I’d like to hear your thoughts on Troy, I know we’ve celebrated moves like Duren and getting Bogey for nothing, but this team won 17 games last year and looks even worse this season.
What drives me the most insane and it has since last summer, is we were sitting on $30mill in cap space. He has a 17-win team with very young players. And instead of grabbing some guys that can help with W’s (Strus, Oubre, Grant Williams, G Vincent, C Wood, Watanabe, Torey Craig, etc.) he basically said…nah, WE GOOD. And traded for an expiring deal with the corpse of Joe Harris and 2 second round picks. (Before free agency even started.) Basically, setting the stage for the current shit show.
Do you think Troy should be bounced now?
Do you give him until the trade deadline?
Do you trust him to spend all that salary cap this summer? (This scares the shit out of me.)
Does he deserve to see this through until next season?
Pros: (relatively chronological), drafting Stew and Bey at 16 and 19 in a very weak draft class.
Signing Jerami Grant as a free agent.
Getting Bojan for a bag of peanuts.
Drafting Duren and eating salary to obtain the pick that yielded him.
Getting compensated to take Burks in a Knicks salary dump.
Drafting Ausar where the draft was wide open.
Getting Monte Morris for about nothing.
Cons: tying up a future draft pick for the Beef Stew pick in 2020, that’s ensured Detroit is not a capable trade partner for a high quality player.
Drafting Hayes over Hali and Maxey.
The maniacal trades following his hiring. Giving Bruce Brown away for nothing. Trading for Dedmon, only to cut him and sign Plumlee, as an example.
Turning Bey into the human crime against basketball that is Jimmy Wiseman.
Having to trade down from a high value 2nd to trash just to move off Plumlee’s final 2 years.
TBD: Hiring Williams (Gores bares much responsibility here as well)
Jaden Ivey and Sasser’s future with Detroit.
Weaver’s cap space management. He’s only utilized it as a dumping ground and has yielded a few good players.
Conclusion: there’s a lot more he’s done. We still aren’t 100% certain where Cade will land on the talent spectrum, but he was going 1 regardless of who was picking.
Weaver has made some choices that haven’t paid off. But it’s unreasonable to expect any GM to just hit home run after home run.
I’d give him a grade of C. He hasn’t been a catastrophe like SVG was. He has made plenty of choices with hindsight that were mistakes.
I’m not going to tell anyone to approve or disapprove of him. It’s just sports, it’s literally entertainment. Your opinion is just as valid as mine. But I will advise caution that if he’s fired, the same guys who hired him will be in charge of the next hire. So you’re probably not attracting a better pool of candidates.
Instead of drafting Bey and Stewart he could’ve drafted Tyrese Maxey and Desmond Bane. And, of course, Halliburton instead of Killian. Your Pros are not as great as you think.
We could theoretically currently run out a squad of Jerami Grant, Tyrese Haliburton and Evan Mobley if he was a better talent evaluator.
But we have Cade and Killian instead.
Lmao