Random bits and pieces I wanted to mention before they fall through the cracks:
- I made a list of Detroit's top 10 athletes for FanHouse -- how'd I do? Leave your list in the comments over there.
- The Sonics hired Sam Presti away from the Spurs to be their new general manager, and one of Presti's first moves was to hire Scott Perry, formerly Detroit's director of player personnel, to be his new assistant GM.
What this means for Detroit is ... I don't have a clue. I know Perry's main job responsibilities for the Pistons had him intimately involved with scouting prospective draft picks, but I honestly don't know how much input he had on the team's final decisions. Either way, I'm happy for the guy -- he first joined the Pistons as a college scout in 2000 and has steadily moved up in organization, and this seems like a pretty big break.
- Natalie from Need4Sheed has John Hammond's ear ... or at least his business card.
- Kobe and KG and Marion have (not really) been traded!
- An interesting theory about Alex Acker's immediate future from the guys at PistonsForum.com.
- Is Mark Champion, radio play-by-play guy, taking a shot at Rasheed Wallace?
Following back-to-back NBA titles in 1989 and ‘90, the Bad Boys began losing their balance on that slippery slope called complacency. The 1990-91 season was the beginning of the end – the famous walkoff led by Isiah Thomas following a Chicago Bulls sweep in the Eastern Conference finals.
The following season saw the urgency of winning replaced by the complacency of "been there, done that."
A first-round loss to the New York Knicks would end a five-year run that stamped the Detroit Pistons as one of the NBA's elite franchises. During the dog days of that season, Daly urged me to watch closely during a timeout. Look at the body language of the players. Look at their eyes. It was a window to the soul of the team.
Dennis Rodman would be sitting on press row, several feet from the nerve center. ...
Replace "Dennis Rodman" with "Rasheed Wallace" and Champion sounds a lot like Chris Sheridan.
- If you haven't listened to Chad Ford's interview with Joe Dumars over at ESPN, I recommend you do so. There's a lot of interesting tidbits there, many of which were highlighted by MLive.com's Full-Court Press as well as Keith Langlois at Pistons.com.
Ford always scores incredibly insightful interviews with Dumars. Does he simply not make himself available for these types of things with the local press? Because he never seems to reveal quite as much to them as he does Ford.
Also, if you're looking to satisfy your mock draft jones ...
- I'm no good at mock drafts (all I know about most of these college players I learned reading other mock drafts over the past few weeks), but that hasn't stopped me from participating in a few. Over at the FanHouse, Spencer Hawes was available at No. 15, so I took him. I haven't seen him falling that far anywhere else, but I imagine the Pistons would be intrigued with him there, right? Since I went big early, I went small late, going with Marco Belinelli with the 27th pick.
- In a mock draft conducted at Ballhype, though, I had them going with Rodney Stuckey and Sean Williams ...
- ... and in the one at SB Nation, I went with Nick Young and Daequen Cook. In hindsight, that Cook pick was probably a bad/unrealistic move, at least following the selection of Young.
What can I say, I'm not really that good at mock drafts. You guys sound pretty intelligent, though.