Ian "Idiot" Thompson

I rarely read Ian Thompson over at SI.com for his NBA coverage, and now I know why.  While checking out some of SI's NBA trade deadline stuff, I came across this gem.  Hard to imagine, but he both defends Isiah Thomas for the Knicks roster disaster and Joe Dumars for the Darko Milicic pick.  Thompson must have a soft spot in his heart for the Bad Boys. 

 

Let's get to Thompson's take on the Knicks first.  He lays the blame not on Thomas, but squarely on the shoulders of owner James Dolan:

People blame team president Isiah Thomas for the Knicks' payroll, but he's simply following orders. (Or do you think he racks up a $60 million luxury-tax bill all on his own?) It's clear that [owner James] Dolan's heart is in the right place, because he has proved in the most expensive way imaginable that he wants to win... If Dolan suddenly changed course, would the Knicks be worse? They couldn't be. Would he have to change his administration? No, because Thomas is one of the league's best draft evaluators (see Tracy McGrady and Channing Frye), and coach Larry Brown loves to teach.

I don't know what's more laughable: that Thompson criticizes Dolan for spending money, or that Thompson thinks Thomas should be absolved of all of his bad player acquisitions.  Dolan may well have given Thomas the green light, telling him money was no object and he should build a good team by any means necessary.  But Thomas is still in charge of assembling the team.  Dolan may sign off on the moves, but he pays Thomas a lot of money to evaluate the players and salaries involved and advise him on what the team should do.  The fact is, with the exception of player evaluation in the draft, Thomas is absolutely abominable at this.

 

The irony is that there is another owner who did exactly what Dolan is trying to do when he came into the league -- Mark Cuban.  Cuban took over a Mavs team that had some decent pieces in place and told his GM to start spending money to build a top level team.  (If I remember correctly, Cuban's attitude was, "I'm a billionaire, so what's the big deal about paying $20-$40 million in luxury taxes?")  It it worked -- primarily because even though they took on some huge salaries, the Mavs always did so in order to acquire good players who played well together and fit into their vision of team basketball. 

 

And now, on to Mr. Dumars.  Here's Thompson's take on Darko:

Was drafting Milicic with the No. 2 pick a mistake by the Pistons? Yes, in the sense that Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade -- the Nos. 3, 4 and 5 picks in the 2003 draft -- have turned into stars. The reality is that they probably would have taken Anthony instead with the No. 2 pick, and he surely would have eaten into TayshaunPrince's role while disrupting the chemistry of a finely balanced team that went to the last two NBA Finals. Then the Pistons would have faced another potentially divisive decision of which players to dump in the next wave of contracts, because they couldn't afford to keep Anthony as well as their current starting five. Taken altogether, the decision on Milicic may go down as the most successful bad pick in NBA history.

Well, I agree with one part of that last statement.  It was a bad pick.  Everything else is window dressing.  His arguments make no sense, and worse, they're unoriginal.  It's the sort of crap you hear all the time about this pick.  Let me just ask a simple question -- would you rather have less talent on your team or more?  Pure and simple, the answer is always more.  If team chemistry is a problem, you can trade someone and get something in return.  If salaries are a problem, you can trade someone and get something in return, or just let them walk away.  The Pistons had the #2 pick in the draft.  They gambled on a 7 footer with "upside" and came away with nothing, when they could have thrown at a dartboard and gotten one of the best 30-40 players in the league.

 

Now, this isn't to say that there aren't perfectly valid reasons for why Dumars drafted Darko and why he thought that gamble was worth taking.  And I wouldn't have an issue with Thompson making that argument.  But no matter how you slice it, Darko turned out to be a horrible, awful, no good, very bad pick.  And there was nothing "successful" about it.