In retrospect, how terrible was Travis Schlenk?

[shakes]

Let's look at teh fallout from the Schlenk era?

 

The Good:

Drafted Okongwu, AJ, JJ, 

Signed Bogi and Gallo 

 

The Meh:

Drafted Hunter, Collins and Huerter.  Huerter and Collins would be in the good category except for the terrible contracts and return on investment.

 

 

The Bad:

Traded Doncic for Trae

Drafted Reddish

Overpaid Collins and Huerter

Traded too much for Murray

Traded Huerter for scraps

Hung on to Collins way too long

Drafted Spellman.  Such a terrible move.  i was screaming at the TV to draft Brunson and complete the point guard rotation for the next decade.

 

Overall I don't think there's anyway to look at his tenure as anything greater than a D+.   Drafted poorly, overvalued and overpaid his assets, gave away the farm for Murray.

 

 

[Atlantaholic]

2 minutes ago, shakes said:

Let's look at teh fallout from the Schlenk era?

 

The Good:

Drafted Okongwu, AJ, JJ, 

Signed Bogi and Gallo 

 

The Meh:

Drafted Hunter, Collins and Huerter.  Huerter and Collins would be in the good category except for the terrible contracts and return on investment.

 

 

The Bad:

Traded Doncic for Trae

Drafted Reddish

Overpaid Collins and Huerter

Traded too much for Murray

Traded Huerter for scraps

Hung on to Collins way too long

Drafted Spellman.  Such a terrible move.  i was screaming at the TV to draft Brunson and complete the point guard rotation for the next decade.

 

Overall I don't think there's anyway to look at his tenure as anything greater than a D+.   Drafted poorly, overvalued and overpaid his assets, gave away the farm for Murray.

 

 

 

 

Doncic for Trae:

 

What has Doncic done in this league that Trae has not?

Doncic: 28-8 on 47-34 1 WCF appearance 28 playoff games played

Trae: 26-9 on 44-35 splits, 1 ECF apperance 27 playoff games played

Doncic is really becoming a massively overrated player. He has ran every decent player and coach out of the organization. Trae had a "bad" season last year. I fully expect him to rebound and be a hands down All Star starter like he was the year before last.

 

The Murray trade is on the new front office. The fallout from that trade notoriously led to him leaving the team, as he was completely opposed to it and ownership overruled him. It was the beginning of the end of Schlenk as a member of the organization.

Reddish: Yes, a big miss. We could have had Cam Johnson or even PJ Washington, both of which would have been upgrades.

Huerter overpaid? It's one of the best contracts in the NBA. He is making less money than Eric Gordon and Tim Hardaway JR. Player at his range (16-13 mil) include, Luke Kennard, Malik Beasley, Luguentz Dort, and Gary Harris. All of which he is waaay better than.

Collins: Yes, yes, this one didn't work out at all obviously. It wasn't a bad contract considering his production and age at the time though.

Huerter Trade. Was not on Schlenk, this move was forced by the front office to stay under the luxury tax. Awful move, but again, not Schlenk's fault.

Hung on to Collins: Allegedly it was also the front office that rejected several trades Schlenk had proposed for Collins.

Drafted Spellmen: It was the 30th pick, 95% of those don't turn out to anything,. Bizarre to bring this up.

 

To me personally. The biggest mistake for Schlenk was the 2019 draft. The Reddish pick turned out to a total dud. And then turning the 8th and 17th pick into Hunter was also poor value. 2019 ended up being a very deep draft even into the second round so to go in with a whopping 6 picks and end up with just Hunter is awful value. There's been around 30 solid NBA players that came into the league in 2019 and we picked just 1 of them heading in with 6 chances.

 

 

 

 

[macdaddy]

I don't think the Murray trade was Travis right?  Wasn't Landry already there.

I think Travis was a really good drafter, good at finding vets to help, terrible at coaching hires, not a trade wizard.  I think his last year in charge was messed up by ownership.  

[givemesome1ce1]

I don’t think Schlenk was an awful GM. A lot of the blame for his tenure is gonna be on Tony Ressler for meddling in so many deals and roster changes. Ressler basically rushed the development process  after the ECF run, and that set the team back for basically two years. So many moves can be blamed on Ressler mandating to go under the Luxury tax (Huerter trade) or just really liking a player (not trading Collins). Ressler has got to stop messing with the team’s operations, and I am pretty sure that before Quin became the coach, he made sure that wasn’t gonna happen.
 

For the 2019 draft, moving up for Hunter wasn’t a great move. HOWEVER, the 2019 draft class has shown to be kind of dud for players and the best wing of that entire class is literally Cam Johnson which I didn’t think anyone expected. Schlenk tried to get two defensive 3nD wings around Trae (the ideal way to build around him) and sadly it didn’t work out.

 

One big criticism against him is that he is not much of a negotiator and you can tell with the lack of moves with the trade deadlines and the Collins contract. That is one I agree with you one. We were the only team who wanted to give JC close to the money he wanted and instead of negotiating it to a lower price, it stuck to $125M. It bit us in the butt years later.

 

the draft picks were awesome and I love how he was always willing to take risks. I think that is gonna pan out in the next few years as we are entering this mini-rebuild. 
 

the Luka-Trae trade has been talked about so much already…there isn’t much to say but I will say we are in a better place than the Mavs. 
 

my overall thoughts are Schlenk’s legacy is mixed because there were a lot of great things that happened, but he lacked negotiating skills and didn’t want to make big changes (which could be blamed on Tony Ressler). It’s just a weird legacy to look back on.

[AHF]

58 minutes ago, shakes said:

Let's look at teh fallout from the Schlenk era?

 

 

Here is my adjusted list:

The Good:

Drafted Okongwu, AJ, JJ, Collins, Huerter, Trae (this is about what we did with the 5th pick and not about the trade)

Signed Bogi and Gallo 

Signed Huerter to a good contract

To Be Determined:

Drafted Hunter and signed him to a big deal before he had a healthy season.  (Clearly would have been nicer to traded up for Mikal Bridges or something on the draft front but we also could have done much worse.  How much improvement Hunter has left in him is an open question for me.)

The Bad:

Traded Doncic for the #5 pick and a future first which became the #10 pick (I'm not convinced this was a mistake given that we have Trae and given some of the cracks in the armor for Luka where the franchise has seemed to move in the wrong direction but I hated the trade on draft day and Doncic has the stronger resume to date so I'll put it here in trying to be fair)

Drafted Reddish

Overpaid Collins (hated the way this was done from about 10 different angles)

The Bad that Was Clearly Ressler and Not Schlenk

Traded Huerter for scraps

Hung on to Collins way too long (reportedly TS had deals he wanted to do on this)

Drafted Spellman.  (Really none of the second round picks were good.)

[Peoriabird]

https://www.espn.com/nba/draft/rounds/_/season/2019

Aren't there like 6 starters from this draft? 7 if you count Tyler Herro who was benched much of his career because of his defense.  This year was Herro's and Cam Johnson 1st years as full time starter whereas Hunter has started since his rookie season so in actuality only 1 player drafted after Hunter has started more games.

[AHF]

12 minutes ago, Peoriabird said:

https://www.espn.com/nba/draft/rounds/_/season/2019

Aren't there like 6 starter from this draft? 7 if you count Tyler Herro who was benched much of his career because of his defense.  This year was Herro's and Cam Johnson 1st years as full time starter whereas Hunter has started since his rookie season so in actuality only 1 player drafted after Hunter has started more games.

The challenge is that among this draft class:

Hunter ranks 21st in Win Shares

Hunter ranks 40th in Win Shares per 48

Hunter ranks 41st in BPM

Hunter ranks 58th in VORP

 

In terms of raw numbers, Hunter is:

6th in minutes

but:

11th in total points

15th in total rebounds

20th in total assists

28th in FG%

12th in 3pt%

 

So the primary way in which he stands out statistically among his class is in playing time.

 

Note that I fully recognize that the value of his defense is NOT fully captured in any of these numbers.

[Atlantaholic]

25 minutes ago, Peoriabird said:

https://www.espn.com/nba/draft/rounds/_/season/2019

Aren't there like 6 starter from this draft? 7 if you count Tyler Herro who was benched much of his career because of his defense.  This year was Herro's and Cam Johnson 1st years as full time starter whereas Hunter has started since his rookie season so in actuality only 1 player drafted after Hunter has started more games.

Cam Johnson, PJ Washington, Brandon Clarke, Terrance Mann, Keldon Johnson, Keving Porter JR, Jordan Poole, Talen Horton-Tucker, Herro, Thybulle, Claxton, Gafford, all were potential picks if we didn't trade for Hunter and give away our second round picks.

We could have picked anywhere from 2 or 4 of these guys, instead we came out with just Hunter. It's not just the Hunter trade which in itself is maybe a "push" but in combination with the Reddish pick and then giving away our second round picks and turning three of them into = Bruno. It was a bad draft. No doubt about it.

[Gray Mule]

Drafted Spellman.  Yep.  And he was a good player for where he was drafted.  He couldn't or wouldn't control his easting habits resulting in his being fat.  I still believe if he had overcome this he would have been good.

Can't really blame our GM for this.  He couldn't have known.

Reddish?  I believed, when he was here and still believe that his biggest problem lies between his ears.  Perhaps it was the coaching that didn't agree with him.  This may still be his biggest problem.  Can't be really good if you can't be coached.  Perhaps he got off on the wrong foot, so to speak.  who knows?

Forgetting the past, we move forward, hoping everything we do now works !!  If we don't know our past mistakes, how easy is it to make the same ones again....

 

[Peoriabird]

49 minutes ago, AHF said:

The challenge is that among this draft class:

Hunter ranks 21st in Win Shares

Hunter ranks 40th in Win Shares per 48

Hunter ranks 41st in BPM

Hunter ranks 58th in VORP

 

In terms of raw numbers, Hunter is:

6th in minutes

but:

11th in total points

15th in total rebounds

20th in total assists

28th in FG%

12th in 3pt%

 

So the primary way in which he stands out statistically among his class is in playing time.

 

Note that I fully recognize that the value of his defense is NOT fully captured in any of these numbers.

Different systems and teammates. There are plenty of bad team Allstars...difficult to compare number with completely different roles.  Ben Hill can March out a bunch of number making his favorite ex-hawk look way better than Trae young

[AHF]

2 minutes ago, Peoriabird said:

Different systems and teammates. There are plenty of bad team Allstars...difficult to compare number with completely different roll.  Ben Hill can March out a bunch of number making his favorite ex-hawk look way better than Trae young

Same could be said of his sheer number of starts and the lack of alternatives in Atlanta.  If he joined a team with a good starting SF, he would not have gotten many starts early in his career but he and Reddish both got handed starting roles from day 1.  Context is important in all dimensions but there is no context where ranking in the bottom half of the draft in metrics like VORP, BPM, etc. is a good thing and teammates and systems don't fully explain it.  

For example, Bogi, AJ, DM, Bey and JJ had better ORTG, DRTG, WS/48, better BPM, and better VORPs last season despite playing on the same team with largely the same teammates and in largely the same system.  (AJ ranks slightly higher than Hunter on DRTG but both have the same 119 when rounded to the nearest whole number as they are reported so you could effectively put them in the same bucket there.)

 

[Peoriabird]

24 minutes ago, AHF said:

Same could be said of his sheer number of starts and the lack of alternatives in Atlanta.  If he joined a team with a good starting SF, he would not have gotten many starts early in his career but he and Reddish both got handed starting roles from day 1.  Context is important in all dimensions but there is no context where ranking in the bottom half of the draft in metrics like VORP, BPM, etc. is a good thing and teammates and systems don't fully explain it.  

For example, Bogi, AJ, DM, Bey and JJ had better ORTG, DRTG, WS/48, better BPM, and better VORPs last season despite playing on the same team with largely the same teammates and in largely the same system.  (AJ ranks slightly higher than Hunter on DRTG but both have the same 119 when rounded to the nearest whole number as they are reported so you could effectively put them in the same bucket there.)

 

Which should tell you something about the numbers...AJ can't see the floor because of his defense. 3 coaches have decided to play Hunter heavy minutes even in the playoffs. Maybe they are stupid and numbers are smart. But I think Quinn knows a thing or 2 about basketball since this was his 7th straight year in the playoffs more than any other current streak.

[KB21]

His biggest mistake was not committing to Mike Budenholzer.  Everything after that is a result of that decision.  He drafted some talented players who did not develop properly in the culture and climate of the tanking Hawks.  

[kg01]

In retrospect, who gives AF?  He gone.

[AHF]

20 minutes ago, Peoriabird said:

Which should tell you something about the numbers...AJ can't see the floor because of his defense. 3 coaches have decided to play Hunter heavy minutes even in the playoffs. Maybe they are stupid and numbers are smart. But I think Quinn knows a thing or 2 about basketball since this was his 7th straight year in the playoffs more than any other current streak.

Hunter is unique among all the NBA in this regard as far as I can tell.  I haven't seen any other player who the metrics hate like this who is regarded as a top wing by his fans.  Maybe I'm missing someone but the numbers love elite defenders like Kawhi.  At Hunter's age, Kawhi put up 13.7 WS, .277 WS/48, 9.1 BPM, 6.7 VORP which were the best on his team in those collective categories.  (He was also near the top in ORTG, DRTG, etc.)  (For clarification, those are single season numbers not career totals.)

[NBASupes]

1 hour ago, Peoriabird said:

https://www.espn.com/nba/draft/rounds/_/season/2019

Aren't there like 6 starter from this draft? 7 if you count Tyler Herro who was benched much of his career because of his defense.  This year was Herro's and Cam Johnson 1st years as full time starter whereas Hunter has started since his rookie season so in actuality only 1 player drafted after Hunter has started more games.

You talking to a lot of people who just don't understand the game and positional value. 

This is a fanbase on average that's 80th percent offense, 20th percent defense and really only understand raw productivity on defense. Which is how you can try to sell yourself that Trae isn't the worst defender in the NBA by a mile who plays large enough minutes. 

I don't have a problem with Dre. Can he improve, 100%. Everyone can if well coached. But he's not gonna just be a star or anything like that. He's mainly gonna be a solid big wing, through and through 

There are 6 positions that I see in Basketball 

Pg

Sg

Sf

Big wing

Pf

C

The most valuable in today's league is big wing as it's the most versatile. 

They are basically the 2000s center in terms of value. 

I get it, for many of you. You try to see things in a prism. Raw stats is key, even advanced analytics is key. But for me, prototype is key. I see winning titles as something thats can be done with team building. I value Hunter, big wing with enough limitations to make him just a solid overall player 10x more than I value John Collins who is a good player overall.

Why? Because JC prototype is the worst prototype for all of bigs. Defense is 70/30 more valuable at the 4 unless you are elite offensively which obviously changing your value as you offensively are extremely versatile offensively.

Defense is more valuable at the 4 than even at the 5. At the 5, it's 60/40 defense. 55/45 big wing and they must be able to shoot, 50/50 for 3s, 40/60 at SG, 30/70 at the 1. That's why Trae get away with the woat defense where if he was terrible on D at the 2, he wouldn't be in the NBA or he would be locked into a role as a 6th man. 

That said, not everyone sees roster building the same. Some want 1s who are more balanced. Some want 2s who are offensive minded whereas some like defensive minded 2s, most people want balanced 3s, mostly everyone wants 4s who can defend 1st outside of a few systems like Utah when they went from Favors to Bogey at the 4 due to having the goat defensive center ever in Gobert. Mostly everyone wants a center who can score but also defend. People don't like centers who are very limited in today's NBA. Even without a back to the basket game as a 5, at least be very good or elite at PnRs and screening which is a mix of playmaking and scoring. They get exposed too much in the playoffs like 2/3 who only shoot 3s. 

[NBASupes]

Clarification, 65/35, defense for Big wings and they have to be able to shoot from range. Not 55/45. 

[NBASupes]

Then you have prototypes 

Rashad Phillips does an elite job of explaining that. 

https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung-rvo1&sxsrf=APwXEdfwsQancMtzjWV-tFU4hZdwF0tpdw:1687893199383&q=rashad+phillips+prototype&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiy-MSUlOT_AhXVgGoFHS8AAzkQ0pQJegQIExAB&biw=375&bih=682&dpr=2.89

 

Edited June 27, 2023 by NBASupes

[shakes]

33 minutes ago, kg01 said:

In retrospect, who gives AF?  He gone.

so is John Collins, but we're still talking about him 

[AHF]

16 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

 

The most valuable in today's league is big wing as it's the most versatile. 

But for me, prototype is key.

I don't think that is necessarily too different from what many of us are saying.  Hunter's greatest value is that he is the only one on the roster who fits that prototype.  Unless you replace him, it leaves a big hole on the team.  That is why listing him as the one I'd want to keep between him and JC was so easy for me.