anyone feel like sharing what they appreciate about joe? for me, it's the bad contracts and extensions. i also admire his stubbornness and refusal to do anything that might put this team in a position to win games. also his anointing of stuckey as the hero of the franchise while playing him out of position and subjecting us to the worst point guard play in the league. i love all of these things.

for christ's sake, how long does this guy have before someone pulls the plug, or at least that he feels some internal or external pressure to do his job?? guy's got too much job security. he can sit on his hands all day, wait for rip and gordon and charlie to expire and then try to take another stab with a brand new crew of mismatched underachievers.

2004 was nice, but i'm sick of paying for it. joe's got a ring and a nice line on his resume to show for it. all we have are memories that get more bitter and less sweet as time goes by.

how about how he put together two 50 win teams in a decade? what other GM in the league can say that? we are 1 year removed from the playoffs! after argueably one of the greater runs a team has had. 3rd in my opinion in this decade, next to the lakers and spurs in that order.

Calm down dude, he has shown time and time again he can put together winning teams. 2002-2008 wow how fast people forget! i will not go back to the teal years! I will not! Joe got us out of that. Never forget.

and to take your post serious...i appreciate the fact that every year i got to stuff it to laker fans (i live in LA) Joe was a apart of the franchise. hell, every championship had dumars appart of it. hes earned a season missing the playoffs i think.

yeah man,
i understand the frustration, but c`mon, have some faith. These things take time, and I`m sure there are variables that we are not aware of. now... that being said... WTF are we doing!? Yeah, I'm excited about Greg Monroe, but why in the Hell are we letting all these free agent bigs get away from us? Why are we sitting around with our thumbs up our asses and watching the competition strengthen around us. I'm gettin nervous. I appreciate the Joe D because of our past, and I will stay loyal, but that doesnt mean it's easy.

ok so joe put together a great team early in the decade. that's nice. but then he smashed it all to bits! so what kind of accomplishment is that, really??

two years ago we were one of the best teams in the league with unlimited flexibility (all-star vets, young talent, expiring contracts), and now we're one of the worst teams in the league (so bad that after a 27 win season joe can't do a single thing to improve besides add draft picks and retain his own players). he's handcuffed himself, and all these people say i should be patient.

how long are we supposed to wait?? not to be champions, but to be at least respectable? all of our depth is on the wings. ALL of it. in fact, we literally have too many shooting guards and small forwards for our own good. we have to showcase our veterans if we're to establish their values for potential trades, and we've also got to develop our young players. there are not enough minutes to do both. even if we limited rip, tay, stuck and gordon to 30 minutes (VERY low minutes for players making $10-12 million) and bynum 20 (very low minutes for the closest thing we have to a point guard), that leaves 4 minutes for daye, summers and terrico white to split. how is this going to work?? who pays a player ten million dollars to play less than 30 minutes per? let alone THREE of them!! it's insane.

the team is a mess. ok, so you want patience? what am i supposed to wait for? until rip's contract expires? until charlie and ben expire?? too much to ask. sorry. believe it or not, i'm a patient man. but waiting around for all these bad contracts to be off the books isn't acceptable. joe hasn't made a good personnel decision since signing dyess five years ago.

in fact, setting aside the draft (where we all know joe's track record is a mixed bag and no better than average), i can count on one hand the number of VERY positive personnel moves he's made. (1) the sign-and-trade for ben wallace, (2) the trade for rip, (3) signing chauncey and (4) dyess with the MLE, and (5) trading for sheed. granted these were great moves, ones that built a team that was great for half a decade, but he's been an unmitigated disaster ever since.

that second paragraph should read: we're one of the worst teams in the league WITH NO FLEXIBILITY... then the parentheses.

MAN WERE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT TO THE PLAYOFFS AGAIN

To name just three, I find the drafting of Greg Monroe this year and Jonas Jerebko last year to be solid personnel moves.

I'm really curious to see what Austin Daye does this season. Terrico White seems promising, but he'll be buried on the bench for a while till Hamilton gets moved.

Picking up Will Bynum out of Israel two years ago and signing Ben Wallace last year have given a great return on investment.

The resignings of Bynum (over $3 million for 10 points and 4 assists) and Wallace ($1.9 million for 5 points and 8 rebounds) at their current contracts have been financially responsible. Other free agents this summer have been getting contracts they don't merit. A few examples include:
1. Brad Miller at $5 million annually for 9 points and 4 rebounds
2. Johan Petro at $3 million annually for 3 points and 3 rebounds, Joe 3. Johnson (29 years old) at $119 million for six years with a limited number of prime years left (21 points, 9 assists last year), 4. Amir Johnson at 5 years, $34 million for 6 points and 4.8 rebounds
5. Darko Milicic at 4 years, $20 million for 6.7 points and 4.7 rebounds
6. Rudy Gay 19.6 points and 5.9 rebounds, but overpaid with 5 years, over $80 million, starting with $13 million next season.

I want to see movement on the trade and free agent front, but Dumars wants to send Hamilton and/or Prince into good positions as well as improve the Pistons will take time. For example, if he did business with Boston, the Pistons would get Rasheed Wallace's contract and filler like Davis or an injured Perkins in the last year of his contract, who (assuming he recovers from his ACL) will likely go back to Boston. Prince or Hamilton would then be relegated to a backup spot behind Pierce or Tony Allen, playing limited minutes to strengthen a weak Celtic bench. Dumars doesn't want that for them.

Like it or not, people will have to be patient for the right deal to materialize. And because of all the crazy money thrown around this summer, mediocre free agents were priced well out of MLE range.

Before injuries knocked them down (155 games lost to injury), they were a 40 win 6-8 East seed last year.

Just being healthy will see them be better this year.

Villanueva has been in Metro Detroit strengthening his body, improving his lateral quickness, and working on his defense. He played very well for the Dominican Republic this summer in a Central American tournament averaging 20 points and 10 rebounds. He scored over 30 points playing for an undermanned Dominican team when they were eliminated.

Monroe is the latest star PF/C to come out of Georgetown and the most skilled college big man since Tim Duncan. He's being compared to Lamar Odom for his inside-outside game and transition play and to Bill Walton for his passing ability in the low blocks.

The Pistons will be able to run their offense through Monroe and he will make things easier for the guards to shoot and drive to the perimeter.

IMHO, the Pistons are a darkhorse playoff team with motivation to prove themselves and surprise the league and casual fans.

When I said "Tony Allen" above, I meant "Ray Allen."

It would be nice if users on the Posting Up Board could edit their messages even after they were posted.

boris, old friend. a few things:

if dumars is strongly concerned with moving rip and/or tayshaun to favorable situations, i'd fire him outright. his loyalty should be to the PISTONS. both of these men are veterans and professionals and fabulously wealthy, and they know trades come with the territory. in prince's case, he's on the last year of his deal. in rip's case, joe gave him the GIFT OF A LIFETIME in that contract extension and owes him nothing. NOTHING. i understand the notion that when you're considering a move you want to put your players in favorable situations (like with chauncey), but when you are DESPERATE to make a move, you can NOT worry about loyalty. you might be right about joe's motivations, but if he's holding on to these guys for their own sake and not for the sake of the team, his position is INDEFENSIBLE. he's too emotionally involved to do his job effectively and should be fired outright.

also, way to pat joe on the back for the little things he's gotten right that have culminated in a 27 win season. bravo. discovering bynum (whom i do love) doesn't outweigh the horror of the chauncey billups trade. signing bynum and ben to reasonable contracts doesn't outweigh the BRUTAL contracts he gave to rip, charlie v and ben gordon. contracts that have HANDCUFFED the team and will leave them in the cellar of the league for years.

i swear to god, good or bad, you just can't shake a reputation, can you? it's like with dave dombrowski. he puts together a team with a blank check, they go from one of the worst seasons in the history of baseball to the world series in three years, and SO many people would take a bullet for the guy, no matter how bad he does. look at the tigers now. they have NO depth, and over the course of the last few seasons he's thrown away TENS of millions of dollars on bad contracts. the guy had a blank check. illitch should be the hero for opening his pockets. anybody with a blank check could have put together a better team than dombrtowski has.

that was a bit of a tangent, but it's the same damn thing with joe. ok so he took the team from the cellar to the top. but he sent it RIGHT BACK DOWN to the cellar. single-handedly. this is HIS team. 39 wins, then 27 wins. who knows, maybe we have fewer wins this year. who knows?? but the bottom line is that after a 27 win season joe is either UNWILLING or UNABLE to make any personnel moves. and that is horrifying.

on to the injuries. first i'll say that winners don't use injuries as an excuse. winners say you're only as good a your record. it's losers who fall back on excuses. second, this team was VERY deep at the positions where injuries were concentrated. i'd argue that injuries did not have much of an effect on our record at all. the team played some of their best basketball without major contributors, and some of their worst at full health. when rip was healthy, ben played less than 20 minutes and scored about 9 points on 10 shots. and i'm sure this is what we spent 55 million bucks for. i'll be surprised if john kuester can manage the minutes in the backcourt.

picture this: there are 144 perimeter minutes to go around. even if stuckey, rip, gordon and tayshaun only played 30 minutes apiece (a low number by about 5 minutes each) and bynum only played 20 (another low number), there's 4 minutes left for daye, summers and white combined. figure that one out. this team is a mess. please stop apologizing for joe dumars.

Kuester and the players don't want to use injuries as an excuse, but the team wasn't any where close to 100% last year.

They lost 155 games to injuries, more combined than in the last 4 years.

If the Pistons stumbled to a 27 win season with a healthy roster, I'd be dreading their immediate future.

The loss of Hamilton, Gordon, and Prince led to the loss 40+ points nightly for the Pistons last year for stretches at a time.

I find Hamilton's extension to be questionable. Villanueva's contract is reasonable. Gordon's contract is a bargain compared to what Rudy Gay and Joe Johnson got this summer.

I'm not apologizing for Dumars so much as waiting to see what happens.

I'm not happy with the last two years. I sat through the 2009 season when Detroit lost 90% of the games I attended. But the Going to Work crew was complacent, underachieving, and aging. Their time was over and a new team has to be built. With that comes growing pains.

No team stays young, hungry, and competitive forever. Generations come and go. Building a new contending team won't happen in one summer.

Also, this summer isn't over. I'm waiting to see if the T Mac rumors are true and what Dumars with Hamilton and Prince if he signs T Mac.

very nice response zemic, i agree 100% joey d will get the ship rolling like the stones, we are an always has been, yet again, an lol ya don't have to think, he definitely deserves the opportunity, to do what he's done before, take us from being a mediocre team, to a legit contender for 5 years to a decade,

i honestly thought haywood, was the only good legit big we could have got that fits here. id much rather wait for a new crop of free agent bigs, then sign another nazr mohammed, which mr joey did, trade for, or else we'd still be over paying his butt. so i like how joey d is approaching it.

Haywood would've been a great pickup.

Unfortunately, the insane contracts to Milicic and Amir Johnson drove up the prices for the good players, putting Haywood out of MLE range.

I'm surprised at how reckless so many NBA GMs were in a bad economy.

Calm down boys and girls...

TAY or RIP trade will provide us the need of a big man...

its a signal coz TMAC has arrived!