they ended up with Kevin McHale as #1<\/a>.<\/p>\nGiven the failure of that system, I’m going to have to take any of their other rankings with a grain of salt. I think this is an instance where the metrics sounded <\/em>good, but when they were applied and led to this Bizarro world where McHale’s #1 and Billy Beane is #26, someone should have said, “Maybe we need to re-weight or add some other factors.”<\/p>\nAnd ranking Billy King of the Sixers at #3 was also pretty mind-boggling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anyone who’s read our VM basketball previews in the last few years knows that the Timberwolves are in terrible shape, and it’s due to the incompetent dealings of its general manager, Kevin McHale, who can also be faulted for being part of the Joe Smith debacle that ruined Kevin Garnett’s career. So that’s why it’s … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “When bad metrics happen to bad GMs”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,29,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basketball","category-nba-preview","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-mc","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":539,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/no-kevin-mchale","url_meta":{"origin":1376,"position":0},"title":"No Kevin McHale?","author":"Gil","date":"April 3, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"It's the NBA All-Ugly team! Glad they gave a shout out to that classic Celtic squad of 1985-86, but still found room for Keith Closs AND his freckles!I'm disappointed that the Hubie Brown entry doesn't mention his real likeness: the dudes from Alien Nation.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1204,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-nov-17-2006","url_meta":{"origin":1376,"position":1},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Nov. 17, 2006","author":"Gil","date":"November 17, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"What we see at Ground Zero and what we will see: When the towers first fell and, in practically the same moment, so many turned to imagining their replacement, I was appalled. Later, when I started to write about the site, I avoided proposing designs of my own, both because\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1408,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/college-whoops","url_meta":{"origin":1376,"position":2},"title":"College whoops","author":"Gil","date":"March 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I've learned a ton from reading Charley Rosen's basketball columns, particularly his single-game analyses. He's got a mailbag up this week, and it includes a vituperative response to the \"NCAA or NBA\" question: Although I do not always agree with your opinions, I respect them because you seem to know\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":417,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm","url_meta":{"origin":1376,"position":3},"title":"NBA Preview: Western Overviewby Tom\u2026","author":"Gil","date":"November 2, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"NBA Preview: Western Overviewby Tom SpurgeonHere are my general predictions for the western portion of the National Basketball Association, now split into three divisions so that Gil could catch me not knowing anything about the league's change three days after I lied and said I was done with this report.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":333,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/swoopin-and-hoopin","url_meta":{"origin":1376,"position":4},"title":"Swoopin’ and Hoopin’","author":"Gil","date":"August 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The U.S. Olympic basketball team got drilled by Italy in a tune-up game yesterday. The Italians managed to drop 15 3-pointers on a team composed of NBA stars. A lot of big names dropped out of the Olympic squad (or turned down invites) because of security concerns, exhaustion, injury, and\/or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1561,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/theyre-strong-finnishers","url_meta":{"origin":1376,"position":5},"title":"They’re strong finnishers","author":"Gil","date":"June 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I have a new favorite basketball team: the Honka Espoo Playboys.","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}