FD Guest Lecture: Chains of a King

In honor of Amir's starting slot, we've called on Matt Watson to give a brief history of all the reasons he supposedly wasn't starting yet. Then, cop the FREE AMIR shirt to celebrate.

Also, don't miss Dr. LIC on our people, and please participate in our DonorsChoose drive.


Flip Saunders, November 11, 2007:

“Thirteen years ago, I had Kevin Garnett and at that time he was the first guy to come into the league from high school in like 20 years. Amir has gotten more publicity this year, a guy who’s never played, than Garnett did that first year, and here’s a guy who was the first high school guy in 20 years.”

Reading this makes me feel silly. Here I was driving Amir's bandwagon last year and I apparently missed his Sports Illustrated cover. Can someone mail me a copy? Before KG was drafted, I remember NBA general managers insisting "that Garnett had more talent and ability than any of his peers," and coaches saying, "Garnett's got everybody going, "Whoa.' A lot of people say he has a Connie Hawkins and Julius Erving flair."

Amir, on the other hand, spent his summer of restricted free agency sorting through dozens several zero offer sheets from other teams before re-signing with the Pistons. The parallels are mind-boggling!

Chris McCosky, November 12, 2007:

On another issue: Let’s back off of Amir Johnson for a bit, OK? I don’t know what some people expect from this kid, but he’s not Magic Johnson. He’s not ready to be in the regular rotation and contribute 25 to 30 minutes a game. He’s not going to be ready all year, is my guess. This isn’t the Pistons’ version of Cameron Maybin. Nobody’s ever said he was the greatest prospect ever to come through the pike. He was the 56th pick in the draft, taken right out of high school. He wasn’t the first overall pick. He’s an extremely athletic but extremely raw kid. He is active and he can finish around the basket. He can block shots and run the floor. But other than that, he’s still finding his way (on the court and off it). For now and for the foreseeable future, he’s the 11th or 12th man this year getting mostly just spot minutes.>

He's not KG and he's not Magic, he's just some scrub who's "extremely athletic," "active," "can finish around the basket" and "block shots and run the floor." But that's it! Why in the world would you want to see the Pistons give a guy like that playing time?



Flip Saunders, February 28, 2008:

"You have to give Amir credit for keeping on fighting. He didn't give up on things even though Maxie was playing well, getting lots of accolades. Amir just kept on fighting through things, and when he got an opportunity, he's taken advantage of it."

Um, that's actually good to hear. When Amir plays, good things happen -- keep giving this guy some burn!

Flip Saunders, two days later, following a loss in Utah in which Amir didn't play:

“But we made a mistake — we should have played him. We got in a situation where they were making such a run, and we thought at that point it was too late. First thing I said afterwards was, ‘We should have played Amir, and we didn’t.’"

Considering you just admitted how well Amir has played, yeah, giving him a DNP was a head-scratcher. But at least you realize your mistake, right?

Flip Saunders in the same article:

“We have people who are saying, ‘Start Amir.’ But they don’t know that Antonio McDyess has been one of the leading rebounders in minutes played in the NBA over the last month. You can’t always look at superficial things.”

AGH! You should have stopped while you were ahead. What's more superficial than looking at the splits for just one month? For the season, Amir Johnson averaged 14.7 rebounds per 48; McDyess, 14.0/48. If you don't want to play Amir, talking about rebounds isn't that smart ...



Flip Saunders, March 5, 2008 after signing Theo Ratliff:

I think we're committed to staying with the rotation that we have and see where that takes us," said Saunders. "But I think what we do have is we do have other players that, if things aren't working, maybe you have a little bit of a shorter leash … If our bench gives us in the playoffs what they're giving us right now, we're going to play them. Our hope is that they're going to be able to continue to do that."

For the months of March and April, Johnson's per 48 numbers: 11.2 points, 13.9 boards and 4.8 blocks to go with 55% shooting. And now, Ratliff's: 10.7 points, 10.3 boards, 4.0 blocks, 10.3 boards to go with 45% shooting.

Saunders, being a man of his word ... completely dropped Johnson from his playoff rotation. Johnson played a grand total of 43 minutes in the postseason, including just seven minutes beyond the first round. Ratliff, on the other hand, played 131 minutes.

Granted, it's a little silly to project a guy's per 48 numbers when he played a grand total of 43 minutes, but for the sake of comparison, here they are: Johnson averaged 23.4 points, 14.5 boards, 3.35 blocks on 75% shooting; Ratliff averaged 5.9 points, 9.9 boards, 4.0 blocks and 50% shooting.

Clearly, Flip's rotation was a meritocracy.

Wind and Tickle

Take a good long look at Shoals' NBA Finals dissection here. Read an extremely good article about our lord and savior here.


And now he's gone.

I take no solace, Detroit, in saying "I told you so." Yes essentially all of my FD posts for the past three years + my Pistons/Bulls Deadspin preview in which I deemed him a "playoff nightmare" foreshadowed this very moment. But make no mistake, I wanted to see Flip get his. I even changed my tune on Flip's coaching abilities ever so slightly this year. It looked as though the Pistons' omniscient swag had run off on him a bit. But at the end of the day, Flip is not the coach that can get you to the next level, and he's not the coach that can get you to the finals. And he is the coach who gets out-coached by Doc Rivers (yikes).

Last Thursday, I told the Recluse and Shoals that whichever coach lost the Pistons/Celtics series would be out (I also added that Avery Johnson would take over the consequent vacancy--MICHAEL CURRY WTF?????!!??). It just gets to the point where people/Dumars are overemploying logical syllogisms to something far more complicated: If the Pistons core four + Larry Brown = the NBA finals, and the Pistons core four + Flip Saunders = not the NBA finals, then Flip Saunders = not the NBA finals.

Flip's looseness is one of his greatest assets, allowing him to coexist with notorious headcases such as Rasheed Wallace and Latrell Sprewell, but his nonchalance, and the fact he has zero NBA roots pre-Timberwolves also makes him--to get on some Billups channeling Michael Clayton bit for a second--"the guy you kill." Rudy T, Larry Brown, even Don Nelson...they're not the guy you kill, they're the guy you buy.



And now he's gone. It will be interesting to see what happens with KG over the next week or so, and (if the Lakers win) whether there is a slight moment of redemption for Kevin McHale. The failure of those relationships and tenures have been placed squarely on the shoulders of Mac, but at the end of the day McHale's real failure was hanging on to those guys for too long. KG and Flip like shooting jumpers. McHale liked to deck people in the mouth.

Back to Detroit for a second...at the end of the day, that core four group has essentially one year left of window. Chauncey and Rip showed themselves as bruisable this year, Sheed's shtick is wearing on some, and If the NBA were the MLB, we would expect McDyess to show up in the Mitchell Report. I really hoped that Avery J was going to get this job and we could look forward to the PISTONS REVENGE TOUR 2009, but with Curry at the helm I have no idea what to expect.