Who wins the next championship between the Pistons, Tigers, Red Wings, and Lions?
I have
1. Tigers: Good but not great team that can never seem to get over the hump. Questionable managing but has as much talent as anyone in the country.
2. Pistons: Have a great player in Andre Drummond locked up but need more talent at other positions. SVG is the best coach currently residing in Detroit.
3. Red Wings: Have an aging roster but are still good enough to make the playoffs every year. Larkin is a nice piece to build around but Holland can't seem to bring in any top players since the last championship.
4. Lions: Absolute mess of an organization. Making the playoffs seems like a tall order.
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Definitely Red Wings. Pistons are absent a superstar in a supersar based league. Tigers are well beyond their window of oportunity, and the Lions.. well...
OP clearly hasn't checked the Red Wings rosted in 5-6 years. its actually pretty young
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Pistons have Andre Drummond who is ascending as a player and is only 22.
the Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Nutcracker Green quartet.
I'd say the Pistons are the closest, but I think there are barriers to them becoming a super team.
A Top 8ish team has a much better chance of winning the Cup, so I've gotta go with the WIngs in a long horizon.
Baseball being baseball, the Tigers could eek into the playoff and win a World Series this year if they got all the bloop hits and the other teams hit at lot of atom balls. But their window for winning is awfully short before those long term contracts take them from a team with a chance to make the playoffs and get lucky to a below 0.500 club.
And then there's the Lions. I'd be happy to see the second playoff win of my lifetime.
Durant scored 20 PPG his first season, and then bumped up to 25 pts, 6 reb, 3 assists his next season.
Curry's star is STILL rising, poor finals aside. He's the best or 2nd best player in the league.
Klay Thomson, hard comparison. Both are good players.
Saying he is "clearly on his way to outproducing" those guys requires a second consideration. In order to be considered a superstar, you need to be able to be on the court in the last 10 minutes when your team needs you. There are like 4 or 5 superstars in the NBA. He's somewhere in the middle of the "star" pack.
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I used to be a Pistons fan until the NBA turned into whatever it is now. The answer to your question should be no. Andre doesnt have a multi- million dollar shoe deal so he isn't a "star" and has no chance of taking a team on his back far into the playoffs. That's just how the NBA is now. No shoe deal star = no championships. Unless you are the Spurs.
Your last sentence basically just destroyed your entire argument.
Spurs are one of the best dynasties of the 2000s and none of them are superstar egos.
I don't see the correlation between shoe deals and championships. They basically all have big endorsements.
being guided by a prime directive to maximize all NBA-related revenue.
Even if he becomes a superstar,
one--even Lebron--isn't enough, and I don't see Detroit having the wherewithall to assemble three or four.
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Disagree -- Dwight Howard and DeAndre Jordan are superstars and can't shoot free-throws. Drummond statistically is comparable to these two
I would argue that the Pistons have won 3 titles in the last 30 years without a true superstar. However, they are kinda the exception to the rule, and I don't see them becoming anything more than a good to very good team in the next few years.
The '04 team had 4 starters drafted in the top 8. No superstars but that team but had untapped talent
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that he could dominate a game with defense and rebounding. He is, after all, a Hall of Famer.
http://www.nba.com/bulls/history/smith_hof2011_110813.html
Joe Dumars was also a Hall of Famer.
Bad Boys, no.
They had PLENTY of talent on that team. It's some weird idea that the Bad Boys were a bunch of rag tag dudes that somehow made it work.
Three hall of famers.
I think they'd have to have the fortune of facing a 2004 Lakers-like team, with Kobe acting as a defacto 6th Piston defender by keeping the ball away from Shaq.
If the Pistons hadn't been dealing with Bird's Celtics and Magic's Lakers at one end, and then Jordan's Bulls at the other, they might have won 4 or 5 titles. All 4 of those teams were incredibly strong. The Bulls ended up winning the most titles because by the time they ascended, no one else was around to really challenge them. Don't get me wrong--they were clearly the best, but unlike the Celtics, Lakers and Pistons, they didn't really have another great team or two that they had to battle every year to win it.
Isiah Thomas is one of the top 5 point guards in the history of the NBA. He was a superstar.
You would argue that but you would be wrong. Isiah Thomas was a superstar.
were a lot like Curry's Warriors. The Curry/Thompson dynamic is very similar to Thomas/Dumars. The rest of the roster were overqualified for supporting roles but fit in wonderfully around the stars.
- Aguirre/Barnes (complementary scoring forward)
- Rodman/Iguadala (versatile defensive stopper off the bench)
- Green/Laimbeer (not afraid to hit a 3 or an opponent's groin)
- Mahorn/Bogut (banger)
- Johnson/Livingston (bench guard who can play beside anyone)
Different eras, so the Pistons were a bigger and more physical team, but the way the team is built around scoring guards offensively and committed to elite defense is similar.
Except Aguirre and Harrison Barnes. Aguirre was a three-time all star and absolute beast before joining the Bad Boys. He never shot the three very well, that's basically all Barnes is on the team to do.
Aguirre could have easily handled a ton more on that team if asked. Barnes was a true role player.
Aguirre was on his way down (29 years old) while Barnes (23) is on his way up, but their roles were quite similar. Both were complementary inside-out scoring forward who sacrificed shots to win. Either one could have been a 20ppg scorer on a bad team. Aguirre was in a different stage of his career (already proven and on the back end of his prime) while Barnes is younger (stilling improving approaching the start of his prime) but there are more similarities than differences.
Aguire was a great scorer, very likely better than Barnes will ever be, but at 29 his best seasons were behind him and he was always a mediocre-at-best defender. Barnes was a good scorer, underrated defender, positionally versatile, and fit in without taking dumb shots or trying to do too much.
I agree he's not the proven player Aguirre was, but you can view the Rodman/Iguadala comp as the mirror of this.At the time Rodman wasn't at Iguadalas level either, he was just an guy trying to prove himself. I don't think it would be a shock to see Barnes playing at at a fringe all-star level within the next 3 years -- especially if he fits in between Matthews and Nowitzki in Dallas.
the Pistons really only got Aguirre because they felt Dantley hogged the ball too much. Dantley was an unbelievably efficient scorer. He pretty much scored or drew a foul on every possession. But he ground the game to a halt and was a black-hole on offense, which kept the PIstons from running the guard-oriented offense that they really wanted to run.
Dantley had been a superstar in the league before coming to the Pistons as well. And he was on all of the Pistons teams that made deep playoff runs except for the '89 and '90 teams (he was traded during the '89 season I believe)
Aguirre had a 1.7 VORP in 88-89 and 1.3 in 89-90.
Barnes was 1.8 VORP last year and 0.9 this season.
Very similar overall value.
or not, but Dennis Rodman won them two basketball games. Dennis Rodman was the reason they were successful."
-Opposing coach George Karl of the Seattle Supersonics in 1996 after the NBA Finals.
That's one helluva "supporting role" player. (and Hall of Famer) It was said that if he had trained for the 400 M hurdles, he would have had a shot at an Olympic medal. He was that freakish an athlete.
Also check out Rodman's dive into the stands/block at 0:15/0:17 (two separate plays), guarding Shaq/hounding Jordan & finishing with a block/Pippen rejection/steal from Magic/iconic rebound battle with Barkley at 0:30 / 0:35 / 0:42 / 0:47 / 0:55
that some advanced statisticians have Rodman as one of the top 5 (i think) adjusted plus minus players of all time. i.e. one of the most valuable players ever. He was so good at defense and so good at getting his team additional possessions that he didn't even have to score (even though he did that at a pretty high efficiency given that his points came on dunks and putbacks). Given that he won 5 rings (or more with the Spurs?), it makes some sense.
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so I'm pretty sure I'll be DEAD.
But thanks, Kiddo!
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University of Michigan in football!
I know it's not one of the choices, I just don't think I will be alive long enough to see any of those teams win a championship in my lifetime. UofM football on the other hand.....We got JIM HARBAUGH! That is all! :)
We are talking about Jim Harbaugh, so it's never out of the realm of possibility.
Be warned though, should it happen, Saban and his worshippers, along with the SEC, might just complain and make a rule to ban the NFL cause they will see no value in it for the student athletes.
1. Pistons - Have a good amount of young talent and a top notch coach. Hard to see them beating a superstar laden team in the playoffs, but then again 04 happened so who knows.
2. Red Wings - Not particularly close and for some reason can't attract good FAs, but they still have a highly rated farm system and have proven time and again to be one of the best organizations in drafting and developing talent. As the young guys continue to grow this team could be back in the NHL's upper echelon before long.
3. Lions - Based mostly on Bob Quinn knowing what the hell he's doing. Remains to be seen of course, but he comes from a great organization.
4. Tigers - Aging roster, bottom third farm system. What will happen when Ilitch isn't around to throw money at the most expensive FAs? I think the Tigers are headed for a long rebuild soon, and are nowhere near good enough to win a championship this year.
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Except the Tigers could sneak into the Wildcard and once you're in you never know.
the Ilich family will pay him an ungodly amount of money to come fix this mess. It's been over 30 years since we won so it's close to qualifying.
Playoff appearances in 5 of the last 10 ten years with 2 World Series appearances is far from a mess.
Good news: Drummond - as a 23 year old with elite athleticism and size - is a great cornerstone. To consider him an all-star or legit franchise player is speculative, but he's trending in the right direction. He's probably a top 10 asset in the NBA.
Bad news is that they don't have a single other player who projects to an all-star level and have locked in a mediocre roster around him with very little flexibility to improve.
-Johnson is the team's best bet to offer Drummond an all-star partner. If he develops into the Jimmy Butler-caliber player they envision him as, the Pistons might be able to contend. The odds are long, but it's possible.
-Jackson is an average starting PG overall because his defense is an embarrasment. He needs the ball to be effective and, while he is good, he's far from an elite offensive player. To win a title with him, he'd have to improve his 3-point shooting dramatically and learn to play defense. Neither are particularly likely given that he is not young and already at or near his peak.
-KCP is a good defensive player, but he is headed for a MAX contract that will pay him like an all-star. His 3 point shooting remains a liability and drags the entire offense's efficiency down.
-Harris is a good offensive player who can create matchup problems as a scoring 4, but is a tweener who can't defend bigger 4s or smaller 3s. Playoff defense shuts him down. His 3 point shooting is OK, but the fact that he is probably the best 3 point shooter amongst the other starters is a huge problem.
Those 5 guys are all going to be on MAX contracts (or close) within the next couple years (assuming things go well with Johnson). Not 1 of them is a proven all-star. Only 2 are even proven to be league-average starters.
The rest of the roster is mostly well-paid backups (exception: Morris is a huge bargain). They just used a 1st round pick on a guy even they don't have confidence in being a contributor within the next 3 years and doesn't have much upside beyond being a quality back-end rotation player (All the flaws of Kevin Love without the elite offense).
They have no cap flexibility and seem firmly headed for a 4 or 5 seed for the next few years if nothing goes wrong. SVG is a better than average coach but his vision is dated and he and Bower have a very short-sighted approach that values short-term incremental improvement over long-term resource allocation.
I am very confident that Pistons will have a good team over the next 4 or 5 years and just as confident that they will not have a great team in that span.
Any sport where randomness is a major factor (MLB, NFL) offers higher odds for a Detroit title than the Pistons winning an NBA championship. I'd feel more comfortable projecting the Tigers to be a top 5 team with an elite pitching rotation in the next 3-4 years than the Pistons having a top 5 team. The Tigers may not have the horses either, but they aren't locked into their current personnel the same way either.