GM Fired: Monty Williams and Gary Payton

[Ian Noble]

GM Fired: Monty Williams and Gary Payton

Account Sharing

The ninth thread ever created on D5 is a rule that states that any GM that is found to control two teams will have both removed from their control.

Over the past week, we have been investigating the activity of Monty Williams and Gary Payton due to irregularities from their recent trade. After extensive evidence gathering, as well as giving both Monty and Gary a chance to provide verification, it has been concluded that one person has been controlling both accounts since joining the league. The owner has been fired from both of his positions, and the Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunder will be opened up to new GMs through the regular joining process.

Basis for Decision

Please know that we did not make this decision lightly and that we have done an extremely extensive investigation.

We first noticed that Monty and Gary logged on from the same IP address to post the trade linked to above. When confronted about the IP address, Monty claimed that he and Gary know each other IRL and sometimes share a computer. We gave each GM a week to provide verification, with only Monty responding to us with a short video of only himself. After pressing for more verification, both accounts have become unresponsive. We are taking this silence as an admission that he has been found out.

In addition to posting the above trade from the same IP address, we noticed that the two accounts always post from the same IP address. This spanned both their "home" location as well as other locations around the U.S. (i.e. if one GM was traveling, the other GM was traveling as well). There are hundreds of log-ins from the same IP addresses, oftentimes within just a few minutes of each other.

While the IP addresses may not be 100% definitive proof, we believe it is the most incriminating proof which is why we wanted to share it here. In the event that the owner shows back up and disputes this firing, we are happy to post additional evidence from our investigation to counter any claims.

Kawhi Leonard

The most obvious, and pressing, implication of this conclusion is the impact on the re-signing of Kawhi Leonard to Memphis. As you may have noticed, this decision has been delayed much longer than other top free agent decisions due to this investigation. After discussing as a player agent group, we decided to make a decision on Kawhi Leonard independent of this account sharing situation. Said another way, we are not going to punish the Grizzlies for no longer having a GM.

Monty Williams offered a full 4+1 max to Kawhi, and we believe any reasonable steward of the team would offer the same contract. Therefore, we considered the 4+1 max the offer from the Grizzlies in our deliberation. Kawhi has decided to re-sign with the Grizzlies and will be posted shortly after this thread.

Thanks to both James Kay and Andrei Kirilenko for their help in this investigation/decision.

[Hanamichi Sakuragi]

Great job by the management.

[Hanamichi Sakuragi]

Make sure to have a lawyer just in case.

[Kareem Abdul-Jabbar]

Too bad. I should have waited for Kawhi. Maybe he'll signed in my team. LOL. ^^

[Amare Stoudemire]

Chosen ones time

[Jared Montini]

Detective James and Andre to the rescue!

[Chauncey Billups]

That’s a shame. Memphis came in guns blazing and did a pretty solid job managing the team.