Building a winning franchise

By Ron Chambers

I had the opportunity to sit down with Rondall Reynoso, GM of the Brooklyn Rage, and Dan Dingleberry, GM of the Arizona Dragons, and talk to them about what it takes to build a team that can compete for the WBA championship. Here are some excerpts.

Chambers: Dan and Rondall, it is nice to be able to sit down with you. Rondall of course we have spoken many times over the years, especially during the height of Brooklyn’s dynasty. Dan, of course we have met, but this is the first year that Arizona has really caught the attention of the media, so it is nice to sit down with you as well.

Dingleberry: It is nice to finally be able to spend some time with you.

Reynoso: Good to see you again.

Chambers: Rondall, you’ve had an incredibly distinguished WBA career. In now your 24th season as a General Manager you are a 2 time GM of the year, your teams have won 1397 games, winning 75% of those, you have never missed the playoffs, and your teams have won 188 playoff games and seven championships. Brooklyn has more championships than the next two franchises combined. To what do you attribute this success?

Reynoso: There is always a little bit of luck. Take for example, in 2019 we traded for Trenton Adams when he was a rookie. Arizona made a smart pick the next year to get Jarius Sullivan. They were generally seen as very similar players. Adams was a little more developed but everyone, including me, saw them as having very similar caps. A few years later, Adams is a generation player and Sullivan is a solid role-player. I can’t blame Dan for that choice. I would have made the same one. Or look at Brooklyn signing Mario Bailey as an undrafted free agent. The media has made it sound like I’m a genius for doing that. But I didn’t see it either. People remember that Brooklyn didn’t have a pick in that draft but what they forget is that we traded away three picks just before the draft. Everyone missed him. But he went to High School in Brooklyn and so we had an advantage in signing him. So we almost accidentally fell into a situation where we had this raw 18-year-old local talent starting for us in the 2006 season.

Chambers: So you are just the luckiest GM in the world? I don’t buy it.

Reynoso: No. My point is just that sometimes things pan out in your favor and sometimes they don’t. All GMs deal with that. As for my actual keys, I’d say having a vision and patience. Brooklyn has had some great offenses over the years. But defense has been at the heart of our philosophy. We have a type of player that we like and rebuild around them. But you have to be patient. You have to stick with a plan. We’ve had one losing season and that was the first year we had Mario Baily, Jarius Miles, and Omar Jefferson on the same team. But we didn’t panic. We stuck with the plan and won a lot of games behind that trio. It takes time for teams to turn around. This has also meant sticking with the players who we decided we were going to build around. Consistency is important. When we get the players we like we do what we can to keep them long-term. We keep our players. Mario has been with the Rage for 19 years, Jarius for 15 years, Mayes for 8 years, we had Jefferson for 10 years, Shane Strom for  12 years, Al Herbert 9 years, Anthony Davis, 6 years, and of course Joe Siebert for 11 years… and that doesn’t count when he came back at the end of his career. I see teams have a plan and then completely change directions in two or three seasons and that just doesn’t work.

Chambers: Dan, your experience in the WBA has been very dirrerent. You had one year in Sydney with a losing season and then took over the Dragons when they were very bad, they had the WBA’s second-worst record before you started. You only won 19 games in your first year with the Dragons. This year it only took you 23 games to get to 19 wins. Right now most commentators consider Arizona one of four elite teams. How have you done it?

Dingleberry: I really have to agree with what Rondall said about patience. It takes time. Meechy Jennings is the only player on our team who was on the Dragons’ roster my first year. We signed Huberto the next year. We of course traded for Matias Gutierrez. He turned out not to be the best fit for us but getting a player of that caliber was important. The next year was big. We traded Gutierrez for Inge Adlgasser, signed Moscoso as a free agent, and drafted Leclercq in the dispersal draft. We got up to 36 wins that year which was big. The next year we kept the same starting five but also signed the former MVP Talacka who played a big role off the bench. We broke .500 that year with 44 wins. Last year was actually a huge disappointment in Arizona. We added more depth with Lobo and Fotsch but went a little backwards record-wise. It was that year that I realized I needed to move Inge to point guard. He has just become such a great playmaker. He was a solid SG but he is an elite point guard. But, I wasn’t able to get the type of player we wanted at shooting guard. Almantas is a great scorer but he isn’t the type of defender that we needed. We got really lucky when we signed Leonard Sedelmaier for a minimum contract. He is such a good defender that I was surprised we got him. We were then able to trade him, Talacka, and two first-round picks for Alexander Saaverda which has turned out better than I expected so far. Most would say we overpaid for him but we needed to improve the quality of our starters and we had built up the talent to trade. He is exactly the type of player we wanted but despite being drafted #1 he hasn’t stood out. But he is a young talent and does what we need. It is still early, he has only played 5 games for us so far but he came in at full speed averaging 26 points, shooting over 55% and over 50% on threes.  But notice, the rise has been incremental changes getting one piece at a time.

Reynoso: There is an important point in there. It is the starters that win championships. You have to have that great, efficient talent. But your depth can lose championships. We learned that years ago when Al Herbert got hurt. But we’ve also done several times what Dan just did. We built up talent and then overpaid in a trade to get the right player because ultimately the right starter is worth more to us than multiple parts.

Chambers: This is such an interesting conversation with one of the WBA greats and an up-and-comer but I see a lot of similarities. This is also interesting because with all the success that Brooklyn has had over the years, they have a huge budget and there have been those around the league who have complained about salary cap rules feeling that the top teams will always be the top teams. Thoughts?

Reynoso: We’ve heard this for years. The reality is that Brooklyn wasn’t always a financial powerhouse. We got that way by winning. We prioritized keeping our key players but other than that there were a lot of changed. Only Mario and Jarius started in our first finals appearance and our last over that stretch of seven title appearances from 2014 to 2021. Over those eight years, we only had the same starting line-up to begin it in 13-14 and to end it in 19-20. Every other year there was a change sometimes two different starters from the year before. We actually had 12 different primary starters in that stretch. The key was that we knew our identity and we knew we had to keep Mario and Jarius because they were our stars. I’ve received some criticism for keeping those two this late in their careers, but we owe them so much and Trenton and Evan can learn so much from them. We’ve also made some tough choices. That year when we had Mario, Jarius, and Dan Kinkaide was probably the best team in WBA history. But even with Brooklyn money that was a team we couldn’t keep together so we chose to break it up, we still won more titles and we got the pick we used to draft Trenton so no regrets.

Dingleberry: I have to add to that. Arizona is not a rich team. My first year our team budget was $79 million. That is over $45 million less than Brooklyn’s budget was that year. Our budget this year is $15 million more than it was my first year. Brooklyn’s is about the same. We’ve done pretty well. Hopefully, winning at such a high level this year will allow the team to make more money and our budget to increase. But we have to plan ahead. That is actually one reason for our recent trade. We did think it would improve our team but we also have players we want to resign and Sedelmaier is on a one-year contract. Getting Saaverda meant we don’t have to worry about money for him in the off-season and getting rid of the two draft picks means that those salaries won’t get in the way of us resigning our key players. A GM has to think about all these things. Listen, I don’t really care about ticket prices and that sort of thing. But it is my job to consider it and to help the team be profitable. I care about winning so I do the other things to help my team win.

Chambers: Plus, you’ve done what some said wasn’t possible. You turned a losing franchise into a winning one.

Dingleberry: Don’t forget that this is my 6th year. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes the team going backward last year, making adjustments, and then seeing the potential in a player like Sedelmaier who no one else even wanted, and signing him for a minimum contract. It goes back to Rondall’s keys of vision and patience. We had a plan. Ours was a little different than Brooklyn’s but we kept to it, made adjustments, and improved over the course of years. But hey when I started I looked to Justin Lawrence, Gm of California as an example. He took over a terrible Varese franchise that had the third-worst record in the league. He immediately improved to 36 wins. My first season in Arizona California won 70 games. But it still took him two more years to win a championship. Over the last 5 years, California has averaged 70 wins and won two championships but it was 14 years from Lawrence taking over the team to winning a championship. It doesn’t happen overnight!

Chambers: I have no intention of ever running a franchise. It frankly sounds too stressful for me. But it sounds like you both are saying to be smart and be patient. With that I’ll let you both go and maybe your teams will meet in the playoffs. Thank you.

Dingleberry: Sure thing. Thanks.

Reynoso: Thank you.