One of the new rumors making the rounds on NBA fan sites is that Ben Gordon’s agent has been going around telling people that he has a promise from Joe Dumars that he will sign the NBA’s reigning Streakiest Player Alive to a contract worth $11M per. No, I did not leave out a decimal point in that number: eleven million dollars. Annually. As in, every single year. For multiple years.
For the sake of this column, I’m going to assume that this rumor has some validity to it. (Unlike all the other wacky shit that anyone with a keyboard has been throwing up lately, including the Wolves wanting to ship Al Jefferson to Phoenix for Amare, Rajon Rondo being on the trading block, the Cavs trying to deal for Josh Smith, and Fox attempting to dump American Idol in hopes of luring Wipeout away from NBC. )
Do I actually believe it could be true? For the sake of the besieged city of Detroit, I hope not. But considering that I am one of the few serious basketball fans who doesn’t think that Joe Dumars is a personnel genius, it does seem remotely, infinitesimally possible. That said, you also have to realize that I would not have trusted Joe Dumars to handle the trade-in of my 1990 Honda Accord last month for fear that he would replace it with an overrated European prospect or an underperforming classic that he wouldn’t allow me to ditch until at least a year too late.
For the skeptics out there, here are the Cliff’s Notes to my Joe D opinion. Obviously, we all know about the Darko pick. I personally think he was too quick to can Flip Saunders after taking his team to the Eastern Conference Finals two consecutive years – especially when his next move was to install Michael Curry, who, if his in-game interviews and post-game press conferences are any indication, is as capable of running a basketball team as I am of preventing a nuclear reactor meltdown. He waited a year too long to blow up the core that won him a title, then shot himself in the foot by sending the one most valuable piece of that core – Chauncey Billups – to Denver for the Ghost of Allen Iverson. All so that he could ostensibly turn the keys to the team over to Rodney Stuckey, a talented combo guard who worked well as a complementary piece but clearly struggled with expectations that he would be the new franchise. (However, he does excel at looking uncannily like 50 Cent.)
Now, the caveat to the whole Billups-Iverson trade is the idea that AI’s contract expired at the end of the season, leaving the Pistons with a ton of cap space this summer. In theory, it’s always great to have a ton of cap space. Except that when you have a ton of cap space and a fan base hungry to win, you need to make impact moves. This is not always an easy thing to do (cue Larry Hughes rolling over in his grave). And in the summer of 2009, here is a list of the biggest available free agent names:
Carlos Boozer
Hedo Turkoglu
Lamar Odom
Trevor Ariza
Ron Artest
Shawn Marion
Mike Bibby
Ben Gordon
Now, by no means am I saying that there aren’t some talented basketball players on that list. But Odom has publicly stated he will not play in a cold weather city; Ariza will be the Lakers’ #1 target in free agency; Artest can never really set foot in the Palace at Auburn Hills again without a flak jacket; Marion and Bibby’s best years are already gone (and if Bibby’s performance against the Cavs in the postseason was any indication, they’re mummified and in a vault somewhere). Which leaves 3 players: Boozer, Turkoglu, and Gordon.
If I were to ask you right now which of those three guys absolutely did not under any circumstances deserve an $11M annual salary, Gordon is the clear answer. Here’s what paying him $11M a year will get your team: an undersized 2 guard who will regularly go 1 on 5 at any point in the game, ignore an open lane to the basket to shoot a contested 3, refuse to pass, refuse to rebound, refuse to defend, largely ignore the shot clock, and provide no intangibles other than being one of a handful of guys who will scare the living shit out of the opposing team if his team is down 3 points or less in the closing seconds of a game. However, this intangible is counter-acted by the fact that if you had a different 2 guard, you’d probably be comfortably ahead in a number of those same games.
With all this in mind, if I’m a Pistons fan and you tell me that my organization is paying Ben Gordon eleven mill a year to play in Detroit, arguably the most economically fucked up city in the US, I’m no longer responsible for my actions. I honestly think that I might have a viable defense in court for any crime committed in the Detroit metropolitan area for a brief period after the signing became public news.
Judge: Mr. Schneider, you’re accused of six counts of aggravated assault. How do you plead?
Me: Not guilty, your honor. Everyone I know lost their job when GM and Chrysler went bankrupt, and while I was in line at the unemployment office, I found out that Joe Dumars just decided to pay Ben Gordon $11M per year to jack up a bunch of contested 3s for the next 6 seasons.
Judge: HE DID WHAT?!
[Judge blacks out. Case is dismissed.]
Here’s an idea: if this is the kind of player you’re looking for, sign Von Wafer. Or if you want to go slightly more upscale, Jamal Crawford. Both are unrestricted free agents who will thoroughly impress a casual know-nothing fan who catches them on a hot streak. At the same time, they will make your die-hard, knowledgeable fans want to firebomb your front office. But at least they will save you some money – even if they will also do the other thing that Ben Gordon would do for the Pistons, which is make them pay for a less disciplined, less hard-working version of Will Bynum, who is already on their fucking roster.
Of course, if this is just another ridiculous rumor started by a bunch of bored guys trying to come up with something to talk about until the draft next week, you can ignore this entire column. But if the Pistons shell out for Ben Gordon to be their franchise player for the next near-decade, get ready for the Joe Dumars Bandwagon to turn into the Matt Millen Hearse very quickly. And remember you heard it here first.
-T
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