Blazers' Cho hopeful of taking franchise to another level
Rich Cho's goal for the Portland Trail Blazers is a simple one.
"I don't just want to be the best-run basketball franchise in the NBA," Cho
said Friday. "I want to be the best-run franchise in pro sports. That means
being the best in scouting, player development, analytics processes, just a
lot of different things like that."
If that sounds haughty or presumptuous from a 44-year-old in his first month
as a pro general manager, well, it didn't come out of Cho's mouth that way.
It sounded like something Cho had thought about for a long time, for years,
probably, and had researched, like if he was buying a house in a certain
neighborhood and wanted to know exactly what the resale price would be in 10
years. It is his way, and it is that thoroughness that the Blazers are hoping
will lead them from promise to production, from front office dysfunction last
season to stability next season, and beyond.
Cho has led a stable employment life for the last 15 years, all spent in the
organization that is now Oklahoma City, starting as an intern in Seattle in
1995 and rising to assistant general manager. He held that title he held for
much of the next decade, through the team's move from Seattle. Along the way
he worked with executives like Wally Walker, the former Sonics president,
Rick Sund, the Sonics' former GM now in Atlanta, and Sam Presti, the
Thunder's current GM, and coaches Nate McMillan, whom he will again work with
in Portland, and Mavericks assistant coach Dwane Casey.
"He is an out-of-the-box thinker," Presti texted Sunday, "someone that will
counter consensus when a tough decision comes around. It's tough to see him
go, but we knew that it was a matter of time before he moved on to an
enhanced leadership opportunity such as Portland."
Indeed, Cho says he doesn't like scouts "who are wishy-washy," and wants to
hire people that will disagree with him -- as long as they have their reasons
lined up. Reason is a big part of Cho's makeup.
Cho is part of the vanguard of NBA executives, led by Houston's Daryl Morey,
who are quite comfortable with using baseball-like metrics as part of
evaluating players, both current and future. Their presence has made
conclaves like the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference into
must-attend events for NBA teams looking for new ways of analyzing the game.
But Cho isn't one of those guys who values a spread sheet more than a
scouting report.
"I don't think it's any one thing," Cho said. "It's more a hybrid of
everything. A lot of times you can cut statistics to make a guy look good or
bad. It depends how you look at it. You have to take everything as a whole.
Statistics is just one facet of the equation."
In Oklahoma City, Cho found a kindred spirit in Presti, who'd made his
reputation in San Antonio coming up with similar kinds of
thoroughly-researched opinions of players.
Presti "did a really good job of implementing different processes," Cho said.
"A lot of different structures. I'm very process-oriented, too. We worked
very well together. We want to put a process together in every facet of
basketball operations."
For example, when the Thunder sent a player down to the NBA D-League, Presti
told the player. Cho got on the phone and did the paperwork with the league
office. Another group handled the player after he arrived in Tulsa, got him
situated in his new place, made sure he had whatever he needed. And the Tulsa
team ran the same sets that the parent club did in Oklahoma City. It's not
reinventing the wheel; other teams have similar structures in place. But
having the structure in place is critical.
Cho will beef up Portland's existing operations. He will keep director of
college scouting Chad Buchanan and director of NBA scouting Mike Born, but he
is hiring an assistant general manager this week (the candidates are Oklahoma
City's director of pro player personnel Bill Branch and Atlanta's director of
pro personnel and college scouting Steve Rosenberry).
Analytics, in Cho's mind, are a lot more than stats. That doesn't mean PER,
True Shooting Percentage and other such numbers aren't part of evaluating a
player. But there's a lot of other data out if you're willing to sift through
it. The "statistical piece," as Cho calls it, is actually three different
areas: player evaluation, self-analysis and strategic/coaching decisions.
Whether his way is going to be standard operating procedure around the league
is still a matter of debate.
"Part of it depends on who the GM is," Cho said, "and how much they believe
in it. Some guys really look at things analytically, and some guys are more
gut feel. I'm a big data collector. I like to look at a lot of data, and try
to decipher it accordingly...you can have too much data, too. You have to
have the right kind of data."
You may have read Cho's interview with ESPN.com's True Hoop blog, in which he
detailed how he'd examined every second-round draft pick's contract over the
last seven years, giving him the precise breakdown of how many guys got
guaranteed money, how many were partial guarantees, or non-guaranteed, and so
on, so that he could come back at agents who cherry-picked the numbers to
find the deals most favorable for their clients.
But Cho also knows every trade that was made for second-round picks since
2003 -- how many were strictly for cash, how many were for the rights to
another Draft pick, how many were for both the rights to a player and an
existing player. And he can break down the contracts of every player in the
Lottery during that time, and from pick 14 through the end of the first round
as well.
And Cho has done the same thing with knee injuries.
"We were looking to sign a guy a few years ago who'd had an ACL injury in the
past," Cho said. "We wanted to try to get a feel for, is this guy going to
come back strong? What are the chances he comes back strong, or does he start
to fade a little bit? So I went back and looked at every ACL or microfracture
injury the last 10 years, back to Penny Hardaway, Terrell Brandon, Kerry
Kittles. We looked at the age when the player was injured. The type of
injury, was it a microfracture? We looked at their productivity before and
after the injury. If they were right handed, typicaly jumping off of their
left leg, which leg was injured, and if it was the left leg that was hurt.
And vice versa. We looked at perimeter guys versus bigs."
Cho will no doubt spent a similar amount of time over the next few weeks
researching knees and kneecaps. Greg Oden is making a recovery from a
fractured left patella, and his backup, Joel Przybilla, is trying to come
back from a ruptured patella tendon. Portland's got a little more insurance
this season with Marcus Camby, but if the Blazers are to realistically mount
a challenge in the West next season they need either Oden or Przybilla --
both, really -- to return to form.
Oden "is not ready to play in a game yet," Cho said. "But he's looking pretty
good. He's still in his rehab stage."
Cho is also not concerned, he says, with what happened off the court in
Portland last season. You know my feelings about what happened to Pritchard,
run off in my view for a host of minor offenses by people inside the Blazers'
parent organization who sought to consolidate their own power bases next to
owner Paul Allen. But like former Wizards/Bullets coach Jimmy Lynam used to
say, why should he have a problem with Chris Webber just because C-Webb and
Don Nelson didn't get along in Golden State? Whatever happened to Pritchard
didn't happen to Cho, so he came to Portland with an open mind.
"When I met with (team president) Larry Miller and Mr. Allen, I saw the
incredible commitment Mr. Allen has to winning," Cho said. "Same with Larry.
I can tell right away, in my first two weeks on the job, how much he loves
the Blazers and how much he wants to win."
Cho has no doubts that Allen will continue to okay spending whatever needs to
be spent, including buying and hoarding future Draft picks, if it helps the
Blazers win now and down the road. And with Allen's largesse at his back,
there's no doubt that Cho will have the means to go as deep into the numbers,
statistical and otherwise, as he wants. He has thought a lot about what he
wanted to do when he got a job of his own, and now he's got it, and he wants
to build an organization that will be fluid, yet flexible enough to tolerate
debate. Presumably, that includes Allen and his Vulcan Sports and
Entertainment group.
"You have to be on the same page," Cho said. "You don't have to be on the
same paragraph or the same sentence. But you have to be on the same page."
http://www.nba.com/2010/news/features/david_aldridge/08/08/morning.tip/index.html
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc)
◆ From: 74.115.3.61