Now that Larry Harris has been the GM of the Bucks for 4 full seasons, how good of a job has he done? He has built a young team with little future flexibility, as 8 players are under contract for between 3-6 years and nearly all of them should still be at or near their prime for the entire duration of their contracts. To his credit, Harris has not been afraid to make bold moves but one problem with locking up players to long contracts is that you are bound to reach some bad deals — and his bad ones have had major implications for the future of the franchise.
I think that the problem with Harris that he is either way too optimistic for his job or such a huckster salesman that he believes his own spiel too much. One of the most difficult things for a talent evaluator to do is to bring a guy in and then later admit he has made a mistake, which is something that Harris has had a major problem with. Before last season he was telling everyone who would listen that his team wasn’t just ready to make the playoffs, but to win a round; and even after the team had completely fallen apart he was still making moves as if he intended to make a playoff run once the team got healthy (such as by adding Earl Boykins and risking that Boykins would not opt-out of his contract).
However, this seasons results have shown that last years’ team was nowhere near a playoff contender in the first place. Is this young team a contender down the road? As currently composed, I’m not sure it is. It should get better, but there is no more cap flexibility for the foreseeable future so remaking the roster will get more and more difficult. The only way this team leaps into the Eastern Conference elite is if Yi becomes a star, and it’s still very difficult to predict that.
Many people often claim that Harris has no real power, and all the major decisions are actually made by Herb Kohl. While that may be true to a certain extent, any GM has to work within ownerships parameters, and no matter what the owner wants he does take advice from the GM. So I am going to leave Kohl’s influence out of my analysis, and also not discuss the coaching changes, which clearly were a result of past Herb Kohl relationships.
When Larry Harris was named GM on July 1, 2003, he inherited a complete mess. Ernie Grunfeld and George Karl had completely botched the franchise with a series of “lets win now”/”screw it, I’m outta here” moves that left the Bucks with almost no good, young talent except for Michael Redd and the newly drafted TJ Ford. They had nothing to show for Glenn Robinson, Ray Allen, and Sam Cassell except for Toni Kukoc, Joe Smith and Ford (good thing since they threw their own 2003 pick away on Gary Payton).
Much is unfairly made of the Bucks drafting Dirk Nowitzki and trading him, but that’s not fair since it was a pre-arranged draft day trade , if the Bucks hadn’t done that deal then Dallas would have simply taken Nowitzki themselves at #5. But an even worse crime had already been inflicted on the Bucks by Grunfeld and Karl.
In 2001, Grunfeld had traded the Bucks’ 2004 first round pick for nothing in order to clear cap space to sign Anthony Mason. This disastrous signing of an aging, overrated player with a massive attitude problem both tore the team apart and cost them the #17 pick in the 2004 draft, which turned out to be Josh Smith. That’s a bigger crime than the Nowitzki deal. You think the Bucks could use a 6’10″ small forward who is averaging 18 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 blocks a game? No? Me neither.
Over the next four days I am going to analyze every major player transaction he has made during his tenure. Today I talk about the okay ones (ranging from “Good” to “Bad, but with an asterisk”. Tomorrow will be the seven “Great” to “Very Good” moves. Then the seven “Bad” to “Horrendous”, and, finally, “The One Move That Cannot Be Labeled”.)
Good Moves:
2005: Drafted Ersan Ilyasova. The young Turk was touted as a lottery pick before an ankle injury and rumors that he was in fact an older Uzbek torpedoed his draft stock. The Bucks have been searching for a big small forward ever since they didn’t get the chance to draft Josh Smith, and for a while it looked like they found one. Ilyasova shone in the NBDL his first year and was MVP of the Under-20 World Championships in the summer of 2006. Of course, the fact that he may have been 23 at the time may have something to do with him shining at that level, and his 2006 NBA campaign made him look like he never was an NBA athlete to begin with. He was still a reasonable risk, and Harris’ track record with European players was pretty good up to that point.
2005: Resigned Michael Redd (6 years/$95 million). I put this signing only in the “good” category because any idiot could have offered Redd the max to stay in Milwuakee and of course Redd’s agent (who gets a commission) would counsel him to take the extra money the Bucks could offer him over Cleveland’s deal. However, Harris’ salesman skills may have really shone in this free agency pursuit. Being second banana on a great team worked out just fine for Scottie Pippen, so I’m sure the opportunity to sign with his hometown team and run as LeBron’s wingman was tempting. I’m sure that Harris leaned on Redd pretty hard to show him that by leaving he’d be completely screwing the team that both gave him his big chance and dismantled its roster for him to shine. I’m sure at the time Redd was excited about the chance to lead his own team, but somehow I think that these days he keeps a pile of $100 bills on his nightstand to smack himself in the face with when he thinks about how he could have been in the finals last year.
2006: Signed Lynn Greer (2 yrs/1.5 million). Another European find, he had been a big scorer in Europe ever since the NBA realized that the best product John Chaney had ever put in the NBA was Mark Macon and took a pass on Greer. Unfortunately, Greer’s stay in Milwaukee was tragic, as his fiancée fell ill and passed away during the season. As a result, Greer missed time and never was used until well after the season was wasted. Greer would have been an able replacement for Charlie Bell this year, but after resigning Bell, Harris did Greer a favor and let him out of the final season of his contract in order to return to a better offer in Europe. It was still a good signing, just one that didn’t work out.
2006: Traded Jamaal Magloire for Steve Blake, Brian Skinner and Ha Seung Jin. Credit Harris for realizing that Magloire’s game had turned to crap and he had virtually no value whatsoever. Conventional wisdom would say that Magloire could be traded for a draft pick at the trade deadline, but Harris probably got as much back as he ever would, considering that Portland wasn’t able to move Magloire either. Besides, getting a pick back would probably have required the Bucks to take on some sort of longer salary commitment, which would have hurt them this past offseason.
2006: Traded Steve Blake for Earl Boykins and Julius Hodge. Given the way the Bucks season was going, this was a perfect trade for them. Boykins is the type of player that can sell some tickets, at 5’3″ he’s an inspirational story, and can score a little, but he won’t help you win at all. Because of his height there’s simply no way he can come close to pulling his weight defensively, and his shoot-first mentality leaves his teammates more interested in strangling him than running the offense. Not a bad way to dump games. Fortunately for the Bucks, Boykins opted out of his contract (as expected), saving Milwaukee $3 million and pretty much making it possible to sign Desmond Mason. However, as what must come as a surprise to Boykins, he is still unemployed. Something is wrong with Julius Hodge , you would think that he’d be the perfect guy to have as the backup to Michael Redd for 10 minutes a game (6’7″, can defend a little) but something about him caused the Bucks to release him as quickly as they could.
2007: Resigned Mo Williams (6 years/$52 million). Good move to keep Mo, as he is still only 24 years old and will be a part of the team as he reaches his prime and despite Mo being the only reasonable option for the Bucks, Harris kept the contract offer from getting out of hand. Williams has built himself up into one of the better point guards in the league, and his career trajectory to this point actually looks a lot like Chauncey Billups’. For that to continue, Mo will have to develop two major skills that he currently does not have , namely, becoming a lockdown defender and a foul-drawing machine. However, those were both knocks on Billups as well (as was the “point guard who does nothing but shoot” label), and point guards have a history of peaking later in their careers than other players. Mo is smaller than Billups, so he will probably never reach those All-Star heights, but still this contract should provide fair value with a 5-10% chance of being a real bargain by the time it ends.
2007: Signed Desmond Mason (2 years/$10 million). My feelings about Mason’s game are well documented (way too inefficient offensively to help, overrated defensively, good hustle guy who should get 10-15 minutes a game) but this was a good signing, especially since it has become apparent that Bobby Simmons is not and may never again be the same player he once was. Harris got a great insurance policy at small forward in Mason , a great character guy who won’t complain should he not play much, but if he does, at least he never gives less than maximum effort. There weren’t really any better options available in free agency for that role, and while $5 million a year is a bit much that doesn’t bother me since the contract is only for two years.
2007: Drafted Ramon Sessions. He sure has played well in the NBDL.
Bad Moves (but with an asterisk)
2005: Signed Bobby Simmons (5 years/$47 million). Because of Simmons’ injury problems this deal hasn’t worked out, and it’s starting to look like Simmons might not be the same player any more after surgery on his feet. That’s a tough injury for a basketball player to recover from, and it’s a shame. In 2004 Simmons was the NBA’s most improved player, an award that historically hasn’t meant much, but the 4 previous winners were Zach Randolph, Tracy McGrady, Jermaine O’Neal and Gilbert Arenas. Heady stuff. There’s no doubt that the Bucks overpaid for Simmons from the get-go, but Harris was under a lot of time pressure to get the deal done. They signed Simmons in the period between reaching an oral agreement with Michael Redd and actually signing him, so they technically used their cap space to get Simmons and then went over the cap to sign their own guy (Redd). Obviously it’s easy to look back now and say they should have offered Simmons’ contract to Gerald Wallace, but they didn’t have the time to sign the RFA Wallace and wait to see if Charlotte would match, and if they did then the Simmons opportunity might have been gone. Also, Harris could have done much, much worse as the rest of the free agent class of 2005 wound up being a complete disaster. It’s too bad that the Simmons signing will probably wind up being a bust, because it was the right move at the time.
2006: Traded TJ Ford for Charlie Villanueva. This is a hard trade to categorize as good or bad. It hasn’t worked out, but that’s not really anybody’s fault. Ford was a long way from being a good player after 3 seasons with the Bucks, but he only had played 1 ½ years due to injury. Mo was cheaper and an equally good player, so it only made sense to trade him, right? But it often takes point guards a long time to reach their potential, and while Ford busted out last season, it seemed to me that the improvement came more from being in a better situation for his game than actually improving. But then this year he definitely improved , and suddenly everybody holds their breath as the neck problem crops up. Clearly Ford will have to change his game to take less contact, but will he be as effective once he does? Charlie Villanueva is even more difficult to figure out. Such a tantalizing talent, but does he play physically enough to be a starting power forward? Is his head in the game consistently enough to be effective off the bench? I’m convinced that TJ has become a better player than he would have in the Bucks system (especially now that Krystkowiak has slowed the game down so much this season) and that ultimately, Charlie V will probably be playing somewhere else. What the Bucks get in that deal will be the final determinant of the quality of this trade.