The Worst Management of the Year Award Goes To. . . .

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For too long truly terrible management has not gotten the accolades it deserves. That is something we wish to rectify here at the Wages of Wins. That’s why we’ll be giving you periodic updates for the Worst Management in the League award throughout the upcoming NBA season. Also, unlike other most other awards, we recognize that it takes a team to make truly bad decisions. That’s why we won’t just be choosing a worst owner, GM or coach. No, only entire management teams are in the running for this award. Here is a breakdown of our criteria:

  • Bad moves. This includes bad trades, bad signings, questionable drafts.
  • Playing the wrong players. This includes playing the wrong players too much or the right players too little.
  • Bad PR. While not graded as highly as the other two, we do accept our perceptions of management are influenced by how they act in the media. We’ll just admit here that it has an impact.
For the purposes of this award, we are considering a “year” to be the period of time between the NBA Draft and the end of the playoffs. That means that offseason dealings count towards the season that they lead up to. But before we can begin tracking this year’s contenders, we’d be remiss if we didn’t first wrap up last year’s winners. And with that, my pick for worst management of the 2010-2011 is. . . .

The Orlando Magic

This pick is actually deceptive. The truth is that, when you have one of the best players in the league, you can hide a lot of bad decisions. However, when we delve into the details, the 2010-2011 Magic made some amazing moves to get on this list. Here’s a quick rundown.

Instead of playing big they decided to shoot – The Magic could have mimicked the reigning champion Lakers and played a strong trio of bigs with Gortat, Anderson and Howard. While Howard did get minutes, the Magic decided such greats as Richardson, Turkoglu, Lewis and Carter were more worthy of minutes than the other bigs.

Traded Marcin Gortat and a 1st round pick for Hedo Turkoglu – Turkoglu is a mediocre, old, overpaid small forward. Gortat is an amazing center. This move almost helped the Suns back to the playoffs.  On the other hand, the Magic got a mediocre player to surround one of the best players in the league.

Traded Rashard Lewis for Gilbert Arenas - Lewis had one of the worst and most expensive contracts in the NBA and was pretty much impossible to trade. Impossible, unless you are willing trade him for the only worse contract out there. Instead of benching Lewis behind their talented bigs they, they made a bad situation worse and traded for Gilbert Arenas. This saved a little cap space in the short run at the cost of an extra year and about $14 million in total salary. And this season, thanks to the amnesty, the Magic will only need to pony up $60 million to pay Arenas to go away.

Already in the running for next year

The Magic may not have made as many awful moves as other teams, but they made some of the worst out there. It’s no wonder Howard wants to leave the team. If the Magic continue with moves as bad as last year, they may be able to defend their title. They are certainly on to a smashing start with drunk dialing Dwight Howard!

Runner Ups

The Magic were a tough choice and we’d like to give a nod to a few of their competitors.

Hope you enjoyed this and we’ll keep you posted which managements are in the running this year.

-Dre

6 thoughts on “The Worst Management of the Year Award Goes To. . . .”

  1. It’s hard to defend Orlando. The Arenas deal alone puts them on top of the list. But I think Howard may have contributed to the Hedo Turkoglu deal. I remember reading that he wanted to bring Hedo back because he felt they played well together.

    This wouldn’t be the first time a franchise was so desperate to keep it’s star, it made a bad move that the star wanted.

    I seem to recall Lebron pushing for Jamison.

    It’s a no win situation for some of these markets. Many of these big stars are extremely impatient. If you don’t surround them with high quality players quickly, they leave. The owners and GM know it. But there aren’t many good values out there. You can’t just snap your fingers and bring in highly productive players on the cheap that fit together well and create a major contender. It’s a multi year process. So they gamble to get it done quickly (and typically lose). It’s a often a lose lose situation.

    Right now Orlando is in a bad spot. They have to make sure they wind up with “something” for Howard because he WILL leave as a FA if he’s not happy and it’s going to be close to impossible to bring in the type of player that would make him happy.

  2. “Traded Marcin Gortat and a 1st round pick for Hedo Turkoglu”
    And it’s amazing on how many levels it was a bad move:
    1) Magic got worse player,
    2) they probably could have acquired Turkoglu just by absorbing his contract,
    3) 2 yrs earlier Magic thought it was too much so they let him go,
    4) Magic somehow added a draft pick,
    5) they could really use a trade chip like Gortat right now to make a play for Paul.
    6) Instead of thinking in terms of “max assets received” Magic will have to include Hedo in any Dwight trade to rebuild.

    Just a spectacular panic move ;-)

  4. Wayne,

    I’d submit that there are usually a few under-valued (and therefore cheap) pieces available every year, and front offices with superstars almost always pass on them because they are obsessed with landing a “big name” to go with their superstar.

    For instance this year I predict that Miami, Orlando and New Orleans will all pass on Reggie Evans, even though he’d make all of those teams better for barely more than the league minimum.

  5. nbageek,

    I can’t disagree with you. I also think there are some decent values every year that teams mistakenly pass on. But I also think it’s hard to go from playoff team to serious contender without 2-3 really special players. It’s those special ones that are tough to come by cheap.

    I know Reggie Evans is highly regarded here, but he has some limitations that make him a tougher fit than some other players. He can’t do some things that some teams need and he’s really good at some things that some teams already have enough of.

  6. Pingback: Which NBA team has the worst management? | The Wages of Wins Journal

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