Remembering Wark and Rex...

I’ll miss them both and will always be left wondering how good they could’ve made this team had they not had their money restraints from Stan.

As much as I want Pritchard to become our new GM, I don’t think Stan will go that route… supposedly Pritch has a huge ego and that’s not the kind of guy Stan hires. He doesn’t want someone who will clash with him or try to get more power. Not to mention Stan always hires his close friends (most of the Nuggets organization is made up of his friends), so idk if he’d give arguably the most important position to someone he doesn’t know he could trust.

I’m a firm believer that to have a good NBA team, it starts with the GM. That’s why I don’t think saving money on a GM is something Stan should even consider . This is one thing he can’t cheap out on.

And if money isn’t an issue I can’t see why Pritchard wouldn’t get the job. Griffin and Sheppard intrigue me, but I’m kind of scared that they could be the next David Kahn, which would be horrible. I would prefer to go the safe route and just get the experienced and well known GM in Pritch. I think even though either Griffin or Sheppard or some other guys have high potential and could be the next Sam Presti, but I’d prefer to avoid the risk, and go with something you know what you’re gonna get with (which is Pritchard).

but as far as deserving better….dunno. The only thing I’ll say is they deserved to be let go sooner (after the season) so a new regime could go through the draft and the Free Agency period. That was extremely poor timing by Josh and Stan

They did make a couple of mistakes and the way they gave away assets or let them go really pissed me off. Maybe it was Stan’s pushing that caused it, but I still feel like they could’ve gotten a good player for the TPE and/or gotten a good player at the TPE. Not to mention that Steven Hunter trade…that always pissed me off. I understand getting rid of a contract, but why before the season? I guarantee we could’ve gotten Tyrus Thomas from Chicago if we offered Hunter, that first and Graham (and/ or Petro), but b/c Stan didn’t want to pay the lux tax bill early, he dumped him in August. Even I know that luxury tax is counted for until the last day of the season, so why do such a herky jerky move so soon.

and he always struck me as…..disingenuous. Kinda like a publicity hound. I always knew when Chapman was the idea behind a deal because he was always appearing on talk shows and Jim Rome. Oh well.

All I know is with Wark gone, Melo’s biggest supporter is gone. I can’t help but think that this will have a serious impact on what happens with the contract extension.

The final nail in Wark’s coffin was on the day of the draft he was on a morning radio show being interviewed and he was doing his usual bullying and condescending towards the radio hosts.

When asked about the draft, rather than just giving a sincere answer to the question Wark pulled another pile of rhetoric out of his bag and tried to say the draft was like taking his wife shopping… they’re not planning to do anything but if they see something.

Then he said something else that was a little disturbing. When asked about the Nugs’ need to acquire another big, Wark was trying to sell the radio audience that the Nugs 2010 new “big” would be… Balkman!

At that moment I thought “oh you’re so gone”.

Great read Feinstein. I loved the way you intertwined the conversation with Wark into the article and I can’t actually believe you had the balls to be that up front with him like that. That’s what being a journalist (or fan advocate) is all about.

I gotta say at this point in time I’m really liking the idea of Griffen. I love Phoenix’s team right now and the way they still remained competitive even after the departures of Marion, Bell, Shaq and Diaw who all played key rolls in their prior success.

I’ve heard the arguments against this and considered them carefully. I’m just not buying that Warkentein absolutely deserved the extension. This is the right move for the Nuggets, the only sour part about it is not letting them go earlier to compete for other management jobs that are now taken.

The problem I have with Wark is the slimy, condescending way he tried to be candid about the job when talking to fans. The absolute utter horseshit about “Big Bertha” stands out among the his stupid poker and chess analogies. Reading about this argument with Andrew was actually pretty upsetting to me. Does Wark have a point? Yes, but chastising the fans for dreaming big is crossing the line. He admitted what a grave mistake 2008 was by dumping Camby and trading A.I. to fix it – and if it wasn’t so beneath him to be honest in front of a fan he would have admitted as much right there. Instead we get this hiding behind 50 wins and bad locker room bullshit.

If Wark delivered Melo he would have stayed no question. He didn’t, and in the following weeks he proved that he can’t. Wark can now take his 50 win resume, his Big Bertha golf clubs and his poker chips to another middling team searching for playoff mediocrity.

What have you done for me lately is a fair question. In Mark’s case, the answer is not much. The final nail in the coffin – trading Steve Hunter’s expiring and 2010 first round to Memphis for jack shit. Oh, and trading Sonny Weems and filler to Milwaukee for Malik Allen’s guaranteed deal. 50 wins is great and all, and we’ll look back on Wark’s time here as some decent years. If the Nuggets are dreaming for anything bigger than that – they needed to change. Wark finally ran out of chess moves and bluffed off the last of his poker chips. With Bearup, Dean Oliver, and Josh Kroenke still here half of the management team is surviving with room to add in some new talent. This isn’t nearly as big a loss for the Nugs as it’s made out to be. It’s the right move, perhaps just at the slightly wrong time

Proof of the pudding will be what does new FO do with Balkman who was definitly Wark’s folly. Normally a team shouldn’t need to worry about a $1.6m contract but for a team with a bloated payroll and an owner not really wanting to spend, that $1.6m is a big obstacle in trying to improve the team. And because it’s guaranteed for 3more years you can’t dump him and you can’t trade him because nobody else wants a bad 3year contract… even if it’s just for $1.6m… good move Wark.

Wark liked to play the ego card to the hilt, not answer questions and instead talk down to the interviewers & audience. The interviewers, possibly for concern that Wark wouldn’t come back for a future interview like the childish management practices they see the Rockies get away with, ofter took long pauses between comments and seldom questioned Wark’s on his non-comments. I always kept waiting for a response like “well you know us rubes here in Denver don’t know nthng but we have had a pro team for over 40years” and/or “I don’t seem to remember any of us who just fell off the turnip truck being responsible for the JailBlazers like you were”.

I tell you Wark is the poster child of someone who needs to be slapped on the back of the head by his grandma (because nobody ever messes with grandma) and be shaken back to reality with “Dude, glass houses”.

After enough time has passed and an objective comparison can be done, the last FO’s job performance I think will rate out a little better than Kiki’s time; but not by the leaps & bounds a lot of posters have been saying. Overall the bottom of the barrel signings & trades by Wark & Rex (Dahntay, AAA) may have been equal to Kiki’s (Najera, Bird the 1st time) but there might have been a few less misses (Tacos, Demar, Patterson).

I would think within the next 2-3 days we’d get the first interviews and then like 3 final candidates all get 2nd interviews to determine who gets the job or if they hire 2 guys again (Sheppard and Ujiri or Griffin could make a dynamic duo)

We’ve been over the full list of transactions engineered by the troika and I think we’ve pretty much all came to the agreement that there was more good than bad, but nothing got us over the top. Chapman and Wark had two years after dealing Camby to find a big man to battle the size in LA. They failed. They had a Kleiza for David Lee offer on the table and didn’t take it (thanks also in part to George Garl) now they lost Kleiza for nothing, which kind of means they lost David Lee for nothing. That to me is the biggest blemish on our former exec’s. I understand George Karl loved Kleiza and didn’t want to lose him but as an executive there comes a point where you have to pull the " I’m the boss" card and make a move that will help the team despite the coaches objections.

Obviously, the timing of this was poor. I would have liked to see a new gm earlier. Maybe the Nuggets weren’t sure what direction they were heading yet back in June, or maybe as Andrew speculated they were giving Rex and Wark this summer to get the big man job done. Either way, letting them go after the draft and fa and not getting a new gm to start building his plan with those tools is a mistake. I also question who exactly Stan and Son of Stan plan on getting who is better. I’m not an executive buff so I’ll stay out of the who’s next conversation.

One thing that is very concerning though: These firings, Karl’s health, Melo’s extension, the injuries to K-mart and Bird and the lack of a fourth big…Denver has question marks and nothing is certain from top to bottom.

It was super interesting hearing about your meeting with Wark.

I have no idea why we’re considering anyone in the Wizard’s organization…I don’t recall seeing them make a good front office move. I agree that the choice should be Pritchard (guy has done an unbelievable job by all accounts, has credibility with the players since he played in the league, and understands both the value of observation and analytics). If that’s not possible, I feel like we should be looking to the Spurs, Thunder, or Rockets organizations for our next hire.

wish i was there to witness this run-in with wark.

I think what we’re looking for is a guy from a quality organization, who has done great work behind the scenes, who not a whole lot of people have heard of. The best example of this is when the Thunder hired Presti away from the Spurs, at the time, the best organization in the league, and Presti was known to be a star in that organization. I’m not sure why we’d consider someone from organizations that haven’t been successful or have been known to make poor decisions.

I love what the Blazers did by hiring Rick Cho.

The ideal candidate would have these characteristics: in depth understanding of the cap (this is really important), fundamental understanding of basketball and coach speak (which is why it’s an advantage to have played basketball at least in college), scouting and player evaluation at both a college and the international level, negotiation skills, thorough understanding of the role of analytics, someone who understands how to build successful organizations and finally, someone who understands operations. If a lot of these skills sound like someone who is more suited for a CEO, that’s not a coincidence. I’m not sure if the politics of the NBA demands that the GM needs to be a former player to be taken seriously…but it feels like a lot of former players have been put in roles and they’re front men for smarter, more capable guys who are running the show behind the scenes.

Here are some names that I think would be interesting: Mike Zarren (guy behind the scenes who advises Ainge…although I’m not sure what the hell they’re doing signing Shaq), Haralabos Voulgaris (aloneinthecorner.com) who has done some of the most profound and analytical analysis I’ve seen, Sam Hinkie (VP of Operations with the Rockets), Demps would have been a great option, Jeff Weltner from the Bucks (Scott Skiles was a brilliant coaching hire, they’ve made some very shrewd moves in the past couple years).

While I think Reilly in Miami did a masterful job, there’s tons of other GMs with the forethought to clear a ton of space to land the big 3. He was the only one who got lucky and landed them…so he looks like a genius. The key word there is luck. He has done a great job of building a team around the big 3, but at the same time, it’s not hard to recruit to play with LeBron, DWade and Bosh. The smarter GMs are the ones who didn’t panic sign Amare Stoudemire or Joe Johnson to big deals. They’re saving their cap space.

Michael Cunningham: #Hawks asst GM Dave Pendergraft has emerged as early candidate for #Nuggets GM. He’s also in mix for #Suns GM Over 8 hours ago.

Read more: http://hoopshype.com/twitter_media.html#ixzz0vmaaClaa

idk who he is, but I would rahter get someone who is well known or comes from a good organization/ well mentored…

i was at the pepsi center the day jawon howard was let go. they both knew how the organization worked for several years. they had valid contracts and knew the consequences of when they expired. what goes around comes around. the organization is in transition with josh kroenke moving into the ownership role. making big money managing a pro basketball team. rex and wark have been truely blessed. these are the last 2 guys on earth i feel sorry for.