2021 Executive of the Year
Nov 12, 2021 21:18:36 GMT
Walt Frazier, Mike Krzyzewski, and 7 more like this
Post by Ian Noble on Nov 12, 2021 21:18:36 GMT
2021 Executive of the Year
Introduction: Commissioner's 2021 Address to the League
2021 Executive of the Year
San Antonio Spurs - George Gervin
Introduction: Commissioner's 2021 Address to the League
Dynasty Five's tenth season is now in the books! The Pelicans Trae Young has taken his place as our banner player for Season 11 and the D5 Universe keeps rolling on, covid-less it would seem - if our incoming injury system is any indicator, thankfully the pandemic has yet to cause a single lockdown here, although this year we postponed Off Season Free Agency merely to enjoy the summer months after an endless series of real-life lockdowns across the globe. This season we saw the birth of a fully-automated (albeit slightly clunky in my opinion) online depth chart and primacy editing system which will hopefully, eventually, be more user-friendly and run directly from our remote SQL database like the upcoming automated injury system will be! Kevin Love may nevertheless still appear in our Top 5 scorers if his GM so wills it! Back in January it's worth remembering we actually suffered a slight hiatus and started running on new hardware after the decade-old machine that ran D5 literally fell out of my car as I was unpacking and died instantly (praise backups!)! But it also provided me with an excuse to buy the swanky new hardware on which I'm currently typing. Lastly, looking to the future, on the horizon we now have the prospect of tradeable Bird Rights and a sanity-check on rookie contracts, limiting them to four years to bring us more in-line with the real NBA.
This year it felt destined for one of the juggernauts; Boston or Brooklyn, to take the championship, but you can never account for injuries, not least the most contentious injury I can remember, and wouldn't you have guessed it - the mythical Golden State dynasty of GM Chris Mullin swooped in to once again shower themselves in glory, not just with a fourth championship that went down the final quarter of game seven but also with, by far, the greatest series of playoff performances from a single player in the history of D5 (and the modern real-life NBA) as Kevin Durant secured for himself three of the top four best performances of D5 history, not least by unleashing a 56 point act of devastation to win Golden State the 'chip in game seven... an absolutely incredible performance for the ages.
It's early in the real-life NBA season but it's looking like a helluva strong draft class this year and it's fascinating to see some of the former tankers taking shape around their new prospects - the Knicks look spooky with Evan Mobley and Tyrese Halliburton, Mike Krzyzewski's Clippers backcourt now contains triple-double threat LaMelo Ball and the freakishly bouncy Jalen Green, Jerry West got his man Josh Giddey at #6, Scottie Barnes ended up as part of Glenn Robinson's re-tooling and I think everybody was also super happy to see D5 legend, Walt Frazier, secure the #1 pick in the lottery and start building his new dynasty around Cade Cunningham! maybe it wont be long before we see some new names in the race for Executive of the Year!
I know nobody cares but analytics time: we had 535,949 pageviews, good for second highest all time behind last year's endless lockdowns probably making D5 the only thing that kept us all sane. But it's easy to see why we're so popular when we get to hear about Jerry West's day in Arizona and how Hanamichi Sakuragi always... ALWAYS... puts his balls where his mouth is! wait...
Big thanks to the player agents, including newcomers to the team James Kay and Jerry West, who are both continuing to do a great job as we wrap up OSFA, and Big Thanks as well to all you GMs who continue to make D5 the powerhouse it is! Stay tuned to this thread as I write up the candidates for Dynasty Five's 2021 Executive of the Year!
2021 Executive of the Year
San Antonio Spurs - George Gervin
This year it seems blatantly obvious to me which GM should win Executive of the Year, nobody in D5 has built a superteam in this short of a time period since the early days of the league when big trades flowed like water. He was a newcomer to the race last year and he takes the prize this year, welcome to the podium Mr George Gervin!
What started as some great strikes of luck has become a sustained barrage of excellent GMing moves that have cemented the Spurs as a legit Top 5 team in the league within 3 years of George Gervin inheriting one of the worst rosters available. George joined the Spurs organisation after seven years of lackluster results trickling into the once proud city of San Antonio, everyone who was around at the time will still remember it: the endless first round exits, or late lottery finishes to every season in which the team rarely even kept their draft picks come Draft Night. Tim Duncan himself was left out on the prairie in OSFA 2013 only to find his way to Portland and win a championship the following season.
The Spurs needed some good luck to go their way and within a month of finding themselves a new GM they hit another jackpot when they did the unthinkable and the pick they traded Isaiah Thomas for catapulted all way from 14th to 1st position in the Draft Lottery of 2018, however that is the lucky part of George Gervin's tenure out of the way and done, everything else has been a talent for GMing and talent spotting. Combining that #1 pick with the #23 they acquired by shipping out the cold corpse of Tyreke Evans, Gervin was then able to move down to #2 and still select the face of their franchise, Luka Doncic, whilst also moving up to #12 to pick up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to form one of the greatest single-draft-day-hauls of NBA and D5 history!
Since that fateful 2018 Draft there have been some good picks, but nothing like that initial duo, and George has instead excelled at knowing when to jettison the prospects who aren't working out. Fast forward to the year that's past and the patchwork of trades and signings that were looking like a gradual rebuild for the Spurs were elevated in their grandeur and we've suddenly got ourselves a team that could genuinely be the Best in the West, maybe even someone to finally challenge Golden State! In the last six months George Gervin has taken the monstrous contract of Tobias Harris, moments before his precipitous fall in performance, and a plateauing Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and turned them into real-life champions Anthony Davis and Kawhi Leonard!
Capitalising on a great year by Tobias Harris, Gervin sold-high at just the right time back in July in a trade that left pretty much everyone scratching their heads even then, but has since begun to look like highway robbery, as Karl Anthony Towns joined the Spurs and Tobias's efficiency accidentally fell off a cliff in 2021/22. A few months later and KAT was moved on again, this time for former Finals MVP, Top 10 player, Kawhi Leonard!
Striking at the right time again George Gervin found himself at the right place, right time in mid-September whilst Milwaukee was dismantling their 10-years-together, former D5 Championship team, and it must've been an easy decision to ship out one of their great picks, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for none-other than Anthony Davis!
He's not only established himself as one of the best GMs in the league he's also become a trusted player agent and helped us formulate this year's rookie ratings. As Commissioner it's a relief when a single GM elevates themselves to be a tier above the rest so you don't have to second-guess yourself and that's exactly what George Gervin has done this year. To have built a contender is such a short time, when we all acknowledge it's much harder to do so nowadays than when the league first started, is perhaps the most tremendous achievement.
Trading:
Signing:
Drafting:
Planning:
Signing:
Drafting:
Planning:
2020 Team
Mason Plumlee
Tobias Harris
Marcus Morris
Luka Doncic
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
2021 Team
Anthony Davis
Jae Crowder
Kawhi Leonard
Luka Doncic
Goran Dragic
Mason Plumlee
Tobias Harris
Marcus Morris
Luka Doncic
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
2021 Team
Anthony Davis
Jae Crowder
Kawhi Leonard
Luka Doncic
Goran Dragic