MAVS NEWS:

[mvossman]

I think it has been a fantastic summer.  Obviously, ping pong balls had a lot to do with that.  But I bet if we could forget the name on the GM's office door, we'd all be pretty pleased.  Retaining Gafford and PJ at the numbers they got, negotiating with Kyrie enough to allow the exception for D-Lo and getting Exum on a minimum contract while staying $1.2mm under the 2nd apron is pretty astonishing if you think about expectations in mid-June.  Yeah, OMax was a miss, but the guy who really forced him out (Williams) looks like a potential hit.  

One note about OMax and this being a blemish on Nico's record.  I'm not sure it is fair to give Dennis Lindsay credit for all the maneuvers that brought him here when we liked him and then blame Nico now that he's gone.  If Lindsay was the power behind the summer of 23, then he gets the blame for the miss.  If the buck stops with Nico as the GM who made the pick, then he also gets credit as the GM who has done some good things (and some bad).  But, we don't get to selectively give Nico all of the things we perceive to be bad and someone else the things we perceive to be good.

I get the argument that its not really fair to blame all of the bad moves on Nico and the good ones on Linsay when we don't really know who was responsible for what.  But its hard not to attribute the maneuvering required to get the Omax pick to Linsay as we have not seen anything like that from this FO before or since he was here.  Its also hard not to attribute Omax to Nico as he was so vocal about getting him at the time.

But I am willing to judge Nico solely on what we know he was responsible for (getting rid of Casey Smith, letting DJJ walk to get Klay, Naji, that disastrous TDL and this offseason).  I would call this a good offseason.  Its only fantastic from the standpoint that we have had so many terrible offseasons in the past.  There is still a lot of work to be done.  As mentioned above, the five best healthy players on this roster are frontcourt players.  I'm fine with waiting to see what we actually have, but I think the real measure of this FO is going to be handling the rebalancing of this roster.