Cleveland Cavaliers Should Take Note of Kevin Pritchard’s Troubles in Portland

March 24th, 2010 by Amar Panchmatia Leave a reply »
Building a team through the draft is a lost art in the NBA.

While the NFL treats its entire draft like an actual regular season game, the NBA's version is mostly done after the first 20 picks—well before every team has has a chance to make at least one selection.

Someone forgot to give that memo to Kevin Pritchard, the embattled General Manager of the Portland Trail Blazers.

Even before taking over as the Blazers' GM following the 2006-07 season, the man affectionately known as just "KP" in Portland used the draft as the primary—and sometimes only—instrument in building his team. As an assistant GM, Pritchard engineered draft day trades to acquire all sorts of draft picks, allowing the Blazers to find their franchise cornerstones, Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge, in the same draft.

After taking over as the General Manager, Pritchard used draft day transactions to bring in Rudy Fernandez, Jerryd Bayless, and Nicolas Batum—all key rotation players for what has become the core for one of the youngest teams in the NBA. Using mostly homegrown talent courtesy of Pritchard last season, the Blazers went 54-28, were c ...

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