The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

In the Racine Journal-Times, Gery Woelfel is reporting that the Bucks are considering both Billy King and John Gabriel for their General Manager position.

After spending years mismanaging the Sixers, I can’t understand how Billy King could even be considered for another NBA job. He perpetually failed to add an impact player beside Allen Iverson but destroyed his own efforts to do so by constantly resigning his players to ridiculous contract extensions that far exceeded what they could have made in the open market. Contracts to players like Greg Buckner, Aaron McKie, and Eric Snow consistently befuddled everyone in the league. Even when he did make the big splash it usually stunk of desperation, such as trading expiring contracts for the expired knees of Chris Webber.

He has drafted fairly well, getting Andre Iguodala and Thaddeus Young in recent drafts.

But because of his basic misunderstanding of the salary cap and his horrendous judgement of player ability (when it concers keeping his own guys) Billy King is among the three or four worst general managers of the last 20 years, which is really saying something when you have Isiah Thomas, Kevin McHale, Chris Wallace, Elgin Baylor, Billy Knight and Scott Layden to choose from — and the immortal John Weisbrod, a hockey guy who came to the Orlando Magic with no basketball experience.

Honestly, I think Billy King’s first order of business should he get the Bucks job would be to extend Dan Gadzuric’s contract.

If the Bucks hire King I will very seriously consider cancelling my season ticket renewal, getting NBA League pass, and calling myself a Utah Jazz fan.

John Gabriel, though, is a different story. Gabriel did a pretty good job as GM of the Magic, rebuilding the team after they got screwed by Shaquille O’Neal’s decision that his movie career would work out much better in Los Angeles and Penny Hardaway’s knee injury.

He did, of course, make possibly the single most colossal blunder in the history of NBA free agency by signing Grant Hill to a max deal while knowing that Hill was going to be out for a full season following ankle surgery. As we all know Hill never did recover, and because of this the Magic never got past the first round of the playoffs with Tracy McGrady. Hopefully Gabriel has learned from this error and keeps a card on his desk saying: “Major ankle injuries to basketball players are a big deal”.

To Gabriel’s credit he did draft Mike Miller in 2000, coming away from the worst draft in the last 20 years with the rookie of the year, and in 1999 turned Horace Grant into Corey Magette. The rest of his draft record is pretty poor, but he was generally picking in the middle of the first round, and while he made some comically bad picks (Johnny Taylor, Curtis Borchardt, Ryan Humphrey) he usually didn’t miss out on much. It’s not like he was blowing top-5 picks and passing on future all-stars.

I think John Gabriel would be a pretty good hire. It seems to me that most of his problems were brought on by the cap-killing Grant Hill mistake, and that he would be a good person to give another chance to.

But Billy King …. what more could he have done in Philly to prove himself incompetent?

Also, Woelfel has an interesting tidbit that Larry Harris might wind up working for Donnie Walsh in the Knicks front office. I don’t know — with the mess that the Knicks are in, I think that unemployment might be a more appealing option.