from 1-10. 1 being the atlanta hawks, 10 being... the knicks? (if nothing else, i dont doubt that want to win. just a little misguided.

(note: ratings of high, low, thumbs up/down, smiley faces, and blaha pics are all acceptable of alternative ratings if my 1-10 scale doesnt fit well)

9 regular season, about a 5-6 in the playoffs.

err... mainly directed at front office, but i guess i should have said that rather than "team".

Is ownership a part of front office? If so, 3.

Rate this team's commitment to whining since 04
Fixed.

Seriously, it depends on what moves you think were moves that they thought helped them win versus moves just to run in place. Ther've had to spend a lot of energy choosing what they felt to be the lesser of two evils -- the Corliss trade for cap reasons, getting rid of LB, letting Ben go rather than overpay -- where they haven't felt like they had a lot of opportunity to push themselves over the hump. To what extent were these real problems rather than fabricated problems can be speculated and second-guessed to death, of course, but it's hard to tell "commitment" just from actions. A lot of folks say we "lucked out" into winning, rather than any "commitment", by trading a 1st round pick and some scrubs for Rasheed. (If anything, they think Ainge should've been committed. :) )

The Spurs had a four year gap between 1999 and 2003 Finals wins, and didn't make grand sweeping changes to their formula in that time apart from slowly building up young players snarfed at the end of the draft. They certainly could've traded DRob for some guns and maybe had a chance to slay the Lakers beast sometime before 2003. But, they did not do that.

Like each year or overall?

front office I would think around 5. Signing Flip Murray for CHEAP was okay move. GEtting Webber was smart and short term but we could have done much better imo. for exmaple nazr as a panic move for a shitload of money, not doing shit in this years trade deadline.

we did resigned a few players in the past offseasons, did okay in the drafting and found a decent coach in Flip(or thats what we all assumed)

I know joe didnt want to break up the core and do anything major and was probably confident in the team like everyone else was.

Here's link to a list of all the moves the Pistons have made since the 'ship (I'd have posted it but its 4 pages long).

http://www.n-c-systems.com/hoops/Search/SearchResults.php?Player=&Team=Pistons&PlayerMovementChkBx=yes&BeginYear=2004&BeginMonth=6&BeginDay=20&EndYear=&EndMonth=&EndDay=&submit=Search&start=0

I love that website.

Nice play, "Fingerbang".

Also, I don't know how to assign a "Score" to it, but I feel that the Pistons front office has more of a "commitment to not losing" than a "commitment to winning".

I can understand the difference, but it's hard to explain, so I hope that makes sense.

I think they are commited to winning without paying the tax. Not sure what score that equates to.

I think its about 3 of these :hooper:

more of a "commitment to not losing" than a "commitment to winning".

I can understand the difference, but it's hard to explain, so I hope that makes sense.
Oh I understand it completely. They aren't as worried about winning it all as they are about winning just enough to keep everyone around and interested. They don't want to become losers, and it seems like some of their decisions arebased more around not becoming losers instead of putting them over the top and being champions. Does that about sum it up?

Oh I understand it completely. They aren't as worried about winning it all as they are about winning just enough to keep everyone around and interested. They don't want to become losers, and it seems like some of their decisions arebased more around not becoming losers instead of putting them over the top and being champions. Does that about sum it up?

Yes.

There have been times during this recent run over the past few years when it felt like we needed that one piece to get over the hump, and time and again we didn't address it.

Now I know they see what we see, so it's not like they didn't know what they needed to do, but the inactivity at the last two trading deadlines speaks volumes IMO.

Yes.

There have been times during this recent run over the past few years when it felt like we needed that one piece to get over the hump, and time and again we didn't address it.

Now I know they see what we see, so it's not like they didn't know what they needed to do, but the inactivity at the last two trading deadlines speaks volumes IMO.
The exact opposite of what we did when we knew we needed that one piece and we traded to get Sheed. Sheed was the piece that got us over the top, and we haven't done anything like that since, not that it's the easiest thing to do.

I would give the front office a 7. If I try too look at things objectively, they :

Paid LB a ton of money to coach here.

Brought in the best coach available in Flip and paid him a bunch

Some good bench coaches were brought in.

Made a risky trade to get Sheed, then paid to re-sign him.

Offered Ben big money to stay.

Went out and got Dice and Nazr.

Have said that they will keep Billups.

We still have Kander and Abdenour.

With all of this being said, the front office has done well and realistically it was the coaching and the players who have failed to get it done. The pieces were definitely there.

Micknugget follows my thoughts for the most part. I do think that we've lacked that one piece and we haven't made enough of an effort to go get it (as far as we know, who knows what goes on behind closed doors), but we have made all the other moves we've needed. We kept Sheed when he was a free agent, we brought in McDyess, we did the best we could with Nazr I guess. JoeD has been doing his best, so he gets a good mark. Davidson doesn't get as good of a mark as JoeD but that's more because he doesn't want to go over the tax which has held us back a bit.

You can fault Joe for bad draft picks. That certainly set us back, but not from a lack of effort. If anything he tried too hard to find a star (Darko) instead of a safer pick.

We tried to keep Memo and couldn't (because it was him or Sheed, we couldn't afford both).

We tried to sign Finley, he passed on us.

We tried to sign Ben without totally screwing the future.

Maybe there was a deal out there that Joe didn't take, but how do we know he wasn't trying?

Basically, Joe/Davidson were not willing to mortgage the next 10 years in order to boost our chances for 2 years. It took a long time to bring Pistons fans back, they weren't going to risk another fan ice age when we still had a title contender as it stands.

The Spurs loss was the fault of the players. The Miami loss we had a weak bench (because guys like Finley opted for other places) and a new coach who hadn't fully installed his system. Not to mention Stern's golden boy. This year we unexpectantly lost Ben and imploaded because our front court leader is a whiner that blew his top.

Yes, Joe made a mistake on White and Darko. But I don't think it's a lack of effort.