Do GMs earn their paychecks?

A couple of weeks ago Baskin-Robbins had their annual celebration giving out ice cream cones for 31 cents. My wife and I visited the restaurant twice eating a total of 8 scoops of ice cream for less than $3.  The most amazing thing was that we never waited longer than three minutes to get our ice cream.  I wondered where everyone else was.  I figured that we would have to wait behind hundreds of other people who wanted unlimited ice cream at 31 cents a scoop, but I was wrong.  Lots of people were missing out.  You may even be kicking yourself right now, reading this if you didn't cash in.  It was a national deal.

Tonight the Denver Nuggets gave out 31 cent ice cream cones in the form of Marcus Camby.  They essentially handed him over to the LA Clippers for a measly few cents (the right to swap 2nd round picks in 2010).  Which begs the question, "where was every other team?"  I know that the situations of ice cream and Marcus Camby do not equate perfectly.  Only one team won the Marcus Camby sweepstakes, while almost anyone could buy cheap ice cream.  But I am willing to venture that a reason for missing out on both commodities is not knowing that they could be had so cheaply.  How many GM's will read that headline and think "I could have offered more than a second round pick?"  And this isn't a completely new phenomenon.  Pau Gasol was sold for about 31 cents to the dollar by Memphis.  The other reason GM's might miss out on these deals is not having the right pieces (good players with good contracts or expiring deals).  But you have to think that many GM's could have done better than the Clips or Lakers.  In fact, the Memphis GM has already admitted that he could have done better.  Denver will be no different.

Now before I go any further, I need to mention that I am a big fan of Kevin O'Connor.  I believe that he has made mostly good deals for the Jazz, which is more than 90% of the GM's can say.  He helped build the Jazz team back to prominence quickly after the Stockton and Malone days with good drafting moves and aggressive free agency signings. But he whiffed big time on this one.  Camby is a player that I believe could have put the Jazz over the top.  He has all the dynamics we need: a low post defender, who rebounds and doesn't demand the ball offensively.  And he is arguably the best player in the league in both rebounding and blocking shots.  So why didn't Kevin O'Connor offer something more for him?

In an article recently written by Bill Simmons, writer for ESPN, he mentioned that Kevin Pritchard, possibly the best GM in the NBA right now, makes hundreds of calls to teams asking about the availibility of players and chances of making trades.  That according to Simmons and Pritchard himself is a big reason why Portland continues to make good deals.  Not only do they have one of the most talented young teams in the NBA, but they had anywhere between 30 and 47 draft picks in last month's draft.  If you thought to yourself, "it seems like Portland picks every other time" during this last draft, there is a reason: they pretty much did. 

What do GM's do all day?  They negotiate contracts, they work with the owner of the team, they sit in meetings, they try to make trades and sign free agents.  I don't know all of the intricacies, but I would guess that if they put in a full eight hour day every day, they might have 3-4 hours a day to make some extra phone calls.  What would it hurt to call Denver and say "what do you want for Marcus Camby?"  The worst thing that would happen is Denver would hang up the phone.  So what?  As fans we assume that good deals for our team won't happen because other teams aren't that stupid.  But sometimes teams make bad deals or just need to clear cap space.  The GM's who do their homework have a better chance of picking up the cheap ice cream.  I agree that in this case Denver might have not been willing to trade Marcus Camby to us since they are in our division.  But they needed to clear cap space.  You can't tell me that we wouldn't have made a better offer than LA.  And since we aren't under the cap like LA is, we couldn't have taken Camby's contract for nothing back.  But a three way trade would have been plausible.  We could have offered a lot that would have been pleasing to Denver and LA.  Maybe the clips would have been interested in pairing Andrei Kirilenko with Kaman.  We could have offered first round picks or cheap prospects to sweeten the deal for both teams.

So even if getting Marcus Camby wasn't realistic, there are other players in this league that would help the Jazz immensely and are available,  Kevin O'Connor just doesn't know it yet.  He better get on the phone and start finding out who is out there.  And who knows, teams might get so tired of his inquiries that they make a bad move just to shut him up.  So as bad as it might sound to become another obnoxious telemarketer, I think that O'Connor's hefty paycheck more than makes up for it.