Probable starting lineups
Orlando Magic

F Chuma Okeke
F Al-Farouq Aminu
C Nikola Vucevic
G Dwayne Bacon
G TBD

Sigh…

Owen: That is a very unsavvy blunder by Thibs vis a vis Rose and Covid.

That’s because Thibs is a basketball onanist who if you put truth serum in him would probably confess his deep-down belief that, like things such as the three-point shot and the forward pass in football, HIPAA rules are for pansies.

i’m not sure if covid makes this similar to off-field injury/illness thing or if they negotiated a separate thing with the union but i have to imagine that it’s similar and it’s to the player if they want to disclose… i don’t think any laws were broken though…

Kerr is such an interesting guy because he is just so abnormally candid. He assessed the Shaq move as:

“It was a bad move. I’m not here to save my reputation. We went for it. We swung for the fences, but we disrupted what we had built. We made it for the wrong reasons. It was not a financial deal, it was a swing-for-the-fences deal. I was a young GM. It’s the kind of move that, yeah, you go for it, but you’re compromising the long-term health of the franchise. That was a mistake. The reasons for making it were not sound. We knew we weren’t good enough to win the whole thing. We’d been in it for several years. Kept losing to the Spurs. But it was a rushed, sort of home run swing that we struck out with. We went for it, which is admirable, but I just think we compromised our identity.”

I don’t think the moral of the story is “don’t let players and/or coaches be GMs”. Kerr is a very smart guy (and affable, and respected) which is (are) the most important trait(s) of being a GM. If he’d stuck at it he probably would have been pretty good at it. (He didn’t double-down on his bad Shaq trade like a lot of people would have, but instead dumped Shaq for a floor stretching 5). Basically, the way he GMed was a lot like the way he’s coached: not married to a dogma, and willing to learn from mistakes and evolve. He’s proved himself to be very good as a “manager”, stepping into a very fractured Golden State situation and getting everybody headed in the same direction. I think limiting GM candidates to non-players and non-coaches is a bit narrow-minded.

Owen:
That is a very unsavvy blunder by Thibs vis a vis Rose and Covid. Not sure why there should be a stigma about having had it but it’s pretty crazy Thibs just broadcast it with HIPAA and all.

I don’t think there’s a stigma, only a privacy thing as with other medical conditions as Pepper said.