The Clippers have been embarrassing the NBA for a long time now. I mean, they've been the go-to butt of jokes for decades. But they're going to have to work harder if they want to hold off the Memphis Grizzlies.
Memphis is a team that is going to depend on young talent for quite some time. They're the type of team that needs great scouts to go find second-round, or obscure free-agent talent to make big contributions to the team without commanding big contracts. But that's gonna be hard to do… now that they've fired ALL of their scouts.
All of them.
Some teams… the good ones… have entire international scouting departments. They have people spread out all over the world finding hidden gems. Do you think the Celtics second-round draft success comes from Danny throwing darts at pictures on a cork-board?
This is embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for basketball fans in Memphis. If I woke up to my struggling team firing all of its scouts, I'd immediately ditch them and put my fanhood up for auction. You can't tell your fans "hey… we're just going to rely on our GM and a few of his assistants to get around to see all these players. We're not going to have dedicated talent-evaluators helping us make this decision." You're telling your fans you don't care about giving them a good product. Why should they, in turn, consume your product? Whatever money you've saved by cutting scouts will be offset 10-fold by the fans who stop watching because they've had enough.
As an NBA fan, I'm disgusted that moves like this are allowed in the league… that teams can willingly suck and destroy the game for an entire city. I hope David Stern gave Memphis owner Michael Heisley a profanity-laced ear full about how he's embarrassing the entire league.
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