CFB Thought

I just have these quotes from a conversation between, jeremy, jgw and me so it's preserved for the future:

(Two weeks before the season)

JGW: In the case that Tate Forcier DOESN’T get knocked out for the season happens (20% chance), we’re going 9-3.

Lank: I think thats overestimating the swing between the two personally. Tate has to be one of the most overrated/hyped incoming freshman ever. Yeah, the spring game and early enrollment and QB High and all that... He's still just a little punk kid.

HOLD ON TO THE DAMN BALL!

The Warrior

He is a warrior.

Hire is not the opposite of fire

“It's not like Joe lucked into having a hard-nosed, hard-working defensive team. He created it. Pistons fans are lucky to have the guy that built a team to that style in the first place.”

Actually, luck had a lot to do with it. You mentioned the key part here: “when the Pistons had just lost Grant Hill”. It wasn’t Dumars’ preferred strategy, it was his plan B. A graceful fall after striking out with his superstar (Grant Hill). Marketing your (seemingly) crappy team towards local likability was smart but ultimately a marketing gimmick in response to failure. That it translated to on-court success was good fortune. As Joe would admit, he got extremely lucky with Ben Wallace. It wouldn’t be the last move Joe made for publicity sake, but unlike drafting Mateen Cleaves this worked out well. Joe deserves credit for building a championship team but he had A TON of help. Its far less black-and-white than you describe.

“The greatness of Joe is the competency of the moves he doesn't make…He moves slowly and calculated… But he never debilitates the franchise."

This is like arguing for the greatness of Interpol or The Raconteurs: “Its not what they do, its what they don’t do.” Not being as awful as others doesn’t mean you’re good. Most GMs will seem competent if compared to Isiah Thomas or the GMs on the top 20 worst moves list. Joe Dumars seemed, in the distant past, to move with vision and foresight. Not anymore. What was slow and calculated about:
-trading Chauncey Billups for nothing
-overpaying/extending Rip Hamilton
-painting yourself into a corner by announcing you'd make big changes immediatly after losing to the Cavs
-bidding against yourself to get Gordon and Villanueva on the 1st day of free agency?

Even the cap-killer contract avoidance with Okur and Ben Wallace, while probably right and obvious (Joe’s received almost no heat for these decisions), were questionable in hindsight. After they left, the team failed to win another title.

“Rip's contract will most likely be unmovable and hurt the Pistons chances, but they're not franchise killers…If Joe doesn't like where the franchise is going, Gordon and Rip are still moveable.”

Moveable or not? Which is it? This is proof that logical thought is absent from your emotion-driven argument. Some awful contracts have been moved but the Hamilton one may indeed be debilitating, not to mention Gordon/Villanueva. 2002 Joe Dumars never would have made those signings.

“fans questioned him, only to find out he was right…the good in his history far outweighs the bad”

He was both right and wrong. Before 2004 he was mostly right, as you say. But in the last half decade, since the 2003 offseason, does the good still outweigh the bad? No, nearly every decision has been bad (besides the obvious Sheed trade). Its not even close, especially if you factor in the Darko debacle.


“who are you going to hire in his place? Pritchard and Daryl Morey…neither has enough of a history to show that they may go through their downtimes as well.”

Joe Dumars doesn’t have that history either. He built one team up, which is the same thing Pritchard and Morey have done. They had less flexibility than Dumars but Morey had more talent and Pritchard had draft picks and lots of money. Joe went farther but has had way more time. As for WHO?, I don’t have a thorough knowledge of NBA management personnel but I’d favor someone with an analytical bent, demonstrated intelligence (and education/work experience to back it up) over any former players blessed with favorable circumstance.

There are no guarantees with anyone new, but making the same mistake again with Joe Dumars after years of ineptitude on his part wouldn't be smart. How long till the moves made in 2003 are outweighed by the bad decisions since?

“Let's not forget that it was Joe D that brought all three of those titles to Detroit, twice as a player and once as a GM.”

Joe Dumars was around all 3. So were Rick Mahorn, George Blaha and Vinnie Johnson. So was my Dad. Or maybe each of those guys was just lucky to be around Isiah, Rodman, Daly, Billups, Ben, Sheed, Brown etc.


Without those titles they are no different than, say, the 76ers and no more of a draw for top talent.

The franchise’s desirability comes from excellent management and ownership. They’ve been wisely run by the owner for decades. The top business people (at one point, and perhaps still, the Palace and its revenue sharing agreement made the Pistons as valuable as any franchise besides, if I recall correctly, the Knicks, Celtics and Lakers, despite an obvious market disadvantage. Top training personnel. Strong marketing. Etc. This is similar to why San Antonio is a desirable destination for many (though they also have weather and tax breaks.) Joe Dumars does deserve a lot of the credit for this. But already, he seems to be living on a reputation he isn't sustaining.

---------------------

If the Pistons want to maintain their reputation they’ll cut ties with their inept GM. This isn’t reactionary “crazy talk” driven by modern what-have-you-done-for-me-lately sports culture but a logical response to half a decade of wasted opportunity, dilly-dallying, and decline. And as I keep saying, Joe Dumars, at his very best, would have done the same (witness the firing of Rick Carlisle). The job description has changed. Its time to rebuild and Joe Dumars has demonstrated he isn't the man to do it anymore.

But you’re right about one thing. Someone SHOULD hire Joe Dumars. But first, the Pistons need to fire him.

Hire Joe Dumars!

...or, at least sign him to an extension or something. Firing him would be the worse move in Pistons basketball history.

In February of 2008, I gave a chronology of how Joe created a champion: Making of a Champion

A few other notes I want to include:

• It's not like Joe lucked into having a hard-nosed, hard-working defensive team. He created it. Before Big Ben was ever a starter, and when the Pistons had just lost Grant Hill and were looking to be lottery bound without a doubt, Joe coined "Going to work" as the team slogan saying that you may not see the flashiest team in the NBA, but you'll see a team that works harder than anyone in the NBA, a team that blue-collar Detroit would identify with. He then went about building the team that fit that mold. So, when Pteradactually says "fire joe" and for one of his reasons gives a shift away from the hard nosed defensive style that won them the championship, I can only think that Pistons fans are lucky to have the guy that built a team to that style in the first place.
• The greatness of Joe is not the genius of the moves he makes, but the competency of the moves he doesn't make. You could say he's the opposite extreme of his backcourt counterpart, Isiah. He moves slowly and calculated. Sometimes he takes risks that don't pay off. Sometimes he takes risks that pay off. But he never debilitates the franchise. ESPN ran an article last basketball season that gave the top 20 franchise killing contracts. Unsurprisingly there were no Pistons on that list. That shouldn't be taken for granted. Pistons fans are very fortunate to have a GM that doesn't make big mistakes. I don't like the Ben Gordon signing and Rip's contract will most likely be unmovable and hurt the Pistons chances, but they're not franchise killers. The Pistons will put a semi-competitive team on the court and will be able to make moves. If Joe doesn't like where the franchise is going, Gordon and Rip are still moveable.
• I can remember plenty of times when Joe made a move and the fans questioned him, only to find out he was right. Everyone thought it was a step back when he traded Stackhouse for Hamilton. Going further back, everyone thought it was a mistake to trade JYD for Big Nasty. In the offseason after the championship, many people questioned the decision to let go of Okur and sign McDyess for less, so that he could free up some money to resign Sheed. He may make bad moves here and there but the good in his history far outweighs the bad and, as I said above, the bad are never that bad, and most importantly to this point, Joe has turned out to be right more often than his critics.
• In all of professional sports the coaching and management carousel is spinning at a faster and faster rate. If fans are discontent at all with their team, the immediate reaction is to get rid of the coach, the management, or both. It makes sense as demanding a change is the only thing a fan can really do, but how often is this beneficial? So, you don't like the Ben Gordon signing and you want to get rid of Joe D as a result, but who are you going to hire in his place? Sure Pritchard and Daryl Morey (whoever that is) have looked better recently but neither has enough of a history to show that they may go through their downtimes as well. Everyone's favorite GM before Joe D was Jerry West, but look at what he did in Memphis. Even if the Pistons wanted a Pritchard or Morey type, what makes you think that the Pistons are an enticing destination for those GMs. I think that the Pistons fans get to feeling a bit entitled at times due to having three championships in the last 20 years, but let's not forget that it was Joe D that brought all three of those titles to Detroit, twice as a player and once as a GM. Without those titles they are no different than, say, the 76ers and no more of a draw for top talent.

I question the moves Joe made this offseason. I will be critical of those moves every step of the way, especially when the Pistons go out in the 1st round of the playoffs this year. But calling for a managerial change is crazy talk.

Trust the NFL?

Politicians, left and right, say the NFL should take care of the ruined old men it creates--or else lose its anti-trust exemption (which lets the league negotiate contracts [broadcasting and labor, I think, maybe others] instead of individually owned teams doing so like in most industries).

Can somebody tell me what I'm supposed to think about this?

Fire Joe Dumars Reason #Whatever

Detroit used a draft pick on Washington, stashed him for a year, let him develop, then gave him some guaranteed money, yet now they've cut him before they see a single minute's return on that. They've not cut him for a salary saving, and they've not even cut him for Chucky Atkins; they've cut him for a roster spot that they don't need yet, and may never need.

Real Men's Sports

I am thirty-[something] years old. I now like football more than I ever have, or at least as much as I ever have since fourth grade. I never thought this would happen. Never. I always assumed that my interest in football would wane over time, just as it has for everything else I was obsessed with as a kid. For a few scant years, this did seem to happen, but since entering the workforce, my obsession with football has risen every single autumn. I love watching it and I love thinking about it. And I want to understand why that happened.

I assume it is one of three explanations or -- more likely -- a combination of all three: Either (a) the game itself keeps improving, (b) the media impacts me more than I'm willing to admit, or (c) this is just what happens to men as they grow older. I suppose I don't care. I'm just glad to have something in my life that is so easy enjoy this much. All I have to do is sit on my couch and watch. It is the easiest kind of pleasure.

My wife is awesome, but she hates football (as wives are wont to do). Every game seems the same to her. I will be watching a contest between Kent State and Eastern Michigan on a random Thursday night, and she will say, "Go ahead and watch that game. I will just sit here and read this magazine featuring a plus-sized black female TV personality from Chicago." Two days later, Georgia will be playing LSU for the SEC championship. Now she will want to rent Scenes from a Marriage. "You want to watch football again?" she will ask. "Didn't you already watch football on Thursday?" Every game seems the same to her. And I can't explain the difference, even though the differences feel so obvious. And I don't want to explain the difference, because I always want to watch Kent State and Eastern Michigan, too. They are as different to me as they are similar to her.

I don't know what I see when I watch football. It must be something insane, because I should not enjoy it as much as I do. I must be seeing something so personal and so universal that understanding this question would tell me everything I need to know about who I am, and maybe I don't want that to happen. But perhaps it's simply this: Football allows the intellectual part of my brain to evolve, but it allows the emotional part to remain unchanged. It has a liberal cerebellum and a reactionary heart. And this is all I want from everything, all the time, always.

-Chuck Klosterman

How different are dogfighting and football?

Gladwell compares dogfighting and football.

History:

In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt called an emergency summit at the White House, alarmed, as the historian John Sayle Watterson writes, “that the brutality of the prize ring had invaded college football and might end up destroying it.” Columbia University dropped the sport entirely. A professor at the University of Chicago called it a “boy-killing, man-mutilating, money-making, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport.” In December of 1905, the presidents of twelve prominent colleges met in New York and came within one vote of abolishing the game.

NFL offensive lineman says:

I remember, every season, multiple occasions where I’d hit someone so hard that my eyes went cross-eyed, and they wouldn’t come uncrossed for a full series of plays. You are just out there, trying to hit the guy in the middle, because there are three of them. You don’t remember much. There are the cases where you hit a guy and you’d get into a collision where everything goes off. You’re dazed. And there are the others where you are involved in a big, long drive. You start on your own five-yard line, and drive all the way down the field—fifteen, eighteen plays in a row sometimes. Every play: collision, collision, collision. By the time you get to the other end of the field, you’re seeing spots. You feel like you are going to black out. Literally, these white explosions—boom, boom, boom—lights getting dimmer and brighter, dimmer and brighter.

Brain Doctor says:

She pulled out a large photographic blowup of a brain-tissue sample. “This is a kid. I’m not allowed to talk about how he died. He was a good student. This is his brain. He’s eighteen years old. He played football. He’d been playing football for a couple of years.” She pointed to a series of dark spots on the image, where the stain had marked the presence of something abnormal. “He’s got all this tau. This is frontal and this is insular. Very close to insular. Those same vulnerable regions.” This was a teen-ager, and already his brain showed the kind of decay that is usually associated with old age. “This is completely inappropriate,” she said. “You don’t see tau like this in an eighteen-year-old. You don’t see tau like this in a fifty-year-old.”

Dog-fighting in society:

It’s the shot ringing out that seals the case against dogfighting. L.G. willingly submitted his dog to a contest that culminated in her suffering and destruction. And why? For the entertainment of an audience and the chance of a payday. In the nineteenth century, dogfighting was widely accepted by the American public. But we no longer find that kind of transaction morally acceptable in a sport.

Is the difference in judgement on pain for entertainment based only a matter of time?

Smart?

More From The Pitiful Bully

KG in the preseason

"After toying with the Chinese 7-footer in the first quarter both inside and outside, Garnett demonstrably shoved Yi's arms aside and began bodying him up during a dead ball. The replacement refs quickly separated them, but as soon as they cleared away, Garnett immediately went back at Yi and bodied him up some more, raising his hands high in the air while pushing him from behind with his body"

Gotta love that "intensity" right?

The Rocket Don't Lie

These damn team doctors!

Blazers Games Available Online?

what I’ve heard is that the Trail Blazers have already decided to stream all their games live this season on their web site.

says this guy

LOLZ