Re: FORUM

[Murph]

Answer the following question and you will know the single most important ingredient to constructing a Ship-shape squad.


Name a common characteristic shared amoung 31 of the last 32 championship teams.

Most of them drafted a franchise player (like Monroe), and then surrounded them with complementary players, acquired mostly through trades?

[cool breeze]

[quote="frankied"]

HINT:
2010-11 Dallas Mavericks Miami Heat 4-2 Dirk Nowitzki, Dallas

also note that those players -at least the legit franchise players- NEVER get traded. the pistons fall from grace is directly tied to trading it's franchise player, the one guy who was indispensible.
the fact that chauncey is still hitting those big shots, and detroit has no one capable of taking and making those big shots is simply another sign of how idiotic the chauncey trade was, no matter how some try to rationalize how it coulda, mighta worked out.

Lemon Pen and Frankied I wonder if Joe would have traded Dirk over the summer if he were working for Dallas. Nowitzki is getting older now. Dumars sure has some guts or is a complete idiot to have agreed to the Detroit News interview where he tells us that Stuckey is part of the building process. We know about your stupid plan Joe. You traded Billups so Stuckey could lead the team. You sacrificed everything to bank on a long shot (Stuckey) and it didn't work out. Why wasn't Affalo part of the building process? Stuckey has not improved one part of his game in the past 3 seasons. He looks on the floor as if he doesn't really give a crap if the Pistons win or lose games. Why didn't Dumars talk about Stuckey's leadership last night? I saw Knight digging down deep to play tough defense. When Knight brought the ball up the court to set up the offense, he didn't walk the ball up like Stuckey and then pick up his dribble on the top of the key without having any plan in mind. You might do that in Jr High School or JV ball but if you are playing the point guard position on a high school team. Stuckey didn't stop dribble penetration or even try to rebound on the defensive end. He cannot concentrate like a real player. He is not consistant because he does not put in the work Mr. Dumars. Dumars made a huge mistake in trying to compare his Pistons rebuilding operation with a business type venture. In the business world, Dumars would have been fired directly after he made the bogus trade that has cost the Detroit Pistons everything. I wonder if Dumars suggested that to his pet player, Maxiell, to put that high arc on his foul shot. Maxiell cannot play basketball at the NBA level. Yet we fans still have to watch him try to play against players who are smarter, quicker, in better shape and are 5 to 7 inches taller than Maxiell. Great job Joe. Go have another hot fudge brownie and play your fiddle while the Palace burns.

[frankied]

Answer the following question and you will know the single most important ingredient to constructing a Ship-shape squad.


Name a common characteristic shared amoung 31 of the last 32 championship teams.

Most of them drafted a franchise player (like Monroe), and then surrounded them with complementary players, acquired mostly through trades?

who cares how you get them. LA got kareem via a trade.
the key is that you keep those guys, absent extraordinary circumstances, and you certainly don't give them away for over the hill superstars or cap space.

[cool breeze]

[quote="Fennis Dembo"]The Real Notes and Quotes from the Minnesota game not the stuff we get from the beat writers - by Biff Burns


Opposing view to Joe Dumars’ State of the Team Interview

Biff Burns: Why didn’t you dive for that loose ball?
Stuckey: I was afraid of getting floor burns and getting my uniform dirty.
Just like Richard Simmons’ parents shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for grandchildren, I’m not holding my breath waiting for a victory.

Great job Fennis Dembo. I like it that you brought up Richard Simmons. Being that Dumars has announced part of his mastermind rebuilding plan, maybe he and Stuckey should be forced to wear Richard Simmons' outfit with the shorts and tanktop in stripes. Stuckey would stand out so the fans could watch him more carefully being that he is Dumars leader since he kicked Billups out of town. And Dumars would look great in that same outfit with his big gut hanging over the shorts while chatting with Piston fans and of course eating his hot fudge brownie. Everything is great according to Joe so let's bring more fun to the Palace by showing off our two leaders.

[cool breeze]

I'm holding out hope we continue to tank the season, and Drummond or Davis is available to us.

On collecting 1A players: The T-Wolves have been collecting 1A players for a while now. They've drafted Johnson (#4), Rubio (#5), Williams (#2), and they've acquired Love (#5) and Beasley (#2). And the T-Wolves still suck.

My point is, that it's not enough to just collect top draft choices. Somewhere along the way, chemistry must be developed. Now, I don't know if McGee would improve the Pistons' chemistry or not, but at least on paper, he seems to be the kind the player that the Pistons need desperately.

Too true Murph. Chemistry can't be valued enough when it comes to getting a team to contend, and the T-Wolves are a real head scratcher. On paper they're a far superior team to us, but we damn near kicked their asses handily. Who can figure? Anyway, I'm looking at OKC as a model for rebuilding a team the right way with youth. I would love to see that develop here.

McGee didn't do much to improve his current team's chemistry about two games ago when his team was getting blown out and he had a breakaway layup but decided to show off throwing the ball off the backboard and then dunking like a high school kid might do. I do not hear good things about McGee. Sure we need some big men but considering some of the current college guys, it would be stupid to trade the Pistons first pick just to get McGee. At all cost, keep the number one pick please.

[frankied]

when joe d f-cked up the darko pick, folks said that it really would never matter. they won a title anyway, so what's the problem...
well, all these years later, it is pretty obvious that darko's ghost has continued to haunt the pistons and can fairly be said to be the ultimate cause of the pistons' demise.
why?
because, for joe, darko morphed into rodney stuckey. when he traded darko and got that first rounder back and then drafted stuckey with it, his salvation for an historic f-ck up - drafting darko - was that he'd parlayed darko into a draft pick that turned into rodney stuckey and stuckey was an excellent choice and would ultimately make the darko pick look pretty darn good.
and we know the rest of the story...trading chauncey because he saw stuckey as his heir apparent...trying to remake stuckey into a franchise point guard...tying the franchise's future to stuckey's development as a point guard....
and we see the sad results.
most unfortunate, he still persists, though with some lessening, in trying to keep stuckey in that point guard role. we will see how things work out with knight and stuckey, but starting the season with stuckey as starting point guard, after everything that had happened was incredibly stubborn.
so, as some had predicted, the botched darko pick has had a ruinous impact on the franchise. every nmajor, disastrous move joe has made can probably be traced back to darko and stuckey and related issues and players.

[cool breeze]

I have read a lot of negative stuff concerning Prince and am a bit puzzled if all of you who are ripping him have been watching the Pistons play lately. Prince has been the most consistant player on both ends. Some might say no Monroe is the most solid player. I do not agree. Monroe is still developing and in my opinion has not played well consistantly yet. He seems to fade for 5 or 10 minute periods of time and does not seem to have the strength or energy yet to master interior positioning, boxing out to become the defensive player we need him to be. On the otherhand, while I believe Prince needs to become a better rebounder, he is a highly skilled help defender who is coaching players on the floor. I think he played a outstanding game on both ends last night and that performance has to be better than any player on the team has had to this date. Prince is a great chemistry player. We should give him a lot of credit rather than rip him. He has few teammates who can spell their names it appears let alone play as complete players. It is crazy that Stuckey and Gordon make more money. When I see the offense breakdown, the only guys that I see running without the ball trying to get open are Prince, Knight and Jerebco during the second half of games where Detroit usually starts to suck. I see a lot of standing around by Stuckey, Gordon and company. Is Stuckey coming over to Dumars' home for that hot fudge brownie with Maxiell driving him there before every home game?Maybe Stuckey will be the size of Joe once his contract expires.

[frankied]

a buddy is a pacers' fan so i watched the pacers/sac-town game last night at his place.
cousins had a nice game. didn't shoot well, but he had 19 boards and basically helped control the pacers big guys all night.
david west only had 5 boards, and cousins actually was manhandling west at times, sticking his elbow in his chest, neck...just moving him out of the way. he's a big guy, and he definitely is not shy about throwing his weight around.
cousins also has what are probably the best hands in the league. he has chris webber-like hands...anything he gets his hands on is his. several times, during scrums for a loose ball, he'd just reach in a crowd, grab the ball with one hand and claim it. incredible stuff.
i've always been so-so about acquiring him because he definitely still has a lot of knucklehead in him - that entire sac-town team does; man, they have a few thickheaded players like thornton - but watching him last night makes you wonder whether it might be worth it.[Only admins are allowed to see this image]

[cool breeze]

[quote="frankied"]when joe d f-cked up the darko pick, folks said that it really would never matter. they won a title anyway, so what's the problem...
well, all these years later, it is pretty obvious that darko's ghost has continued to haunt the pistons and can fairly be said to be the ultimate cause of the pistons' demise.
why?
because, for joe, darko morphed into rodney stuckey. when he traded darko and got that first rounder back and then drafted stuckey with it, his salvation for an historic f-ck up - drafting darko - was that he'd parlayed darko into a draft pick that turned into rodney stuckey and stuckey was an excellent choice and would ultimately make the darko pick look pretty darn good.
and we know the rest of the story...trading chauncey because he saw stuckey as his heir apparent...trying to remake stuckey into a franchise point guard...tying the franchise's future to stuckey's development as a point guard....
and we see the sad results.
most unfortunate, he still persists, though with some lessening, in trying to keep stuckey in that point guard role. we will see how things work out with knight and stuckey, but starting the season with stuckey as starting point guard, after everything that had happened was incredibly stubborn.
so, as some had predicted, the botched darko pick has had a ruinous impact on the franchise. every nmajor, disastrous move joe has made can probably be traced back to

Frankied you are 100% correct. It all goes back to the second biggest blunder in Piston history, the drafting of the 17 year old chain smoking Darko who had never been a (KEY) player on (ANY) team in his entire life before Dumars picked him as the number 2 overall pick. Remember that Dumars did not play college basketball in a big time college program and his teammate, Dennis Rodman, was another guy who made it in the NBA coming from a small college as well. So Dumars, at the time, was not really impressed with high profile college players who got a lot of attention playing in the NCAA tournament. Dumars didn't really care what the quality college coaches thought of those college players as well. After, all, Dumars was executive of the year. He didn't need to spend much time on this silly draft thing. And Dumars got a nice trip to Europe to meet with Darko. So Dumars used his crystal ball instead of actually doing the necessary background checks and homework even though he had previously screwed up selecting Rodney While over Joe Johnson in a previous draft. But Dumars really did think that the fans would be thinking he was the smartest GM on Earth when he drafted Stuckey. However, true to form, Dumars didn't actually do any real work there either. If he had interviewed Stuckey's previous coaches, he would have found out that Stuckey was a ball hog who didn't like to work hard on his defense, ball handling, passing or the other mental parts of the game that makes for complete players. Stuckey could drive well and score a lot of points against other small college teams. Did Stuckey shoot 50,000 jump shots over the summer like one player on the current Arizona team did last summer (Kyle Fogg)? Did Stuckey put up even a 1,000 practice jump shots over this past summer? What about the work ethic of your dream player Rodney Stuckey Joe? And he is part of Joe's vision for the new Piston team of the future. Good luck!

[deusXango]

I'm holding out hope we continue to tank the season, and Drummond or Davis is available to us.

On collecting 1A players: The T-Wolves have been collecting 1A players for a while now. They've drafted Johnson (#4), Rubio (#5), Williams (#2), and they've acquired Love (#5) and Beasley (#2). And the T-Wolves still suck.

My point is, that it's not enough to just collect top draft choices. Somewhere along the way, chemistry must be developed. Now, I don't know if McGee would improve the Pistons' chemistry or not, but at least on paper, he seems to be the kind the player that the Pistons need desperately.

Too true Murph. Chemistry can't be valued enough when it comes to getting a team to contend, and the T-Wolves are a real head scratcher. On paper they're a far superior team to us, but we damn near kicked their asses handily. Who can figure? Anyway, I'm looking at OKC as a model for rebuilding a team the right way with youth. I would love to see that develop here.

McGee didn't do much to improve his current team's chemistry about two games ago when his team was getting blown out and he had a breakaway layup but decided to show off throwing the ball off the backboard and then dunking like a high school kid might do. I do not hear good things about McGee. Sure we need some big men but considering some of the current college guys, it would be stupid to trade the Pistons first pick just to get McGee. At all cost, keep the number one pick please.

AT ALL COSTS is right Don. People who advocate trading our sure to be high first round draft pick must not know that McGee has always been known to have a low basketball I.Q. There will be mid to late first rounders with high basketball I.Q.'s. What's my point? Stuckey has a low BB I.Q.!! I've had enough stupidity in a professional game.

[Murph]

It all goes back to the second biggest blunder in Piston history, the drafting of the 17 year old chain smoking Darko who had never been a (KEY) player on (ANY) team in his entire life before Dumars picked him as the number 2 overall pick.

Don...I'm glad you're back to your old self. That was really beginning to freak me out, when you were calling Darko, "one of the best centers in the NBA", a couple of weeks ago.

[WTF]

I think again that people want 20 pts coming from every starting position and 40 coming from the bench and that is just not feasable. At best McGee would be a solid role player and though a valuable one not one that worth giving up our #1 pick.

Ideally for me I would like to see the bulk of scoring coming from my SG, SF and PF with my PG directing and my C doing the defensive grunt work. McGee could fit that role, but he has yet to prove himself the next Tyson Chandler or Dalembert and even then I wouldn't part with my 1st for grunt work.

McGee was a 18th pick and nothing about him said superstar. Serviceable, solid, steady yes, but superstar no way.

[frankied]

if maxiell had cousin's hands, he'd be an all-star.
i counted 2-3 passes and at least 2-3 rebounds where maxiell was right in place, under the basket, with an easy layup/dunk and he fumbled the ball away. every game i think he'll grab that rebound or pass the next game, but he never does. i guess i finally have to admit that maxiell has bad hands.
now kwame brown-bad, but more like nazr mohammad bad.
if he had better hands, now that he plays more with monroe, he should get lots of chances for easy baskets because he is pretty active. but he just can't hold on to the freakin ball!

[deusXango]

I wonder what we'd have in Darko today had Joe held onto him and he was tutored the game by Ben, Rasheed, and Antonio? Those players day has past, but players they were, and I do know that they respected Darko and saw something in him. They all said so at one time or another. Larry Brown don't play rookies, and Flip Saunders leaves much to be desired as a Pistons coach. Darko was made a joke, and a kid in a foreign land struggling with the language, and making all sort of adjustments. If we don't have a team with mentally tough players, we might as well have some mentally tough fans. Let's not loose our open-mindedness. Joe don't know when to hold 'em or when to fold 'em, and Darko shouldn't be blamed for that!

[frankied]

I wonder what we'd have in Darko today had Joe held onto him and he was tutored the game by Ben, Rasheed, and Antonio? Those players day has past, but players they were, and I do know that they respected Darko and saw something in him. They all said so at one time or another. Larry Brown don't play rookies, and Flip Saunders leaves much to be desired as a Pistons coach. Darko was made a joke, and a kid in a foreign land struggling with the language, and making all sort of adjustments. If we don't have a team with mentally tough players, we might as well have some mentally tough fans. Let's not loose our open-mindedness. Joe don't know when to hold 'em or when to fold 'em, and Darko shouldn't be blamed for that!

DX,
you just expressed exactly what i've always thought about darko.
imho, at the very least, detroit would have a solid rotation big man. a guy who could play 25 minutes of post defense and block a few shots. he'd definitely add more than what maxiell brings, with the benefit of being a lot bigger and stronger. when you consider that maxiell has basically turned into the second or third center on the team, i'd much rather have darko performing that function.

[WTF]

Problem is he should have never been selected #2 even if he ended up serviceable at best. You simple don't use a #2 on a bench players or non-superstar player. It's really nothing that can be said to ever make this screw up right or rational. Hell we could have traded that pick and made out like a bandit and got the big that was always needed. Maybe we could have ended up with KG first had we offered up that pick to Minny back then. It was just a dumb decision all the way around and it cost us chances at repeating as champs not just the future impact that it has now.

[frankied]

Problem is he should have never been selected #2 even if he ended up serviceable at best. You simple don't use a #2 on a bench players or non-superstar player. It's really nothing that can be said to ever make this screw up right or rational. Hell we could have traded that pick and made out like a bandit and got the big that was always needed. Maybe we could have ended up with KG first had we offered up that pick to Minny back then. It was just a dumb decision all the way around and it cost us chances at repeating as champs not just the future impact that it has now.

agreed. i was a melo fan from day one.
i remember seeing him at a pistons game, being interviewed after he'd won his title, and he was excited about the possibility of detroit drafting him. it didn't seem fair, that detroit had such a good team and was about to get the best college player out there. just seemed too good to be true and too easy.
leave it to joe to have f-cked it up so royally.
but once the team had made the pick, they had a duty to try to develop him as best they could. they didn't do it.
matter of fact, i was stunned when they took him, after getting larry brown as their coach. brown had said a bunch of derogatory things about euro players - he hated them - and he was also notorious for not tolerating rookies. the idea of drafting a 17 year old euro, and putting him in brown's hands seemed kind of crazy. it was easy to imagine exactly what happened: brown burying him on the bench.

[FlyDog]

Surprised he hasn't cracked the starting lineup on that crummy team. He was unimpressive last night. Looked like Carlos Boozer without a shooting touch. Wolves fans must be disappointed.

[frankied]

Surprised he hasn't cracked the starting lineup on that crummy team. He was unimpressive last night. Looked like Carlos Boozer without a shooting touch. Wolves fans must be disappointed.

he still embarrassed damien wilkins a couple of times.
he's much more athletic than boozer. he'll be ok, though they will have to figure out what to do with him. imho, he's more of a 4, but with k-love there, he has to play the 3.

[frankied]

this was hilarious.
chad ford, an espn reporter, had a chat yesterday. someone submitted a question on joe dumars. ford completely ignored the question! didn't even acknowledge it!
he is always the national source whenever joe wants to get stuff out into the national media.
what a joke! but an indication of how the media treats him, even on the national level.


Ed (Saginaw, MI)

Hi Chad. The Pistons are pretty horrible too. Can you tell me why the new owner decided to keep Joe Dumars as GM? I mean, he hit alot of home runs back in the day but, lately alot of misses. Also, why don't they amnesty Charlie V? He's horrible (another Joe D mistake).
Damon (Santa Cruz)

Who do you have pegged for the ROY? Stats point to Irving, right? Or will the Rubio hype win it for him?
Chad Ford (1:13 PM)

Kyrie has had better stats and his team has a better record. But the Rubio stuff isn't hype. Watch the kid play. He's for real. Right now both players are playing well enough to deserve it. I think we're all just going to have be patient and see how this pans out. Sometimes rookies struggle to maintain early season production. They get tired and defenses start taking away what they like to do. How they adjust to the fatigue and more advanced scout reports will likely be the deciding factor.

[FlyDog]

Damien Wilkens does a fine job of embarrassing himself. He's tarnishing the family name. That family emergency last week? Rumor has it Uncle 'Nique was suicidal over the thought of Damien suiting up that night.

[FlyDog]

He's Michael Curry with more pedigree.

[Grizz]

there are so many great posts .. I dont know where to begin .. thank you forum members! This horrible season would be far worse without this forum .. thank you Flip!

[FlyDog]

Looks like Ben Wallace approached Austin Daye in the shower and told him to get his head right. Personally, I would be a little intimidated being accosted in the shower by Ben Wallace...........but that's just me.

[Rett]

Question asked on Pistons Website:
Was it Roundball One that had problems en route to Houston?



Langlois: Yes, the third version of Roundball One, a plane the Pistons only put into service at the beginning of the 2010-11 season. Passengers on the plane were in no danger and, in fact, weren’t aware of any difficulty. Only after landing and successfully taxiing to their awaiting buses did they become aware of an issue with the appearance of emergency vehicles and personnel. The minor issue was repaired and Roundball was back in service to carry the team to Minneapolis late Tuesday night. It was strictly procedural to report the issue, but there was no danger to the team in the air or even at landing. The hydraulics issue limited the pilot’s ability to turn the plane once on the ground.

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