Comments on: Ben Wallace: “Coaches and players usually don’t like each other”

By: Laser

Laser — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:43:21 +0000

yes. best that joe gets all the credit for his successes and no blame whatsoever for his failures. that’s the way the world should work.

By: Laser

Laser — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:42:12 +0000

there’s nothing i like more than a joe dumars apologists. we all know he built a championship. he’s taken all the credit in the world for it. now it’s time to take the blame. he’s not “not allowed” to make trades, just limited by ownership in what trades he can make. but ownership hasn’t limited his flexibility ONE TENTH as much as the players he assembled and the contracts he gave them. ownership would love for him to make certain trades. get rid of some of these perimeter players, add some big bodies, shed salary, get younger, etc. but joe is unable to make the trades he wants to make, because nobody wants the players he’d like to trade.

the man gets a free pass for not being able to make any trades, but he’s been the GM for a decade. he single-handedly put this team together, and the team F*CKING STINKS. stop pretending like someone else handed him this mess. it’s his mess. ownership isn’t the problem, but ownership isn’t going to bail him out.

By: Laser

Laser — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:34:09 +0000

i dunno. you’ve certainly isolated the “pros” for the curry and kuester, but it’s not as easy as “the players played with curry and respected him and kuester was a larry brown disciple, so these were fine choices.” because we’ve all seen what these guys are capable of, and neither has looked like head coaching material for a minute. curry came off like a dullard from day one and was so bad they paid him $5 million dollars to go away, and kuester speaks for himself. maybe he’s a good Xs and Os guy, but he’s miserable at managing personalities, it took him AN ETERNITY to sort out a sensible rotation. he stuck with so many bad combinations so long it boggles the mind. and when interviewed he’s got no air of authority whatsoever. he speaks only in platitudes, talks in circles. he’s obviously not a leader. there isn’t a chance in hell brian hill wouldn’t be a better candidate. from the limited exposure i’ve had to these guys, i can’t imagine what anyone would see in them as potential head coaches.

part of me wants to excuse him for these atrocious hires, since for all we know ownership wouldn’t allow him to get a big name coach, but these guys did make $12 million total over four years. so it’s not like he’s working with no budget. and if brian hill was available to assist, i’m sure he would have taken the first chair. i’d give it to him today if it was up to me.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 03:31:26 +0000

Of course i was jokinng, Tim. Of course I don’t believe Curry or Kuester were hired as fall guys.. I was just lightening up the comment boards is all..

And i completely agree about Saunders. I LOVED Saunders. 3 Eastern conference finals in a row – that’s impressive, no matter how you look at it…

By: steve

steve — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:22:54 +0000

that’s what happens when you take risks… sometimes they pan out and sometimes they don’t. we were a legit title contender for 5 years, you can’t take that away from him

By: steve

steve — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:19:22 +0000

hey dumars brought together a team that won a championship and had a chance to win a couple more. that’s more than you can say for most gm’s. now we are rebuilding and he isnt allowed to make any trades. i’m still happy with the job he has done even if some of the moves haven’t worked out.

By: Patrick Hayes

Patrick Hayes — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 21:59:33 +0000

Tim is exactly right here.

I mean, there are two options here. People can use hindsight, look at moves that haven't worked out, and say, "OMG ... Dumars is so dumb."

Or you can actually look at the context surrounding his moves. Saunders? Best coach available at the time, used to coaching veterans in Minnesota and, until McHale blew up the team with Cassell trade and not signing Spree, he had a team that was on the verge of getting out of the Western Conference and to the Finals. He was a good coach who was familiar with Detroit's best player, Billups, and they had a good relationship.

Curry? He played with a couple of these guys. He'd been an assistant for one year under Saunders so theoretically, he had some idea of minor tweaks that needed to be made to get the team over whatever internal things kept derailing them in the playoffs. The roster (at least to start the season) was still intact, and they had Billups, who would basically serve as offensive coordinator using key elements of Saunders' offense. Risky hire? For sure. But poor reasoning behind it? No way.

Kuester? Well, as Laser said somewhere, Dumars has expressed a desire to return to the tough, defensive-minded style of the previous era teams. So he hired an assistant to Larry Brown, who used that style to win a title here. Risky hire in the sense that Kuester didn't have experience. But poor reasoning? Nope.

I get that Dumars has had several moves turn out very badly lately. But to ignore that there were valid reasons he did the things he did or to suggest he purposely hired guys to be his fall guy is just beneath the readers of this blog. You guys are better than that.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 21:32:59 +0000

Do you honestly believe that any GM would intentionally hire poor coaches just to have fall guys? Dumars has made some pretty poor decisions, but there’s no way I think he would look for bad coaching hires.
I just wish that the players hadn’t been so headstrong with Flip Saunders. He did an incredible job with the Pistons. But they only heeded him begrudgingly in the regular season. Once playoffs hit, they shut him out entirely. They were a good enough bunch with strong enough chemistry to still live up to their cumulative talent. But they were no longer overachieving like they did in the regular season and in the playoffs under Brown. So they consistently got beat in the ECFs by either a better team (Boston) or a superstar hell bent on carrying his team (Lebron/Wade).

By: Laser

Laser — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:01:06 +0000

plenty wrong with this, trav. 1) you’ve still ended up pairing stuckey with rip, which we’ve seen more than enough of to know it doesn’t work. 2) stuckey’s probably not a good enough facilitator to be a backup PG. as instant offense off the bench with a unit that was utterly dependent on him for scoring, maybe. but we’re better off having a point guard on the floor. 3) the only thing stuckey does better than bynum is “be taller.” i know you hate bynum, but it’s just not rational. he’s not perfect, but he’s a fine backup point guard. 4) you’ve still got like $30 some million dollars committed to a mediocre backcourt once you extend stuckey, which is beyond comprehension. i’m less concerned with how we align the current batch of guards on the roster, which seems like a lost cause, as with what trades we can make to improve the team. what difference does it make which combinations of these guys we use? we’ve tried almost everything and the team still stinks. anything short of a personnel change is a waste of time.

By: Travis

Travis — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 18:07:06 +0000

So what if stuckey is not 100%, he backs up tmac. Ben Gordon starts, and Rip backs him up. Squeezing Bynum