John Hollinger sure thinks so.
Let’s look ourselves in the mirror, fellow media members: We’ve all given the guy a free pass because of his amazing run to six straight conference finals and blithely ignored the fact that he’s screwed up a hundred ways from Tuesday since he decided to whack Flip Saunders after the 2008 conference finals.
Check out the résumé and find me a correct decision. Just one. Fire Saunders? Wrong. Hire Michael Curry? Wrong. Trade Chauncey Billups? Wrong. Extend Richard Hamilton? Wrong. Sign Kwame Brown? Wrong. Go after Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva? Wrong again.
In two years, the Pistons have gone from one of the best teams in basketball to among the worst. They stink, they’re capped out, and they don’t have much in the way of young talent; for all we know, in two years they’re going to be the Pittsburgh Pisces or the Seattle Grunge or something. If Isiah Thomas or Rob Babcock had done this, we’d have buried them alive by now, so it’s only fair for us to point out that regardless of his previous track record, Dumars is on a two-year losing streak of McHalian proportions.
No arguments here, though I don’t know that keeping Flip Saunders as your head coach is ever the right move.
Let’s not forget that it was Dumars who picked Darko Milicic #2 overall back in 2003. The next three picks? Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. Ouch. Dumars got a pass on that pick because of the aforementioned six straight Conference Finals and the fact that the Pistons won the title in 2004. But the Billups trade and his performance in last summer’s free agency understandably has a lot of Piston fans scratching their heads.
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Trading for Iverson was not really a misstake. People blamed Iverson for everything, but Rip agreed with him about the coaches lies. Stuckey should never have started above AI or Rip. The coach was a joke. AI left now, and they are worse. It was never AI. And now all the DET fan’s or any other people who blamed AI can go f*** them selfs. They got nothing to say now. AI is gone can’t blame him now for being pathetic.
Joe D is probably overrated. As a pistons fan, i’ve seen his decisions.
1/Yes Darko was a huge mistake, but by most accounts a lot of teams would have piked him, but Joe d was the unlucky one who did.
2/Trading Billips and taking a risk on AI wasn’t all that bad because the main reason was to get cap space which he got.
3/ Charlie V and Gordon have been crazy inconsistent, but they have both had injuries and the team as a whole haven’t had enough games together to gel.
I dont think Joe D is all that bad, he takes risks, and some don’t turn out, but some have and thats how he built the Championship team in 04. This offseason will be huge in the way joe will be percieved in the future.
I still think Okur should have been kept over signing McDyess.