2008 Record: 59-23
Division Finish: 1st – Central
2008 Playoffs: Lost, 4-2, to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals

Head Coach: Michael Curry
Season: First Season

Offseason Acquisitions:
Kwame Brown, C, 6-11, 5.7 ppg, 5.7 rpg, Signed from Memphis Grizzles

Offseason Transactions:
Resigned forward Walter Herrman

Offseason Losses:
Jarvis Hayes, F, 6-8, 6.7 ppg, 2.2 rpg, Signed with New Jersey Nets
Juan Dixon, G, 6-3, 6.5 ppg, 1.6, rpg, Signed with Washington Wizards

Rookies:
Walter Sharpe, F, 6-9, Alabama-Birmingham

The Skinny:
Teams have come and gone over the last six years in the Eastern Conference, but one constant has been the Detroit Pistons. With their core still in tact from last year’s conference finals there is no reason to believe that the team won’t be back in the Eastern Finals or beyond once again this year.

With a 59-23 record the Pistons had the second-best record in the NBA last season. The only team with a better mark was the Boston Celtics. A big reason for the two best records coming out of the same conference is that the East is pretty week. The number of really good teams in the East you can count with your ears and nose. There are only a handful of decent teams and then there are the dregs of the league.

The West is completely different. You’ve got a bunch of really good teams with no one really head and shoulders better than another. Few would have expected the Lakers to make the Finals, but really there is so much talent in the conference that who ever is hot in the West can make a run. The talent in the East is not that good. Even a really hot team will struggle to beat one of the top dogs.

Two teams have been as consistent as it comes. One is San Antonio and the other is the Pistons. They have seen very little turnover in their roster during the last six years and as a result they’ve been able to rule a mediocre Eastern Conference.

Five key players have been with the team for at least four years. Guards Richard “Rip” Hamilton and Chauncey Billups along with forward Tayshaun Prince have all been with the team for six years. Center Rasheed Wallace has been there five years and forward Antonio McDyess has been there the last four.

That’s a great group of talented players that have been with each other for a while now. They know how to anticipate everyone’s moves and they all know how to win it all as members of the Pistons’ 2004 World Championship team.

No team may have more of its team returning from last year than the Pistons. Detroit brings back its top seven scorers from last year’s squad that was on the doorstep of the NBA Finals. The starting five averaged 69.0 points per game last season and accounted for 386 starts out of a possible 410.

The biggest problem the Pistons have is their frontcourt. Not since the days of the Bad Boys has Detroit been big on the inside. Even when they had Ben Wallace they still weren’t dominant. Wallace was a tremendous rebounder, but he wasn’t much of a threat on offense. Rasheed Wallace has the size of a center, but the skills of a power forward and presents such a tough match-up at the offensive end of the floor, but just the opposite of Wallace he’s not much on defense.

In an effort to strengthen the inside, during the offseason the Pistons acquired the services of center Kwame Brown from the Memphis Grizzles. After averaging 5.7 ppg. and 5.7 rpg., Brown was shipped to Memphis as part of the Pau Gaol deal. They also drafted 6-9 forward Walter Sharpe from Alabama-Birmingham who was averaging 14.2 ppg. and 6.8 rpg. before he was declared academically ineligible for the spring semester. Second-year center Cheikh Samb from Senegal could pay benefits down the line. He’s 7-foot-1 and is pretty solid at 245.

Unlike some teams, the Pistons appear to be ahead of the curve when it comes time to replace their vets. General Manager Joe Dumars knows that Billups and Hamilton aren’t getting any younger, that’s why they drafted guard Arron Afflalo and Will Bynum. Both are pretty good college players and if they listen to what the vets have to say they could step in and keep the train rolling.

Prediction
Even though Detroit has much talent back across the board, the one big intangible is its new coach. With only one year of experience as an assistant, Michael Curry was handed the keys to the Pistons after Flip Saunders was fired.

Curry has long had the respect of Dumars when he was signed to a 10-day contract with the team a few years back. Now the question is will he have the respect of his players. At 39-years old he’s only about four years older that Wallace and McDyess.

With such a veteran team this maybe the perfect situation for Curry. Billups and Hamilton can pretty much run the team from the floor so all Curry really needs to be able to do is manage all the egos in the locker room. As a former member of the Players’ Association he knows how to deal with a lot of egos so he may be the perfect man for the job.

I think this will be the year that the Pistons get back to the NBA Finals. As good as Boston is, I think the Pistons will figure them out. I also think that Detroit is much deeper than the Celtics are and the combination of those two factors will give them the edge of Boston come playoff time.

Before he got traded to Memphis, Brown was finally starting to develop into a good role player on the inside. It also helped that it was able to get out of Los Angeles because he was starting to get into trouble off the court there. This could be a second life for him in Detroit. Sharpe and Samb could also give some help on the inside.

This could be their last hurrah, but I think the Pistons will win it all this year. No one in the East besides Boston will give them a run and I don’t think Boston has it this year. The West is better from top to bottom, but they’ll beat themselves up and only San Antonio is as good as Detroit 1-5 with any sort of bench.

One of the longest-running NBA executives is out of a job and it’s a he said, he said story.

After 22 years of running the day-to-day operations of the Los Angeles Clippers, Elgin Baylor has been replaced by Mike Dunleavy as vice president of basketball operations for the Clippers. The problem is it doesn’t seem like Baylor wants to be out of a job.

The organization said that Baylor has resigned, but it doesn’t appear that way. When asked about his “resignation” from the Clippers, Baylor said that there is a difference between him and the organization and that on the advice of his lawyer he should say much more than that.

When was the last time that someone said they talked to their lawyer and every thing was just hunky dorrie? That’s what I thought.

Outside of being arrested, people talk to their lawyers because they’re either going to file a lawsuit or one has been filed against them. From just looking at the surface it appears that Baylor has been pushed out by the Clippers and he pissed about it.

If someone has put 22 years into an organization, and is 74 years old they are not resigning, they are retiring. Maybe he was resigning to take another job, maybe, but in either case, with as many years as Baylor put into the organization there would be much more remising if he was leaving on its own. It wouldn’t be treated the same way you treat something you’re trying to sweep up the rug and move along as quickly as possible.

It’s not to say that it wasn’t time for Baylor to be replaced of his duties. Given the Clippers’ history it’s amazing that he made it 22 years. If he wasn’t an NBA Hall of Famer and named one of the 50 Greatest NBA Players of all time I wonder if he would have made it that long as bad as the team has been.

During Baylor’s 22 years with the organization, the Clippers posted a 619-1153 record and have been the laughing stock of the Association – and most of professional sports – for some time. They have been joined as the laughing stocks of professional sports like the Cincinnati Bengals and the former Montreal Expos. Baseball has had a number of bad teams of late – primarily because the lack of a salary cap and decent revenue sharing prevents the competitive balance that the other sports have – but of late it’s been my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates.

Here’s my rant about the Pirates. Until they totally revamp the whole organization they are going to be perpetually below .500. Explain to me how the Tampa Bay Rays are making the American League Championship Series and Pittsburgh hasn’t sniffed the playoffs since 1992?

I hope the new ownership is trying to do that, but it doesn’t look good. They brought in a new general manager and team president, but so far their moves during the first year were less than impressive. I’ve heard from a lot of experts on TV that their trades have brought in a lot of talent, but I’ve heard that before and they’ve still gone nowhere. I hope they do, but they’ve got to spend some money to invest in players. If you look at all the players they let get away because they weren’t willing to pay them you could put together a pretty decent team. I don’t know if they’d win a World Series or even make the playoffs, but they’d have a much better chance.

Anyways…

If you take a look at all the first round draft picks the Clippers have had over the years you can see why they’ve been a bad team. Only three times during Baylor’s tenure have they not had a lottery pick – with nine picks inside the top five. That’s a boat load of great to good players that they’ve had a chance to draft and have messed it up more times than not.

The number of first-round draft picks that have panned out can be counted on one hand – Heresy Hawkins, Danny Manning, Antonio McDyess, Lamar Odom and Tyson Chandler – but most of them have succeeded on other teams. And for every Lamar Odom you’ve got three Yaroslav Korolev or Michael Olowokndi.

Chris Kaman – who originally looked like a bust when drafted in 2003 – seems to be coming around. That’s fine for a prospect to come around after five years, but only if you’re an established team and can afford that. If you’re a team like the Clippers you need instant help. Last year’s No. 1 pick Al Thornton of Florida State was a member of the 2008 NBA All-Rookie Team and looks like he could be a good building block for the future.

With Baylor on board, the Clippers managed to make the playoffs only four times in 22 years. He was named NBA Executive of the Year in 2006 after the team beat the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs. It was the organization’s first playoff series victory since the 1975-76 season when the team was located in Buffalo.

So it’s not like getting rid of Baylor wasn’t the worst thing for the Clippers to do and was probably way too late. What I don’t understand is why they didn’t just fire him and say he was being let go because the team has sucked? This is just going to make the Clippers look worse.

I can’t say that I’m surprised that Baylor failed. The list of former players who were outstanding during their playing career and then sucked as a coach or executive are longer than anyone cares to look at. I think there is something innate in great athletes that they can not explain how to do things or truly evaluate talent. They really never had to break down the sport and learn the nuisances, they just did it without an explanation. That’s not who you want coaching your team or drafting your players.

You want the guy who had to work his ass of just to be average. They had to look at the sport and the skill from every angle possible to get the most out of themselves. They had to teach themselves the game and they can teach it to others because they’ve already used themselves as a guinea pig.
Now the team is in the hands of Dunleavy, who has been their coach for the last six years. Needless to say I’m opposed to the head coach holding any other position in an organization. To be a head coach of a professional team is a big enough task and to add another big task is just too much for one person to handle, but we’ll save that for another post.