Kącik NBA

[Gondola.]

Trwają play-offy w najlepszej koszykarskiej lidze świata, dużo się dzieje, więc przyda się osobny temat na dyskusje o NBA.

Drabinka oraz obecne stany serii w PO:

[hugh hefner]

https://theathletic.com/2649806/2021/06 ... ka-doncic/

Ktokolwiek z dostępem byłby tak dobry i zrobił ctrl+c/ctrl+v?

[Goldschmidt]

Inside the Mavericks front office, Mark Cuban’s shadow GM is causing a rift with Luka Doncic

In early February, during the second quarter of a home game against the Golden State Warriors, Luka Doncic carelessly turned over the ball and received feedback from a Dallas Mavericks employee he didn’t care for: Haralabos Voulgaris, a well-known sports gambler hired by team owner Mark Cuban in 2018.

Voulgaris, sitting with an open laptop in his typical courtside seat across from the Mavericks’ bench, motioned downward with his hands, which Doncic specifically interpreted as Voulgaris telling him to calm down, multiple team and league sources tell The Athletic. Doncic snapped back, telling Voulgaris, according to one source’s recollection, “Don’t fucking tell me to calm down.” The same sources say Voulgaris later professed that his motion wasn’t solely directed at Doncic, but regardless of intent, it only worsened an already inflamed relationship between the two.

Doncic, multiple league sources say, intends to sign the supermax extension — which he will be eligible for once named to this season’s All-NBA team — with Dallas, worth more than $200 million over five seasons after his rookie contract expires next summer. “I think you know the answer,” he said, smiling, when asked whether he would at last week’s exit interview. But a high-level power broker within the league says the Mavericks recognize that there’s urgency to build a contending team around Doncic after losing in the first round in each of the past two seasons. The clock is ticking.

Internally, there are concerns the front office’s dysfunction has hurt its ability to do so — and that poor relationships Doncic has with key members of the franchise, including Voulgaris, could impact his current desire to remain in Dallas long-term. The team’s most recent postseason defeat against the LA Clippers served as a direct indictment on the roster constructed around him. Can Mavericks management remedy that in time? Or, as some team sources fear, will they pay the price for the dysfunctional dynamics that exist in some corners of the organization?

Dallas announced Voulgaris’ hiring in the fall of 2018 with a title — director of quantitative research and development — that vastly understated his actual role. Multiple league and team sources tell The Athletic that Voulgaris has been the most influential voice within the Mavericks front office since joining the team, either initiating or approving virtually every transaction made over the past two seasons. Those same sources add that Voulgaris has frequently gone as far as scripting the starting lineups and rotations for longtime head coach Rick Carlisle.

That influence has spanned Doncic’s three seasons in Dallas. While he had been drafted prior to Voulgaris’ arrival — Donnie Nelson, the team’s longtime president of basketball operations, was the driving force behind trading up to acquire the Slovenian wunderkind, a process he described in detail to The Athletic last year — Cuban had sought out Voulgaris’ basketball advice in the years before putting him on the team’s payroll. As one team source says, “Mark Cuban is the most powerful person in the organization, but whoever he’s listening to is second.” Cuban was won over by Voulgaris’ vision: an analytics-driven spread pick-and-roll offense with Doncic as the focal point which he has tried implementing in the past seasons.

It’s unclear when the Cuban and Voulgaris relationship began, but their coming together is perhaps unsurprising given Cuban’s origin as a self-made tech billionaire whose first major purchase was the Mavericks. Voulgaris has never been shy about his desire to run a team. In an ESPN feature from 2013, Voulgaris is quoted as saying, “The whole process (of becoming a highly successful gambler) has led me to believe that I’d be able to put together a better team than almost any general manager in the league. If not maybe all.”

The way Voulgaris tells it — the ESPN feature is the only notable reporting ever focused on him, and he declined an interview request from The Athletic shortly after being hired — he began gambling on the NBA in the late 1990s and had made millions by the early 2000s. His success, he says, came in part from an instinctual reading of certain coaches. It finally failed him during the 2003-04 season, causing him to lose much of his gambling wealth and step away temporarily, only returning once he’d developed an analytics model that brought back his old edge. He says he did exactly that, his new model beating the odds at a rate higher than five percent. In 2009, he gave up gambling again to consult for an unnamed NBA franchise. The advisory role lasted one season; he returned to his previous life afterward and began publicly promoting himself. In the coming years, he became a well-known presence in the basketball world.

Voulgaris spent a limited amount of time around the Mavericks during his first season of employment, attending about one-quarter of the team’s games. He attended fewer games the following season, but his imprint on the team’s roster grew substantially that offseason. It was Voulgaris who initiated the team’s acquisitions of Seth Curry and Delon Wright, with multiple sources telling The Athletic that Voulgaris believed Wright should start next to Doncic. “He was the only person that believed that,” one team source says. Wright did start the season opener before being moved to a full-time bench role the following game, barely playing in the team’s first-round defeat in the 2020 postseason. He was traded that offseason.

Because Voulgaris’ influence was greater than his official role, those within the front office — and executives around the league who interacted with them — were often confused about who actually held power. “We had two general managers,” a team source says. Nelson remained the team’s president of basketball operations, a role he has held since 2005, and other executives and agents continued largely communicating with him or Cuban regarding personnel matters. Nelson continued to spearhead major moves, including trades for Kristaps Porzingis and Tim Hardaway Jr. in 2019, Josh Richardson in 2020 and J.J. Redick in 2021. But team sources say Voulgaris was supportive of the transactions — or explicitly approved them.

Multiple league and team sources point to the 2020 draft as a particularly egregious example of Voulgaris’ power, an evening one source described as “embarrassing.” Most members of the scouting department joined the team’s war room remotely through Zoom and were surprised when Voulgaris, attending in person, didn’t consult them for either of the team’s first two selections (Josh Green and Tyrell Terry) despite disagreements they held with at least one of the players he picked.

“What did (he) sell to Mark to make him believe (he) can do this?” asks one source with an intimate knowledge of the situation. “Nobody knows.”

It marked another throughline of Voulgaris’ tenure with the Mavericks: that his personality and decision making has steadily irritated and exasperated the team’s front office employees and players over the course of the three seasons he’s been employed. “He doesn’t know how to talk to people,” that same source says.

That’s best exemplified by Dallas’ franchise player disliking him. Doncic’s strained relationship with Voulgaris predated their incident in February, multiple sources say. It wasn’t the only incident, either. This season, Voulgaris attended his first game in mid January, frequently appearing courtside at home and also traveling with them on the road in the months that followed. In mid-April, during the final minute of a home defeat to the New York Knicks, Voulgaris was seen on the game’s broadcast footage standing up and leaving with about 45 seconds remaining. While the Mavericks were trailing by 10 points at the time, they cut the deficit to six and extended the game seven more possessions before eventually losing.

Doncic noticed Voulgaris’ early departure. In the locker room after the game, multiple league and team sources say he told teammates he viewed Voulgaris leaving before the game’s conclusion as him quitting on them. Voulgaris would not attend another game the rest of the year.

Multiple team sources confirm Voulgaris remained involved in the team’s gameplans and in-game adjustments in a remote role. But Voulgaris, who earlier this season appeared likelier than not to wrest further control over the front office and perhaps even drive out Nelson entirely, now heads into a summer with his contract set to expire and uncertainty surrounding his future.

When reached for comment on Monday, Cuban defended Voulgaris’ involvement. “I really like what Bob brings to the table. He does a great job of supporting Rick and the front office with unique data insights.”

Cuban added: “Bob has a great grasp of AI and the opportunities it create for gaining an advantage. Which is important to me. But he isn’t any more influential than any other data source on the team.”

Voulgaris declined to comment for this story when reached on Sunday.

Doncic’s relationship with his head coach, Rick Carlisle, has been publicly scrutinized since joining his team. It’s expected Carlisle will return next season, multiple league sources say, something Cuban publicly voiced support for last week shortly after the first round defeat.

“Let me tell you how I look at coaching,” he told ESPN. “You don’t make a change to make a change. Unless you have someone that you know is much, much, much better, the grass is rarely greener on the other side.”

Multiple sources were surprised to see Cuban’s prompt backing of Carlisle, however, even though Cuban’s support for Carlisle has hardly wavered over the past decade. During the season, it was believed Carlisle’s future could be reconsidered following the season, partly due to a belief Doncic had tuned him out.

“It was very much up in the air,” one source with intimate knowledge of the situation said.

Sources say some players have been frustrated with Carlisle after they lost playing time despite doing exactly what they felt he had asked of them, and for stiff rotation patterns, the latter of which they viewed — correctly, team sources confirm — as being dictated directly to him by Voulgaris. Early on, Doncic also disliked Carlisle’s timeouts and frequent calling of plays.

But Carlisle, who’s “adaptable as a motherfucker,” as one league source put it, began to modify his coaching style as a way of relieving some of the pressure from this sensitive situation. Beyond Carlisle’s obvious coaching acumen, he has always been able and willing to, in essence, read the room when it came to which personal battles he could win and which ones he couldn’t. This was no different.

Doncic’s greatness, so evident so early on, clearly compelled Carlisle to consider the changing hoops politics at hand. Since being hired in May of 2008, Carlisle has had his fair share of friction with key players, in large part because of his well-known tendency to be controlling. But Rajon Rondo, this was not.

In truth, it was far closer to the difficult dynamic that he’d successfully navigated with then-point guard Jason Kidd en route to winning the franchise’s first and only title in 2011. It took an intervention of sorts to get through that friction back then, when then-Mavericks assistant coaches Tim Grgurich, Dwane Casey and Terry Stotts stepped in to tell Carlisle that he needed to loosen the reins on Kidd. In the end, of course, it was a wise and necessary move.

The championship took Carlisle’s credibility to another level in those coming years. He was, with good reason, virtually untouchable when it came to the job insecurities that most coaches face. Such is life when you reach the NBA’s mountaintop for a franchise that has never been there before.

But as Doncic started to look more and more like a modern-day Dirk Nowitzki these past three seasons — the kind of once-in-a-generation player who the Mavericks could build around for the next two decades — the landscape that surrounded Carlisle began to change. And Carlisle, quite clearly, decided to change along with it.

“You can’t win against the next Nowitzki,” one source said.

Doncic has a healthy relationship with the Mavericks organization at large. League sources say he angled to be drafted by the team in 2018, and he has been particularly complimentary of his relationship with Nowitzki, whose final season coincided with Doncic’s first. Those feelings could change if the team’s postseason struggles continue, as the Mavericks haven’t advanced past the first round since their 2011 championship run. It’s not that Doncic’s situation with the team is at a critical inflection point right now. Multiple team sources simply fear that it’s heading that direction.

Those concerns mostly center on Cuban and the decisions he makes regarding who he trusts and imbues with power. Sometimes, it’s examples like Voulgaris, a sports gambler with no league experience being given near total control of the team’s roster. Other times, it’s the relationships he doesn’t sever: The Mavericks’ front office has come to be known around the league for its long-existing power structure that, Voulgaris aside, has barely changed.

Doncic has provided the Mavericks a chance to return to prominence. He’s a generational star the team was fortunate to draft, seamlessly taking the mantle from the franchise player before him. But after beginning another offseason sooner than hoped for, the focus falls upon the organization around him: on how the dynamic that existed over the past seasons was allowed to operate in such a haphazard manner, and whether it can be fixed before it’s too late.

[hugh hefner]

Dzięki wielkie.

[labeleq]

Ciekawy artykuł, ale jest w nim tyle "gdybań", czy mojego znienawidzonego "sources say", że może być burzą w szklance wody. Z drugiej strony, czytając o postaci Voulgarisa w głowie od razu zapaliła mi się lampka i przypomniała postać, z którą "walczył" MJ, czyli Jerry Krause (aczkolwiek tutaj nie ma tak wyraźnego konfliktu potwierdzonego)... i jednocześnie skojarzenie z filmem "Moneyball", w którym osoba od cyferek miała wpływ na drużynę.
Wydaje mi się, że mimo wszystkot może to być konflikt wyssany z palca. Nieporozumienia w każdym teamie są na porządku dziennym, a tutaj brakuje mimo wszystko konkretów.

[Goldschmidt]

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/ ... 1982165192

Ładny wstęp... spina o Last Dance czy chwyt marketingowy?

[labeleq]

Wydaje się, jak chwyt marketingowy, nie sądzę, żeby ta książka miała wywrócić świat do góry nogami.



btw...

[hugh hefner]

Taki bullshit, że właśnie Cuban wywalił zarówno Voulgarisa, jak i Nelsona. Markowi nie można wierzyć na słowo. Jak wyszło info, że handlowali Porzingisem, to też tak zareagował.

Generalnie to był zaskakująco obfity w wiadomości dzień w NBA:
- Dallas j/w
- Scott Brooks odchodzi z Wizards
- Stan Van Gundy odchodzi z NOP
- Kawhi ma kontuzjowane kolano (ACL, oby nie zerwanie) i może nie zagrać do końca serii z Utah, co byłoby równoznaczne z odpadnięciem Clippers z PO
- CP3 ma pozytywny wynik testu na covid, na jego szczęście, mają parę dni odpoczynku, bo jeszcze nie ma rozstrzygnięcia w drugiej parze półfinałowej
- LaMelo wygrał ROTY
- wczoraj ogłoszono składy ALL-NBA, Luka ponownie w pierwszej piątce

Z kolei to co wczoraj zrobił Durant, to był jakiś kosmos. Bucks prowadziło w pierwszej połowie kilkunastoma punktami i wydawało się, że tego nie wypuszczą, a tu taki klops. I tak do tej pory Milwaukee grało bardzo słabo, ale jeżeli taki mecz jak wczorajszy nie złamał ich kompletnie psychicznie, to bardzo (pozytywnie) się zdziwię. Imho już pozamiatane, choć w teorii wynik oczywiście do odrobienia, szczególnie że Kyrie i Harden kontuzjowani, choć ten drugi wczoraj akurat zagrał, ale tylko z konieczności i nie wyglądało to dobrze.

Panowie z The Ringer szybko zareagowali na to, co wczoraj wyczyniał KD.

[labeleq]

Taki bullshit, że właśnie Cuban wywalił zarówno Voulgarisa, jak i Nelsona.

O ile widzę potwiedzenie Nelsona, który nie był wskazywany jako problem, tak nie widzę nigdzie informacji o Voulgarisie. Skąd to info?

[hugh hefner]

Fakt, potwierdzenia oficjalnego nie było, myślałem, że też szybko się pojawi. Źródłem info jest Kevin O'Connor, z tego co pamiętam. On to mówił na jakimś live streamie, którego nie oglądałem, więc muszę wierzyć na słowo osobom, które tego słuchały. Przy czym trzeba wziąć pod uwagę, że Voulgaris to nie jest nawet w 1/10 tak znane nazwisko jak Donnie i jednocześnie przynamniej w teorii był na o wiele niższym stanowisku, więc mogą nawet nie informować o tym publicznie.

[Goldschmidt]

O'Connor podawał chyba tylko, że nic nie słyszał by Dallas mieli przedłużać umowę Voulgarisa która wygasa po off-seasonie.
https://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/2 ... -Mavericks

[labeleq]

Czyli nie wiadomo co z Voulgarisem i zwolnienie Nelsona może wskazywać, że nie dogadywał się z Voulgarisem i to ten ma za zadanie znaleźć kogoś do budowania nowych Mavs?

[hugh hefner]

Mavericks wynajęło jakąś firmę konsultingową do poszukiwania nowego GMa, przy czym brany pod uwagę jest jeden z ich byłych zawodników - Michael Finley - który do tej pory był vice-GMem.

[Goldschmidt]

Z innych GMów wolni chyba Ujiri i Ainge? Po co im firmy skautingowe? :piesel2:

[hugh hefner]

Ujiri to pewnie marzenie większości kibiców Dallas, problem w tym, że pewnie mało realne. Polecam wczorajszy podcast Billa Simmonsa - wcześniej wrzuciłem jego fragment dotyczący meczu KD, ale w dalszej części (dostępny na spotify, apple podcasts, czy jak to się tam nazywa) jest rozmowa o Mavs z Tjarksem (dziennikarz z The Ringer pochodzący z Dallas), który mówił, że niektórzy unikają pracy w Dallas, bo wiedzą, że na końcu to i tak nie oni będą mieli pełnię władzy, a decyzje podejmuje Cuban, na co akurat przykładów jest pełno, chociażby już słynne wjebanie się Marka w kompetencje Donniego podczas draftu w 2013 roku, w którym Nelson chciał wziąć Giannisa, co Cuban spacyfikował, o czym zresztą sam wielokrotnie otwarcie mówił.

[labeleq]

Ujiri to mokry sen kibiców Dallas, ale tak jak piszesz, w Dallas GM nie ma pełnej autonomii, więc Ujiri raczej nie będzie brał pod uwagę pracy w Texasie.

[hugh hefner]

https://theathletic.com/2657406/2021/06 ... ka-doncic/

[Goldschmidt]

Nic czego nie da się domyślić

Donnie Nelson’s concerns were clear.

After 16 years as the head of the Dallas Mavericks’ front office, from Dirk Nowitzki’s one-of-a-kind run to the Luka Doncic era that has shown so much similar promise, Nelson had begun to wonder if he was truly in charge of the team’s roster or coaching staff anymore. But when he relayed these fears to owner Mark Cuban, sharing his growing belief that Haralabos Voulgaris, the former professional gambler who served as the team’s director of quantitative research and development, was encroaching on his influence over personnel moves and strategy, the course correction that he’d never hoped for arrived.

Nelson had wanted Voulgaris to stay in his proverbial lane, to avoid overstepping the bounds of his role and focus on being a trusted adviser to Cuban whose analytics-based views would always be taken into account. Dallas would have preferred to project stability ahead of a crucial summer in which Doncic was eligible for a supermax contract extension he indicated a desire to sign. Instead, within the front office, there was turmoil and dysfunction.

As the Mavericks announced on Wednesday, just two days after The Athletic’s report about the friction in the Dallas front office that Cuban had publicly called “total bullshit,” Nelson is out. While the organization said in its release that Nelson and the Mavericks had “mutually agreed to part ways,” a source close to the situation said Nelson was fired on Sunday. He had spent 24 years working for the organization.

Voulgaris’ contract expires this summer, and his continued employment with the team remains uncertain. When asked about the matter Wednesday evening, Cuban told The Athletic he “won’t talk about individual deals. Never do.” But it’s expected any continued role would be the same he has held.

Voulgaris never angled to usurp Nelson as the formal leader atop the front office’s organizational chart, team sources say, a role involving constant conversations with other executives around the league as the main figure for transactions which doesn’t fit his analytical strengths. But as his influence grew within the organization, perceptions around the league began to shift toward him gaining authority. From Nelson’s perspective, lines were clearly crossed.

As one rival team executive shared Wednesday, there were times when talking to the Mavericks about trade possibilities meant inevitable confusion. Nelson would paint one picture, so to speak, discussing the possible pieces and players involved in an attempt to get a deal done. But Voulgaris, who this rival executive said had talked to his team simultaneously about a particular deal, would tell a different story. And because Voulgaris was widely known to have a direct line to Cuban, this dynamic was seen by Nelson as damaging to his credibility. When asked over the phone about this assertion on Wednesday, Cuban refuted the idea that Voulgaris had negatively impacted the process.

“At multiple levels of the front office, multiple people have ongoing conversations,” Cuban said. “Scouts, assistant general managers, anybody and everybody. Player development people, everybody (has) conversations with people in other organizations to get information and find out what they’re up to, just like they have conversations with Donnie.

“We have people top to bottom with other teams and other teams have conversations with us. We take input and that goes into all of the final decision-making. But that’s no different than (any other) team. … And no one has any more influence because it comes down to us agreeing on it. Or me agreeing on it. That’s just how it works. And only Donnie initiated trades.”

While Cuban may view such speculative calls as being business as usual, multiple team sources still voiced concern about Voulgaris’ perceived influence around the league contributing to the team’s dysfunction. The overarching concern of these sources is how it might impact the team’s ability to maintain Doncic’s desire to remain here long-term. Doncic told reporters at a Slovenian national team press conference held Thursday that it was difficult to hear about Nelson’s departure, who sources confirm he held a good, long-standing relationship with since meeting him as a teenager. “But I’m not the one making decisions,” he said.

Despite Doncic’s previously reported dislike for Voulgaris, sources close to Doncic insisted Wednesday he still intends to sign the supermax extension before next season, worth more than $200 million over five years following the final season of his rookie contract.

The Mavericks have now opened a formal search for their next general manager, which will be spearheaded by the oft-used Sportsology consulting firm run by Mike Forde (first reported by ESPN). They will also consider Michael Finley, an internal candidate who team sources say has taken a larger role in the team in the past months as Nelson’s departure began to seem possible.

Finley, who spent nine seasons playing for the Mavericks after being traded from Phoenix in 1997 and who later won a championship with San Antonio in 2007, was hired to the front office in 2012 and formally began his role as vice president of basketball operations in 2014. He has often been described as someone being groomed to run the team in glowing profiles written about him. Following Voulgaris’ February incident with Doncic, Cuban stopped sitting next to Voulgaris at home games and would often be seen in a new location on the baseline sitting with Finley. They also sat next to each other at the Staples Center during the season-ending Game 7 defeat against the Clippers.

Whatever happens in the future, it’s clear the team’s departure from a longstanding franchise stalwart in Nelson was far less ceremonious than anyone desired. Nelson may have helped build the Mavericks as they exist today, but his departure from the team was announced with little more than a four-paragraph press release.

“I just want to thank Donnie for his 24 years of service to this organization,” Cuban said in the release. “Donnie has been instrumental to our success and helped bring a championship to Dallas. His hard work, creativity and vision made him a pioneer. Donnie will always be a part of the Mavs family and I wish him all the best.”

Co ciekawe

As the Mavericks announced on Wednesday, just two days after The Athletic’s report (artykuł wyszedł w poniedziałek) about the friction in the Dallas front office that Cuban had publicly called “total bullshit,” Nelson is out. While the organization said in its release that Nelson and the Mavericks had “mutually agreed to part ways,” a source close to the situation said Nelson was fired on Sunday. He had spent 24 years working for the organization.

Ładny timing xd

[hugh hefner]

Dzięki za pastę.

Timing zupełnie nieprzypadkowy, zresztą w tym pierwszym artykule było jasno napisane, że przed jego publikacją prosili o komentarz ludzi z Mavs, więc musieli wiedzieć, że ten artykuł powstaje. Szkoda tego szamba w Dallas, ale oby się ogarnęli i to trzęsienie wyszło z korzyścią dla Luki, bo nie chcę go oglądać za parę lat w jakimś Lakers.

[labeleq]

Ojezusiu, nie, tylko nie to...

[Goldschmidt]

Kurwa mać

[hugh hefner]

Ale chujowo. Przyszły trener Celticu?

Naprawdę grubo. Myślę, że nie wymienił w podziękowaniach Luki bez powodu. Od dawna były plotki, że jest on Luce nie do końca po drodze.

[labeleq]

Ostry kocioł, co to będzie za offseason?

Celtics chyba najlepszym wyborem dla Ricka... i Celtics.

[hugh hefner]

Nie ma to jak przyznać się do błędu, nie przyznając się do błędu.

Perez też mógłby się tego nauczyć.

[hugh hefner]

Rick oficjalnie w Indianie, o której od początku mówiło się jako o jednej z opcji obok Bucks i Bostonu. Pracował tam już wcześniej jako asystent.