By Katie Carrera
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Linda Hargrove receives e-mails from fans almost daily proposing that one trade or one draft pick would cure all of the Washington Mystics' ailments. If only it were that simple.
"This wasn't a year I started feeling great," Hargrove said earlier this month. "I know this team has deficiencies. We all knew that coming into the season. I think we've all been frustrated with it."
Hargrove's fourth season as Mystics general manager was the worst of her tenure, both in record -- the Mystics finished 10-24 -- and morale. The team transitioned to its fourth coach in five years by firing Tree Rollins on July 19 and promoting Jessie Kenlaw, the 10th coach in the franchise's 11-year history. Washington finished the season with a nine-game losing streak and players acknowledged after the final game Sunday that the team must change if it is ever to win consistently.
Washington is 60-78 during Hargrove's time as general manager, a record that is typical of the organization's mediocre history. She has been the most prominent presence on the WNBA team's basketball operations side since Lincoln Holdings LLC purchased the Mystics in 2005.
But as the team continued to founder this season, fans called for wholesale changes, beginning with Hargrove. When team president and managing partner Sheila Johnson held a question-and-answer session with reporters in August, her biggest criticisms -- the team's "lack of talent" and the absence of a "long-term plan" -- appeared to be indictments of the general manager.
When asked about Hargrove's effectiveness, Johnson said: "She's done a wonderful job. . . . Just like everybody else she's going to start to be held to a higher standard." That has done little to quell speculation about Hargrove's job security. Hargrove, 58, enters the offseason with one year remaining on her contract.
"Anytime you're in a position of power and particularly the position that Linda Hargrove is in without a consistent coaching presence, the GM is usually held responsible for the makeup of the product that's on the floor," said Doris Burke, a longtime WNBA analyst for ESPN. "They absolutely take responsibility for who a team is and, in this case, who the Mystics are."
Hargrove's first WNBA experience was from 2000 to 2002 as general manager and head coach of the Portland Fire. She went 37-59 in Portland, where Kenlaw was one of her assistant coaches. The Fire failed to make the playoffs all three years of its existence. Before the team disbanded, the decision had already been made not to renew Hargrove's contract.
Hargrove then spent two years as a scout and assistant coach with the Mystics before being named general manager in February 2005.
She said there are two main ways to improve a WNBA franchise: free agency and the draft. Because the Mystics' draft picks consistently fell between No. 6 and 8 in the first round, Hargrove explained: "You can't make a big move with your team. You've got to have a couple number one or number two picks to show drastic improvement.
"But we've never been reluctant to take a chance and make a move," Hargrove continued. "If we feel like a move is going to help our franchise we've been there to do it."
Hargrove has made one significant trade in each year of her tenure -- decisions that sought to address specific weaknesses.
The first major move came early in her stint as general manager when she sent an unhappy Chamique Holdsclaw to Los Angeles for DeLisha Milton-Jones and a draft pick. Holdsclaw, the team's first draft pick and first legitimate star, was battling depression and searching for her competitive drive to play basketball. Milton-Jones was a proven forward who could fill the void.
In 2006, Hargrove brought in point guard Nikki Teasley to run Coach Richie Adubato's complex offense. The Mystics finished 18-16 that year -- the best record in franchise history -- and the following season seemed like the perfect opportunity for Washington to make its move into the upper echelon of the WNBA.
Instead, the Mystics melted down. The defining trade in 2007 sent center Chasity Melvin to Chicago for Monique Currie. Management believed Currie was needed to replace the retiring Crystal Robinson at small forward and that it could get along without Melvin. The front office also wanted to gain room under the salary cap by exchanging Melvin's maximum salary for Currie's rookie contract, which still had three years remaining on it.
But Adubato thought the move was at odds with trying to build a championship team and saw the trade as a signal of the organization's lack of faith in him. He quit hours before a game.
"I'll admit I was unhappy when I wasn't offered a new contract" after the winning season, Adubato said in a phone interview. He declined to comment specifically on Hargrove. "If you have confidence in a coach you try to keep them around, but then to make a trade over my wishes that I was not happy with made me think. 'I guess I don't belong here.'
"I didn't feel like it was rebuilding time," Adubato said. "Once we got rid of Melvin that's what it was. It knocked that team down a level."
Hargrove's draft history has brought mixed results: Four of Hargrove's 12 picks are still with the Mystics, one is elsewhere in the league, and the rest are either playing overseas or have left the sport. Hargrove knew there were major holes to fill for the 2008 season.
"We went after every free agent point guard out there," she said. "We felt like we had to get a veteran point guard to lead our team."
She targeted Ticha Penicheiro and Helen Darling, and when they both decided to stay with their current teams she began fashioning a trade that would move the Mystics up in the draft to acquire prime point guard prospect Candice Wiggins.
"We had a trade done that would have brought the third pick [from Minnesota] and Wiggins here," Hargrove said. "We really thought she would be someone who would fit in well here, but DeLisha refused the trade. She was a core player, had to approve the trade and wouldn't."
When draft day arrived, Milton-Jones was still unsigned and Washington had lost four of its reserve post players in the offseason. Hargrove and the organization decided the priority was finding a player that could start immediately if necessary.
They chose Crystal Langhorne as the sixth overall pick with that intention, even though many available players, including her Maryland teammate Laura Harper, were considered better professional prospects. Hargrove eventually completed a trade that sent Milton-Jones to Los Angeles for Taj McWilliams-Franklin, but the Mystics were still without a point guard.
"I told [Sheila Johnson] at the time, 'You don't replace two all-stars, two veteran starters,' " Hargrove said. " 'You don't lose two of them in one year and get better.' "
Rollins, who took over after Adubato quit, felt he didn't have the players -- specifically a point guard -- necessary to put together a consistent, winning team.
Kenlaw, who has made her own comments about inconsistency at point guard, said that in yesterday's exit interviews several players spoke of a lack of veteran leadership as a key problem. When McWilliams-Franklin was traded to Detroit in August, it made the Mystics the second-youngest team in the league and added a new deficiency.
"We did feel a lack of that leadership," Kenlaw said yesterday. "Taj was a great leader and we definitely missed that. But it was also an opportunity for someone else to step up and I don't think we ever accomplished that."
Now the Mystics face a situation eerily similar to the one they were in a year ago. They don't have reliable leadership, a proven point guard or permanent coach, but they have five draft picks (two each in the first and second rounds and one in the third in 2009) that could help meet Johnson's demand for a plan with a "long-range view on winning."
"I don't know that our plan is complete," Hargrove said when asked about the Mystics' future. "I don't know that we put together a full, long-range plan until the season's over and we evaluate our personnel. . . . We haven't sat down and put that plan together yet but we will."
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