Judging General Managers in the NBA: Best 5 and Worst 5

Oftentimes in the NBA, blame is associated only with the coaching staff of a losing team. Unfortunately, coaching changes do not always change a squad's fortune. If your favorite team has been struggling to move up in the league for a couple of years now, there is a good chance that your team has a poor general manager.

But how do you find a bad general manager? The truth is that it is not as easy as it might seem. A lot of general managers enter bad situations and need time to fix the mess they were handed. Even so, there are indicators to bad management in the NBA. The following guide should help you know what makes a good, and bad, general manager:

• A good general manager should a plan for the team to build around. A good example of this is the Phoenix Suns. Going into the summer of 2004, the Suns decided that they were going to outbid the Mavericks for Steve Nash. They knew that Nash was a pass-first point guard who needed teammates that can hit open shots and spread the floor. As a result, the Suns also acquired Quentin Richardson, Raja Bell, James Jones and Kurt Thomas to compliment Nash. For this reason, they refused to overpay for Joe Johnson as they knew Nash could get the same contribution Johnson made out of Bell. The Suns have benefited from Bryan Colangelo's excellent management and will certainly miss him as he has moved to Toronto.

Now let's look at an example from the other side. When Isiah Thomas first came into New York, his job was to revitalize a mediocre team. But what did he really do? He overhauled the roster for a bunch of overpaid and selfish players. He drafted talented young rookies but then hired a coach, Larry Brown, who has a reputation of burying first and second-year players at the end of the bench. How did he expect to win?

The bottom line is that if you can't look at your team and see a reason for the moves the team is making, your general manager probably has no idea what he is doing.

• The draft is where most people judge general manager's performances. But this is not a good barometer of a good general manager. Good draft selections doesn't necessarily correlate to good management. Isiah Thomas of the Knicks has a great draft record. When he was with Toronto he selected numerous stars such as Damon Stoudamire and Tracy McGrady. That doesn't mean he has done a good job as a general manager.

On the other end, Pistons GM Joe Dumars made one of the biggest draft blunders in NBA history by selecting Darko Milicic over Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade. Since he took over as GM, however, the Pistons have run off five straight fifty-plus win seasons and have won a championship. This success can be attributed to Dumars creating a starting five that is among the best in the league.

• The true skill of a general manager is signing free agents and trading with other teams. In these negotiations, GMs are often butting heads with each other to get the best deal for their team. As such, the winners of free agent battles and trades are often the better general managers in the league.

A good example of this can once again be seen with Joe Dumars. Grant Hill was going to leave the Pistons the second Dumars because a general manager, yet Joe managed to convince the Magic to give up Ben Wallace and Chucky Atkins in a sign-and-trade. The result? A four-time DPOY and the anchor to a powerful defense that won a championship.

Another example of good trading can be seen with former Phoenix GM Brian Colangelo. When Joe Johnson indicated he was leaving to Atlanta, Brian calmly negotiated the Suns Boris Diaw and two future first-round picks in return. In one swoop, the Suns picked up a great player, future draft picks and salary cap relief from not having to match Johnson's ridiculous offer.

Free agent signings are harder to judge. When Steve Nash left Dallas, the team was justified in not wanting to pay him excessive amounts of money because of his age and back problems. But Phoenix, which was criticized for overpaying him, ended up with a back-to-back MVP who led them to an immediate turnaround. In retrospect, it was a good move on Phoenix's part and a bad one for Dallas. But put when put into perspective, it was a good move for both teams.

A bad free agent signing is when a team overpays someone who simply does not deserve it or stretches to get a marquee free agent in a position where they already have a solid starter. There is no point in signing someone just to get someone. Those sort of moves can come back to bite you in the behind when the following summer you don't have enough cap to sign someone you do need. Remember when Danny Ainge gave Brian Scalabrine a five year contract for one good game he had in the playoffs? That is the epitome of a bad signing.

A bad general manager can also be seen as someone who doesn't make a move when his team needs it. Kevin McHale's Tmberwolves have long needed a sidekick for Garnett, but he has only succeeded in adding one in one season out of the eleven Kevin has played.

Overall, bad teams should have low payrolls and good teams should have high ones. If you have a team that has a very high payroll and not too many wins, think Knicks, then blame it on the general manager.

As once said in a book written by one of my favorite authors, Orson Scott Card, "Blame can be passed up or down unlike credit, which always rises to the top." Unfortunately, this principle occurs way too often in the NBA. Coaches are fired yearly for not being able to rack up wins, despite not having enough talent to do so in the first place.

Here is a list of my top-five and bottom-five general managers in the NBA presently:

Top Five

1. Brian Colangelo - Toronto Raptors - Look at what he did with the Suns and the almost immediate turnaround the Raptors are in this season. Colangelo is an excellent general manager and the best in the league in my opinion.

2. Jerry West - Memphis Grizzlies - West may be about done as a general manager in the NBA. But he has an excellent track record with the Lakers and Grizzlies. West was responsible for creating the Lakers teams that won championships with Magic and Kareem and later with Kobe and Shaq. And he converted Memphis from one of the league's worst franchises to a playoff contender a couple seasons ago. Never mind what the Grizzlies are doing this season, West is an excellent general manager.

3. Joe Dumars - Detroit Pistons - There are zero players, count that zero players, left over from the roster Dumars inherited six seasons ago. Without overpaying players, Dumars has created one of the leagues most consistently best teams. If he had a better draft record, he would be higher on this list.

4. Kevin O'Conner - Utah Jazz - Talk about a name that nobody outside of Salt Lake City knows. O'Conner rebuilt the Jazz from Stockton and Malone to the current form of Boozer-Okur-Williams in a hurry. The Jazz have a lot of talent from top to bottom and it is because of some shrewd moves and smart signings by the guy managing.

5. R.C Buford/Donnie Nelson - San Antonio Spurs/Dallas Mavericks - Both of these guys have been general managers for relatively short periods and therefore cannot be given full credit for their current team's rosters. At the same time, both of these teams are perennial championship contenders and you have to like what these two do to add talent to their teams.

Bottom Five

1. Isiah Thomas - New York Knicks - It is just ridiculous this man still has a job. Who cares that he is coaching the mess he created into almost reaching .500? He has a team with the highest payroll in the league, a roster he entirely created, and it is not even close to contending for a championship. Isiah is a good at drafting young talent, but enough is enough. Fire him!

2. Kevin McHale - Minnesota Timberwolves - The only reason McHale doesn't get more bad press is because Kevin Garnett keeps the Timberwolves from being among the worst in the league. McHale has not made one good decision since drafting Kevin Garnett and his lax attitude towards draft picks, the Joe Smith blunder comes to mind, has cost the team much young talent. He was a great player but he is also a terrible general manager. Get rid of him before he ruins his good name even more.

3. Danny Ainge - Boston Celtics - The Celtics always seem to be contending for a lottery pick ever since Ainge became general manager. He just seems to make the wrong decisions all the time. He made a huge blunder by trading a high pick for Sebestian Telfair and quite frankly he has not gotten the job done in Boston.

4. Billy King - Philadelphia 76ers - This is not about the Iverson trade. I believe King got everything he could for him. But King handed out huge-money contracts to one-dimensional players like Willie Green, Kyle Korver and Samuel Dalembert to keep them from jumping ship. The result? No flexibility to sign players until the 76ers were forced to trade their best player.

5. Billy Knight - Atlanta Hawks - Knight got robbed in the Joe Johnson trade and for some reason he seems to draft and sign more and more small forwards/power forwards. Why pass up Chris Paul for Marvin Harrison when you already have players at that position? The Hawks are a team that could easily be in playoff contention had they been steered better through the summer.

So there you have it. In my opinion every GM in the bottom five should be fired. They have not done their job and have had enough time to fail at it. Hopefully this article has helped you learn a little more on judging general managers.