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Its funny how he starts doing things right and ppl still calling for his head. He's gotten 3 straight steals off the draft, we'll have about 25mil in expiring, and probably another high pick.

Joe D's acquired the talent, Its Franks job to make the roster work.

*FYI When trying to acquire a coach 2 years ago we had: Ewing, Laimbeer, Woodson, M.Brown, and L Frank to pick from..................not exactly a lot too look forward too.


If Detroit were to fire Joe D right now, literally 3 seconds later, Joe would have 3-5 teams calling him.

Picking a coach is also part of Joe's job.

Dan Z wrote:Picking a coach is also part of Joe's job.

Joe D should get coach of the year for winning one game with that crap shoot of coaches. Woodson may have been a better choice, but i want to see him get out of the first round

Woodsanity wrote:Wasn't Darko a consensus number 2 pick? Not really Dumars fault. Not to mention Darko was better fit wise. It just turned out he was a bust.

Exactly. People forget how hyped Darko was. He was supposed to be the best Euro prospect ever. He was the consensus #2.

Why are people still talking about Darko? That was almost a decade ago...

ComboGuardCity wrote:

Woodsanity wrote:Wasn't Darko a consensus number 2 pick? Not really Dumars fault. Not to mention Darko was better fit wise. It just turned out he was a bust.

Exactly. People forget how hyped Darko was. He was supposed to be the best Euro prospect ever. He was the consensus #2.

IF darko had any sense of work ethic and wasn't such a d*. He probably would have been a top5 center through his career

I_Socrates wrote:

FlipTSO wrote:I never hear ppl talk about Riley's #2 pick gaffe, taking Beasley over Westbrook, Love, Gordon, Hibbert, Ibaka, B Lopez, etc. Its only Dumars taking Darko over Wade, Carmelo, Bosh.

At that point in time, Beasley was viewed as a can't miss number one or number 2 pick. You can't possibly blame Riely for picking him over any of those other guys, most of whom were viewed as projects.

Meanwhile, Carmelo was the can't miss talent in 03 after LeBron, and Darko was a HUGE unknown but still regarded highly as a project big. Imagine that 04 Pistons team with Melo instead of Darko.

%99 of the mock drafts had Darko at number 2.

Chad Ford's insights: http://sports.espn.go.com/nbadraft/d03/story?id=1572643

Woodsanity wrote:Wasn't Darko a consensus number 2 pick? Not really Dumars fault. Not to mention Darko was better fit wise. It just turned out he was a bust.

Yep, there have been numerous reports that the Nuggets were praying that Dumars passed on Darko as they wanted him over Melo.

Dan Z wrote:Picking a coach is also part of Joe's job.

Picking coaches is much harder when you are not allowed to pay them a competitive wage and everybody knows the team is being sold meaning the coach could be out of a job at any time, even a few weeks after they were hired.

^Exactly. Most coach's weren't even interested at all because they had no idea who the new owner was going to be. On top of that, they were only offering a $1 mil/yr salary. What good coach out there would've accepted that deal, that Joe missed on hiring?

I think the Darko thing was because they already had Prince at the 3 who was looking to be a stud and Melo was not known as being a good defensive player like Lebron already was. Dumars maybe looked at Melo as a Stackhouse type player who could score but little else. Also Sheed didn't fall into their laps until midseason so if they had Sheed already on the roster at the 03 draft I think Melo would have been taken or they would have at least traded down for a guy like Bosh if they did still take Darko as the Raptors really,really wanted him at that time. I beleve its the most likely scenerio he would trade down for Bosh then actually keep Melo if he took him as hard as that is to believe the way he is playing now for NY. This was all affected by Rasheed Wallace not being on the team at that time.

Sheed would have been a perfect mentor for Bosh. Darko was a totally different type of player who didn't speak good English and was pampered in Europe. He didn't warm up to his teammates his whole tenure in Detroit and felt isolated. He was meant to be a Zydrunas Illgauskas type player with no pressure to be a superstar.GM's desperately wanted to find the next Dirk so bad that they gambled high picks on any guy who could maybe develope into that.

He has brought in Drummond and Monroe, with Knight playing better and a top 5 pick this year most likely coming up.

He has made some bad decisions, but he is quietly redeeming himself.

Dumars admitted he made a mistake in how he evaluated Darko and learned from that and does extensive background & personality checks now. And falling for an overhyped big man is mistake every GM in the league makes. Even LA traded a prime Caron Butler for Kwame Brown. And Butler produced a 18 & 6 year in Washington after the trade.

Dumars has done a great job with his big man picks since then, Monroe & Drummond are great.

But he's dealing with Detroit not being a FA destination, changing ownership, and no luck w/ the lottery balls. If 7 is the highest you draft, it's going to be tough to find a superstar that drops that low.

Come on people, forget talking about Darko and sheed and so on. That stuff is THE PAST.

Let's talk about what he's done in the last 4 years or so:

Terrible.

^
Joe had a bad 2009 offseason but has been correcting it ever since. Now, we have a boatload of expirings, and good young prospects. We aren't competitive at this point but we have a very good young core and a lot of capspace to make moves. We have entered our rebuild and that is fine.

A core of Knight/Singler/Monroe/Drummond + another lottery pick and a lot of capspace is a good position to be in. There are teams who have consistently drafted ahead of us, whose future is not as bright as ours so Joe D has very quietly been redeeming himself.