With Kevin Pritchard having been deposed and LeBron James moving on to bigger and better things, the Trail Blazers must still find a replacement for their open GM position. Three candidates have already interviewed, and a fourth name has floated around the rumor mill but is yet to be contacted. While Danny Ferry, Randy Pfund, and Richard Cho have interviewed for the position, Kiki Vandeweghe appears to be the best candidate for the job when you look at the resumes and their relationships to the Portland community.
The early favorite for the position was Danny Ferry, who recently resigned from the same post for the Cleveland Cavaliers. After spending most of his mediocre playing career in Cleveland and San Antonio, he then moved on to the Spurs' front office, where you would think some of the front office success would have rubbed off on him before he took the GM job for the Cavs in 2005. Instead, he managed to waste the ability of the most talented player of his generation for 5 years.
Since joining Cleveland, he was faced with the pressure of getting LeBron James a ring, and figuring out how to bring in the proper personnel to allow him to succeed in the playoffs. The major moves that transpired during his era were not enough to bring Cleveland a championship. All that paying Larry Hughes $11 million per year and re-signing Drew Gooden and Donny Marshall brought the town was a 4 game sweep out of the 07 Finals. Ferry then managed to turn these three role players into an over-the-hill Ben Wallace, Joe Smith, Wally Szczerbiak (who's expiring contract he would fail to deal later on) and Delonte West (who would supposedly go on to bang LeBron's mom. Of all the women in Northeast Ohio at his disposal, he went with the King's mother). He also managed to pick up Mo Williams, the only All-Star (dubious) LeBron ever played with.
For Ferry's last two blockbusters, first he flipped Wallace and the athletic Sasha Pavlovic into Shaq. Shaq went on to clog the middle and change the whole Cleveland offensive dynamic. For his second blockbuster, he managed to land Antawn Jamison for practically nothing (since he got Big Z back a month later) at the trading deadline. Danny Ferry seems to be the opposite of the kind of GM the Blazers would need. While he was saddled with "Win NOW!" pressure from the very beginning, he still overpaid for mediocre players and did not use contracts properly. And then there's this, from his
basketball reference page, sponsored by a fan:
An Extremely Ticked Off Cavs Season-Ticket Holder sponsor(s) this page. Danny Ferry was a colossal failure, both as a bad NBA player and as an atrocious NBA general manager. He will forever be known in the annals of professional team sports as the first person in history to have destroyed the same sports franchise twice.
A bit much, but you get the idea.
The next candidate, and also the one with the best resume, is Randy Pfund, former Miami Heat GM. This resume comes with a huge asterisk, due to the fact that the legendary Pat Riley was head coach during much of this tenure and president through all of it. It's been Riley who receives the credit for Miami's run the past 15+ years, from all those Atlantic Division titles in the late 90's, to the drafting of D-Wade and subsequent championship after he landed Shaq. Now, it's been Riley as the de facto GM since Pfund resigned in 08. The Heat don't even list a GM on their
executive page.
For argument's sake, give Pfund the benefit of the doubt, since he held the title. If it was indeed him masterminding these moves, then he did a tremendous job building a perennial contender and a champion. Since signing on to a talented Heat team that featured Tim Hardaway and Alonzo Mourning in November of 96, he managed some great acquisitions that began with landing 23 ppg scorer Jamal Mashburn for essentially nothing (underachieving Kurt Thomas, Pedrag Danilovic, and Martin Muursepp). He then traded away his rival GM Chris Wallace (of Gasol trade fame) and a second round pick, landed Terry Mills and Veshon Leonard through free agency, and made a deal for a young and promising Brent Barry that only forced him to give up Ike Austin and Charles Smith. He then turned Leonard into All-Star Chris Gatling and Eddie House, then turned those two into Brian Grant (who, if you don't remember Portlanders, was a potential All-Star on an extremely deep Blazers team that was a blown-17-point-4th-quarter-lead-in-Game-7-on-the-Road from going to the NBA Finals and probably winning a championship).
Over the next few years, Pfund managed to keep the Heat afloat after their championship window had essentially closed by landing Anthony Mason and Eddie Jones for an (at this point) injury-plagued Mashburn, picking up Lamar Odom, and drafting Udonis Haslem, Caron Butler, and a guy named Dwyane Wade. With all these pieces in place, he then turned Odom, Grant, and Butler in Shaq, except unlike Ferry, he brought in Shaq when he still had something left in the tank. Now, with two superstars like Shaq and Wade, Pfund brought in quality supporting members like Antoine Walker, Jason Williams, and an old Gary Payton which ultimately brought Miami its only title in 2006. It probably would have been two titles if it weren't for timely injuries to Wade and O'neal in 2005. After the glory days were gone, he turned Shaq into Shawn Marion, and drafted Michael Beasely and Mario Chalmers after the Heat bottomed out in 08. The unwritten fact throughout all of this is that Riley receives all of the credit, and rightfully so. It's difficult to say no to a figure as legendary as Riley. Just ask
Shaq in 04, or James, Wade, and Bosh in 2010. While it may have said GM on Pfund's letterhead, the real one managing the situation was Riley.
The latest candidate to interview for the postion is Richard Cho, the assistant GM for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Cho has been involved with the organization for 11 years, going back to their days as the Seattle Supersonics, so he has a little Pacific Northwest awareness in him. Before he worked for the Thunder, he worked as an engineer for Boeing in Seattle, and then (like many others in NBA front offices) went on to get his law degree. He's been a part of a very exciting up and coming team, and Sam Presti has done an amazing job acquiring the perfect personnel to support his superstar Kevin Durant as well as been very economically savvy, and now has the Thunder in a position to be very successful for a very long time. Although he doesn't have much experience in the limelight, Cho has been learning behind the scenes at one of the smartest and best run front offices in the league. While in theory this is a good thing, examples have shown in the past (see: Ferry, Danny) that working for a well run organization does not mean you've learned anything.
Finally, there's former Blazer Kiki Vandeweghe. Although he has yet to be officially contacted by the Blazers, his name has come up in conversations over the past few weeks. First, his track record shows he can turn around a franchise. Since he took over the Nuggets in 01-02, he turned them from a cellar dweller to a perennial playoff team that has been favored to win the West. His major moves have been landing free agents Andre Miller, Veshon Leonard, and Juwan Howard, landing Kenyon Martin (for late draft picks), trading on draft day for Nene and Marcus Camby, and drafting Melo. After the 06 season his contract was not renewed, thought it is not his fault the team underachieved.
His next GM stop was a messy New Jersey situation, that again he made the best of. By the time he took over, Jason Kidd had already left, Vince Carter wanted out, and the Nets were in rebuilding mode. Still, he made the best of the 08 draft, picking up Brook Lopez (who has now become the cornerstone of the franchise) and Chris Douglas-Roberts, who was a serviceable reserve.
The key things to focus on are his tenure in Denver, his draft record, and ultimately his connection to the Blazers. He played his entire career in Portland with an injured back and still averaged over 20 ppg. He scored 47 in his first game ever as a Blazer. He's #17 on The Oregonian's top 40 Blazers of all time. He played an integral part in the development of Clyde Drexler. He's even been used as an excuse for why Portland drafted Sam Bowie (they had just traded for Kiki a few weeks earlier). If you look at the players he got in Denver, all for next to nothing, you can see he knows how to assemble the missing pieces of a team. If he can get free agents to come to a place like Denver, then Portland shouldn't be such a leap. Now that he already has a decent team assembled, he will be able to plug in the missing pieces without much fuss. Based on his track record, and his connection to the organization, Kiki Vandeweghe would put the Blazers in the best position to continue to develop and succeed.
