much to my company I'm pretty sure the board of directors would let me do pretty much whatever I damn well pleased.
Exactly. You're killing it this thread.
It's hard to identify the best PG in the game. Could be Rose. Could be Paul. Or Westbrook. Or Rondo. Or Deron Williams.
SG? Wade or Kobe.
SF? LeBron or Durant. Carmelo in discussion.
PF? Love or Griffin. Dirk and Bosh in discussion.
C? Dwight Howard and Dwight Howard alone!
If you're the ABSOLUTE BEST in the business, you get away with a lot more.
Somewhere right now David Stern is crying.
This is all back-asswards.
Shrug. Wouldn't be the first time a player has gotten a coach/admin fired. But odd that a team would ever admit it or let that get out, especially before the fact. It basically undermines the coach/GM if they keep them, and if they don't fire them, well, thats still gonna be awkward
So if this is true, Dwight would be crazy to suggest changes to the coaching staff.
Otis Smith blows chunks though
What these teams don't get is that instead of spending money on overpaid players to make your franchise star happy just do like Miami did and have a massive amount of cap room the same year that your start is a free agent. If Orlando had a ton of cap space Deron Williams would be joining him in Orlando in the summer rather than likely vice versa.
This kind of stuff is why I can't get myself to follow the NBA anymore, which is unfortunate because I like professional basketball (or at least the idea of it).
The league feels like a newspaper that's gone from printing actual journalism to becoming a gossip rag.
To be fair, Howard couldn't do much worse than the GM that maxed out Rashard Lewis and gave Hedo Turkuglu a $12 million player option for a year when he was turning 35.
Turkey-Glue!*
*Sorry. It was immature but I had to.
...they should just go ahead and let the players run the entire NBA. Why shouldn't Dwight Howard be commissioner too?
Watching the whole thing go down the toilet when Howard is coordinating halftime shows...or LeBron is wrestling bears...would just be more fun than the current NBA.
Flint...Michigan...Mega bowl...
Flint...Michigan...MEGABOWL!!!
this just in: every management/owernship group in the NBA is horribawful. Therefore this does not surprise me. See: the lockout, insane extensions, Isaiah getting what seemed like a lifetime to bury the Knicks in awful deals and PG contracts, someone giving Darko 7m+ a year and the existence of Carlos Boozer's contract. Oh and the Piston's roster (minus Daye, Monroe, Knight). The NBA BY FAR has the worst ownership/general manager group in all of major sports.
This is only news in the sense that somebody finally admitted it. I seem to remember a one Magic Johnson getting his coach fired amoung others. And if LeBron had agreed to stay here in Cleveland IF Dan Gilbert would've given him coaching and GM authority i BKfinest it that both Brown and Ferry wouldve been sacked in a NY second.
Coaches and GMs are expendible unfortunately. Superstar talent is not. Just ask the Cleveland fans which one of the three they'd rather have back.
We have to understand the value of a superstar to a franchise, though. LeBron leaving the Cavs in 2010 virtually cut the team's price in half. A coach on a 5/25 contract and a GM making less annually is chump change when you're considering a loss of 200-250 million due to a change in team star power.
The biggest issue I have is this crap getting leaked. All parties should leave these negotiations with their dignity intact and it's becoming increasingly difficult for the Magic front office to do so.
when a the 3rd seeded Detroit Pistons had two incredible series with the Nets the Pacers where they were down 2-1, pulled both of them out, and then faced the Lakers with 4:1 odds against them and completely annihilated them in the finals. But I guess since the Pistons didn't have one of the four best records that year or have a superstar on their team none of that really happened.
They were one of the four or five teams competing for a title.
March 14th, 2012 at 12:32 AM ^
March 13th, 2012 at 10:38 PM ^
I don't mean to sound anal, but the Pistons were down 2-3 in the Nets series and 0-1 in the Pacers series. Otherwise, Those were the only two times they trailed in the 2004 playoffs. How I miss those days...
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_magic/
The second entry down mentions a denial issued by the Magic ownership regarding the ESPN report earlier. In all honesty, I hope the denial is true more than the original story just because of the precedent this would set in the long run.
I must say, I don't know if NBA ownership is necessarily roundly bad as some claim, although I will say that it is definitely not the best managed professional sport. If it had been the case and some manner of managerial control had been given to Dwight Howard, then quite honestly the Magic ownership should really just fire itself as their authority in team affairs would be forever undermined at that juncture. Further, if the NBA Players' Union is like many unions, being any sort of supervisor or manager on more than a temporary basis technically would be grounds for removing you as a member (the moment I took a supervisory position, by rule, I had to disassociate myself from the local).
I understand the value that the stars of the league have and the draw that they themselves get (far beyond what the team without their presence would get in some cases), but there is a pretty good reason that the management of a professional sports team, like any corporation, is a hierarchal structure, and to destroy it runs the risk of making the organization unviable in the long term. This might extend to many teams in the league unfortunately.
We're going to just forget about Bill Russell as a player-coach then huh?
March 13th, 2012 at 10:19 PM ^
Dick Devos: "I really want to fire the GM and coach.... BUT THEY'RE SO NICE, I don't want them to be mad at me!! Let's get Dwight to do it."