OT - Pistons dump Gordon to Bobcats
Pretty amazing they were able to find a taker considering Gordon's cap hit. Even if Maggette does absolutely nothing, this seems like a win.
Just a random question to Pistons fans. How would you all feel if the Pistons traded out of their spot to get a couple first round picks, like say both of the Celtics first round picks?
but come on man. hindsight is indeed 20/20. Ben Gordon was coming off one of the most incredible first round series ever. He was putting up 50, and playing like a leader in the clutch, and frankly like a superstar. he scored anywhere from 18-20 pts a game. This guy wasnt supposed to be a bust. His mistake was keeping Rip, and not having anywhere to play Stuckey.
As far as Charlie V. i dont have any defense. he is a scorer who doesnt play ANY defense. His contract wasnt ridiculous for what his production had been, but he didnt produce here.
...when it's true.
The Gordon signing made no sense with RIP on the team and still giving some decent production with him being happy. No reason to trade Billups either...Stuckey was perfect for the role he had coming off the bench for the older guys.
He needed to add some beef at SF because LeBron was destroying Tay, instead he drafted Prince 2.0...
Also needed to add a legit big man. Never happened until Monroe fell in our laps.
The re-signing of Rip, was for my mind, just as indefensible as giving Ben Gordon all of that money.
He basically made a bunch of panicky moves when he knew they weren't going to be able to ink any of the big name free agents, and in resulted in the clusterfuck of a roster we've had the past few years.
It was just dumb. Dumars has refused to face the reality of needing to rebuild for about 5 years now. He's been dragging the '04 team out for going on 8 years now. Love em to death, but what the hell are Tay Prince and Ben Wallace still doing on this roster? Why is Joe D tossing aside 1st round picks and assets like Aaron Afflalo so that he can spend money on free agents, when he's proven he is incapable of rebuilding that way.
Dumars made 3 brilliants moves: Stackhouse for Hamilton, signing Chauncey Billups, and drafting Tay Prince. Notice those all happened about a decade ago. He's made very few, if any, truely impressive moves since then. The few good picks he made were obvious (Monroe and Knight) or marginally relevent (Afflalo, Jerebko) and thats with a lot of duds in between. The Villanueva and Gordon signings were horrendous and it was obvious at the time that they were horrendous, just like the Hamilton contract.
This move is AWFUL. Joe is gearing up for another free agency bonanza that is going to fail spectacularly. Whatever insights he might have had a decade ago are clearly not there anymore. Lets keep in mind that, even at his best, he drafted Darko and tried to give a max contract to Grant Hill. The biggest favor Hill ever did the Pistons was turning down Joe's money and making way for Ben Wallace and the go-to-work group that eventually lead to the '04 title team. Now, he's just a rube. Getting fleeced by a better GM (Rich Cho) for a 1st round pick AND a better player, just so he can go waste his money on some other over-priced free agent.
The man is a legend, but his time has passed. Fire Joe Dumars!
I mean, kudos for pulling it off and he got a great deal, but nobody was like "who is the Rasheed Wallace guy, he can't really play".
It was a smart move to take on the risk, overstated as it was, of Sheed's personality, but Joe didn't have to give up much and Sheed's talent level was obvious and he was already a proven entity. He was the best player available for a team looking to upgrade before the trade deadline. In that respect it was closer to obvious than brilliant. Dumars got a bit lucky there that a top 50 league player happened to be available when he was in a position to add to a rising contender.
But still, you have to give him credit for pulling it off. If Rasheed was available for a song, why didn't any other team go after him?
Dumars gets credit of course, but its not a case of him seeing something the rest of the league is missing (my criteria for brilliant). People knew Sheed was good, but as an expiring contract ($17 M that year), and a short-term rental, there weren't many teams who fit as trade partners. The pool of contenders was relatively small that year and no one else could really afford to give up enough pieces to make the contract numbers work. That's why Sheed was shuffled around for basically equivalent contracts and insignificant sweeteners.
It was opportunistic and smart and wildly successful, but the same can be said for drafting Tim Duncan or Shaq. It's not brilliant.
But blaming someone for what you know NOw doesnt make a ton of sense either. Gordon had been a sixth man since coming in the league, and im assuming that was the plan with the pistons as well. Stuckey at PG and Rip the 2 guard. Stuckey isnt a PG and Rip clashed with every shitty coach Dumars hired. That is equally the issue as any of the free agent signings.
Like i said earlier, im not defending Joe. There were just many other circumstances that caused Gordon to be a bust. I didnt find it to be a horrible signing at the time.
He's a fine role player, like Ben Wallace, but you don't overpay for those guys.
He was always a one-dimensional player and a defensive liability. If you have a lock-down defense that lacks a dynamic scorer, fine - but Joe paid top dollar for a bench player. There's no getting around that.
On top of that, he signed them immediately - basically bidding against himself.
It was stupid and poorly handled and I would have told you that the day it happened. This is not a case of hindsight being 20/20 but common sense.
Charlie V was the more defensible of the two signings at the time.
His contract wasn't as monsterous as Gordon's, and his numbers were similar to LaMarcus Aldridge, when projected more minutes. Joe D thought he was getting a developing big who could stretch the floor and if he became a 20-9 guy, that's a steal at just $7 million a year.
The year they inked Charlie Villanueva he averaged 16 and 7 in just 27 minutes of play. His per 36 minutes averages came out to 22-9. He was 24 years old. If you think you can nab a big guy like that at $7 million a year, you take him.
It's not his fault Charlie V hasn't worked out, and as many stupid or questionable things as Joe has done over the past few years, that's one that I won't put on him.
Villanueva was still developing, but with Ben Gordon, I have no clue what he was thinking. Ben doesn't play defense, is a black hole on offense, and a streak shooter.
You knew precisely what you were getting with Ben, and that's all well and good if you're paying him around $4 million a year like the Bulls, but at $10-12 million a year, no way you invest that type of money in a guy who basically does one thing. He doesn't rebound, he doesn't pass the ball well, he doesn't defend, he just scores.
He also didn't fit in with the roster they had and he wasn't going to get any better. It was doomed from the start.
The Bucks couldn't wait to get rid of the guy. That should have tipped Joe off especially when one of his most trusted former assistants was the guy making that decision for the Bucks.
Villanueva, like Gordon played no D and didn't pass. He's smaller than Aldridge and less of competitor and far stupider. Nobody was confusing Aldridge and Villanueva.
I get that he has some talent and was young, but it was still an incredibly dumb signing that no one else was close to paying that amount for.
That's the inherent problem with free agency, you inherently have to be smarter than every other team to get value on anything other than a MAX contract. It's not easy to do.
This is a curious use of cap space by Charlotte, but also a smart one, I believe. GM Rich Cho knows he is in a small market and isn't likely to get a big time free agent to come there. Max-salary free agents are the most desirable types because the NBA caps the amount players can make, and NBA stars are often the most underpaid. Absent the ability to obtain a player like this, and unwilling to subject the team to the free market dynamics that lead to overpaying role players in the FA market (almost all are overpaid), Cho is using their cap space to acquire a future asset, in this case a pick that will likely be in the top ten when realized. Cap space is valuable in the NBA, but its value is highly contextual based on the team that has it. For a team in Charlotte's position, this move is expensive, but they are in asset-gathering mode and weren't likely to use the salary flexibility they relinquished.
You nailed it. The problem is that the Pistons are in the same position - a team that won't attract elite free agents and has relatively few assets. Yes, Char is in a deeper hole for now, but with Cho running circles around out-of-touch GMs like Dumars that won't last for long.
Because if you are bad enough to get a top 3 pick, you're probably out of a job.
They need to embrace the rebuild. But it is okay to have a good vet around to help that, I just wouldn't pay him as much as they're paying Tay - who openly said he resigned with the Pistons because they overpaid.
Knight looks like the real deal. He outperformed his draft position despite being younger than most of them. He and Monroe are the two pieces to build around. Hopefully Henson or Drummond will make a 3rd if Joe can manage to hold on to that pick instead of shipping it off to make up for his free agency mistakes.
You are never as smart as you look when you get lucky and you are never as dumb as you look when you don't.
Sometimes:
You trade Jerry Stackhouse for Richard Hamilton or You sign and trade Grant Hill for Ben Wallace or you deal Atkins and Hunter for Rasheed Wallace or you sdign free agent Antonio McDyess
and sometimes:
You draft Darko instead of Bosh or Wade or You sign Villanueva or Gordon to big contracts or you deal Billups for Iverson
Let's hope he gets back on that better trail ....
In hindsight his career has followed the arc of a rookie ball player called up to the bigs who starts mashing right away, but has an extremely high BaBip....
Cavs fan here. I wonder if our reported attempt to move up to the #2 spot to grab Beal plays into this move at all.
For the record - the consensus in the NBA is that no matter how shitty a contract a player has...somebody will always be willing to deal for him. I cannot believe Dumars got the Bobcats to take on Gordon's mess of a contract but hey...more power to him.
For the record - the consensus in the NBA is that no matter how shitty a contract a player has...somebody will always be willing to deal for him.That's pro sports in general. There's a lot of dumb GM's in every league
and the Bobcats would have slipped below that floor in the 2013-14 season as Maggettes contact is expiring. The Bobcats HAD to spend this money and they got a 1st rounder for their troubles.
This is an example of a win-win (depending on where the pick lands). Charlotte gets a future asset and Detroit gets flexibility (and the ability to have major cap space next summer if they amnesty Villanueva).
Aside from drafting Greg Monroe, this is the best move the pistons have made since trading for rasheed wallace.
That's pretty ridiculous considering Joe D's insistence that they were going to make a move just about every season since then.
In Dumars's defense, the franchise basically didn't have an owner for a big portion of that time, which may have tied his hands.
While true, it shows how clueless Mrs. D was after Bill died. Rather than let Joe make moves to potentially improve a team that had trade assets, she (allegedly) made Joe sit on his hands as the franchise dwindled into obscurity, thus lowering the overall value of the Stones.
Mr. D wanted the team to go to his kids, and stay in the family, and she couldn't sell his stuff off fast enough. Got long timers to jump ship...heck, even had a guy commit suicide.
Back in 04-06, people were calling JoeD one of the sharpest execs in the league... Which apparently made him angry, because he's done everything possiblle since then to dispell that reputation. Hopefully this is a sign that things are trending the opposite way.
Henson was in college for 3 seasons. But agreed, I don't want the Pistons drafting him. He doesn't have the fram to add weight if we wanted him to.
They choose to give up future assets (1st round pick) in favor of maintaining mediocrity (free agency spending).