CV gives me a chance to respond to some stuff.  I don’t think Dumars thought of him as much more than a band aid who he could flip and I think he relied on the word of John Hammond for that confidence too much.  However, I think the real answer to why Dumars picked 2 tweeners and one small forward that summer (Budinger shouldn’t count and Dumars certainly didn’t pick 4 small forwards as is misrepresented) was that he perceived a possible hole at PF and knew Prince’s contract was coming up.   I don’t know why this notion isn’t so obvious to everyone else, he hedged his bets between Prince, CV, Daye and Jerebko and Summers because he perceived possible areas of weakness.
“Why would you draft 4 small forwards” from a reporter puts Dumars on the defensive and no matter what he says in an isolated response, it is quite obvious that he could have given dozens of answers and been telling the truth about all of them because 15th and 2nd round picks come down to a variety of factors.  It’s not like Dumars is ever going to say, “Well, the other team picked the guy I really wanted”, when he is talking to the press.
I do think Dumars screwed himself with the timing of the trade because it was not the right summer to get under the cap and if you go back to the majority of Dumars’ moves, he always acted as quickly as possible to sign the best players he could.
It is all well and good now to give Dumars great credit for signing Billups for instance, but you could also take the tact the Dumars simply offered the MLE to the best free agent who was clearly the best available free agent who anyone could sign for MLE and he struck as soon as the gates opened and gave Billups every assurance–and liken it to how he went after BG since there was not even a Boozer on the market.
So ultimately, I don’t think the isolated signings of BG and CV are worthy of saying that Dumars totally sold out his values.  I hope that wasn’t too rambling for you.

That was ignorant. Admittedly, I haven’t taken any of your comments all that seriously since then.

I don’t know if you’re brain dead. I do know that you post rambling comments that are hard to follow, you don’t use the reply button correctly and you tend to accuse opinions that you don’t agree with of being biased or unfair.

So that’s fine. Despite multiple comments from Dumars to the contrary, as well as multiple personnel moves to the contrary, you don’t believe that seeking out offensive-minded players has been a heightened part of Dumars’ philosophy over the last three or four years. You have yet to say why you believe this, even in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. Charlie Villanueva, Ben Gordon and Austin Daye could totally be anchors of a great defensive team, I guess.

That comment said to me that Dumars felt the offense part of the stretch four was more important than finding a big who could shoot but who also could defend some. Those players do exist. Ryan Anderson is a stretch four who is pretty solid defensively right now, for example. Matt Bonner is another stretch four who has become a solid defender.

That statement, to me, proved that defense was somewhat of an afterthought.

Have you considered that maybe that’s the problem? You post A LOT. Like way too much sometimes. Also, you have a real problem figuring out that ‘reply’ button. So half the time you’re responding to something that was raised like 15 comments above and it becomes a wordy mess that no one can follow. I don’t respond to every comment. I try to get to what I can. Honestly, your descriptions of the points you want to make are not articulated clearly. Just say, “Do you think that this is really Dumars’ philosophy or are you just assuming?”

My response to that: Of course I’m assuming. But I think it’s a pretty educated assumption. The guy doesn’t do a lot of interviews. The ones he has done over the years, he’s given some pretty specific clues that he believed the league was changing, that he needed more offense and that he believed bad defensive players could be taught to be good defensive players. So yes, I’m comfortable assuming that those are or at least were parts of his philosophy, since he shared those things publicly on multiple occasions. Joe Dumars is free to contact me and I’d happily print a retraction if he wants to clear something up or feels something is out of context.

This was an opinion piece. It is clearly identifiable as such. It is three people discussing a viewpoint that I went into detail about in the previous post. Do I have bias? Absolutely. Anyone with a viewpoint does. But I did a sufficient job of explaining, with ample evidence, why I believe what I believe. You are the one who hasn’t done a good job of mounting a counter-argument. You’re counter-argument consists of “Your questions are mean derp!”

Secondly, even if they are phrased unfairly (which they aren’t), the two others participating could’ve easily said, “That’s a loaded question and here’s why.” It’s not like I tricked them into answering how I wanted them to. They’re both thinking humans with brains who are opinionated themselves and also not shy about disagreeing and arguing. If they found a question unfair, they would’ve said so. For you to insinuate that I was trying to bait them into giving answers that I wanted is your way of implying they’re too dumb not to get tricked by me. That’s insulting. You owe Ryan and Dan an apology.