Is An Above-Above Averge GM A-OK?

Measured by his body of work in totality, its probably true that Dumars is one of the top 10-15 GMs, but its also clear that he is outside the top 5 and has been one of the worst in the last 5 years. Your comfort in having an overall mediocre to above average GM depends on your goals.

Many owner’s intent seems to be overall competence to facilitate profitability. What they want is a consistent winner. They see bad teams playing in front of empty seats and want to avoid that. Sure, a championship would be nice, but the first thing is to avoid being terrible. I assume many GMs either agree or are asked to behave as if they do. Joe Dumars has certainly been a success by this measure. Since 2005 (and obviously before), the team has made the playoffs in every season.

But as fans, we generally care more about competing for championships (i.e. being the best) than we do winning 40-60 games consistently (i.e. being above average). We either want a title contender or feel like we're building towards one. As much as winning individual games, we want to follow the team with hope for the future title runs. We'll attend a loss if we can see signs of optimism for the future. Our enjoyment is based largely on our hopes and expectations, and therefore a set of seasons with more losses {20, 20, 40, 50, 60 wins) and a title is far more enjoyable than a set with more victories {40, 45, 55, 50, 45 )with first round losses each year.

Fans will tolerate losing if it is transparent. Give the fans an exciting style, or young players they can hope for, and they'll watch. Give them disinterested veterans on a marginal playoff team and they'll tune out. A GM, together with his owner, needs to have clear objectives that the fans can get behind. The reason most franchises who have 20 loss seasons have no fans attending games is the buildup to the losing from previous seasons, where fans continuously fall off and become disappointed and disinterested.

If owners want to attract and retain fans, their goal shouldn't be to maximize the number of PLAYOFF seasons but to maximize the number of IMPROVING seasons. The implication being, that once your team falls into decline you shouldn't hesitate to pull the plug and rebuild from scratch. Particularly with the way the NBA is structured to be dominated by superstars and the reward of lottery picks for bad teams. Tell your fans what you're doing. They'll understand.

Dumars effort to rebuilding without losing is a tired model and an empty promise. Every other loser franchise strives for this and it almost never works. It is the worst case scenario that we currently see in Detroit, Philadelphia, and, before a few weeks ago Washington.

By 2007 it was clear the Pistons were badly in decline and needed a change. That was a time for the franchise management to tell you the run was done and now its time to to rebuild. Sure the next season would have been awful and the Palace would have many empty seats. But by 2008, you'd have a people returning back to see what the new guys had to offer.

A short-term flame-out isn't bad for fans, but a long-term decline is. Joe Dumars "success" as defined by conventional measures of consistent winning is in reality a tragic failure. There are few franchises in the NBA whose futures look as dim as the Pistons and the fanbase is responding to that. Joe Dumars is the guy who has positioned this franchise into a depressing place it will have trouble getting out of for the next 5-10 years, even with the NBA's quick-turnaround structure. Fire Joe Dumars!