Did Pierre Lacroix Pull An Isiah Thomas?

Mark Kiszla of the Denver Post is not pleased with the trade made by Avalanche GM Pierre Lacroix yesterday, sending David Aebischer to Montreal for Jose Theodore. I have to agree with his assessment.

"We got the best goalie in the business," Lacroix said Wednesday, after a swap of goalies that sent David Aebischer packing to Montreal.

Um, no you didn't. As Pierre Lebrun noted, the Canadians dumped a player who hasn't played terribly well in almost four years, as well as salary that will now allow them to go after players like Todd Bertuzzi. They also got a pretty good, and relatively cheap, goaltender in return.

The Theodore/Aebischer trade reminded me of Bill Simmon's interview with Malcolm Gladwell the other day, and what Gladwell had to say about New York Knicks manager Isiah Thomas:

Here's the real question. If I was GM of the Knicks, would I be doing a better job of managing the team than Thomas? I believe, somewhat immodestly, that the answer is yes. And I say this even though it is abundantly clear that Thomas knows several thousand times more about basketball than I do. I've never picked up a basketball. I couldn't diagram a play to save my life. I would put my level of basketball knowledge, among hard core fans, in the 25th percentile.

So why do I think I would be better? There's a famous experiment done by a wonderful psychologist at Columbia University named Dan Goldstein. He goes to a class of American college students and asks them which city they think is bigger -- San Antonio or San Diego. The students are divided. Then he goes to an equivalent class of German college students and asks the same question. This time the class votes overwhelmingly for San Diego. The right answer? San Diego. So the Germans are smarter, at least on this question, than the American kids. But that's not because they know more about American geography. It's because they know less. They've never heard of San Antonio. But they've heard of San Diego and using only that rule of thumb, they figure San Diego must be bigger. The American students know way more. They know all about San Antonio. They know it's in Texas and that Texas is booming. They know it has a pro basketball team, so it must be a pretty big market. Some of them may have been in San Antonio and taken forever to drive from one side of town to another -- and that, and a thousand other stray facts about Texas and San Antonio, have the effect of muddling their judgment and preventing them from getting the right answer.

I'd be the equivalent of the German student. I know nothing about basketball, so I'd make only the safest, most obvious decisions. I'd read John Hollinger and Chad Ford and I'd print out your mid-season NBA roundup and post it on my blackboard. I'd look at the box scores every morning, and watch Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith on TNT. Would I have made the disastrous Marbury trade? Of course not. I'd wonder why Jerry Colangelo -- who I know is a lot smarter than I am -- was so willing to part with him.

Would I have traded for Curry? Are you kidding? All I know is that Chicago is scared of his attitude and his health, and Paxson knows way more about basketball -- and about Eddy Curry -- than I do. Trade for Jalen Rose? No way. One of the few simple facts that basketball dummies like me know is that players in their early thirties are pretty much over the hill. And Jerome James? Please. I have no idea how to evaluate a player's potential. But I'd look up his stastistics on NBA.com and see that's he's been pretty dreadful his whole career, and then I'd tell his agent to take a hike.

Now would I be as good as GM as Jerry West or Joe Dumars? Of course not. But just by sitting on my hands, and being scared of looking like a fool, and taking only the safest, most conservative steps, and drafting only solid players that everybody agrees are a can't miss, I could make the Knicks a vastly better team than they are today -- as could any reasonably cautious and uninformed fan. (The big exception, of course, would be you. You would draft the starting point guard from Holy Cross, a handful of short Irish guys from the South End, and various members of Larry Bird's extended family -- and then try to package them to Milwaukee for Bobby Simmons).

Here's the money shot:

The point is that knowledge and the ability to make a good decision correlate only sporadically, and there are plenty of times when knowledge gets in the way of judgement. That's Thomas in a nutshell: He knows so much about basketball that he believes that he knows more than anyone else about the potential of previously undistinguished players.

Did Lacroix make the same mistake as Thomas, thinking that if Theodore was away from hockey-crazed Montreal, as well as his lengthy list of personal problems, he might return to form? Do any numbers support him? This season's definitely do not. Does he know something that the rest of the world doesn't know about Jose Theodore? We will have to wait and see, but my non-expert guess is no. I think Pierre Lacroix just pulled an Isiah Thomas, and Bob Gainey just pulled a Billy Beane.