Tom Gores was in town for the last #Pistons home game of the season, but his agenda isn’t just about enjoying his team’s last game. With the past two season showing little or no improvement Gores made it clear that thing will happen.
The rumors have been circulating for weeks that Lawrence Frank’s job is on the line. Gores had lofty playoff aspirations and Frank led the team to another Draft Lottery pick.
“Lawrence is a tremendous guy, I’ve gotten to know him a little bit the last couple years and he’s a tremendous guy. But I have to worry about this franchise and what is the best thing to do.” Via Mlive
Dumars is also on the hot seat.
“I think both of them, including ownership, has to be accountable for the year. We have to be accountable for the results of this year.
I expected to be in the playoffs. So I’m disappointed by that. When I said that last year, I meant it. I’m very excited about what we have going. We have a lot of room financially. In basketball operations, we’ve set ourselves up. So I’m very excited about the future. But I’m not content about how we performed this year.”
We’ll know soon what the direction of this Pistons team will be but it seems quite obvious at this point. I’m not sure many Pistons fans would rally behind Lawrence Frank, but I know that many want to give Joe Dumars another go at it considering his hands have been tied for a while.
I myself am a big Dumars slappy, and think he’s got to take a ton of blame but I’m not all that sure that this ownership team can do much better. Their not sports guys, they are money guys.
What do you think?
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We’ve all had it with “ok, I’ll give them / him one more year”… But I still think it’s a tough decision on both Frank and Dumars.
Frank had a couple of injured players, but I still think that the team could have done better. He clearly is a hard worker, tried incorporating the rookies (probably too late into the season).
Dumars, as Natalie said, did not have a lot of room to work with after the championship team fell apart, due to the uncertainty of ownership.
If you want Dumars and / or Frank to go, who do you guys see as new GM & new head coach? Bill 🙂 ?
Just undo one more button Gores
Alls i got to say is thanx alot pistons for finishing the year on a meaningless win streak just in time to dash a shot at drafting a real difference maker in the top six.
I think Dumars should be given one more year to right his past wrongs. I feel like his biggest mistakes have come from trusting players who got the money and flopped on us (Rip, BG, Stuck, and yes sheed). Those were critical players with critical contracts who refused to give their all to help the franchise win. Now that three of the four aforementioned are gone along with a key trade of probably Joe D’s favorite player in Tayshaun Prince, he is in position to right most of his previous wrongs. Given his history in Detroit and having his hands in bringing three rings to this franchise, I think he deserves that opportunity now that the cuffs and the kid gloves are off… Frank is a whole different matter though. If there’s any other tough defensive minded coaches out there with some kind of proven track record, fire Frank immediately. At this point I’d even take Bill Laimbeer, but I’d hate to see him fail on the big stage, and the fact that he was briefly an nba assistant who is now relegated back to the women’s league don’t speak much in his favor (no offense to women). Maybe Mike Brown? I just dont want another Flip Saunders type who’ll come in and throw defense out the window.
chauncey billips for ai, darko instead of melo bosh wade and kaman, traded away arran afllalo for pocket change, ran stuckey the point for three years and fired coaches (flip, curry kuester) instead of trading stuck and getting a real point guard. Hires two of the softest guys in the nba, charlie v and ben gordon. Picks Austin Daye as a top pick for a stretch 2-4. Gave Rip Hamilton (and then prince) a check for being part of the ’04 team, and wrecked Detroit’s chances for rebuilding.
Now I’m not going to give him credit for moose or penguin because those fell into his lap.
What Joe D can do and shown it repeatedly is look down in the 20-30 pick range and find players like Jerebko and affalo that can play substantial minutes in the NBA.
What Joe D can’t do is negotiate. He gives away contracts to players because he likes him, his emotions get in the way.
Can we do better? Sure. Can we do worse? Actually no we can’t do worse. Because if we did worse and quit drafting in the 7th-11th range we might get a #1 pick instead of stuck on the same treadmill that the Pacers have been on for a decade.
Gores is impatient, and that’s a dangerous GM to have, because for a market like ours . . . you don’t build winners, you grow them. He has to be patient. On the other hand, Dumars does not deserve another year. He had his chance.
We should have been in the playoffs this year.
I do give credit for Joe, he’s been slowly unfunging his mistakes, so there is that. It will make it a lot easier for the next GM, no bad contracts, good attitude in the locker room and a GM that thinks it’s christmas.
dangerous “owner” not “gm” to ahve
Just curious, when you say we can do better than Joe who exactly do you have in mind?
Cause just pretending that Championship Team building GM’s grow from trees and can be picked off whenever you need a new one is extremely foolish.
After all this GM by the gut and player love by dumars, I’d like to see someone like Tom Penn who is basically a math guy. 76ers almost hired him.
I think there are a lot of other good candidates out there though of course most of the ones you hear about in the news are former GMs it’s a regular game of musical chairs, expect Dumars to get a job somewhere else if we fire him.
i dont believe that “you grow them” rarely is a team grown to championship. Usually it’s 2nd round of playoffs at the most. Usually you spend all your resources trying train the young guys and they eventually leave to gain a championship after matured somewhere else. Right now we have some good young pieces that we can package if joe dumars wanted. But remember he built a championship and he didn’t grow it. He went out and got the pieces. Stackhouse for RIP seemed stupid to everyone but it worked. Joe d needs a epiphiany. A moment of clarity and a realisation he doesn’t have john hammond anymore. He needs to find inspiration elsewhere
you also forgot to include traded away carlos delfino who is doing pretty well in houston for nothing. Also Amir Johnson. Let sheed walk and got nothing from him.
I think Gores is more disappointed than impatient because like us, we expected to be in the playoffs. But its not fair to blame just the GM and coach, we had players who under-performed.
I don’t really think Frank should lose his job…yet. And I don’t really see Dumars getting fired. After a bad start, the team was playing really solid, .500 ball until Drummond got injured. It kind of fell apart after that for some reason. Give this young team a chance to come back together and get more acquainted with Calderon at point.
i see no point in firing frank either really with this group of players we have now. Unless you are looking to shake things up. I’m hoping guys like Stuckey and CV are gone by next year though
I don’t know but sometimes Frank is too slow to make adjustments, doesn’t take advantage of mismatches and calls time out only after a huge scoring run by the opposing team. He also rides the bench guys far too long even if they aren’t contributing much.
while i know its bad form to “tank” a season. i’ll admit that this winning streak is annoying because it’s coming when we don’t need it. Either guys are ruining our chances to pad their stats or to avoid getting traded at the last second.
We all knew lawrence frank wasn’t the right coach but it was the tom gores company guys who interviewed and put frank in place not dumars. I always figured it as a case where we didn’t need to overpay for a coach right now because we didn’t have the pieces in place to really compete. So once we get better players we will also see better coaches.
I personally have not enjoyed any moves that dumars has made in a long time. Buying up 2 guys from toronto that allowed kobe to score 81 is gonna help your team? Other than a couple good draft picks I have gotten really annoyed with Dumars reluctance to like any players that I like and instead go for guys from former glory. I hate trading for salary cap because there’s no one in this free agent class I want other than Tony Allen. And I doubt he’s leaving memphis for detroit. I personally don’t want to see dumars go. I like him and what he is capable of bringing. But i think he has allowed guys like keith langlois who doesn’t know basketball to always stroke his ego and made joe dumars complacent (yes there’s that complacent word. GM’s can have it too)
as of now we aren’t just close to making it to the next level. We are getting beaten and blownout constantly. They should of shut some players down to get a better draft pick.
one thing i really do like about frank though is that he brought drummond on slowly. I think he was purposely trying to deny him success early so the press and everyone doesn’t get their claws in him so soon and turning him into those “stuperstars” instead allowing him to concentrate on the game and winning, rather than ESPN highlights. I know everyones mad at frank for doing that and handcuffing drummond and even monroe but I really liked it the more i thought about the reason of why
Agreed. I think Drummond is not yet mentally mature and needs more confidence so bringing him in slowly is a must. He was supposed to start though after the all-star break but unfortunately he got injured.
Joe needs to get us a team that will make the playoffs next year or he has to go! We have plenty of cap space and some good young talent. We need to get the best free agent on the market for the positions we need to fill.