Minnesota Sports Forum

The problem I have with Hinkie is we never got to see him make moves after he got his rebuild going right. We know he can get a bunch of assets in a tanking effort to get high picks and he was questionable on picks he made that weren't at the very top of the draft. Well that does nothing for us right now because we need to put a good team on the court now and not in 4 years. If you want to dump assets and do a proper rebuild he's your guy, but is there any evidence he can make the right decisions for a team with limited options to improve and needing to start winning now? It seems like a stretch to just assume he'd be good for us given where we are going to be picking in the draft the next few years combined with the fact that we can't really afford to just dump guys for picks either because we don't have much cap space with 2 max guys on the team already to take advantage of salary dumps.

monsterpile wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:I'd stay away from David Griffin. He strikes me as a windbag like David Kahn. He really didn't accomplish much when you look at his history. LeBron was returning to Cleveland no matter who ran the front office and it was LeBron in his prime attracted free agents and ultimately lead to the team's success.

Sam Hinckie is intriguing, but look at his record and his tenure with the Sixers does isn't all that impressive if you look at the specific moves he made. Simmons was the obvious choice with the #1 pick and Embiid made sense - although it was risky given his healthy issues. I like that he showed patience through the process and he made an excellent choice for head coach.

The guys I'd look at are Troy Weaver, Mike Winger, Brian Wright and Trajan Langdon. Google their names and take a look at some of the information and opinions on them.

Honestly I'm a bit conflicted on Griffin. I've listened to him breaking some things down on TV and been impressed. I get what you mean about the windbag comment too. I'd guess at worst he is somewhat of a rich man's david Kahn though. Lol the bar is pretty low.

Let's remind ourselves of some of the moves he made to get the Cavs where they were. He basically picked up JR Smith and Shumpart for nothing and both guys were worthwhile players surrounding LeBron. Now both guys ended up getting paid too much but the initial trade was pretty good. He had a couple other smaller deals like that that were pretty solid to build up a contender. It's a different thing to be building around a guy like LeBron you give up some assets to win now. Considering the Warriors turned up when LeBron went there I would say Griffin did some good things. You can find some black marks on the record too but I think what I'm trying to say is the guy would be pretty far from a disaster. Remember that he worked for an owner that...didn't bring him back then the best players left months later. Maybe it's a coincidence but it's something to consider. Let's just say if you were going to say who is more of windbag and less competent I would pick Dan Gilbert over Griffin easily. Just sayin.

Both guys speak well and in somewhat soothing voices, but I don't think Griffin is anything like David Kahn.

Kahn was pompous and condescending right off the bat at his first GM gig, which was an early indication that he was the sort of guy who did not really listen to others. He was also incredibly overconfident in his own decisions. Rubio fell to him and he acted like he somehow found the next Magic in the late first round, he insisted that our team would be "breathtaking" because of his choices, and claimed that Darko was "manna from heaven" despite all evidence to the contrary. He sounded like a smooth talker, but had zero humility, so it was obvious he was really tone deaf and oblivious. The Webber interview was only one example. He tried to make stupidity sound like genius. Guys like that always make terrible leaders because they don't listen to others and fail to recognize, adjust to, or learn from their own mistakes.

David Griffin comes off to me much more like just a thoughtful guy whose tone suggests he knows the importance of listening to others. His comments on personnel decisions like Butler and AD indicate he's the kind of guy who deals with the reality of the situation rather than how you might hope it would be, which is totally the opposite of Kahn or Thibs, for that matter.

Griffen was GM for a franchise that won a championship with challenging personnel (stars and role players). Beyond that huge accomplishment he comes across as articulate and intelligent. Comparing him to Kahn seems insane to me and not really worth the time, they are light years apart in terms of accomplishments and proven competency.