Top 10 GMs of the Decade

Where I would change the list

1) A minimum criteria for how many years you’ve worked for one team.

-I would set a criteria of….4 years as a minimum track record.If you’ve set your team up with exciting young talent, within four years you should have some concrete results.

3) Consideration for how many rotation players were brought in under your watch. If a GM inherited the key parts of a championship team, then he will be judged on how well he filled in complementary pieces.
  
All that being said:

Morey gets an incomplete. He just wasn’t around for enough of the decade.

Admittedly, Morey’s presence on this list is due to one hot start, and a whole lot of optimism

Warkentien get’s an incomplete.

Pritchard get’s a top five spot. Having presided over (as asst GM/GM) the transition of the JailBlazers cap hell to second round contention is quite a feat. Like Presti, he realizes that young players can be a crap shoot, and has amassed enough that he only needs a handful to develop into rotation calibre players. He also has his fingerprints ALL over the key pieces on that roster. From the comments, Roy for Foye anyone. How about Aldridge for Tyrus Thomas?

BC was with the suns for long enough that the success of “7 seconds or less” should be his ticket onto this list. This list seems to zero on on a GM’s best stretch of years, ie Ainges’s Celtics only came on recently. BC did make the decision to overpay for Nash to bring him in. That was a big risk, and he ended up being the catalyst for the team.

Otis Smith didn’t bring in enough players, to make a list spanning the whole decade. Howard, Nelson, and Turk were already there. Hence, he can’t take any responsiblility for the their respective breakouts in a Magic uniform, at least not directly in my books.

In closing, since KD had the title of TOP GMs of the decade, I think he gave too much credit to GMs that are off to a good start, and was biased towards current success over long term record. Furthermore, I think he felt obligated to feature GMs that are still active today, when I’m sure a few GMs that could make the end of the list are no longer employed..

Questions?

Who was in charge during the Pacers strong run, which ended with the Malice in the Palace? They should get consideration for the transition from Rik Smits-Reggie to JO and friends.

Rod Thorn? He did assemble the J-Kidd- K-Mart – RJ – Kittles quartet. Were they successful long enough to hang his hat on?

Don’t have the time to go over BC’s track record, but I think by looking his transactions over the “SSOL” Era he stacks up favorably to be on the tail end of a top 10. Another credit to the way it was constructed is that it was sustainable over a long period, with the odd plugin of a new body. I will contrast that with Pat Riley’s Heat Championship run, which had a very limited window of success before most of the key role players turned into pumpkins (bad contracts). Riley is thus justified as the lowest ranked of the GM’s that won championships. Anyone have any insight into the Heat years built around Alonzo Mourning and Tim Hardaway?