Bryan Colangelo - Updated Legacy?

[grindhouse]

We lost Ed Davis who right now would have been our starting power forward. I hope he comes back in free agency


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[blackjitsu]

You guys kill me. BC was an incredibly bad GM. You give credit for him drafting Ross, but wasn't Ross Casey's pick? Last I checked Casey is still with the team.

But in case you forgot why he is bad, we have Landry Fields under contract -- because we were trying to get a senior citizen under contract! He held on to Bargs for WAY too long. Massive player turnover every year, and then questions of why there's no chemistry. Fired his best coach (because he wanted to discipline Bargs, was defense first, wasn't his "guy")...His "guy" was a solid assistant, but horrible head coach who was giving WAY too much time.

I haven't even started with the desperate moves -- Gay, "Ball", JO, etc..the idea that the team was a "player away." Most importantly, Ed Davis is stuck on a BENCH in Memphis right now.

Stop trying to rewrite history. I was asking for him to step down and let Masai run things years ago. A good amount of YOU GUYS agreed. Now that the team is doing well you're giving him praise?

If a corporation is about to go bankrupt and a new CEO steps in, utilizes the talents of the employees better, and gets them into the black no one says, "Maybe the last CEO was good, his practices led to hiring all these amazing people." No! They say, "The last CEO was an idiot! He had all this talent around him and screwed up!"

You guys kill me.

Also, nothing wrong with drafting Bargs, but that extension was weird, and more importantly, for a GM who had a reputation for correcting his mistakes BC never moved Andrea when it was obvious that he had overpaid the kid.

He was bad. It's okay. Dude's rich. He'll survive.

[Burnit482]

Colangelo was always decent when it came to forecasting talent in drafts. In hindsight, the shortcomings of Bargnani weren't the real issue -- the real issue was rewarding that ridiculous contract to a person who had yet to display the level of talent deserving of such a contract.

I argue this completely. That was one of his assets. He signed Demar to what we now see is a reasonable deal. We see Amir's deal that i didn't question but was a bit of a head scratcher now look like a bargain. The bargs deal although we all know how much we hate bargs was not awful. Where he had issues was free agency and we all know how brutally fkin awful he was. LK TURK Fields nash even tho we didn't get him.

Just to add BC did a great job drafting. At the end of the day no matter whatever advice he received the picks are his credit or failure. Demar Davis JV Ross... you will be hard pressed to find a better player that was drafted after them. Yes there are some but no one is perfect, you do draft positional needs to a small extent but were all great picks. 3 are currently starting on a winning raptor ball club.

[The Great One]

Meh. I like Colangelo. I think he's a good GM. He's made some good moves that was supposed to put the Raps on top of the Eastern Conference like the JO trade and the Turkoglu signing. It just didn't work out.

I know he overpaid to get Turk but Turk had a sensational year for the Magic the year before. And i thought JO still had something left in him when he traded for him.

Biggest mistake he's made though(and it's a big one) was not getting anything back for Bosh. That really sets the franchise back.

As for the Bargnani draft? it was a weak class. can't really blame him for taking a chance on AB.

And the Rudy Gay trade. It's a trade to save his job.

[isaacthompson]

It doesn't really change anything for me. The negatives outweigh the positives for sure. Holding onto Bargs and Bosh for so long doomed this franchise.

[MACK11]

Dumars' second half has been SO bad that I'm basing the 1st half on complete fluke. Throw out the Milicic pick, let's pretend that didn't even happen, every single free-agency move he's made since the year they lost to Cavs in the ECF has been atrocious. I can't even think of a single good free-agency move in all the years since and the draft picks have been hitting at pretty much the league average, so that doesn't really move the dial one way or another.

He also traded away Amir for nothing and trades Arron afflalo for a 2nd round pick hahaha

[p00ka]

Meh,,,,, bad BC has been beaten to death.

good BC: he did make other good moves too, but the drafting of 3, and trading for the other 2, of our starters were certainly good ones.

His bad ones hurt the team, without question, though some can only be said with hindsight. Every GM in the league makes mistakes. Bryan made too many. However, moving forward, which is what is important, not crying over spilled milk, we can thank him for the core pieces we have,,, then move on to the Masai era.

[Letter N]

Dumars' second half has been SO bad that I'm basing the 1st half on complete fluke. Throw out the Milicic pick, let's pretend that didn't even happen, every single free-agency move he's made since the year they lost to Cavs in the ECF has been atrocious. I can't even think of a single good free-agency move in all the years since and the draft picks have been hitting at pretty much the league average, so that doesn't really move the dial one way or another.

[ebrian]

Bryan Colangelo would have made a great career as a scout and nothing more.

The question I'd like to ask is whether or not you think Joe Dumars is a great GM. The first half of his tenure were unbelievable. You couldn't even make it up if you wanted to. Near perfection. Then, the latter half has been absolutely horrendous, bordering on total disaster. If any GM had stepped into any team and done what Joe Dumar has done in the last 5 years, they wouldn't have lasted 2.

Would you update his legacy, and if so, which half would you update? Great GM or horrible GM?

[Letter N]

Here's my analogy for Colangelo as a GM.

BCo was a bad gambler, I know because I'm a bad gambler. I know basketball and I can get about 55-60% of games correct in a year, which is actually a very respectable mark on par with the Sharps. But unlike the Sharps I don't make any money on gambling, in fact the opposite because I have no money management and I let emotions drive my decisions. So yes I get 60% correct, but my 40% misses are more detrimental to my overall bank roll.

For every Amir Johnson win he bet quadruple on a Bargnani or Jermaine O'Neal or Hedo Turkoglu, so the hits could never catch up to the misses.

[Craiger]

I've mentioned this many times before - Colangelo's problem wasn't that he was a "bad GM" per se. It was that he was ego centric and worried more about how he and his decisions would appear than the welfare of the team as a whole.

That ofcourse led to what amounted to bad decisions, particularily on his big investments and over time, but with plenty of good or fair smaller investments along the way that would otherwise never see the light of day hiding behind those big bad investments.

Bargnani is the most obvious case, and perhaps the most influential. He simply refused to allow Bargnani to look like a bust, so he did everything in his power to hide that possibility. 3 coaches, no accountability, trying hide his deficiencies by building around him, indirectly blaming other players/people for Bargnani's weaknesses. There was always an excuse for why things weren't working, and always "potential" on the other side. I do think he would have traded Bargnani, but only IF a great package came along. I'm convinced that the deal Masai took would not have been close to good enough for Colangelo.

He refused to make the hard decisions that would be an indictment of his previous mistakes. He had guys that were 'his guys' that he'd make big investments in and he would not let them go at a loss vs his purchase price (so to speak) unless forced to do so. (Bosh left, Hedo seemed to have demanded a trade, TJ vs Jose situation, Bargnani was never moved) The only exception to the above was JO, who he traded for Marion (his guy again) that he tried to re-resign during FA and failed. Arguably the exception that proves the rule.

This led right up to until the Rudy Gay deal, which was a last ditch effort to save his job and never in the best interest of the team.

I think Slaw is right that this isn't a Colangelo team. It has a bunch of players from the Colangelo era, some of the good decisions made. But chances are, if he was still in charge here, Bargnani and Gay would both still be on the team and in the starting line up, and the team would be significantly different just by that addition.

[JawsGT]

I think he had a decent eye for talent and an awful touch for building a team. His philosophy seemed to be identify the best player on your roster and build around them, first with Bosh, then with Bargnani, and given the chance he would have rebuilt the roster around Gay. Which is a terrible approach to team-building, unless you've got an absolute superstar as your best player. I mean, it reflects just as poorly on Colangelo now that he had a lot of the right pieces but was unable to see how they would work as a team. You know that he would have traded any of the current starters to get pieces he thought would go better with Gay.

That pretty much sums up his legacy.

[Joey]

Well of course he had a few adequate qualities and a semblance of what it takes to be successful in the league - you don't hold down a GM position for close to two decades exclusively because you're Jerry Colangelo's kid. But he lost his way in Toronto early on and really kept compounding his errors with each passing move. He inherited a nice situation when he got here, left the team in misery when he departed, with almost no tangible success in between.

What about the Atlantic Division Banner hanging in the rafters...

But actually, I think this is probably the fairest summary of his stay here.
He spent too many of his moves trying to fix other moves. He was on his heels til the day he left.

[thead]

Agreed on both accounts. You don't need to convince me that BC was a clown. I wanted him gone before his extension in 2011.

you really need to consider the whole picture...Colangelo would have us capped out with starters that dont fit and zero bench. this season would have started with 34 million dollars or our cap tied up in Fields, Bargnani and Gay. His drafting record was solid save Bargnani.

[Fully]

Well of course he had a few adequate qualities and a semblance of what it takes to be successful in the league - you don't hold down a GM position for close to two decades exclusively because you're Jerry Colangelo's kid. But he lost his way in Toronto early on and really kept compounding his errors with each passing move. He inherited a nice situation when he got here, left the team in misery when he departed, with almost no tangible success in between.