Although MDSr seemed surprised by the timing, Mark Heisler’s LATimes article this morning indicates Baylor’s retirement was long in the works… probably back to Dunleavy’s last contract negotiation.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-heisler8-2008oct08,0,7192753.column?page=1

Why doesn’t the Clipper organization recognize your talent and name you GM? Why is this Dunleavy person double dipping? Why Steve?

I haven’t really entered the fray on this one. It seems very typical of Clipper dysfunction rearing its ugly head, but there’s also the “streamlining” argument (see the Clipperblog roundup, where CS gets a nice quote), and the fact that this won’t have much effect on the team. There’s the bumbling and backing into a bad communication situation, and then there’s also the slight mystery, no one quite knows what happened and what is going on. Classic Clipper obfuscation, whether it’s necessary or not. It should be noted that Dunleavy would seem to have pushed through all this into official control while keeping himself clean, staying effective, and seeming to be respectful of Elgin. We all know it could have been handled better, but we don’t know the details. Did Elgin get greedy, wanting more compensation for a largely ceremonial function, though still perhaps in an advising role? The true breakdown is as cloudy as the Brand situation, although the stakes are much lower, A level of respect and loyalty is involved, once again, but it’s also probably a matter of getting paid, on some level.

But I’m more interested in the past. I think that CS’ point that Baylor should have been fired on a yearly basis isn’t wrong, but it puts the blame in the wrong place. As the Clippers change in Dunleavy’s tenure and their time at Staples, we seem to keep learning what a fleabag operation it has been all these years. Maggette’s “revelations” about the workout situation are the latest (is it crazy to wonder whether Maggette could have put a pretty nice gym in his house, if he wanted to work out in privacy and some luxury, maybe a hoop in the driveway to shoot around… not to excuse the Clipper shabbiness, but just asking). When Dunleavy arrived the Clips had one VCR, and he pushed hard for the practice facility.

Elgin was operating under very serious financial constraints. It was virtually Dickensian. I guess my view is that it’s not that Elgin should have been fired, but that he should have quit every year. He shouldn’t have associated his name and reputation with the wildly substandard Clipper operation. He legitimized it. He has culpability there, but it’s hard to say what he was supposed to do as a GM, because there was very little that he could do. He hired the best coaches that he could, but wasn’t allowed to pay them real money or give them longterm guaranteed contract that would need to be paid off if things went sour. He wasn’t given the resouces to chase free agents. The Clippers failed to retain a number of promising young players, but none of them turned out to be stars. It’s not that they had a great, franchise player on their roster and let him get away. That never happened.

He had very bad luck with the draft. The timing was always wrong—there was never an obvious major star, a complete no-brainer, ever available to the Clippers, even with all of their futility. That part is simply uncanny, and it seems impossible. Elgin clearly missed on a number of really good players, but none of them was completely obvious. It’s not like he ever took a Sam Bowie over Jordan, or a Darko ahead of Wade or Carmelo, and he never had a shot at a Duncan or Lebron.

I think that Elgin cruised along, did what he could, hoped to get a little success and then build on it, and things just didn’t break quite right. He should have figured out that it was an embarassing situation that was never going to gel after about 10 years, but at that point perhaps he blamed his luck and determined to just try harder. The deck was always stacked against him and he was working in a toxic atmosphere, but he was probably dizzy and a little blindly optimistic about finding good chemistry, or the right coach, year after year.

The fact is that Elgin was a huge enabler. There’s probably some kind of rich psychological saga here, and all those years of losing to Russell and the Celtics probably took their toll. Elgin had such marvelous gifts as a basketball player, but something in his head told him that he didn’t deserve to be a winner, and he played it out over two decades with Sterling. The contrast with Jerry West is striking. And let’s not forget Elgin’s very bad knee injury, which fractured his playing career. He was good enough afterwards to still be one of the premier players in the game, but he couldn’t win. Jerry West had his injuries, but he was never hurt like that. Elgin retired just as the Lakers finally on their way to winning their first championship. He wasn’t able to play well enough to satisfy his own standards, while West was healthy and completely focused on breaking through. There are echoes of Elgin’s exit from the court in the way that he has left the Clippers now. He’s a damaged guy. Sterling exploited that, and him for years.

And yet, hanging in, he set the stage. He drafted Odom, traded for Brand and Maggette. This wasn’t so significant in its results on the court, as it was in that he got players that Sterling was willing to match and pay—the quality of the Clippers benefitted from the RFA structure and salary minimums, but still. Larry Brown stopped by, and he made a choice in Dunleavy who ushered in a new era.

The hope, here at the Nation, might be that Elgin played a role on the Clippers similar to what he did on the court with the Lakers. He started in a different era—Elgin started playing not too long after the one-hand jump shot was invented, and he played above the rim—and set the stage. Elgin set the stage for West, who finally won his title and then turned the Lakers into the Showtime dynasty. Elgin kept the lights on for years and set the stage for Dunleavy, who has changed the culture and may be able to take the Clips to the Promised Land. Moses in the desert, anyone? Elgin is a good man, and he did his best. Sterling is not a good man, but he’s the owner; it’s his team. Sterling is more like Scrooge, lost for years before having a dream about Clippers Past and Clippers Future. It’s a rich history.

So that’s my view: it’s not that Elgin should have been fired—in this case Moses should have quit working for God/Scrooge, and hopped on the first camel out of the desert.

Dillman at the Times is reporting:

Though many of the details remain unclear, several pieces of information emerged. Sources with knowledge of the situation who were not authorized to comment publicly said that Baylor had been working without a contract since the early 1990s, having been told that one was not necessary.

So it sounds like they “Fixed the glitch.”

What would you say it is you do here, Elgin?