How about John Hammond?

Fire Joe Dumars!

But the masses ask "Oh yeah smarty pants, who do they hire instead?"? mVs will attempt to answer that question one candidate at a time.

Candidate #1: John Hammond

The current GM of the Milwaukee Bucks was vice president of basketball operations for Joe Dumars for almost a decade. He handled player personnel decisions, scouting and has many years of coaching background. He’s been with the Pistons off and on (but mostly on) since 1994.

Organizational affiliation aside, he’s already done a fantastic job turning around and rebuilding the Bucks. To recap the Bucks offseason:

o Traded away Richard Jefferson
o Did not resign Charlie Villanueva or Ramon Sessions
o Drafted Brandon Jennings
o Brought Erysan Ilysova over from Europe
o Acquired Carlos Delfino and Hakim Warrik for cheap: 3.5 and 3M, respectively

Saddled with a 17M annual contract to a middling “franchise” SG, 14M for a meh SF, and Andrew Bogut getting 10M per, it was clear this team isn’t close to contention. So Hammond began moving people out with a rebuild job in mind. He dealt Richard Jefferson for cap relief. Also, in a move that would please Joe Dumars’ fans, he avoided overpaying to retain his own free agents, letting overrated guys like Ramon Sessions and Charlie Villanueva walk away. This puts the team into much stronger position. By 2011 they’ll have commitments to just 4 players (Bogut, Charlie Bell, Brandon Jennings, and Ersan Ilyasova). Only one of these contracts is bad (Bell expiring at 4M).

Besides shrewd long-term fiscal management, Hammonds deserves credit for drafting Jennings, who appears to be the steal of the 2009 draft and a potential franchise player. He also brought over Ersan Ilyasova, who looks like a promising forward. Now if he could just find someone to take Michael Redd and Dan Gadzuric off his hands the Bucks will really be in business.

Yeah, but rebuilding isn’t fun you say, and losing stinks. Yeah, it can, but a quick check of the standings shows the “conventionally rebuilding” Bucks at 8-4 despite their franchise SG and C being hurt. Meanwhile, the “rebuilding without losing” Pistons are 5-9. Yeah its early, but you can already see that this kind of rebuilding is superior to the Pistons efforts. The bucks signed bargain basement players at the end of the offseason and hope they keep the team from losing too badly, but don't commit to any bad contracts long-term. With one lottery pick the Bucks have a better core to build from than the Pistons. They have a potential franchise Center and Point Guard locked up while the Pistons sign scoring wing after scoring wing.

And as for past success in Detroit credited to Joe Dumars, one wonders how much of that should go to John Hammond. Given the divergent paths taken since Hammond left Detroit and Dumars was left to his own decision-making, it seems like the philosophy that brought success to Auburn Hills might have been mastermind by the man in Milwaukee.