Comments on: Biggest trade deadline disappointment? The glory of the 10-day contract will never materialize

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 22:33:12 +0000

Fair enough. If you consider Prince a better player than Butler, that more or less nullifies my point. It was contingent on my belief that those two players are exceedingly close to equal.

By: Dan Feldman

Dan Feldman — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 22:07:07 +0000

Laser,

2005-06 Heat: NBA champions

2007-08 Heat: 15-67

1997-2006 Pacers: playoffs every year, four conference-finals appearances, one Finals appearance

2006-11 Pacers: no winning seasons

2005-10 Cavaliers: 54.4 wins per season, won at least one playoff series each year, one conference-finals appearance, one Finals appearance

2010-11 Cavaliers: 10-47

2001-07 Nets: won playoff series in five-of-six years, reached Finals twice

2007-11 Nets: 97-206

There are plenty of other examples. You have no perspective.

By: Dan Feldman

Dan Feldman — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:46:09 +0000

Laser,

1. You're smart enough to tell that wasn't the biggest disappointment. It's so far from it Patrick figured nobody could make the mistake of reading his headline literally.

2. I think there was a decent chance the Pistons would have had to buy out Butler as part of the trade. The Mavericks like what he brings to their locker room, and he's been working to be ready for the playoffs, even if there's only a slight chance.

3. The 2.2 number accounts for the odds of catching the birds in the bush. If you catch them, they're worth more than 2.2.

4. Nobody actually believes you're leaving. More importantly, nobody cares. You're not convincing anyone with some grand crusade.

By: Patrick Hayes

Patrick Hayes — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:43:43 +0000

Tim, I just don't agree that they had to take that trade.

I mean, I would've been fine with the decision if they did it. I'm also fine that they didn't.

You could probably make the case that getting Prince the hell away from young players wouldn't be a bad thing, and I certainly wouldn't argue after today's events. But like him or not, he's still going to have value to contenders, moreso than Butler would because Butler is a less efficient player who is coming off an injury that cost him an entire season. He also was pretty bad overall during his Dallas career and had injury issues in Washington. If you're trying to convince me they're pretty much equal value-wise, I'm not buying it.

Prince has infinitely more value to a contending team where he can be a fourth or fifth option rather than a mediocre or bad one, as we've seen the last couple seasons. Contending teams most likely won't have the cap room to sign him outright. He's still only 29 years old and already has a ring, so to think he's going to take a smaller deal to ring chase is improbable. My guess is a team will want him and be amenable to a sign and trade where, at minimum, they'll offer a deal similar to the one Dallas offered.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:06:26 +0000

@Hayes, in response to the number 4 part of your response, you repeat this general sentiment that keeping Tay was worth it because he has a chance of turning into value as a sign-and-trade. But that completely ignores the fact that the exact some advantage lies in having Butler. They are players of comparable value. Dallas’ pick would not be an amazing prize. But it would be an asset, and it would cost nothing from the Pistons perspective. It just switches which player we have next summer to try and get something with a sign and trade. The only loss is Prince’s play for the rest of this season, which has no value to Detroit. Although Dumars probably does value it and is probably still thinking there is a shot of making the playoffs. Not taking that deal isn’t going to hurt Detroit very much. But it is frustrating because it is just so stupid. There was an opportunity to get something for nothing and he didn’t take it (And he could have saved a bit of money too).
That move was like watching the Grizzlies offer Gay a max contract over the summer. It wasn’t the worst contract handed out but it was in at least one sense the stupidest because there was a no-lose way to get him cheaper. They just had to sit tight and wait to see if anyone offered him a deal. If no one did after a while, his value goes down slightly. If someone does, it is at most a max contract which they simply would have to match and it still would have been a less rich deal than the one they gave him. Not doing this Prince deal was just like that. No disaster but just one more painfully stupid decision on top of a recent pile of them.

By: Laser

Laser — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 18:54:58 +0000

1) i’ll take this response as you being cute.

2) i’m not the first to miss who wrote a particular blog; i’m WELL aware feldman was the one who concocted that absurd math problem. also, “you” could mean PistonPowered. in this case, it did!

3) summers is a dead duck. he’ll see no minutes here.

4) i would have traded these guys a LONG time ago. the rockets asked about rip when they ended up trading for kevin martin, plenty people have wanted tayshaun for a while. joe has an incredible knack for overvaluing (rip, tayshaun, max with that extension, amir early on, etc.) OR undervaluing (chauncey, afflalo, amir at the end, etc.) his players, never having a reasonable idea what someone is worth, constantly acting on his misperceptions and costing this team dearly. at a minimum, tayshaun would have gotten us ONE concrete asset to show for our decade of glory. because there’s nothing else left but memories. and i don’t understand why we couldn’t have gotten these kinds of things (future pick, trade exception, an unwanted player on a long term contract) this summer if butler was our expiring contract rather than tayshaun.

By: Laser

Laser — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 18:44:14 +0000

shoot, i forgot one more:

5) this may not be the franchise’s darkest hour, but not when you look at the team’s assets when this DEbuilding project started. has any franchise fallen so far so fast, squandering an embarrassment of riches like the pistons have?? seven years ago they were world champions, five years ago they had four all-stars, they contended for most of the decade and had, what, a dozen all-star appearances in total. and all we have to show for this are memories. not a single one of these assets was rolled over. not one. ben and rasheed walked for nothing, and tayshaun’s about to follow in their footsteps. and those are the lucky ones. chauncey and dyess got turned swiftly into liabilities in the forms of gordon and charlie. rip is unmovable and disgruntled and redundant, hanging over our collective head like the sword of Damocles for two more years. and all of this happened under one man’s watch.

By: Patrick Hayes

Patrick Hayes — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 18:12:29 +0000

1). Shutup

2). I didn't write the calculation you are referring to.

3). Summers - yes, if Prince is injured. White - no, but he is under contract anyway for next year so it's not as pressing and he'll get a lot of playing time in Fort Wayne if nothing else.

4). Keeping him didn't make sense. Trading him in the Dallas deal didn't make sense. What made the most sense is trading him for a player under contract that the other team wanted to shed. Dumars was not in a position to do that. Second option: trade him for an expiring and a late pick. Dumars was in a position to do that. But what's the value? A crappy late first in an even crappier draft? Sure, maybe you find an OK player. There's an even longer history of NBA Drafts that suggests you won't though. So you can trade him for next to nothing, or you can risk that he'll sign somewhere for nothing. But possibly, he'll find a team that wants him and can't afford him but is willing to do a sign and trade. At worst, Pistons get a trade exception or something. At a minimum, maybe they get a future pick that they could've got from Dallas, except over the summer getting it might mean they get a late first in a better draft next year. And maybe the team has a player that would be useful to Detroit that they'd throw in.

I don't get your demand for answers. There are reasons a trade to Dallas made sense and didn't make sense. But to act like the 29th or 30th pick in the draft was some windfall the Pistons clearly missed out on is ridiculous even by your standards.

By: Laser

Laser — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 17:54:01 +0000

1) that’s not the biggest disappointment. that’s a fringe concern. the biggest disappointment is that the team still hasn’t changed when it’s desperately needed it, repeatedly acknowledged that need, and been unable/unwilling to make changes. another missed opportunity, and certainly the biggest opportunity for a brighter outlook. the last few times the team missed chances to fix the roster problems, the only real consequence of waiting to pull the trigger was the waiting; none of our players were going anywhere, and it seemed like we wanted to establish value for guys like tayshaun whose seasons were killed by injury. this time around, we established values for assets like tracy and tayshaun but passed on deals that would have improved our fortunes, but we lose them in the offseason for nothing because the value offered wasn’t “enough.” NEWS FLASH, joe: nobody’s going to give you fair value for anything when you’re obviously desperate.

2) going back to your bizarre tayshaun trade/keep calculus problem, three things: (a) can you please explain to me what we can reasonably expect to receive in a sign-and-trade? my best guess is “next to nothing,” and i can’t imagine why tayshaun is going to receive an offer, go to presumably the highest bidder, then that bidder is going to give us a nice building block for NO REASON WHATSOEVER. please explain it, because keeping tayshaun looks like an objective mistake; (b) even if i was to take your word for that 2 is better than 2.2 nonsense, and i don’t because it’s nonsense, if “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” surely 2 in the hand is worth more than 2.2 in the bush. we could have gotten a concrete return for the last remaining asset of our heyday, and we didn’t; (c) someone pointed out, correctly, that we would have had similar sign-and-trade rights with butler, who is a comparable player to tayshaun and would have still netted us a theoretical 2.1 according to your awful math problem analogy. and 4.1 > 2.2 no matter how you slice it.

3) do you honestly expect the pistons to give “extended looks” at terrico and dajuan? what is it about their recent decisions that leads you to believe there’s even a CHANCE that ever happens?? they’re going to play the veterans who won’t be here next year major minutes at the expense of jump-starting the chemistry that’s been so elusive already, and they’ll try to win as many games as humanly possible. they’ve made up their minds about dajuan, and terrico’s going to be inactive next season and follow in dajaun’s footsteps. they’ll both go on to be good role players for other teams, while we pay other guys ten times more to do less. does there ever come a point when you can take off the rose colored glasses and recognize an organization’s patterns?

4) i’ll probably be around through the weekend, mostly so i can get a straight answer on my first question. i just don’t understand how anyone could think keeping tayshaun made any sense on any level.