Sarcasm based on shaky facts typically backfires. Let me give you an example:
1) Geoff did not build the Portland dyansty. He took over as GM (actually VP) after the 89-90 season in which they won 59 games and went to the Finals (source:SI). He presided over their long slow demise, not their rise.
2) His multiple GM of the Year awards = 2. The first of which he won precisely after blowing everything up and trading virtually every player of value. One of the great ironies of the Petrie worship/rebuild resistance crowd is the profound ignorance they have for their own man's history -- the entire reason he got famous in the first place was for blowign a team up and rebuilding from scratch. Now in his later days he becomes associated with sitting on his *** and trying to make #8 seeds, and his fans resort to trashing Geoff's very own strategy that launched our golden era. Ironic is a nice word for stupid sometimes.
Yeah, my beef with Geoff is not that I don't think he's capable of doing great things, because he's done it in the past. Can't credit him with Portland's success, but we became a powerhouse under his watch solely, through good drafting, timely trades, and a good mix of players that he was responsible for bringing in, from top to bottom. So I believe that he's capable of building a team to win.
I'm not 100% certain he has the stones to. I mentioned this last summer also. Geoff had either been unable to sell the Maloofs on the necessity of rebuilding the right way or hadn't built up the nerve to impose his will as the president of basketball operations. Either way, he wasn't doing his job well, whether that's his fault or someone else's. And since he wasn't doing his job - whether it was an issue with ownership or a lack of testosterone - he wasn't very valuable as our head man.
It's like having a premiere scorer who defers to a lesser player because he doesn't like confrontation. There's a quote from The Office that I like from Ryan Howard, formerly "the temp": "Jim's a nice guy; that's why I got the desk." Being a nice guy is honorable in sports, but it doesn't win championships on the floor, and it doesn't build winning franchises in the front office.
I know that some people think Geoff just lucked into eight consecutive playoff appearances, but I can't subscribe to that line of thinking. There are others who still "trust" him just because we went to the playoffs eight tmies and made some noise along the way. I think it requires some revisionist history and dramatic license to really buy into either point of view.
And I certainly don't think the few moves we've made the past two seasons are enough of an indication that we're moving in the right direction to declare that "Geoff's back".