Written by Zach Harper | 10 March 2010

(Ed. Note: This is another guest post by Greg Wissinger of Sactown Royalty and Exhibit G on Sports.)

 

Mike Dunleavy has finally been fired as GM of the Clippers, and yet he continues to amaze me with his ineptitude.

ESPNLosAngeles.com has a story up which contains the following:

 

Mike Dunleavy still doesn't know exactly what happened. Tuesday afternoon he got a haircut, packed for a scouting trip to the ACC tournament, then went out to a local golf course for a couple hours.

Unbeknownst to him, and still unexplained to him as of late Tuesday night, during that time he was being fired as general manager of the Clippers.

And this:

"I had no idea what they were talking about. I'm like, 'Wow. I haven't even talked to the Clippers.'"

Clearly, I need to become an NBA GM.  I spent a long day at work, and spent my lunch hour trying to run errands.  Mike Dunleavy got a haircut, packed a suitcase, and played golf.  And yet he still doesn't understand what went wrong.

Maybe if Mike Dunleavy had spent a little more time scouting players and a little less time playing golf, the Clippers wouldn't be so horrible.  I'm not trying to suggest that Dunleavy never had days where he worked, but his Tuesday doesn't exactly seem like what I expect an NBA GM to be doing.

Perhaps Dunleavy was playing golf a lot leading up to the trade deadline.  How else can he explain getting nothing more than Travis Outlaw and Steve Blake in return for Marcus Camby?  Camby was widely considered one of the big prizes of the trade deadline.  A big expiring contract attached to a player who can still play at a high level, that's the kind of player every contender wants.  That's the type of player that should net you draft picks or pieces for the future.  But Dunleavy got a back-up point guard and a decent swingman.

Stan Van Gundy chimed in on the firing, saying:

"No knock on Kim or anybody else, but they haven't exactly taken off since the coaching change,"

And Van Gundy is right, it's no knock on Kim Hughes.  It's a knock on Dunleavy.  You know, the guy who has had the last 7 years to build a franchise.  Hughes is coaching the players that were handed to him.  Dunleavy chose those players.

A final quote that cracks me up:

The decision came as a total shock to Dunleavy, he said, because he'd had dinner with Sterling earlier this week.

"We'd talked about what I'd seen on my scouting trips, about free agency," Dunleavy said. "I'd told him some of my ideas on how we should handle free agency and he says to me, 'That's smart, that's a good idea, I like that.'"

Good job, Mike.  You gave you former boss the last bits of information he needed before firing you.  Sterling knows what you had planned for free agency, information he can share with your replacement, and now he doesn't need you.

Well, unless he needs some help fixing his slice.

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