Forbes: Best GM in sports, or why stats lie

[Packt]

Our very own Geoff Petrie made the list at 11. Click the link to find out who's in first place. *drumroll*

http://www.forbes.com/home/business/2007/03/02/sports-greatest-gms-biz-cz_jg_0302gms.html

 

[Larry89]

Kevin Mchale of the Twolves is ranked 1?

 

[Diabeticwonder]

Billy King is #3 and Bryan Colangelo is 94 out of 98. This might be the worst rankings I have ever seen. Completely laughable.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

The methodology of this is terrible.

Our rankings compare each general manager to the final three years of his predecessor's tenure in two categories: (1) performance (regular season winning percentage and playoff win totals) and (2) payroll spending (relative to the league median). Performance counts twice as much in our scoring as payroll spending. Scores account for all teams where the GM held the office and are indexed to 100. A score of 120 in winning improvement means the GM won 20% more games than his predecessor. A score of 80 in payroll containment means the GM spent 20% more than the previous GM relative to the league median.

The first criteria doesn't take into account that key moves made by the previous GM may have lead to the turn around - or even the fact that a poor record lead to the drafting of the franchise player (or two) that singlehandedly turn the team around. The payroll criteria needs some fine tuning (no doubt they only included it since it was Forbes) and its hard to compare across every single sport when they all have unique salary structures and caps. From a strictly financial standpoint any salary criteria should take into account whether the salaries match up with attendance and profitability.

 

[fnordius]

I found the economic studies of the teams to be quite a bit more interesting (and credible). I was a little surprised to see that (1) the Kings are a profitable business, both over the last few years, and overall since the Maloof's acquisition; (2) Arco, at 26% of team revenues, is just about exactly average; (3) although the team hasn't provided a profit of more than several million dollars total during the Maloof period, it is now worth almost twice what the Maloofs paid for the team *and* Arco, which is hundreds of millions in appreciation.

Considering the stuff I'd heard about the team losing money in the past, and about how non-viable Arco is as a venue, I didn't expect to see those figures come out like they do.

 

[Bricklayer]

Our very own Geoff Petrie made the list at 11. Click the link to find out who's in first place. *drumroll*

http://www.forbes.com/home/business/2007/03/02/sports-greatest-gms-biz-cz_jg_0302gms.html

forbes should be embarrassed with that methodology. Apparently all you ahve to do to be a good GM is supercede a bad one, or get lucky enough to be the second GM of an expansion team.

 

[slugking50]

GP has been GM of the Kings since 1994. Unless its secretly 2005 and Im in a time warp, Thats 13 years.

 

[kingsfan916]

those suk wayyyy off the mark