Born a Nuggets Fan has moved to Pickaxe and Roll
Former Nuggets are on the move.
Kiki Vandeweghe has been hired by the New Jersey Nets to fill a front office role under Rod Thorn. This is undoubtedly a case of Thorn paying Kiki back for not only taking Kenyon Martin off of the Nets hands, but also giving New Jersey three first round picks for the right to do so.
Kiki did a tremendous job tearing apart a horrible team with a couple of huge contracts and rebuilding from scratch. The Nuggets went from a laughingstock with no future to a perennial playoff team in just three seasons thanks to Kiki’s work. He made a good trade that landed the Nuggets both Camby and Nene, knew when to sell high on Raef LaFrentz getting rid of Juwan Howard’s atrocious deal in the process, he avoided giving horrible contracts to the Anthony Goldwires and Tariq Abdul-Wahads of the world and when he did spend money he did it reasonably, for the most part, as he signed Andre Miller and Marcus Camby to flat contracts that did not include an exponential jump in value from year to year. In fact, he was able to get them each to accept a reduction in salary in the second years of those contracts in order to maximize the Nuggets’ cap space that resulted in the sign and trade for K-Mart.
Of course, that is not the entire story of the Vandeweghe era. He made the aforementioned gaff of giving up three first round draft picks in the sign and trade for Martin. That contract has become one of the worst deals in the league although to be fair no one had any idea Kenyon would need microfracture surgeries on both knees at this point in his career. But we all knew the Nuggets overpaid for Martin both monetarily and in resources throwing in the three first rounders. The Nets gave no indication that they would have matched an offer sheet and in fact what was coming out of New Jersey make it sound like they would definitely not match an offer sheet, which would have made Martin’s contract much more reasonable. The offer sheet would have been for one less season with lower annual salaries. However, Kiki gave up the three first round picks just to make sure he did not have to wait the 15 days the Nets had to match.
Add in the fact that from everything I have read and heard Kiki would have drafted Darko ahead of Melo, he drafted Nikoloz Tskitishvili and Ricky Sanchez and he drafted Nene ahead of Amare Stoudemire. Throw that all in a pot and mix it together and you see a GM who basically deconstructed a team, spent the team’s cap space somewhat responsibly and misappropriated a handful of draft picks.
That record is spotty at best.
Kiki put the Nuggets back on the map, but some of his decisions also kept them from reaching their final destination. Kiki was never afraid to do something controversial, but it is difficult to know if that is ego (I will show everyone how smart I am) or intestinal fortitude.
I cannot wait to see how the Thron/Vadeweghe administration handles the many issues that are facing the Nets. Maybe Thorn brought Kiki on board to help him deconstruct the mess that he has made.
In other news DerMarr Johnson has been signed by the San Antonio Spurs. I always liked DerMarr as a ninth or tenth man. He seemed to be a solid defender when he challenged himself to be and was an effective shooter from the corner. During the Nuggets amazing second half run in the 04-05 season it seemed like DerMarr was automatic form the corner, especially in the first quarter, after which many of their games had already been decided.
However, last season his three point percentage dropped from 35% down to 22% and without giving a consistent effort on defense, rebounding or passing he essentially lost all of his value.
It will be interesting to see if he can get on the floor for San Antonio. Free Agent signee Ime Udoka can not seem to get off the bench and he is a consistent defender and a solid shooter from that corner spot. The Spurs seem to keep their fifteenth spot on the roster in constant flux. DerMarr may not be around for very long.
January 2, 2008 at 3:39 pm |
You would have taken Darko too! No one knew about Amare and the word was he was a headcase. Skita was supposed to be Dirk. You are being a bit revisionist.
January 2, 2008 at 4:24 pm |
You are partially correct, in the name of full disclosure I should admit that I was high on Darko and was seduced by the thrill of the unknown as were a lot of NBA personnel men, but it is a GM’s job to gather all the data, not get caught up in hype and emotion and make the right choice.
Even leaving out the potential Darko pick from our little evaluation, Skita should have never been drafted. It was easy for the fans to get excited about a guy that size who was a good athlete and could shoot, but as a GM Kiki had access to information and game film that we did not and he should have made a better decision. He should have been able to look at the few minutes of game film from Skita’s time at Benetton Treviso and realize that the kid was lost on the court.
Amare did have some red flags in his background, but almost everything I remember reading and hearing was that he was going to be an absolute beast in time. Nene was, and still is, more of a prospect. As a fan I heard what everyone said about Nene (big and could run the floor like a deer) having never seen him, and got excited about the pick. Then I remember watching a summer league game between Nene and Amare and noticing how much more explosive Amare was. I still talked myself into liking Nene more, but Amare’s explosiveness made me secretly afraid the Nuggets drafted the wrong guy.
The point is, NBA GMs have nearly endless resources to look into these guys. Of course it is impossible to hit on every draft pick, but I think Kiki tried to do things that other GMs would not have done because they would make other people think he was a genius. The perfect example is the Ricky Sanchez pick. The guy was not even in the draft media guide. Kiki could have signed him as an undrafted free agent, but he spent a very high second round pick on him to show everyone how smart he was. That definitely backfired.
Obviously all of this is in retrospect, but that does not make it revisionist. We are all judged by what we do in retrospect. We do not have daily performance reviews. The NBA is a little different as teams can be judged night in and night out for six months.
As a fan I was excited about the potential of Darko and Skita, but that does not mean that a GM should be excused from making the mistake of drafting one of them. Especially for someone who has the access to reports and film that fans are never exposed to, like an NBA GM is, they should be able to make the right decision more often than not. In the draft Kiki did not make many right decisions. Ultimately that was a big reason why he lost his job.
January 3, 2008 at 8:05 am |
The only reason I can’t get upset at Kiki, even though he screwed up pretty regularly, is because he got the Nuggets to no longer be the laughing stock of the league. Because of his relationships with players, we were actually able to recruit free agents. NO ONE thought any FA’s would sign with us, and we got Dre and K-Mart in back-to-back years.
January 3, 2008 at 8:50 am |
That is true and also Camby wanted no part of Denver when he was first traded here.