But let's leave Iverson aside for now to try to explain this year's Pistons. These are just preliminary teasers really; I intend to be more thorough later. So this is just a brief chat answer and not a complete answer.
--Rodney Stuckey, who is Chauncey Billups' replacement, has been wildly inconsistent. He was a superstar in December and only a poor player unqualified to start in February. The Pistons will never be a very good team if Stuckey is going to be this inconsistent.
--Although Coach Michael Curry was smart to try numerous starting lineups and rotations, he probably got carried away with experimenting.
--Worse, Curry has had difficulty judging the results of the experiments and has not done very well with rotations overall. He gets an A on generosity to reserves, but maybe a C- on judging which reserves to play when.
--Specifically, Amir Johnson and Will Bynum have not played enough, whereas Walter Hermann and Arron Afflalo have played too much. At least one of the two between Hermann and Afflalo should not be playing at all, considering the Pistons are overloaded with guards who are better than them.
--There is one player who has played worse due to both Stuckey and Iverson combined: Rip Hamilton. It basically makes a mess of the offense to have all three of them out there at the same time, which for some strange reason Curry has insisted on for way too many minutes. In other words, small ball has been a total disaster.
--Although many Pistons are down from last year to this year, Rasheed Wallace deserves special mention. His 3-point shooting has not been as bad as it may seem, and his defending is almost as good as last year. But he isn't taking it to the hoop as much, so his overall scoring, free throws, and offensive rebounding are all down. Since he mostly wants to catch and shoot now, his assists are down also.
--Let's be honest: the Pistons may have drunk the kool-aid and decided that it doesn't matter what they do this season because "everybody knows" that Dumars is rebuilding now and will be getting rid of Iverson and Wallace in order to get new big time players in the next couple of years.
The trouble is, "everybody" does not really know this. Nothing is written in stone. If Iverson or Wallace were to accept much reduced salary, they would probably be welcome to remain. Or if the Pistons with this group went to the East Conference Final, at least one of the two between Iverson and Wallace would be given a new contract that was not discounted.
But this may be a big problem with the Internet and 24/7 TV news now: everyone and his uncle has cynical, simplistic, and exaggerated theories about what general managers are doing. Dumars and other managers can do some of the things people are dreaming of, but not all of them and not even the majority of them.
For one thing, Dumars is in competition with 29 other managers for those players you are dreaming of. For another thing, not every player Dumars or you or I might want is going to want to play in Auburn Hills, Michigan. For a third thing, you have a big potential problem even after you get the player you are dreaming of. A great player who is chronically injured is not really so great a player, really. For example, the Rockets don't have Tracy McGrady due to injury, and so they are most likely not going to be able to make it to the West finals.
Another huge complication for any multi-year plan right now is that the League may end up in some kind of lock-out if the economy is bad enough, and no manager is going to be able to operate any huge plan if that happens. Keep in mind that the salary cap can go down as well as up, and if it is going to go down, then dreaming about cap space right now is kind of silly.
But if the players, as a result of all the know-it-alls, believe this season is just a transition from the old Great Pistons to the new Great Pistons, and so this year is just a wasted year in between needed due to basketball economics, than they might believe that nothing they do this season is going to change the Plan, so why should they go all out to make this season a good one? What does it matter whether the Pistons win 40 or 55 games when Dumars already has a plan he is set on that will go forward no matter what?
If Dumars were a perfect genius, he would have informed the Pistons that this season, like all seasons, matters, and that he has no set in stone, detailed plan about who is coming back in 2009-10. But there are no perfect genius managers, and Dumars may have, by accident, made the Pistons more likely to believe the media rumors that this season is meaningless, when in his news conferences and statements to reporters he emphasized that he would make as many changes as necessary, and when he did nothing to refute the notion that he has a master plan that makes this season meaningless.
I think Dumars should have kept his great eagerness to make changes, immediately in off-season 2008 and in the next few years to follow, out of the public view, so that it would be out of the player's view. No GM should ever create the impression that the Plan is so big that the season can not affect the plan, or else the result may be a ruined season. And if the season is ruined, you now need a bigger plan, one so big that it probably can not be implemented successfully. You've dug yourself a whopper of a hole, laugh out loud.
So general managers need to keep their plans and their eagerness to make changes to themselves, and they have to remind everyone from time to time, especially the players, that every season matters and that there is no set in stone plan ever.
But the players should be smart enough to know that Dumars is not dumb enough to have a set in stone Plan to the point where he will totally ignore the results of this season. But maybe they drunk the kool-aid, since everyone and his uncle (but not me, l avoided it) was saying that this season has to be meaningless due to basketball economics.
========== Editorial Notes ==========
--The above was written in early March, 2009. For a much more on the subject of the Pistons in 2009 and going forward, see this Report.
--As promised, we are finally posting material written during the spring on forums. Obviously, if you have your own site, you should be posting at least simultaneously on your own site when you for whatever reason post elsewhere. But there has been a bad habit of not doing so, a bad habit that is being beaten down due to new content sharing regulations that have teeth.
--The Michael Jackson Hero of the Quest Report was actually not finished when it was posted, and is being finished by noon on August 12. More music videos and one or two music video players are being added.
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