Assessing MJ as Charlotte's Head Guy

Last week I assessed Michael Jordan's job performance as head of basketball operations for the Washington Wizards from 2000-2003. My co-bloggers, away from this forum, have granted that he muffed his DC assignment, but yet have entered in a spirited colloquy as to the quality of Jordan's job performance since becoming head of basketball operations for the Charlotte Bobcats in June 2006. Let us assess his record with respect to three categories: draft picks, player transactions, and building a coaching/management team.

I. DRAFT PICKS

Jordan has helmed the Bobcats for four drafts now, starting in 2006. For each first-round draft pick, I will list the player chosen by Jordan, along with the five players chosen immediately afterwards in sequence.

2006: Adam Morrison
Next selected candidates: Tyrus Thomas, Shelden Williams, Randy Foye, Brandon Roy, Rudy Gay
Verdict: This was a horrible pick. Thomas, Williams, and Foye have disappointed in the pros, but at least they have played better than Morrison. Roy has made three All-Star teams, and Gay has played at a near-All-Star level.

2007: Brandan Wright (Wright was immediately traded to GSW for Jason Richardson.)
Next: Joakim Noah, Spencer Hawes, Acie Law, Thaddeus Young, Julian Wright
Verdict: Brandan Wright has been injured for much of his three-year NBA tenure, so this choice is hard to judge. We do know that Noah, Hawes, and Young have revealed themselves to be legitimate NBA starters, and Noah has performed at a near-All-Star level for Chicago.

2008: D.J. Augustin
Next: Brook Lopez, Jerryd Bayless, Jason Thompson, Brandon Rush, Anthony Randolph
Verdict: Lopez looks like a quality starting center and potential All-Star for the next decade. The other four players have shown great promise as well. Augustin had a nice rookie year, but has seen his minutes, percentages, and general production decline across the board in 2009-10. Not a good pick.

2008: Alexis Ajinca
Next: Ryan Anderson, Courtney Lee, Kosta Koufos, Serge Ibaka, Nicolas Batum
Verdict: Lee started on a Finals team. Batum has started almost all his games for Portland, a serious playoff team, in his first two seasons. Anderson contributes to a title contender in Orlando, and Ibaka recently acquired the moniker "Dr. Nasty" for his work in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, who is Alexis Ajinca? Apparently he has only played in 6 games this entire season.

2009: Gerald Henderson
Next: Tyler Hansbrough, Earl Clark, Austin Daye, James Johnson, Jrue Holiday
Verdict:All these players save Holiday have seen middling results in their rookie seasons. 65 games is probably too soon to assess the long-term wisdom of a draft selection. But still, Henderson averages 8 minutes and 2 points per game, disappointing for a lottery pick.

I give Jordan a D grade as a drafter.

II. ROSTER TRANSACTIONS

Summer 2006: Signed Othella Harrington, Jake Voskuhl, Walter Herrmann as free agents

June 2007: Traded lottery pick Brandan Wright to GSW for Jason Richardson

December 2007: Traded Walter Herrmann and Primoz Brezec to Detroit for Nazr Mohammed

January 2008: Signed Earl Boykins as a free agent

August 2008: Signed Shannon Brown as a free agent

December 2008: Traded Jason Richardson and Jared Dudley to Phoenix for Raja Bell, Boris Diaw, and Sean Singletary

January 2009: Traded Matt Carroll and Ryan Hollins to Dallas for Desagana Diop

February 2009: Traded Adam Morrison and Shannon Brown to Los Angeles for Vladimir Radmanovic

July 2009: Traded Emeka Okafor to New Orleans for Tyson Chandler

September 2009: Signed Stephen Graham as free agent

November 2009: Traded Raja Bell and Radmanovic to Golden State for Stephen Jackson and Acie Law

February 2010: Traded Flip Murray and Acie Law to Chicago for Tyrus Thomas

February 2010: Traded a second-round draft pick for Theo Ratliff

March 2010: signed Larry Hughes

Verdict: Most of these transactions were fairly inconsequential. The trade of Jason Richardson was presumably necessary because new coach Larry Brown was not fond of J-Rich's defense-free ways.

The best transaction above was the acquisition of Stephen Jackson at the beginning of this season. Despite his complaining out in Oakland, Jackson's defensive fire and emotional leadership, filling a need on a team formerly led by the laconic Gerald Wallace, have helped to propel Charlotte into a playoff spot for the first time in the team's six years.

The worst transaction on this list has to be the Okafor-Chandler trade. In nine NBA campaigns, Chandler has averaged double figures in points only once, and double figures in rebounds only twice: all when he played with PG extraordinaire Chris Paul. He also has missed nearly 70 games to foot injury during the past two seasons, including 31 this season. Prior to that trade, Oklahoma City almost traded for Chandler in February 2009, but rescinded the deal when Chandler's former surgeon looked at his medical records and pronounced him a walking suture. Meanwhile, Okafor averaged a double-double in each of his first five seasons, and is only 0.8 RPG shy of a double-double for 2009-10. After missing time in his second and third seasons, he has been quite durable in 2007-08, 2008-09, and 2009-10, playing in 235 of 235 possible games. It is true that Chandler's contract expires in June 2011, while Okafor is extended through 2014, so perhaps the extra financial flexibility is a plus for Charlotte. Still, on the court this had terrible results.

I give Jordan a B grade as a roster steward.

III. MANAGEMENT STAFF

Upon joining the Bobcats in 2006, Jordan wisely opted to retain coach Bernie Bickerstaff, who had piloted a young and raw squad through its first two seasons together. By mutual agreement, Jordan and BB decided at the end of 2006-07 (a 33-49 campaign) that the team needed a fresh voice.

In May 2007, Jordan named Sam Vincent, a former Chicago teammate of Jordan, as the Bobs' new head coach. This was probably a poor decision, as Vincent had only one season of prior NBA assistant experience on his résumé. The Bobcats regressed, winning 32 games (one fewer than the previous season) in 2007-08.

Around the same time he hired Vincent, Jordan began searching for a new general manager, an underling of sorts to Jordan's role as head of basketball operations. Jordan hired Rod Higgins, who had played with Jordan in Chicago during MJ's rookie season, 1984-85. This penchant for choosing old cronies (detailed in my prior post, wherein I described Jordan's hiring of Charles Oakley and Bryon Russell) likely does not result in the selection of the most outstanding candidates.

In April 2008, Jordan fired Vincent as head coach and hired Larry Brown, who had not been seriously employed since leaving the Knicks' head coaching job in a bitter split two years prior. Brown, a fellow UNC alum, represented a sizable risk, as his average tenure in his eight previous NBA coaching jobs was 3 years per stop. Brown tends to get "itchy" after seeing a few autumns and springs go by in the same place. Who can blame him, really? If I had the chance to get paid millions and experience life in multiple world-class cities, I would surely take it. Still, Brown has done a good job with Charlotte, improving from 32 wins in 2007-08 to 35 wins in 2008-09 and, based on current projections, 44 wins this year. Making the playoffs is difficult without a slam-dunk All-Star player on your roster, so Brown deserves great credit. Thus far, this was a good decision by Jordan.

Unfortunately, the roster seems to be "maxed out"; without any major stars, the team cannot ascend to a championship level, and Brown's championship experience will be for naught. Jordan faces major challenges in determining how to improve the roster without destroying it first.

I give Jordan a B-minus grade for his management team decisions.

Jordan's Performance in DC

Via ESPN's Truehoop, I note that new Bobcats owner Michael Jordan attempted today to take credit for the success of the Washington Wizards over the last decade:

When I first got to Washington, people didn’t understand the financial position that team was facing. In Washington we put together a five year plan that included clearing huge salaries off the books to create cap flexibility, and building a roster that would become a playoff contender. In just three years, we went from almost $22 million over the cap to more than $8 million under, and traded veterans with big contracts for young talent. In year five, with a roster made up mostly of guys we brought in, they made the playoffs.

Let us review the chronology of Jordan's tenure with the Wizards, however.

Jordan was hired to run the Wizards' basketball operations midway through the 1999-2000 season. He was fired by owner Abe Pollin in May 2003 just after the regular season concluded. (You will recall that in that period he also decided to return as a player, an oddly self-indulgent decision.)

Following the MJ departure, the Wizards signed Gilbert Arenas, previously of Golden State, as a free agent in July 2003 and acquired Antawn Jamison by trade (for Jerry Stackhouse, Christian Laettner, and a draft pick which became Devin Harris) in July 2004. The Wizards finally made the playoffs, with Arenas and Jamison as their best players, in April 2005. They went on to make the playoffs in 2006, 2007, and 2008.

Jordan clearly was not responsible for the acquisition of those two players (or for Caron Butler, who was acquired in a trade with the L.A. Lakers in the summer of 2005), who together proved to be the core of the Wizards' playoff half-beast. It really is not clear to me what role he played in the construction of that team. His major acquisitions for the Wizards — Laettner, Kwame Brown, Larry Hughes, and Stackhouse — were all gone by July 2005.

In 2002 he also signed his gambling buddy Charles Oakley as a free agent and his one-time nemesis Bryon Russell, probably so that, as a GM-player, he could settle the controversy from his original "push off" (the genesis of this blog's name) against Russell in 1998. He also traded away promising young guard Richard Hamilton, who eventually proved to be the starter on a six-time conference finals team, because Hamilton had rubbed Jordan wrongly on the court.

I certainly hope that he does a better job with Charlotte than he did with Washington.

Honey I'm Still Free

Here at JPO we always enjoy an opportunity to refer back to the originally sinful event where, well, Jordan pushed off. ESPN's Henry Abbott wrote a post today expressing his dismay that Michael Jordan, surprise!, did not appear in Provo, Utah last night to compete with Bryon Russell at an advertised 1-on-1 game. Anyone with common sense could see that Jordan never had any incentive to participate in this purported event. What really galls me, though, is that ESPN aided and abetted the promotion of this hoax via (1) having Bryon Russell appear on an official ESPN.com chat on December 7th to plug the alleged 1-on-1 game and (2) a bubbly post from Abbott himself on December 3rd outlining the proposed contest, suggesting (against all common sense) that there was a non-zero probability that Jordan might appear.

One could argue that the NBA likes the publicity for its Development League teams, and Disney/ESPN, as a broadcast partner of the league, has an interest in promoting the (erstwhile-named) NBDL. But the odd thing is that Jordan is a part-owner of the Bobcats, and thus David Stern and the other NBA central officers work for him. There is a clear principal-agent conflict here (or more accurately, perhaps we could just say that the problem is one of too many principals): Jordan himself probably did not enjoy this whole episode, as it redounds to augment a Grinchy image for MJ that began with September's HOF speech.

Mickey Mouse is rolling over in his grave.

Nothing Could Be Finer

I would like to fully associate myself with the opinions of Adrian Wojnarowski regarding Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame speech. I've heard some awkward wedding speeches ... heck, I've even made some awkward wedding speeches ... but unlike nuptial toasts, Jordan had many months to prepare this one. Rather than sounding inspirational or grateful, all he thought to do is prod and provoke anyone who may have slighted him in the past 30 years.

It may be that Jordan's talent is singular (in which case inspiration would be a mere fiction) and his doings were entirely from his own assiduity (in which case no one deserves thanks). Still, a few white lies for the occasion would harm no one, and leave several folks feeling glowy. Jordan blew it. (But again, look at our URL; we're on to this guy.)