Why do the Pistons stink?

[Rip32]

This is franchise with history and tradition of winning.

[Pandev]

Toughest schedule and most games back to backs so far in the entire league certainly haven’t helped us stay injury free.

Players need rest and preferably some sleep.

[Invictus88]

This is franchise with history and tradition of winning.

A 20 year stretch of futility preceded the bad boys era.
The Bad Boys had 9 good seasons.
9 years of futility followed that.
7-8 years of success with the 2004 squad.
10 years of futility have followed that so far.

I think it's more accurate to say that this is a franchise that every 10 years or so does something interesting but follows that up with 10 years of tough sledding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Detroit_Pistons_seasons

Toughest schedule and most games back to backs so far in the entire league certainly haven’t helped us stay injury free.

Players need rest and preferably some sleep.

I think 'busiest schedule' is probably a better term. The opposition we have faced has been fairly anemic.

[Billl]

Talent wins and we don't have it. The only way to get it is to sign a FA, draft a guy, or get a total bargain trade. It's detroit, so FA's are not coming. Ownership has decided that they aren't willing to bottom out, so that make the draft much less likely. We did manage to get a star via trade, but that's only because of the injuries. It would take a heck of a lot of luck to win consistently that way. We did it once with Chauncey blowing up on an MLE deal, Ben becoming Ben, and Sheed getting gifted to us, but it would take that type of luck again to fill out a team around blake.

[JNewton]

Right now, the problem is ownership. Even though I disagreed with Davidson's reluctance to pay luxury tax during the Goin' to Work era, there was always strong direction under him. Since he died, the Pistons are a rudderless ship. It should be blatantly obvious that the absentee owner/cocaine enthusiast Tom Gores has no idea what he is doing, and I doubt the Pistons are going to be relevant anytime soon under his watch.

[Invictus88]

Right now, the problem is ownership. Even though I disagreed with Davidson's reluctance to pay luxury tax during the Goin' to Work era, there was always strong direction under him. Since he died, the Pistons are a rudderless ship. It should be blatantly obvious that the absentee owner/cocaine enthusiast Tom Gores has no idea what he is doing, and I doubt the Pistons are going to be relevant anytime soon under his watch.

People have short memories.

The last bits of the Davidson era were completely aimless (John Kuester / L. Frank Era). Davidson owned the Pistons since '74 so they were absolutely terrible for almost a decade before drafting Isaiah Thomas. Then once the Bad Boys aged away they were terrible again until we lucked into Grant Hill. And then things turned bad again -- unless you think the signings of CharlieV and Ben Gordon are indicators of strong direction....

P.S. Although to be completely fair; those last two signings could have been after Bill passed away. Not sure.

[JNewton]

Right now, the problem is ownership. Even though I disagreed with Davidson's reluctance to pay luxury tax during the Goin' to Work era, there was always strong direction under him. Since he died, the Pistons are a rudderless ship. It should be blatantly obvious that the absentee owner/cocaine enthusiast Tom Gores has no idea what he is doing, and I doubt the Pistons are going to be relevant anytime soon under his watch.

People have short memories.

The last bits of the Davidson era were completely aimless (John Kuester / L. Frank Era). Davidson owned the Pistons since '74 so they were absolutely terrible for almost a decade before drafting Isaiah Thomas. Then once the Bad Boys aged away they were terrible again until we lucked into Grant Hill. And then things turned bad again -- unless you think the signings of CharlieV and Ben Gordon are indicators of strong direction....

P.S. Although to be completely fair; those last two signings could have been after Bill passed away. Not sure.

Everything you mention was after his passing and under the direction of Karen Davidson. Regardless my argument isn't really about the pros and cons of William Davidson, but the negatives of Tom Gores.

[Invictus88]

Right now, the problem is ownership. Even though I disagreed with Davidson's reluctance to pay luxury tax during the Goin' to Work era, there was always strong direction under him. Since he died, the Pistons are a rudderless ship. It should be blatantly obvious that the absentee owner/cocaine enthusiast Tom Gores has no idea what he is doing, and I doubt the Pistons are going to be relevant anytime soon under his watch.

People have short memories.

The last bits of the Davidson era were completely aimless (John Kuester / L. Frank Era). Davidson owned the Pistons since '74 so they were absolutely terrible for almost a decade before drafting Isaiah Thomas. Then once the Bad Boys aged away they were terrible again until we lucked into Grant Hill. And then things turned bad again -- unless you think the signings of CharlieV and Ben Gordon are indicators of strong direction....

P.S. Although to be completely fair; those last two signings could have been after Bill passed away. Not sure.

Everything you mention was after his passing and under the direction of Karen Davidson. Regardless my argument isn't really about the pros and cons of William Davidson, but the negatives of Tom Gores.

A decade of futility from '74 to '83 was not after his passing.
A 9 year span in between the Bad Boys and the 2K4 squad was not after his passing.

I make no apologies for Gores. He is his own brand of 'special'. But you need to compare him to someone else besides Bill Davidson. Saying statements like 'there was always strong direction under him' just aren't true.

[Manocad]

I’m a firm believer in the idea that a dead fish stinks from the head first so I’ll always tie extended failures of sports teams to the ownership. Bill D was a great owner and no one would ever deny that, but I believe that in the sense that he loved the team and clearly put money into making sure the Pistons had world class facilities while operating under an umbrella of honesty and integrity. But Mr. D was an automotive guy. He made great choices in McCloskey and Daly because they were high character guys who also happened to be really good at their jobs. Joe D is clearly a high character guy who maybe was average at his job and happened to catch lightning in a bottle. Anyone who was good at their job but maybe had some character issues generally didn’t last long or never got an opportunity (Larry Brown, Rick Carlisle, Isiah).

I think that long term team success is a function of the best “bang for the buck” combination of character and ability. Take the Patriots. Ability? Damn right—top notch from the GM to the coach to the QB. Character? Certainly suspect. Does Bob Kraft consider that to be an issue? Clearly not. And he’s just winning winning winning.

That runs down to the players too. Laimbeer. Mahorn. Sheed. Isiah. Definitely character issues that were overlooked because they brought championships. Lebron, Bosh and Wade—kinda shady how that went down, but it got a couple of championships.

In short, the Pistons have an owner who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground and thus wound up with a GM, coach and players who—to a man—are not great “bangs for the buck” save for Blake Griffin. And no, I’m not talking about players like Wood who appear to be great value at a moment in time. I’m talking about real needle movers in the longer term/bigger picture sense.

P.S.—this post is dedicated to all my detractors who seem to think I spent 14 years posting “U mad, bro? LOLZ” 60,000+ times.

[Snakebites]

Because history and tradition have nothing to do with the state of the team now. Being good in the past does not translate to future or even present success. Plus, we haven't been that great in our history. We're the 17th best team in all time winning percentage, though we have managed 3 rings. That's not a winning tradition on level with teams like San Antonio, Boston, or the Lakers. On average, we've been mediocre to sub-par overall.

We're poorly run. We draft poorly and make ill advised trades that ruin or lose us assets. It's not overly complicated.

[MotownMadness]

I’m a firm believer in the idea that a dead fish stinks from the head first so I’ll always tie extended failures of sports teams to the ownership. Bill D was a great owner and no one would ever deny that, but I believe that in the sense that he loved the team and clearly put money into making sure the Pistons had world class facilities while operating under an umbrella of honesty and integrity. But Mr. D was an automotive guy. He made great choices in McCloskey and Daly because they were high character guys who also happened to be really good at their jobs. Joe D is clearly a high character guy who maybe was average at his job and happened to catch lightning in a bottle. Anyone who was good at their job but maybe had some character issues generally didn’t last long or never got an opportunity (Larry Brown, Rick Carlisle, Isiah).

I think that long term team success is a function of the best “bang for the buck” combination of character and ability. Take the Patriots. Ability? Damn right—top notch from the GM to the coach to the QB. Character? Certainly suspect. Does Bob Kraft consider that to be an issue? Clearly not. And he’s just winning winning winning.

That runs down to the players too. Laimbeer. Mahorn. Sheed. Isiah. Definitely character issues that were overlooked because they brought championships. Lebron, Bosh and Wade—kinda shady how that went down, but it got a couple of championships.

In short, the Pistons have an owner who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground and thus wound up with a GM, coach and players who—to a man—are not great “bangs for the buck” save for Blake Griffin. And no, I’m not talking about players like Wood who appear to be great value at a moment in time. I’m talking about real needle movers in the longer term/bigger picture sense.

P.S.—this post is dedicated to all my detractors who seem to think I spent 14 years posting “U mad, bro? LOLZ” 60,000+ times.

Bravo!!!

[DetroitPistons]

We have been decimated by injuries and have played a lot of games early on. That's about it.

[MrBigShot]

I’m a firm believer in the idea that a dead fish stinks from the head first so I’ll always tie extended failures of sports teams to the ownership. Bill D was a great owner and no one would ever deny that, but I believe that in the sense that he loved the team and clearly put money into making sure the Pistons had world class facilities while operating under an umbrella of honesty and integrity. But Mr. D was an automotive guy. He made great choices in McCloskey and Daly because they were high character guys who also happened to be really good at their jobs. Joe D is clearly a high character guy who maybe was average at his job and happened to catch lightning in a bottle. Anyone who was good at their job but maybe had some character issues generally didn’t last long or never got an opportunity (Larry Brown, Rick Carlisle, Isiah).

I think that long term team success is a function of the best “bang for the buck” combination of character and ability. Take the Patriots. Ability? Damn right—top notch from the GM to the coach to the QB. Character? Certainly suspect. Does Bob Kraft consider that to be an issue? Clearly not. And he’s just winning winning winning.

That runs down to the players too. Laimbeer. Mahorn. Sheed. Isiah. Definitely character issues that were overlooked because they brought championships. Lebron, Bosh and Wade—kinda shady how that went down, but it got a couple of championships.

In short, the Pistons have an owner who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground and thus wound up with a GM, coach and players who—to a man—are not great “bangs for the buck” save for Blake Griffin. And no, I’m not talking about players like Wood who appear to be great value at a moment in time. I’m talking about real needle movers in the longer term/bigger picture sense.

P.S.—this post is dedicated to all my detractors who seem to think I spent 14 years posting “U mad, bro? LOLZ” 60,000+ times.

Ultimately the owner is the one at the top who is responsible for hiring the people who have the biggest impact on the team's talent, culture and staff so it's hard to argue with that logic.

I think Gores is just content to have bought the team for 325ish million iirc and had it more than triple in terms of value.

[Wallace_Wallace]

The last ten years it felt like we were putting some Great Value Band-aids on glaring holes, and we were not afraid to overpaid the hell out of these band-aids. Just because the Pistons had cap space or an exception doesn't mean they have to spend it. We have kneecapped our cap space and use them over our mid level prospect (could've tanked for better ones but whatever).

It's awesome in theory for Blake to join the Pistons, but with his injury concerns, we were probably better off by keeping Tobias Harris.

[Joker]

If a team's bad for a season or two, it's tricky to point fingers. It could be the players underperforming or needing more time to develop, it could be the coaching. And you can't really judge a GM based off of 1-2 seasons, because they may be inheriting a flawed roster that they'll need to revamp over a number of seasons.

If a team is bad for 4-5 seasons, I question the GM. In that amount of time, a GM can build up assets, shed bad contracts, and revamp the roster/coaching to their liking.

If a team is bad for the duration of a decade or more, I question the owner. If you're bad for this long, you're allowing one bad GM to continue for too long, or you keep replacing bad GM's with other bad GM's. Or perhaps you've got a decent GM but you're cheap on contracts or are interfering with their work.

[Pharaoh]

The playoff or bust mandate has doomed us as we're like a drug addict, doing anything possible to get the next quick fix.

If the goal is so low you gotta blame the owner. You can look at Portland and Indiana as examples where from the outside looking in it seems they're not looking to win a title but (almost) every year they're in the playoffs - it's sustained over years and years.

I'd prefer we have that goal - to have long term, sustainable success.

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[bstein14]

At some point if, the longer we continue to be a bottom 7 or 8 team in the NBA, you have to think ownership considers becoming sellers and developing the young guys. I don't think we can sell fans on another "playoff push for the 8th seed" yet again this year.

[pistonsbball]

We just don't draft/have the access to great players. If you're not in a big market then you have to hit early and hit well in the draft. The only way back for us is to completely bottom out.

[El Chivo]

Everything is set for the winning streak that kills our draft stock, don't mind.

[Pharaoh]

You'd like to think we're at least smart enough to "load manage" Griff & Rose then play the kids the last month and a half.

Hasn't happened yet cause of this playoff or bust mentality but if we're mathematically eliminated by then we'll all be happy.

Reggie - Bone - Thomas
Luke - Brown
Snell - Svi
Kieff - Sekou - Thon
Dre - Wood

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