Fish flop

….but with all of these “rethinking Kahn” articles popping up I drafted the following but never put it up (or proofed it):

There has been something of a rash of recent articles, thoughts, tweets, whatever concerning the job performance of everybody’s favorite POBO, David Kahn. Whether the article is a stretch attempt to connect the words "OKC model" with what is happening in Minny, or an earnest attempt to place David Kahn as the common denominator in the team’s current rise, there seems to be a general rethinking of Kahn and his place in franchise history.

Is it time to look at the POBO with a brand new perspective? We’ll take a look at things below the fold.

Let’s start with the Sam Presti/OKC Model question and work into the rest of it.

Models and plans are for marketing departments. The Blueprint? Yeah, that was for selling tickets. The reason why Sam Presti and the Oklahoma City Thunder are really good is because Sam Presti and Kevin Durant are among the best in the world at what they do. That’s the "plan". That’s the "model". You can’t duplicate a process that is completely contingent on the talent of the people executing it. However, since the claim is tossed around, let’s take a quick look at what has happened in OKC/Seattle.

Sam Presti was hired as a 30 year old dynamo in June of 2007. He had previously worked for the San Antonio Spurs and was widely credited for encouraging the Spurs to draft Tony Parker. Here are his first 10 significant moves as GM of the Seattle SuperSonics:

1- Drafted Kevin Durant
2- Drafted Carl Landry
3- Drafted Glen Davis
4- Traded Carl Landry to the Rockets
5- Traded Ray Allen and Glen Davis to the Celtics for Jeff Green, Wally Szczerbiak, Delonte West, and a 2nd rounder
6- Traded Rashard Lewis to the Magic for a 2nd round pick and a $9 mil trade exception
7- Traded a 2nd round pick and the Lewis trade exception to the Suns for Kurt Thomas and 2 1st round picks
8- Traded Kurt Thomas to the Spurs for Brent Barry, Francisco Elson and a 2009 1st round pick
9- Drafted Russell Westbrook
10- Drafted Serge Ibaka

Here are David Kahn’s first 10 significant moves as the POBO of the Minnesota Timberwolves:

1- Traded Randy Foye and Mike Miller to the Washington Wizards for Stewie, Darius Songalia, Etan Thomas, and a 1st round pick
2- Drafted Ricky Rubio
3- Drafted Jonny Flynn
4- Traded the 18th pick to the Denver Nuggets for a 2010 1st round pick
5- Drafted Wayne Ellington
6- Traded Mark Madsen, Craig Smith, and Bassy to the Clips for Quentin Richardson
7- Signed Ryan Hollins as a FA
8- Signed Ramon Sessions as a FA
9- Signed Sasha Pavlovic as a FA
10- Traded Brian Cardinal to the New York Knicks for Darko Milicic and cash

Sam Presti has drafted Kevin Durant, Carl Landry, Glen Davis, Roddy Beaubois, Russell Westbrook, and Serge Ibaka. He’s made use of late first round picks. The core of the Thunder was assembled in fairly short order and they made great use of their numerous first round draft picks.

David Kahn saw Ricky Rubio in the Olympics and used a shrewd trade to be in a position to grab him with the 5th pick. He also spent the better part of his first two years collecting players that would put up some of the worst seasons in franchise history. You can make a very solid case that Jonny Flynn, Sasha Pavlovic, Wes Johnson, and Damien Wilkins put up 4 of the worst 5 individual seasons in Timberwolvesdom.

Throughout his 3 years as POBO, Mr. Kahn has possessed 8 of the 24 first round picks in franchise history. Ricky Rubio is the only good starter to show for it. Derrick Williams

All the while Mr. Kahn has peppered the road with some of the most baffling quotes in all of professional sports. Here he is describing the 2009 trade that sent the 18th pick to the Denver Nuggets:

At the 18th pick, we did not believe we could identify a player who would be worthy of that rookie scale slot and become part of our core nucleus, so in an attempt to further stockpile assets, we traded it for a future first-round pick with only modest lottery protection. This will prove to be valuable. We also traded one of our two second-round picks for a 2010 second-round pick.

That future first-round pick was then moved along with Ryan Gomes to Portland in exchange for another version of Ryan Gomes, Martell Webster.

We all know about the "windows of opportunity", "raise your hands", "who could have predicted?", "singular moves", "significant fine tuning", and a host of other amazing tidbits that escaped his lips. We’ve seen circuitous move after circuitous move (my favorite is when he signed Ramon Sessions, threw him to a coach who ruined his game, signed Luke Ridnour, traded Sessions for Delonte West and Sebastian Telfair, and then waived West) and we’ve gone through 3 seasons of being told version after version of this:

http://www.canishoopus.com/2010/3/24/1387505/interview-with-wolves-president
Obviously, I think how I would characterize that is that David has a position to take advantage of, possibly, the biggest off-season in franchise history. It is up to him and his staff that the assets we have accumulated are utilized correctly. The fact that we have a top 5 pick, the fact that we have Utah’s and Charlotte’s pick and expiring contracts, and that we are positioned well in a massive free agency market, it can be potentially one of the great summers in our franchise.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

At no point of the way has David Kahn ever given the Wolves fan base a reason to think that he understands that anyone not named Ricky Rubio might be an above average professional basketball player.

And there’s the kicker.

To his great credit, from the day he fell to #5 in the draft, Mr. Kahn knew he had something in Ricky Rubio that was worth building around. Ricky Rubio is the reason why the team wants to run and have a bunch of athletes that can catch ally-oops. He’s the guy putting the butts in the seat. He’s the magical unicorn that is providing the 2nd player’s worth of above average production. Ricky Rubio is David Kahn’s Spanish Cash Cow in every imaginable way and Ricky Rubio seems to be good enough to make a lot of the other nonsense fade into the background.

Taking a quick look at the current roster, 2 of the team’s top 3 performers are McHale guys and only Luke Ridnour is performing at .100+ wp48. The team’s three worst performers are Wes Johnson, Martell WebsterMichael Beasley, and Darko Milicic.

The team certainly isn’t winning in spite of the POBO, but he certainly didn’t do himself any favors by failing to surround his one brilliant personnel move with much of anything else. This team doesn’t have depth. It has two amazing performers, an emerging center who can only be stopped by foul trouble, and a bunch of ok performers who every now and then approximate the type of production needed to win at a decent level. Do we really know if his method of player evaluation has evolved beyond "long and athletic"? I’m not sure we do.

The other feather in his cap is the hiring of Rick Adelman. I could not have been more wrong about Kahn being a barrier for a good coach to show up at 600 First Avenue, but somehow it all worked out, with Team Adelman riding in to provide the Country Club with some much needed professionalism and competence.

So, what do we make of all of this?

- 2 great moves
- no evidence of competent player personnel selection
- overrated cap/financial management
- willingness to cut bait early on failures
- shared personnel duties with team adelman?
- he’s the misfit toy of the league’s front offices.
- is he one of us in the misfit sense?
- philosophical tangent about forgiveness- – Hannah Arendt, paradox of forgiveness,

Conclusion: acceptance on the island. Hope that lessons have been learned, points of forgiveness to move forward (moving D-Will for functional player w/30-35 mpg along side Love/Rubio), taking another McHale player in the starting lineup, staying out of the limelight.

I’d have to clean up the Presti draft stuff (he drafted Roddy and Davis for other teams) and tighten up some of the bad writing, but I think it basically comes down to Kahn making 2 really good moves surrounded by a bunch of crap, embarrassing comments, and no evidence of player eval skills.