The Post Ferry Autopsy

[thecampster]

So lets try to keep this on topic.  No thread hijacking. Knowing everything you know now, do you still feel the same about the team letting Ferry go?

 

My Perspective: It was Ferry, not Bud who was responsible for the 60 win season.  Ferry masterfully put together a team of lunch bucket type players who could defend and were willing to work on all parts of their game. It was Ferry who brought in Bud, assembled the coaches for Hawks-U and changed the culture. The day Ferry left, the wheels fell off.

Is there anyone here who, if they could go back in time, would change their mind and keep Ferry?

[Plainview1981]

1 hour ago, thecampster said:

So lets try to keep this on topic.  No thread hijacking. Knowing everything you know now, do you still feel the same about the team letting Ferry go?

 

My Perspective: It was Ferry, not Bud who was responsible for the 60 win season.  Ferry masterfully put together a team of lunch bucket type players who could defend and were willing to work on all parts of their game. It was Ferry who brought in Bud, assembled the coaches for Hawks-U and changed the culture. The day Ferry left, the wheels fell off.

Is there anyone here who, if they could go back in time, would change their mind and keep Ferry?

Ferry didn't deserve the fate he ended up with here. He deserved some time to see his way through.

You're right though... The wheels sort of fell off, but I don't think that Hawks team was built for the long haul anyway. Perhaps he would have managed it better once Carroll and Sap came up for the big contracts they were going to get. But you can't expect long term success if a journeyman 3pt shooter is such a large key to your success. 

Either way, Ferry deserved to be GM for at least a few more years.

[yungsta]

I hated Ferry plan. He built the foundation for the situation we are in now.

His win now with role players on short term contracts model was terrible for the future.

His decision to focus on developing a bunch role players in their late 20s on short term contracts did nothing for us but set those players up for big pay days and put us in a tough position financially.

Ferry also whiffed on multiple drafts (outside of dennis)leaving us devoid of any young talent which forced us to either tank or be a 40 win team with a 100 million+ dollar payroll.

He also allowed Larry Drew to hang around and soak up all of our drafting knowledge and go to Milwaukee which cost us Giannis.

Im glad Ferry is gone.

[AHF]

I give co-credit for that magical season to Ferry and Bud.  Ferry put the pieces together but Bud made them much more than the sum of their parts.  

My view hasn't changed - we never should have let Ferru go.  We need someone with vision, authority and stability in the front office.  I didn't think his path would lead us to a ring but he was doing an excellent job executing his plan and very rarely had any overpriced assets which allowed him to maintain flexibility on roster building into the future.

After he left, we had no coherent vision in the front office and were consistently two steps behind on FAs.  I have little doubt our roster would have looked very different coming into the offseason last year had he not been fired.

[Peoriabird]

2 minutes ago, AHF said:

I give co-credit for that magical season to Ferry and Bud. 

Y'all mean magical month.

[hawkman]

The Legend Of Danny Ferry will never die. I've never seen a GM lauded more for doing less.

[AHF]

3 minutes ago, hawkman said:

The Legend Of Danny Ferry will never die. I've never seen a GM lauded more for doing less.

I didn't agree with his fundamental approach but I firmly believe that you have to get someone with a vision and empower them in the role of GM to go after it.  I vastly prefer that over committee decision making, owner yes men, etc.  I also think any GM needs at least 3 years before you can intelligently judge them.  So I let my views be known and then supported him and rooted for the team because I wanted to see the team succeed much more than I cared about my disagreements with his decisions.  At the end of the day, the roster he assembled led to the best regular, best season and most fun overall season in the last 20 years or so.  

He wasn't perfect (draft stands out) but I still think firing him left us rudderless the last few years.  Budcox had no vision and were very reactionary and willing to take on bad assets which limited options short and longterm for the team.  I don't know what Ferry would have done because we had tough choices to make after the 60 win season but I think we would have been better off with Ferry making them than with what Budcox left Schlenk.

[Wretch]

We were coming off of a sub .500 season with the exact same team plus 1 halfway decent rookie.  Nobody expected 60 wins and the ECF's.  Not even Ferry himself.  The expectation was having a team that could remain competitive with players on flexible deals.  This would keep us in the playoffs with the ability to add key pieces (perhaps even a star if we could attract one) and eventually compete for something significant.  I'll give Ferry credit for putting that team together and I have to admit that the way he was doing things could work.  It's hard for me to give him much more consideration than that.

Honestly, this is just an odd conversation for me to have.  On one hand, the 60 wins are skewing an honest perspective and on the other, we'll never truly know how Ferry would have handled personnel decisions in the wake of that ridiculous campaign.  Personally, I liked the atmosphere around the team, but I didn't have hope for the future.  We are in the eventual worst case scenario I pictured...rebuilding later than sooner.  With Ferry, we would have never done what we are doing now.  We'd find a way to creep into the playoffs one way or another, peaking in the 2nd round.  As I've said a thousand times, I'm over that and all of its late 1s round pick glory. 

So, no way I'd go back to change things.  I'm happy with where we are.

[bleachkit]

Ferry is the kind of guy that finds a Kent Bazemore on the cheap, Bud is the kind of guy that gives him 70 million. Ferry was the master at finding underrated veterans like Korver, DMC and Milsap. Bud couldn't GM his way out of a wet paper bag. Michael Gearon exploiting a fake race controversy to get his own GM fired is the one of most disgraceful things any NBA owner has ever done. I hate Gearon with every fiber of my being. 

[HawkItus]

Ferry is the classic mythical King who dies too early.  He gets romanticized as the one who could have fixed the current issues.  But, on closer inspection the current issues were growing under his lead and most likely would have been his undoing.  He is gone before they come to light, so he is romanticized.  

[RedDawg#8]

People complain about the 2 year deals but maybe that was the only way we could have gotten those guys to sign here in the first place

People forget how much of a discount we signed Millsap for. I’m sure the length was part of that.

Understandably it hurt us when it came to re sign, but he may have had a plan in place for that scenario.

The foundation for a long term Spurs like franchise was in place with Ferry as the mastermind. There would be no Bud in Atlanta without Ferry. That’s the truth. So there is really no debate who was more vital. 

Bud didn’t have a single FA signing or draft pick that could match what Ferry did. Under Bud we traded 1st rounders and generally lost talent each year as we couldn’t manage the cap properly.

Bud is a good coach. But he is very responsible for us having to rebuild in the first place.

We lost every starter of that 60 win team with Bud in charge of personnel. (Sap was a Schlenk move but the damage was done and writing was on the wall.)

It is what it is but Bud deserves criticism 

[AHF]

42 minutes ago, HawkItus said:

Ferry is the classic mythical King who dies too early.  He gets romanticized as the one who could have fixed the current issues.  But, on closer inspection the current issues were growing under his lead and most likely would have been his undoing.  He is gone before they come to light, so he is romanticized.  

Eh...the team would have had real challenges after the 2016 regardless but would we have let Horford and Sap walk for nothing and paid Baze crazy money with Ferry in charge?  I don't think so.  I think he would have tried to do some cold Patriots type moves and dealt them for assets rather than leave us in a position to lose them for nothing.  I know he would never have paid Baze like that.

Ferry might have crashed and burned but who can say.  You are right that this leaves people to speculate but I hardly see how he could have done worse and I can see a lot of paths that would have been better.

[hawkman]

34 minutes ago, HawkItus said:

Ferry is the classic mythical King who dies too early.  He gets romanticized as the one who could have fixed the current issues.  But, on closer inspection the current issues were growing under his lead and most likely would have been his undoing.  He is gone before they come to light, so he is romanticized.  

I couldn't phrase this any better. He got run out of town before the negative consequences of his drafting and short term deals could catch up with him. He also came off as a condescending jerk, which is probably why not many on the Hawks staff spoke up for him when he was shown the door. Is he even working in the NBA right now? A while back, I remember him working as a "consultant" for some team. You'd think if he was that good of a GM, teams would be clamoring for his services.

[AHF]

Last I saw, he was working for the Pelicans as a special advisor.

[HawkItus]

9 minutes ago, AHF said:

Eh...the team would have had real challenges after the 2016 regardless but would we have let Horford and Sap walk for nothing and paid Baze crazy money with Ferry in charge?  I don't think so.  I think he would have tried to do some cold Patriots type moves and dealt them for assets rather than leave us in a position to lose them for nothing.  I know he would never have paid Baze like that.

Ferry might have crashed and burned but who can say.  You are right that this leaves people to speculate but I hardly see how he could have done worse and I can see a lot of paths that would have been better.

Quote

Danny Ferry speaks on decision to hang onto Josh Smith

 

Danny Ferry couldn't find the Josh Smith deal that he was looking for at Thursday's trade deadline and decided to stand pat.

By Kris Willis@Kris_Willis  Feb 21, 2013, 10:10pm EST

All I can go on is what he did.  Josh Smith was a test case and he didn't make a magical move here.  He sat on his cards.  

Edited April 26, 2018 by HawkItus

[AHF]

9 minutes ago, HawkItus said:

All I can go on is what he did.  Josh Smith was a test case and he didn't make a magical move here.  He sat on his cards.  

Ferry did exactly what I would have expected with Josh so you are right that it was a test case and Ferry passed that test.  Josh is a guy who wasn't an All-Star and was viewed as toxic by most of the league (as his post-Hawks history demonstrates).  The offers we got for Josh Smith were reportedly like the Howard trade - teams trying to force us to take toxic contracts.  Ferry did the right thing by shopping Josh and made the right call with Josh to let him walk.

In contrast to Josh who was a fundamentally flawed player, I am 100% certain there would have been trades with positive value for both Sap and Horford.

[HawkItus]

6 minutes ago, AHF said:

Ferry did exactly what I would have expected with Josh so you are right that it was a test case and Ferry passed that test.  Josh is a guy who wasn't an All-Star and was viewed as toxic by most of the league (as his post-Hawks history demonstrates).  The offers we got for Josh Smith were reportedly like the Howard trade - teams trying to force us to take toxic contracts.  Ferry did the right thing by shopping Josh and made the right call with Josh to let him walk.

In contrast to Josh who was a fundamentally flawed player, I am 100% certain there would have been trades with positive value for both Sap and Horford.

You say that, but when we were shopping Horf and Sap the offers were reportedly very weak.  As a matter of fact show me any in season trade for guys you see on Paul and Horfords level that netted real value.

[Plainview1981]

4 hours ago, hawkman said:

The Legend Of Danny Ferry will never die. I've never seen a GM lauded more for doing less.

I'm not saying that he was a genius, but nobody deserves to go out the BS way he went out. If you don't like the moves he makes... Fire him for that. Not for PC crap he got fired for. At the time he surely had done enough to keep his job anyway.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Plainview1981

[nathan2331]

I'm not saying that he was a genius, but nobody deserves to go out the BS way he went out. If you don't like the moves he makes... Fire him for that. Not for PC crap he got fired for. At the time he surely had done enough to keep his job anyway.

If we're being real, alongside Bud he built the best team in Atlanta's history. Amazing he got fired for those comments when the president has said much worse, but I'll leave it alone.

[hawkman]

1 hour ago, Plainview1981 said:

I'm not saying that he was a genius, but nobody deserves to go out the BS way he went out. If you don't like the moves he makes... Fire him for that. Not for PC crap he got fired for. At the time he surely had done enough to keep his job anyway.

It happens all the time in the real world. If he conducted himself with rigor and formality in a professional setting, there would be no scandal and he wouldn't have been fired, at least not at that time. He brought it on himself.