The Los Angeles Clippers today announced that Head Coach Mike Dunleavy will assume the additional role of General Manager, replacing Vice President of Basketball Operations, Elgin Baylor.
In a related move, the team’s current Director of Player Personnel, Neil Olshey, will be elevated to the post of Assistant General Manager.
“We greatly appreciate Elgin’s efforts during his time with the Clippers, and we wish him the very best,” said Clippers’ Owner and Chairman of the Board Donald T. Sterling.
Referring to Dunleavy and Olshey respectively, Clippers President Andy Roeser said, “In Mike and Neil, we’re fortunate to already have talented people in place to make this transition a seamless one. Going forward, we have high expectations for our team. From a basketball standpoint, these are the people we’re counting on to make those expectations a reality.”
Dunleavy welcomed the opportunity, saying, “I really appreciate the trust that the organization has placed in me. We’re ready and excited to move forward, and we think we’ll have a team which can be dynamic and exciting, certainly one with enough talent to be a force in the Western Conference.”
Baylor, an 11-time NBA All Star, joined the Clippers in 1986 as Vice President of Basketball Operations after a stellar 14-year playing career with the Los Angeles Lakers and a brief coaching stint with the New Orleans Jazz. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1976, chosen as one of the NBA’s “50 Greatest Players of All Time” during the league’s 50th Anniversary celebration in 1997, and was named the 2005-06 NBA Executive of the Year.
Dunleavy, entering his sixth year as Clippers’ Head Coach, has manned dual roles before: he was Vice President of Basketball Operations and Head Coach of the Milwaukee Bucks from 1992-93 through 1995-96.
Olshey, originally hired as Clippers’ Director of Player Development prior to the 2003-04 season, became an assistant coach on Dunleavy’s staff in 2004-05. He has been the team’s Director of Player Personnel for the past three seasons.
Philadelphia 76ers President and General Manager Ed Stefanski announced today that the team has waived Andre Emmett, Maureece Rice and Cory Underwood. The roster now stands at 16 players heading into the preseason opener on Wednesday, Oct. 8 against the Boston Celtics at the Mullins Center on the campus of the University of Massachusetts.
The New Jersey Nets have requested waivers on guard/forward Awvee Storey, Nets President Rod Thorn announced today.
The Orange County Register (Kevin Ding) reports via blog on key quotes from a Luke Walton interview where the Lakers player talks about being stalked: “A couple of days later, I was signing stuff, and she came up. And I just rolled up my window and drove off. And as I was driving off, she threw her basketball at my car. It didn’t hit the car, but I saw it was bouncing down Nash Street. And I was kind of laughing like, ‘She’s kind of lost it.’ But at the same time, it was like, she’s really starting to pick up what she’s doing.” … “Once I moved out of the gated community, that’s when I started noticing. I’d come home, and the same car with tinted windows would be parked across the street all the time. One time, I was like, ‘I swear I see someone there.’ So I walked up and saw her, and she had a hat on, and I said, ‘I can’t believe this is the same chick from the practice site.’ And then for a while, everywhere I went, I’d see her park like a street down. As soon as I took off, she’s start following me.”
The Sacramento Bee (Scott Howard-Cooper) reports on now retired point guard Jason Williams: “He really has a little bit of a unique place in the history of the NBA, I think,” Kings basketball president Geoff Petrie said, “in the sense that his rookie year and into his second year, he kind of came out of nowhere at a time when the league was coming out of the lockout and sort of struggling with its style of play and just trying to regain some of the footing it had lost at that time. And here was this kid that had these incredible dribbling and passing skills and sort of pedal-to-the-metal attitude about the game. He just caught the imagination of the entire country, along with the rest of our team. “It really helped the NBA. It really helped this franchise, along with a lot of other terrific players, too. He became the darling of ESPN highlights just about every night. I’ve told this to other people: There was a time there, probably for about a year or so, other than Michael Jordan, he was the most popular basketball player in America because of this flamboyant style he had.”