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The were you watching?
SGA was a gift. Kawhi forced the Clippers to trade the Thunder capital equivalent to two superstars. Presti took advantage, sure.
Presti did well to draft Harden, Durant, and Westbrook, but my god those were gimmies. Sure, other GMs might have blown them, but it would have been hard to do. He also drafted Stephen Miller and Ibaka, who were great picks. But he completely failed to build a team that could win a championship, which is astonishing. They didn't even make the Finals more than once. Just utter failure.
Giddey was a good pick, Williams was a great pick. Holmgren was a #2 pick so was a gimme, although a bad GM might have taken Jabari Smith.
But between the semi-championship run of those MVPs and getting SGA for nothing, take a look at his draft history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklaho..._draft_history
It's absolutely terrible. The only players who managed to be any good -- Alperin Sengun, Immanuel Quickley, Brandon Clarke -- he actually traded away, i.e. he drafted them for those teams.
The were you watching?
people keep saying he chose ibaka over harden but honestly its worse than that. he chose perkins over harden. they easily could have kept durant/westbrook/harden/ibaka
I wouldn't call Westbrook a gimme. I think most expected Kevin Love to go before Westbrook since Love was the engine of that UCLA Final 4 team and widely considered far and away the best player on it while Westbrook was more the defensive ace and third or fourth option. Plus he viewed as an undersized shooting guard and there was extreme skepticism on him being able to play the point in the NBA.
And then with the big bump in the cap coming a year later turns out he could have kept them all.
This. Durant was a no brainer after Oden, but the Westbrook pick took some balls at the time. And Harden at 3 wasn't a complete gimme, either. OKC picked a shooting guard in Westbrook the year before so there was some redundancy with him. That draft was odd anyway with tons of busts (and also Steph Curry). With all the landmines that he could have stepped on, Presti looks pretty good in hindsight.
Definitely understand this point though I'd say this metric still has some value, but like all metrics needs to be taken in context and in combination with other metrics. This one is a lot like FG%. FG% doesn't account for if all your shots are close up dunks or are difficult shots, but it is still a metric with some value. This is a very outcome oriented metric (because that's what Sabermetrics is), certainly not to be taken as the end all, be all... but is just another data point. With that said, there are plenty of other metrics that point to the Spurs being good at running a basketball club. I wouldn't rank Wright as the 3rd best GM in the league, but I probably would say he is above the median.
I also don't think I would label the Derrick White trade as a K. I can see arguments either way. There is definitely a subjective element to this that kind of throws it out the window somewhat.
I don't think Wesley will ever be close to as good as Derrick is, but at the time it was just rolling the timeline forward. More of a sac bunt than a strikeout imo. The Spurs also got a look at Langford (not worth much) and rolled Richardson into four seconds and a perhaps useful Mills-role bench piece.
I think the sac bunt descriptor is perfect for this deal
...and the 2028 #2-30 swap. Don't forget that.
No offense but Presti didn't choose Ibaka over Harden. He didn't have the choice, Harden wanted a starting job in his own team on a big market, with the glory and max money coming with. Harden is no Manu and there's no way he was accepting to be Westbrook back up, or split stats and share responsabilites with him, no matter who finishes the game. Those 3 couldn't cohabitate on the long term, speciallty with Russ and the Harden's egos.
I don't think he had as much influence then and either way, no one was going to turn a team as limited talent wise and poor fitting as that was into much more than it was.
Sure, they should have never gave away Green, started Forbes or signed Belinelli, but the ceiling with those teams was always going to be 1st round exit anyway.
Another porblem is we tend to jusge GMs mostly for the moves they make, and ofc particularly the succesfull, splashy ones, which often are obvious moves most GMs would do... But we don't put enough attention on the moves GMs don't make, the patience they have, as well as the kind of minor moves Wright did this summer that can transform into more significant stuff time over time, like that Dallas swap.. A good GM is a patient, meticulous GM who can see the big picture.
Great point and I would add that GMs are often criticized by boneheaded fans for not making splashy moves that make zero sense in a larger context (We could have signed FVV! Why aren't we trading for Dame! The Rockets got Dillon Brooks and we did nothing!). A lot of times FO criticism really just boils down to someone making moves on the Trade Simulator and getting upset the real team isn't doing the same thing.
2007 2nd pick KD was certainly obvious but lucky Por selected Oden
2008 4th pick Westbrook - only showed potential at the end of his second season. Could have picked UCLA teammate Kevin Love- was the top scorer, rebounder better FG, 3PT% and FT than westbrook.
2009 3rd pick Harden - could have picked Evans (who has a broken shot imho) or 1 year older prime time Stef Curry or Derozan (Pac 10 tournament MVP to Harden's Pac 10 player of the year)
other picks
2007 5th pick Jeff Green - could have picked Joakim Noah but otherwise decent
2008 24th pick Serge Ibaka - was a spurs killer so this is a great pick for a late first
2013 12th pick Steven Adams - could have been international lucky picks Giannis or Gobert but was otherwise a spurs killer and great career so far despite pedestrian college stats. This is still a good pick since Giannis or Gobert developed their potentials later on but hard to scout during their draft years
2022 2nd pic Chet Holmgren - #3 pick Jabari seems to be a good player but otherwise TBD Chet seems to have Wemby lite potential on defense
+ got lots of draft picks from disgruntled Westbrook and Paul George (which net them a bigger superstar several years after in SGA).
Top 3 for what? Tanking and mediocre draft selections? Ok let's erase the last 5 years, he lucked out and got Wemby, he's on the clock right now he has to build something going forward and then he can access if this guy knows what he's doing.
Brian Wright’s record as GM of the Spurs:
32-39
33-39
34-48
22-60
Winning no longer counts, it appears.
How's the White trade a "K" and why isn't the Murray trade listed?
Pairing DD and LMA together was dumb in the first place. As the league is transitioning to shooting 3's lets build around two guys who don't like shooting 3's.
Trading Kawhi to Toronto was also dumb. History has shown a team will get desperate and we could have gotten way more for Kawhi. With DD and Poeltl doing absolutely nothing noteworthy in a spurs jersey we effectively traded Kawhi for Keldon Johnson. That is all time bad.
They should have never tried to salvage the team. They should have just went into tank mode right then and their. Nobody loses their franchise player but then is like lets try to build a 6th seed 1st round exit team anyway. This is pretty much what the spurs did for two years.
what exactly?
We got three good years of DD, four good years of Poodle, and four FRPs, Keldon,Malaki, plus the Chicago 2025 pick, and Torontos 2024 pick, both acquiredwhen DD and Poodle were flipped.
what matters is winning ships.
Good years? We went from losing in the 1st round to not even making it to the 1st round.
Literally anything would have been better than a 2 guard nobody wanted, a soft big man who spends half the season shooting 30% from the line, and a tweener forward who occasionally gets hot making wide open 3s
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