worse Detroit move: Darko or AI?

[BadMofoPimp]

William Bedford was the worst.

[Pharaoh]

It makes me wonder that no one has mentioned Wade as an available pick? Yes, I know he once said he really didn't want to play for the Pistons, but had they drafted him I'm convinced he'd have been fine. If you don't worry about Prince with Carmelo there, do you really worry about Rip with Wade available? In retrospect, certainly not!

Wade is an absolute "hindsight being 20/20" pick. Operating with the benefit of hindsight, the very clear move is likely getting an insane trade return from Toronto or Miami for pick #2 to move down to #4-5 and taking Wade, then trading Rip to fill the hole created by Ben's departure.

I don't agree with that. Wade was an unstoppable beast in the NCAA tournament that year, carrying Marquette to the final four. I was surprised he was still on the board for Miami at 5.

I was online in the years leading up to the Darko draft.

Only ONE forum member was talking about us taking Wade! His name was higher warrior and we used to post on Scout (was called something else back then)

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[hoophabit]

Wade is an absolute "hindsight being 20/20" pick. Operating with the benefit of hindsight, the very clear move is likely getting an insane trade return from Toronto or Miami for pick #2 to move down to #4-5 and taking Wade, then trading Rip to fill the hole created by Ben's departure.

I don't agree with that. Wade was an unstoppable beast in the NCAA tournament that year, carrying Marquette to the final four. I was surprised he was still on the board for Miami at 5.

I was online in the years leading up to the Darko draft.

Only ONE forum member was talking about us taking Wade! His name was higher warrior and we used to post on Scout (was called something else back then)

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I agree that Wade was not widely supported as the Pistons' pick at the time of the draft. He was highly regarded however, and was anticipated as being a high draft pick. Clearly, it was widely underestimated just how great he is.

I can't claim I wanted Wade. I was in the Darko camp. I had been reading Basketball Times and they'd been mentioning this Serbian wunderkind for a couple of years in their Euro scouting. Great size, length, and athleticism. A workout wonder. All true, but irrelevant if the player doesn't really care about the game. At the time the question was Darko or Melo.

[Alexander]

I'm not as upset about missing on Anthony/Bosh as I am about how naive Joe was when it came to the drafting process and he didn't do his due diligence in vetting Darko.
I'm not as upset about trading Chauncey away and *retooling* as I am about the cap space being used on Gordon and Villanueva and then using them in different roles than the ones they thrived with on the Bulls and Bucks, respectively.

It's really tough. One makes me think that Joe got really lucky in some of his drafting decisions, and the other reminds me that Joe may have lucked into his "blueprint" that he never adjusted away from.

I don't think Joe lucked into the blueprint - his time as a Bad Boy would have been gold as was his time spent as the "Good Guy" around the league.

The drama was as his playing days got further and further from view he lost the advantage he had over other GMs - he'd been in the locker room and had played with and against a lot of guys

Eventually he was flying blind IMO and while a lot of quality organizations were moving towards analytics Joe didn't...so he went from having an edgeto being behind the curve really quick.

Throw in the ownership issue and I think it's obvious how Joe went from "Wow, he's a great GM" to "OMG he's crapola"

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I hear that. He was initially plugged in. He got Corliss, Cliffy, Barry, Campbell, Davis, all sorts of vets that he knew from playing against. They all provided great stability and were wonderful rotation players and made having a strong bench into a fashionable thing. That sort of magic definitely wore off at the end of his tenure. The vets he acquired in later years were washed up and didn't fit into any sort of plan. Why get McGrady, Webber, Iverson, Calderon when you're not contending and have all sorts of culture issues?
Joe seemed to be a "system" GM, however. I understand that if you're a coach, or if you're a coach with personnel power, like SVG; get the players that fit your system. Stuckey, Gordon, Villanueva, were things that Joe forced. Joe seemed to INSIST upon 03-04 as the prototype Pistons team, and he tried to find players that were similar to Chauncey, to Sheed, and so on. Bringing back Chauncey, bringing back Ben, bringing back Tayshaun all showed that he only seemed to know how to recreate one thing, and went through six coaches in the process, further showing that he was desperate to regress to the the championship blueprint and clueless as to how to implement it in the modern game. There was a lot of luck involved in Chauncey finding a home and avoiding journeyman status, Ben Wallace being an absolute anomaly of a HOF caliber defensive player that wasn't even drafted, and the Rasheed trade even being available.

I'm really curious what Joe would have done had the Sheed trade not come around. Just re-sign Okur? and then what? Roll with Chauncey/Rip/Tayshaun/Memo/Ben for half a decade and spend another half trying to find the next Okur rather than the next Sheed?

[Pharaoh]

We made the ECF before getting Sheed so:

Would have retained Okur

IF we never get Sheed maybe Darko gets to play more, maybe he develops into something useful, maybe we trade him earlier for a "win now" piece

Getting Sheed didn't change anything as far as Darko was concerned - he wasn't playing much before we got him

NOT getting Sheed changes everything...

Funny thing: one of the picks we gave up to get Sheed became Josh Smith!

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[hoophabit]

Funny thing: one of the picks we gave up to get Sheed became Josh Smith!

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We were kind of like a squirrel crossing the road on that one. We had made it to safety and then decided to run right back into disaster.