GMing 101: the 15 basic rules

Posted on LakersGround.net on 3/15/06.

Rule #1 - Have at least 4 good bigs on your roster
The hardest thing in the NBA is to get good bigs on your roster. C's and PF's are snapped up early in the draft and tend to be signed to long term contracts. Your whole defensive scheme should start with how you want these guys to defend (see here for more). Bigs are so hard to come by that Chuck Nevitt was able to have a 12 year career when his only talent was that he was 7'5" (though he was great at juggling Cool Whip containers). You need to have 4, preferably 5 because if one goes down to injury, you are too thin to compete. Chicago has a great group of smalls with Gordon, Hinrich, Deng and Duhon, but they are out of the playoffs because they don't have any quality bigs besides Tyson Chandler and Chandler has had health issues this year.

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
The Lakers currently have 2 C's (Mihm, Bynum), a PF/C (Brown) 2 PF's (Cook, Turiaf) and a SF/PF (Odom). After Mitch traded Shaq, the bigs on the Lakers' roster were Cook, Odom and Medvedenko. Mitch has done a great job of rebuilding his supply of bigs through the draft and trades. At this point, I expect one of the bigs to be traded this off-season - probably Cook.

Rule #2 - Don't trade big for small
This is almost a corollary of Rule #1. When you trade a big for a small, you create a hole in your group of bigs. You shouldn't do so unless you have a plan to fill that hole. You can fill that hole through acquiring a free agent, the draft, another trade or promoting someone from the bench to start (if you are trading away a starting big man). If you don't have a plan for filling that hole, don't make the trade. Also, when you do trade big for small, you need to be getting more talent to offset the loss of size. For example, the Lakers traded two starters (Chucky Atkins and Caron Butler) for Kwame Brown, a RFA big that Washington wanted gone.

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
Getting RFA Chris Mihm (plus Chucky Atkins and Jumaine Jones) for Gary Payton (plus Rick Fox and a #1 pick) was a major league steal. Ainge should have gotten more ("Mitch, I will give you your starting center AND your starting point guard for an over-the-hill point guard you want gone, a guy who is going to retire and a draft pick that will probably be out of the lottery. And if you say yes in the next 5 minutes, I will throw in a player who will be your sixth man"). Mitch had to pay much more to get Kwame.

Rule #3 - Plan your salary structure years in advance
To me, the ingredients necessary to compete for the NBA championship are:
1. Have a quality big man
2. Have two to three All-Stars
3. Have an excellent coach
4. Have solid role players in spots 4-7

How do you get the quality big man and the two-three All-Stars? You have to do it through a combination of drafting well, trading well and being successful in signing free agents. You also have to keep the quality pieces you have on your team and not lose them to free agency while you are adding the new pieces. Doing all these things requires shrewd salary cap management.

An excellent salary cap structure is when your main contributors have long contracts and your role players have shorter, small dollar (MLE or less) contracts. For example, the Spurs have Tim Duncan has the highest salary ($15.8M) and is locked up for four seasons after this. Tony Parker has the second highest salary ($8.4M) and is locked up for five seasons after this. Ginobili is third with a $7.4M salary and is locked up for four seasons after this. Nesterovic has the Spurs' one bad contract, earning $6.7M this season and even more over the next 3 seasons. Mohammed is next at $5.5M and is a UFA after this season. The next five guys in order of salary (Barry, Bowen, Horry, Finley, Oberto) all make between $4.7M and $2.3M and are signed for two seasons after this. Udirh is on a cheap rookie contract. The rest of the roster (Van Exel, Marks, Sato, Sanders, Scales) have contracts that are cheap and end this year.

What you want to avoid is non-key starters and bench players having big, long contracts. When such players have big, long contracts, their trade value plummets as other teams aren't willing to pay so much for someone who doesn't contribute that much. The Knicks are the poster child for how not to have your salary structure. Jamal Crawford is a bench player and has a contract that pays big bucks for 5 more seasons ($10M in his last season). And he's the ninth highest paid player on the team. For every other team in the league, having a bench player with such a big contract would limit the team's ability to sign free agents and re-sign their own players.

Boston is probably a more instructional example. Paul Pierce, their All-Star, is their top paid player and his contract runs two more seasons (player option for the last). Wally Szczerbiak and Raef LaFrentz also have big, long contracts. Szczerbiak is overpaid and LaFrentz, who only averages 25 mpg, 7.8 ppg and 5 rpg, is really overpaid. Next season, the three of them will combine for $37M and $40M the season after that. The Celtics have three promising players on rookie contracts. Of them, Kendrick Perkins becomes an RFA in the '07 off-season and the other two (Delonte West and Al Jefferson) become RFA's in the '08 off-season. If the Celtics owners aren't willing to pay luxury tax (and they have been very salary conscious so far), then the Celtics won't be able to re-sign all three of their young players. They may be able to re-sign two if they stick to only dirt cheap free agents for the next three off-seasons.

Having an owner that is willing to pay luxury tax doesn't really help all that much. Back to Jamal Crawford - he is still overpaid for what he contributes. What team is going to be interested in trading for a big bucks player who can't even start on a 17-45 team? Adding Francis will further reduce Crawford's minutes, reducing his value even more. So, be willing to go into luxury tax for new players means that the trade value of your existing overpaid players will diminish.

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
Odom is getting paid to play like an All-Star and he needs to step up his play. If Odom plays like an All-Star, then the Lakers have an excellent salary structure. The 2007 plan will hopefully allow them to acquire another top notch player through an S&T without costing too much talent. I wish Parker had a longer contract and I really wish Mihm had a longer contract, as losing either to free agency would be a blow.

Rule #4 - Don't churn the roster
It takes a while to build chemistry in the NBA. You want your players to feel loyal to your team, so you must show loyalty to them. Some players take a while to develop and you don't want to see them blossom on some other team. A lot of fans want to trade half the roster every off-season. Doing so is counterproductive for the preceding reasons. You want to turnover 15-25% of your roster most years. You want to have some need blood in or your team will gradually get old and you will have to rebuild from close to nothing. You really only want to go over 25% when you are rebuilding and then do it for only one or two years. (Note: The numbers in this rule are based on the discussion of roster turnover in Dean Oliver's book, "Basketball On Paper")

Trading away your roster doesn't result in an improved roster. When you trade away players, you get players that other teams were willing to trade. In 1997, Don Nelson took over GM duties for the Mavericks mid-season and famously "fired" the whole team. Only Derek Harper played more than 50 games for the Mavericks that year. Of the 27 players that played for the Mavericks that year, only Michael Finley and Shawn Bradley stuck for more than 3 seasons.

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
Of the 17 players on the Lakers payroll at the end of the '03-'04 season (link), 6 were on the roster at the start of the next season and of those 6, George and Medvedenko hardly played and Rush was traded mid-season. Of the 15 players on the Lakers payroll at the end of the '04-'05 season (link), 9 were on the roster at the start of this season and one of those, Medvedenko, was recently cut. Bryant, George, Cook and Walton are the only players remaining from the '03-'04 season. That is a huge amount of churn. Combine that with three coaches in two seasons and it is really too much change.

The Lakers were forced to do such a massive roster turnover because most of the roster at the end of the '03-'04 season was either old (Payton, Fox, Malone, Grant, Russell) or weak on talent (Medvedenko, Rush, Sampson, Pargo, Carter, Udoka). Fisher got a ridiculous FA offer that the Lakers wisely didn't match. Shaq was past his prime and not worth the money he wanted to be paid. That left Bryant as the only starter talent worth keeping on the roster and George, Cook and Walton as the only bench players worth keeping (and I am not sure Walton is really worth keeping).

Sadly, there are a lot of Laker fans that feel that Mitch didn't make enough moves. They complain that Mitch should have made more trades or signed more free agents. They wanted Mitch to make some major moves during the season. They call for Mitch to be fired because they aren't patient enough to handle being a fan while the team is being rebuilt.

Hopefully, this off-season will be much less eventful and the players on the roster will be given time to improve and develop chemistry. I am hoping the Lakers re-sign George and Profit, then buy out McKie. They will add a player with Miami's first round pick. If they keep Wafer and Green, that would give them a roster of 15. If the Lakers do that, only one completely new player will have to be integrated into the team.

Rule #5 - When rebuilding, signing veteran FA's can be counterproductive
When rebuilding, you want to develop players that have the capability of being of value when the team is ready to compete again. Veteran FA's will either be out of the league or past their prime by the time the team is ready to compete again. Signing a veteran FA can be counterproductive in two ways. First, any minutes a veteran FA plays are minutes that could have been used to develop a player who will be of value when the team is ready to compete again. Secondly, if the team signs the veteran FA to a long term contract, that money won't be available to acquire talent when the team is ready to compete.

You have to realize that it is very hard to trade a disappointing free agent. To me, teams are willing to pay a salary premium if it means they can get a player without giving up anything. If a free agent then doesn't play as well as you hoped, no team is going to be interested in trading something of value for what is now an overpaid player. For example, if Golden State were to call Mitch up and ask if the Lakers have any interest in Derek Fisher, Mitch would point out that if they wanted to pay Derek Fisher that much money, they would have matched Golden State's offer. Disappointing free agents do get traded occasionally - I am still amazed that Jerry West traded for Travis Knight after he bombed in Boston - but not often enough to count on.

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
Many fans wanted Mitch to sign Watson or Daniels this off-season, but both of those players would have required long-term contracts to sign. Daniels is 31 and would be past his prime when the Lakers are ready to compete. Mitch's free agent signings - Divac and McKie - have been busts, but they haven't hurt the team.

Rule #6 - When rebuilding, keep your team around .500
When rebuilding, you have to avoid what I call "the death spiral". A young team starts losing -> the players lose confidence in themselves and their coach -> the players tune out their coach -> the players don't develop enough for the team to be able to compete -> cycle repeats. Nobody wants to coach a team in a "death spiral", so you can't get a quality coach to replace the coach that the team has lost confidence in. Once a team goes under .500, it can stay there for a very long time. The Clippers are trying to end 12 straight losing seasons. Golden State 11 straight losing seasons (going on 12). Atlanta 7 straight (going on 8).

When the Lakers rebuilt before, they went 43-39, 39-43 then 33-49. While competing, the Lakers let their veterans go and replaced them with young players. The young players learnt what it takes to win from the veterans they replaced. The Lakers then added good talent through the draft (Eddie Jones) and a trade (Cedric Ceballos) as well as a new coach (Del Harris) who was capable of molding the young team correctly, and suddenly the Lakers were competitive again.

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
Other than the collapse at the end of last season, the Lakers have stayed around .500 while overhauling their roster. It's hard to ask for more.

Rule #7 - When rebuilding, talent is the most important thing
Or why trading for Kwame Brown was a good idea. Vlade Divac had a European approach to conditioning that including smoking. Elden Campbell seemed allergic to hustle and would frequently disappear. Cedric Ceballos had an ego the size of the Forum and was a headcase to boot. Nick Van Exel was close to uncoachable. Anthony Peeler had legal problems while in college. It's no wonder Del Harris' hair was stark white. Yet, each of those players had talent that Harris was able to harness to make a competitive team. George Lynch was a great person, great heart, great hustle, but never really contributed. Lynch would have a solid career as a defensive specialist SF, but the Lakers needed scoring from the SF while he was on the team.

When you are rebuilding, you are short on talent and you need to take it in whatever form you can find it. You have to take a flyer on questionable players with talent. If you wait for the sure thing, you are going to be rebuilding a long time. Once you are competitive, then you can worry about how well the talent fits. As you have talented players, you can then trade them for other talented players that better fit the rest of the team (e.g. Ceballos for Horry).

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
The Lakers gambled in the 2004 off-season on acquiring former #7 pick Chris Mihm. The Lakers gambled in the 2005 off-season in acquiring former #1 pick Kwame Brown. Chris has been a pleasant surprise but Kwame has been a disappointment so far. He has incredible athletic skills, but doesn't make much use of them. I wish he had Cook's work ethic and Turiaf's fire, but if he did, the Lakers never would have had a chance to get him.

Rule #8 - Always consider if a role player fits your system
By role player, I mean the #3 player or lower. Someone who isn't important enough to change the offense to tailor to their skills. I recently read an interesting article about Antonio Daniels' struggles in Washington by (I believe) one of the 82games.com guys. It basically said that Daniels skills are the same as in Seattle, but the system in Washington requires him to do things he isn't good at. Glen Rice struggled as a Laker because he was used to having screens and picks set for him and the Lakers wanted him to be a spot up shooter. The flip side is that there may be some role player struggling on another team that will blossom on your team because he fits your system better than he fits the system of his current team (see Boris Diaw).

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
The triangle calls for a much different skill set than most NBA offenses. Mitch somehow saw that an obscure point guard named Smush Parker who had floundered on three different NBA teams would be a good fit for the Lakers.

Fans need to keep in mind that just because a player has good stats on one team doesn't mean that the player will put up similar stats for the Lakers.

Many Laker fans feel that if the Lakers hadn't traded for Kwame Brown, they could have trade Caron Bulter for Ron Artest. Once Phil was hired, Butler became the back up SG, where he wasn't going to get many minutes. He wasn't going to get any minutes at SF with Odom and George ahead of him on the depth chart. Slashing Butler's minutes would have reduced his trade value. Butler was at his peak trade value for the Lakers last off-season.

Rule #9 - Expiring contracts have little value in and of themselves and are topped by trade exceptions
I don't know how many times I have seen posters write about "valuable expiring contracts". Expiring contracts aren't valuable in and of themselves. They are just fillers that facilitate trades where other pieces are providing the value. Every NBA season, the vast majority of expiring contracts don't get traded. A good example of the lack of value of expiring contracts is last season when Atlanta wanted to trade Antoine Walker. Atlanta wanted back expiring contracts and a first round pick. The expiring contracts were just filler - it was the first round pick that was the value that Atlanta was interested in. Of course, Atlanta would have taken an useful player for Walker, but they knew no one was willing to offer that much.

What about trades like New York trading Hardaway (an expiring contract) for Francis? In this case, it isn't that the expiring contract had a significant value, it was that Francis had a near zero trade value. The only players you can get for an expiring contract are players that teams don't want any more.

Trade exceptions are more valuable than expiring contracts because the team that gets an expiring contract has to basically eat the contract and a trade exception avoids that. Why spend millions if you don't have to? I remember being frustrated that the Rockets got Mike James at the 2005 trade deadline instead of the Lakers, but the Rockets had a trade exception and the Lakers didn't even have an expiring contract to offer.

There are times when you can't make a trade for lack of an expiring contract (see the Mike James comment above). With the requirement for salary matching, there are times when a trade hinges on being able to toss in a filler player that costs the other team the absolute minimum. That makes expiring contracts useful, but not valuable.

The simple rule for trades is that "You have to trade value to get value" and expiring contracts don't have value.

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
I have seen a number of fans that were upset that Mitch didn't use any of the Lakers "valuable expiring contracts" this trade deadline. Again, they weren't valuable.

Rule #10 - Don't expect to add more than two pieces a year
Opportunities to add a player who can be a long term contributor don't happen that often. Realistically, it is unusual for there to be more than one or two such opportunities in a year. Trying to create opportunities when there aren't any will create unnecessary roster churn, may result in losing a slow developing player who was going to develop into a long term contributor, and frequently cause mistakes that set the team back. When the Lakers rebuilt back in '92-'94, West added Peeler one season, Lynch and Van Exel the next season, then Jones and Ceballos the next.

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
That Laker fans need to learn patience. Many Laker fans wanted Mitch to sign a free agent last summer, but there weren't any good candidates in last summer's free agent crop. Many fans want Mitch to trade, trade, trade when there are rarely going to be good trading opportunities. Promising pieces that the Lakers added this year are Kwame, Bynum, Turiaf, Profit and Parker. Wafer and Green are interesting projects. If only two of them turn into a long term contributors, that would be a very good off-season.

Rule #11 - Don't think of trading for rookies or deep bench players
Rookies don't get traded because of organizational commitment and information asymmetry. By organizational commitment, I mean that the decision on who to draft is a political decision within the NBA team and teams want to hang on to rookies to determine if the evaluation by the front office staff was correct or not. The success or failure of that rookie will result in "Attaboys!" or "Idiots!" being tossed around to members of the front office. Enough "Idiots!" and someone is fired. Enough "Attaboys!" and someone is promoted. Trade a rookie before he has had a chance to prove himself and his supporters in the front office will be able to say that they shouldn't be criticized for supporting that pick because the team gave up on the player too early.

By information asymmetry, I mean that the team that rookie is on knows far more about the rookie than any team that might acquire the rookie. Let's say that Danny Ainge calls up Mitch and offers to trade Gerald Green (their heavily hyped rookie who can barely make it off the bench on an injury depleted team) for Brian Cook. Well, Cook has played long enough for his skill, work ethic and coachability to be pretty well known. Ainge has probably heard through the player grapevine what kind of a locker room presence Cook is. Ainge also knows Green's skill, work ethic, coachability and locker room presence because he sees Green all the time. Mitch, on the other hand, can't know Green's skill, work ethic, coachability and locker room presence because Green doesn't have enough of a track record yet. If anything, Mitch should suspect that Green's skill, work ethic, coachability and locker room presence aren't that good, or why else would Ainge want to trade him? Ainge knows that trading Green for Cook benefits the Celtics. Mitch has no idea if trading Cook for Green will help the Lakers. Given the unequal amount of information, Mitch has to suspect that Ainge is trying to rob him and should pass on the trade.

I don't know why deep bench players don't get traded, but they don't. It would have been nice if the Lakers could have picked up Profit last season for perhaps a second round draft pick. Phoenix may have wanted to pluck Diaw off of Atlanta's bench last season. You don't see deep bench players get traded. The only reason I can think of is that trades take up so much time and focus of an organization that teams aren't willing to spend the time and focus on deep bench players.

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
Don't think of trying to acquire this off-season underperforming rookies like Deron Williams, Raymond Felton or Rashad McCants.

Rule #12 - It's very hard to trade players that you don't want
Many, many times I have seen posts along the lines of "[Player X] is garbage! The Lakers should trade him!" and the poster then suggests one or more possible trades. If a player really is garbage, why would any team want him? You have to trade value to get value. If you are going to put time and effort into coming up with a trade idea, start with a player who you think has value.

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
If you don't like Sasha or Cook, don't bother trying to think up trades for them. I don't really see this much on this board. I follow Celticsblog.com fairly closely and the fans there would post trade idea after trade idea for the despised Mark Blount while he was on their team but rarely post trade ideas for the players the fans actually liked.

Rule #13 - Always consider the realistic worst scenario
Back at the trade deadline, many people were debating whether the Lakers should acquire K-Mart. What would be the realistic worst scenario of acquiring K-Mart? That his knee would keep him from playing well enough to justify his mammoth contract. And if that happens, then the Lakers will not be able to trade K-Mart and they will never be able to get below the salary cap. That would severely hurt the Lakers ability to become a competitive team.

Lots of times, I have seen teams make moves assuming the best and then were hamstrung when an anticipated problem happened. An example of this would be New Jersey acquiring Dikembe Mutombo. Mutombo was getting up there in age, was slow getting up and down the court (which didn't fit in with Jason Kidd) and had a monster contract. He was a bust in New Jersey and his contract kept New Jersey from re-signing K-Mart. The Nets were forced to traded away K-Mart for some low draft picks.

By "realistic worst scenario", don't go, "Gee, what if player X suddenly drops dead from an undiagnosed medical condition?" Worry about what has been diagnosed or what is known. Another example - the Lakers were rumored to be interested in Eddy Curry. The Lakers were rumored to have lost out on Curry because they weren't willing to offer a contract longer than 2 years. The Lakers were considering the realistic worst scenario - that Curry would become unable to play because of his heart condition and decided that they only way to mitigate that risk was to offer a short contract. New York offered a 6 year contract, landed Curry and no other team is going to be remotely interested in him for years.

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
When posting trade ideas, think about the realistic worst scenario. I once posted how stupid I thought Orlando fans were for suggesting the Lakers would be willing to trade Mihm for Francis. Other posters thought it would be a great idea. Francis had worn out his welcome with two NBA teams - what if he didn't fit in with the Lakers? Probably no team would want to touch his monster contract. The Lakers would then be stuck with him regardless of how much they would want to get rid of him.

Rule #14 - Think of the impact of minutes for any new acquisition
A while back, I ripped an SI article where the writer said,

SI writer wrote:
It's hard to say how the addition of Sprewell would affect the Lakers, but it's fun to speculate. In his worst season -- last year with Minnesota -- Sprewell averaged 12.8 points, his lowest average since his rookie campaign. Think the Lakers could use a 13-point scorer in their lineup? With Kobe and Sprewell at the 2 and 3, the Lakers' backcourt would definitely create some matchup issues and possibly earn the Lakers at least a few more wins, which could be the difference between the lottery and the eighth spot in the West.

Yes, the Lakers could use a 13-point scorer in their line up, but the NBA doesn't allow a team to play 6 players at a time. If Sprewell plays, someone else doesn't. The SI writer didn't say who would sit so that Sprewell could. Would he sit Odom, who averages 14.1 ppg, 9.3 rpg and 5.3 apg? Would he slide Odom to PF and sit Cook and Brown? Cook provides more a shade more points per minute than Sprewell and Brown provides excellent man-to-man defense on the WC's many great PF's. Would he sit George? Devean doesn't score as well as Sprewell, but he provides a lot more defense and rebounding. When I considered who Sprewell would take minutes from, it appeared to me that adding Sprewell didn't improve the Lakers.

A lot of people were hoping that the Lakers would add Ron Artest. Again, you run into the same problem that Lakers already have their second best player playing SF and their best bench player playing there as well. Now, Artest would have improved the Lakers, but not as much as picking up a very good PG or PF.

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
People are already looking at the 2006 free agents. People need to think who there are going to sit before suggesting who the Lakers should sign. For example, if you think the Lakers should sign center DJ Mbenga, what Lakers center is going to sit or be traded? Mihm, Bynum or Brown? It's hard for me to see Mbenga being an upgrade over any of those three.

Rule #15 - The most important thing a GM does is select the right coach
A GM can build a talented roster, but if the coach doesn't know how to harness that talent, the team will be a disappointment. A GM can draft promising young talent, but if the coach doesn't know how to develop young players, they won't achieve their potential. Looking at roster moves, Jerry West has had in Memphis far more failures than successes. Yet, he has been successful in Memphis because he brought in coaches that knew how to get the most of the talent on the roster. A major, major reason for Joe Dumars success has been his brilliance in hiring coaches. Denver floundered until they hired George Karl last season. Golden State is stacked with talent, but is once again losing with first time pro coach Mike Montgomery. Yet, so many fans look only at roster moves when assessing a GM and not at the coaching moves.

You should hire a coach that fits your team. As your team changes, you shouldn't be afraid to change coaches. Del Harris was a great fit for a young Laker team that had promise but didn't know how to practice and didn't know how to win. He was a poor fit for a Shaq-Kobe team that needed the discipline and focus to compete for the championship. I think for young teams, a veteran coach is best. Someone who knows how to practice and how to win games and can provide the experience a young team lacks. For a veteran team, a young coach isn't a bad idea. Someone who the veterans can relate to and communicate with. I think a team with enough talent to compete for a championship needs a coach that will teach them how to stay focused 48 minutes a game, 82 games a year (there aren't many of those).

What this means for the Lakers and their fans
Phil Jackson is one of the greatest coaches in the NBA and the Lakers are fortunate to have him as coach. When he retires, the team will hopefully have enough experience that Brian Shaw will be able to be effective coaching them.

PS If you reply, please don't quote this entire post