Smart AND funny? I'm in love.

Just to show that I'm not a total curmudgeon or hater of all Detroit sports management types(for the record, I really like Dave Dombrowski) heres a positive assesment Lions head coach and Lank favorite Jim Schwartz.

Maybe he's no threat to Dave Chapelle, but its nice to know the coach isn't a miserable prick either.

via this guy

Jim Schwartz, Lions Head Coach: Right from the beginning, I can tell I like Schwartz. "I have no statement," he announces goofily, "so fire when ready." A reporter asks a dumb question about organizational 'mindset' this week, and where I would fire back, "What a stupid question," Schwartz accomplishes the same by cracking, "Well, I guess the biggest thing is that we're not here to find a QB, huh?"

He's light and interesting throughout, but his best lines come from a series of lame questions about what he felt he needed to fix when last season came to a close. "Probably the number one thing was my blood pressure," Schwartz replies in complete deadpan.

And how would the Lions approach the Draft? "With good decisions," Schwartz answers cheerily, "so that my doctor can cut my Lipitor."

The delivery is pitch-perfect, and all of the sudden I'm kind of a Lions fan.

I know the feeling.

Rodney Stuckey and the 2007 NBA Draft

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!

Not resigning Ben Wallace

“The decision to not match Big Ben's offer 3.75 years ago was definitely the right one.”

I don’t understand why Pistons fans keep saying this. Taken in a vacuum, sure, Ben Wallace was overpaid. But, by not resigning him, an elite team was destroyed. The Pistons got worse and gave up a shot at winning more titles. It was the end of the title run. Maybe the Pistons wouldn’t have won another title with him, but losing Ben meant they never really got close ever again. And what was gained? Financial flexibility that allowed the team to resign Tay Prince, Sheed Wallace, etc? Players and contracts Dumars had to work to dump.

Given where the team is, its obvious that the moves made as a result of Ben losing didn’t work at all. It would have been worth signing Ben if for no reason other than it would have facilitated the rebuilding process earlier and avoid the string of disappointing seasons. Not to mention, that he still looks like a pretty solid player when his role is clearly defined.

In fairness to Dumars (or perhaps this is a critique if you maintain letting Ben walk was a good choice) his hand might have been forced by an owner unwilling to go far above the salary cap.

...

Some of the most often cited reason by Joe Dumars supporters of good moves are really managerial blunders that exhibit why he should be let go. Fire Joe Dumars!

Finally!

The national media is finally starting to get on board the Fire Joe Dumars train that mVs has been driving.

John Hollinger:

Overrated: Joe Dumars

Let's look ourselves in the mirror, fellow media members: We've all given the guy a free pass because of his amazing run to six straight conference finals and blithely ignored the fact that he's screwed up a hundred ways from Tuesday since he decided to whack Flip Saunders after the 2008 conference finals.

Check out the résumé and find me a correct decision. Just one. Fire Saunders? Wrong. Hire Michael Curry? Wrong. Trade Chauncey Billups? Wrong. Extend Richard Hamilton? Wrong. Sign Kwame Brown? Wrong. Go after Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva? Wrong again.

In two years, the Pistons have gone from one of the best teams in basketball to among the worst. They stink, they're capped out, and they don't have much in the way of young talent; for all we know, in two years they're going to be the Pittsburgh Pisces or the Seattle Grunge or something. If Isiah Thomas or Rob Babcock had done this, we'd have buried them alive by now, so it's only fair for us to point out that regardless of his previous track record, Dumars is on a two-year losing streak of McHalian proportions.

The pitiful thing is that Hollinger is actually overselling Dumars here. He hasn't made any significantly good moves for 5 years, not 2.