Morway Named GM for Pacers

The Indiana Pacers announced today that David Morway will expand his role in the front office and assume the title of General Manager. According to the release:

Morway, who has been with the Pacers 10 years, has been serving as Senior Vice President/Basketball Operations for the team, overseeing the day-to-day operation and administration of the Basketball Division. As General Manager, he will retain his current duties and will assume additional responsibilities of overseeing salary cap issues as well as assisting Pacers President of Basketball Larry Bird with all personnel decisions.

Larry Bird has an official right-hand man now to help with player personnel moves who is familiar and comfortable working with Bird and willing to defer critical decisions to Bird's "single voice" at the top.

I imagine the decision-making process will be pretty simple. Bird and Morway work together to consider player moves with Bird prioritizing his desired moves. Morway takes the information and screens it against the salary cap rules and collective bargaining agreement among other factors. After filtering out the doable from the impossible the two will then work with the doable options to assess the short term and long term ramifications and amount of risk involved. Finally, Bird will make the final determination of whether or not the move is smart for the franchise and either make a move or stand pat.

Of course, according to Mark Cuban , Bird's final decision would then need to go through Herb Simon. Maybe this isn't such a simple process after all.