In response to my claim that Joe Dumars has made no significantly good moves in the last 5 years, Dumars supporters have little ammunition. One of their few plausible arguments:
“Rodney Stuckey was a good pick at 15.”
But was this really a good pick?
Looking back at the 2007 draft there are 8 quality NBA starters that would be universally selected above Stuckey. If you redid the top 8 picks they would look something like:
1. Durant
2. Horford
3. Noah
4. Oden
5. Green
6. Landry
7. Brooks
8. Gasol
After that it gets pretty jumbled. For any of these next 8 guys, one could make the argument that they're more or less valuable than Stuckey:
Conley
Jianlian
Brewer
Thornton
Chandler
Fernandez
Afflalo
Sessions
With the exception of Rudy Fernandez, each player is or has started on bad teams and shown flashes of excellence as well some big flaws. Afflalo is now starting (though not finishing) games for a championship caliber team, and Fernandez is a backup to Brandon Roy.
Then, there are 6 other guys who still have promising talent and might be better players in the end:
Hawes
J.Wright
N.Young
B.Wright
T.Young
Splitter
So, after the top 8, there’s a big jumbled mess of 15 players in which Stuckey belongs. If you put him in the middle – that’s right at #15, where he went. If you like Stuckey better than most of those guys (I probably do) he was a good pick.
At best, Stuckey would have gone 9th, which isn’t a major steal.
Conclusion: He went about where he should.
Aaron Afflalo WAS a major steal however. That’s the pick Dumars fans should be pointing to. But of course, they can't, because Dumars gave him away for nothing…
The Stucky pick wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t significantly good either. Building the team around him appears very dubious. The funny thing is, even if you call the Stuckey pick a success, you remember that this Detroit team was good in 06-07 and had no business drafting so close to the lottery. How’d they get the #15 pick from Orlando? The answer brings up Dumars’ biggest blunder: Darko Milicic.
Oh course, Joe D fans will say he was wise to cut ties with Darko and this move goes to his credit. Sigh. Fire Joe Dumars!
Thursday, February 25, 2010
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3 comments:
Yes, and using that same logic, Ben Wallace was the foundation of the Pistons championship team. Ben Wallace was acquired in a sign-and-trade for Grant Hill. The Pistons were able to draft Grant Hill because they sucked so much that season and got a good draft pick. One of the reasons they sucked so much in 94 is due to trading Dennis Rodman for Sean Elliott. Whoever that GM was that traded Dennis Rodman for Sean Elliott (and, in turn, traded Elliott for Bill Curley) one Detroit the championship in 2004. Hire that guy!
I don't even like Stuckey. Whether he's the 10th best player or the 16th best doesn't matter to me. Although, I did appreciate the draft analysis just because the re-ordering was interesting.
I hope that you address the bigger points I made soon. I've had enough of examining the smallest trees in the forest.
Getting to it. Still analyzing Joe's GM peers.
I'm not sure I get your point about Hill/Wallace/Eliot. Was Rick Sund the guy responsible for all 3 moves?
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