Last night, after the Knicks beat the Sacramento Kings for their 7th win in a row, CNBC Fast Money panelist Guy Adami tweeted: “Is it too early to talk about Glen Grunwald as NBA Executive of the Year?”  It’s an excellent question because Glen’s name hasn’t been mentioned once since Lin-sanity began about 10 days ago.  Who is Glen Grunwald? The fact that you’re asking that says something about the New York Knicks’ General Manager and the low profile he keeps.  However, Glen is responsible for picking up Jeremy Lin from the trash-pile at the end of December, after he’d already been waived by the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets. Glen supported Donnie Walsh in bringing Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony to the Knicks last year. Glen’s also directly responsible for signing Tyson Chandler, Steve Novak and Landry Fields who have been key cogs in the recent Knicks’ win streak.  There could be other moves that Grunwald could make in the coming weeks, but – right now – it looks like Grunwald will take NBA Executive of the Year in a walk.  But Glen Grunwald – it turns out – has a personal history that’s very similar to Jeremy Lin’s. Glen has been loved and he has been hated by fans during his career. This all hinged on whether his teams were winning or not. However, Glen has always been smart, kind, and extremely hard-working. Like Lin, Glen never let others’ beliefs’ about him define who he was. Perhaps that’s why he was able to spot a diamond in the rough like Jeremy when he came available.  The first thing you notice about Glen is his height. He’s close to 7 feet. He was an All-American from Chicago who went on to play with Isiah Thomas at Indiana. In fact, Glen was the captain of the 1981 national championship team. Although he was drafted by the Celtics, he never played pro basketball. He had bad knees.  That injury focused Glen to go back to school to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He got an MBA and law degree and began to work as a corporate attorney, where he began to get sports teams as clients.  After working for the Denver Nuggets organization, Glen got a call from Isiah Thomas in late 90s to come and work for the Toronto Raptors. Thomas was a part-owner at the time and asked Glen to be assistant GM. When Isiah left after a stormy tenure where he didn’t gain majority control of the club, Glen was promoted to GM by the Raptors owners. He’d won them over, even though he was an unknown at the time. They didn’t see him as “Isiah’s guy.”  During Glen’s tenure as GM, he orchestrated the draft-day trade to bring in Vince Carter and he also drafted Tracy McGrady and Chris Bosh. The Raptors came within one game from going to the Eastern Conference finals in 2001.  Yet, 3 short years later, Glen was fired by the Raptors. There were injuries. McGrady wouldn’t re-sign because he wanted to go to a team where he’d be the star. The Raptors didn’t win the LeBron James (or Dwayne Wade) lottery and had to “settle” for Bosh. Carter got older and never reclaimed his success he enjoyed in 2001 for the rest of his career.  None of these things was Glen’s fault. He was just the same smart executive that he’d always been. Yet, I remember being in Toronto at the time and listening to the Raptors’ fans calling in to Sports Talk Radio. They hated Glen. They wanted him escorted out of the city. Wins were all that mattered and Glen wasn’t winning anymore. Raptors’ management agreed (although they complimented Glen greatly as they fired him).
It turns out that the architect of Lin-sanity - Glen Grunwald - has a lot of parallels in his career with Jeremy Lin.