Bad Conduct | Who is the greatest architect of a sports team?

Every week, sports journalists from Press answer a question with pleasure, and a little insolence as well. Our special guest this week, Montreal Alouettes general manager Danny Maciocia.

Danny Maciocia, General Manager of the Montreal Alouettes

There have been several great architects over the decades, including Red Auerbach and Scotty Bowman, among others. Auerbach was the man behind the Boston Celtics’ success from the 1960s to the 1980s. I mostly remember the 1980s Celtics with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish and Dennis Johnson. Bowman and the Canadian formed a great dynasty, too. But I have to choose Bill Belichick for the culture and the structure he put in place with the Patriots, a team that was not in great shape before he came to New England. I love his philosophy that every player just has to do their job. They don’t have to be successful at a game, they just have to do the job that is expected of them. And if all the players do, the results will follow. It is the team concept above all. He won with the same quarterback, Tom Brady, for twenty years, but we can see that it is going in the same direction with Mac Jones. This is the team that no one wants to face right now. The players have changed over the years, but the results, very little.

Mathias Brunet

Rarely has a sports manager suffered such vicious attacks. The coach of the French soccer team Aimé Jacquet was demolished for two years by the newspaper The team, between 1996 and 1998, on the eve of the World Cup in 1998, due to a resolutely defensive approach and features a little too provincial for the taste of Parisian journalists. There was also a rumble in the background since France had missed its qualification for the 1994 World Cup, which the team, deconstructed and then rebuilt by Jacquet, had multiplied the draws of 0-0 at the Euro in 1996. , and the fact that France hosted the World Cup that year. He is called “a laborer of the round ball”, a “crude tactician, sometimes Paleolithic”, we laugh at his accent. Despite numerous personal attacks and questioning from the press, Jacquet has stayed the course. Against all expectations, Aimé Jacquet triumphed and became a legend when France beat Brazil 3-0 in the World Cup final on July 12, 1998 at the Stade de France. One of the most improbable victories in football history. The triumphal tour, in the days that follow, remains in the annals. He comes out bruised anyway. “I will never forgive,” he confides in the height of his glory days. Our man will nevertheless have had the last word.

Miguel bujold

Born in Montreal, Bill Torrey was the first general manager in the history of the New York Islanders, who played their first season in the NHL in 1972-1973. With the first-ever pick in the 1973 draft, Torrey picked who would go on to become the club’s captain, defenseman Denis Potvin. The bow tie GM also had a happy hand with selections from Mike Bossy, Bryan Trottier and Clark Gillies, among others. Goalkeeper Billy Smith was picked up from the Los Angeles Kings in the expansion draft. When it comes to the best deals on the eve of the NHL playoffs, Butch Goring’s is almost always mentioned. Goring’s acquisition came months before the Islanders’ inaugural championship and his presence seemed to act as a catalyst. The Isles have won the Stanley Cup four years in a row from that point. Torrey basically started from scratch and built one of the great dynasties in hockey history in approximately seven years. Must do it. He died in 2018 at the age of 83.

Simon drouin

Tennis Canada is not a sports team per se, but how can we ignore the work of Michael Downey in reviving the sport in this country? President and CEO from 2004 to 2013 and from 2017 to today, this Torontonian dared to shake up the established order to make the federation a model envied around the world. At the risk of drawing criticism from within, he was not afraid to look abroad to hire two centerpieces in the reconstruction, the Frenchman Louis Borfiga and the Australian coach Bob Brett, dead of ‘cancer at the start of the year. A great architect of high performance himself, Mr. Borfiga, vice-president of the elite until very recently, was a real catalyst in the conviction of the best Canadian players to be able to reach the highest heights. Mr. Downey also presided over the establishment of a national center in Montreal, with the idea of ​​exposing tennis players from outside the province to another culture. In this context, he was able to recognize the dynamism of the Government of Quebec in the financing of sport and to rely on leaders like Eugène Lapierre. In a decade, Tennis Canada has gone from organizer of two outstanding tournaments to producer of international talent in Milos Raonic, Eugenie Bouchard, Félix Auger-Aliassime, Denis Shapovalov, Leyla Fernandez and many others. If he spoke French, we could have entrusted him with the reins of the Canadian …

Richard Labbé

In 1989, the Dallas Cowboys had the worst club in the NFL, and I remember it well: they won just one game in 16 games on a Sunday night against the Washington Redskins. The rest of the season had been spent getting screwed without love by the rest of the league, and on the sidelines there was a coach, College football jimmy Johnson who looked completely overwhelmed. But he was up to something. According to legend, the Jimster asked receiver Michael Irvin to list the players who didn’t give a damn about the club’s cause. Then, his second big decision was to trade the club’s only star player, running back Herschel Walker, to the Minnesota Vikings, in return for a host of draft picks (eight in all, including three first-round picks!) and four players. Three years later, the Cowboys won their first Super Bowl with Johnson, and they would win three in four seasons, a record the Patriots would later match. Going from a season of 1-15 to three rings is unprecedented, and it is proof of the genius of Jimmy Johnson. Too bad his boss was not able to realize it …

Alexandre pratt

Branch Rickey. He invented the school clubs. This initiative allowed the St. Louis Cardinals to dominate the National League for almost 20 years. Between 1926 and 1946, the Cards took part in the World Series nine times, and won it six times. Rickey also built the foundation for the great Brooklyn Dodgers team of the 1940s and 1950s, breaking down the segregation barrier and hiring black players including Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe. I forgot: he was the first general manager to hire a full-time statistician, Montrealer Allan Roth, and to use advanced statistics fluently.

Jean-Francois Tremblay

To choose the best architect, I decided to use a single criterion: who has pulled off the hottest shot in Montreal sports history? The answer: Sam Pollock, when he drafted Guy Lafleur in 1971. Guy Lafleur had to come out first, and Sam Pollock absolutely wanted to draft the one who would become a legend of the Canadiens. But there was a time when the Canadiens were far too powerful to hope to draft first. So he traded his 10^e 1970 pick and promising prospect Ernie Hicke at the California Golden Seals in return for their 1^er choice of 1971. First domino. Except the Seals were not as bad as Pollock hoped, and the Los Angeles Kings threatened to finish last in the standings, ruining his plan to get the top pick overall. So … the other domino. In an act of apparent magnanimity, Pollock ceded the very decent Ralph Backstrom to the Kings on January 26, 1971, in return for very little. The transaction, bizarre on paper, revealed its true nature when the Kings, reinvigorated by Backstrom, overtook the Seals in the standings. This gave the Canadian the first overall choice belonging to the Seals. Sam Pollock was able to get his hands on the Blond Demon, whose name is hung forever in the heights of the Bell Center. When genius meets Machiavellianism, there is Pollock at the intersection.