Since I already wrote a full column expressing my long-standing view that Joe Dumars is the most overrated executive in the league, I figured I should at least point out that he bolstered my case a little further today.
If you’re one of only three teams capable of truly spending big in free agency this summer, what’s arguably the best way to shoot yourself in the foot a few hours before you can start making phone calls? Try firing your coach.
It’s not just this move itself. It’s that the Pistons’ roster is already in disarray. Billups got dealt in the fall. Iverson got put out to pasture before the playoffs even started. Tayshaun played the final third of the season like he was undergoing chemo. Sheed and McDyess are free agents as of about an hour ago. Rip’s name has been coming up in trade rumors. Stuckey has been anointed as the franchise with no probable cause. No one seems to have any idea what to think about what the franchise’s overall strategy is, what kind of team they’re trying to be, etc.
The only constant for them since the Iverson trade had been that they were going to have cap space this summer. And for whatever reason, they’ve believed that whomever they can get now will course-correct them. But if you’re an executive, free agency is like a first date: you’ve got to do everything you can to highlight all of the good and cloak the bad stuff about yourself long enough to get that person another step down the road with you.
So if your organization has already made a sudden, wild grab for the crown of ‘Most Dysfunctional Franchise in the NBA’ (nevermind that the Clippers will guard that piece of hardware like a dragon sitting on a pile of treasure), how does firing your coach on the eve of free agency help quiet the fears of the free agents worth signing? Even if Dumars thought that Curry was the wrong guy for the job, shouldn’t he have been able to make that assessment some time before now? They got swept out of the playoffs almost two full months ago! That would’ve been plenty of time to interview and hire a new coach so at least the people coming in would understand that there was a vision in place for what the team would be.
By no means am I lobbying for Michael Curry to take over for “Coldstone” Mike Brown. I stand by my statement that all of last season he seemed thoroughly overmatched and under-qualified. But in his defense, with the core of the Pistons already starting to transition / unravel, he was basically put in a position to fail - especially once Dumars pulled the trigger on the Billups-for-Iverson trade. There are not a lot of coaches in the NBA who could’ve realistically handled the egos in that locker room at that point in their decline, and putting that responsibility on a rookie head coach is not what I would call a recipe for success. But to wait to try to fix that until now, the day before you have to start wooing one of a handful of guys to try to save your upcoming season? Not a great move.
Adding to all of this is the continued rumor that Dumars is in fact dead serious about trying to sign Ben Gordon to a major contract. I will save my ammo for if and when that deal gets done, but if Dumars traded for Iverson last season in a deal whose only express purpose was clearing cap space to sign a big free agent…and then he uses that space to sign a younger, less talented version of Iverson…well, you can see where I’m going.
All right, enough of this nonsense. Back to trying to siphon through a dizzying array of questionable metrics on available free agent forwards. But I’m on record as of right now that the Cavs are not going to have to worry about Detroit challenging for the Central next season, regardless of how our free agent decision-making goes.
-T
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