Great cast as usual. Mark you had me spitting out my water with the Candace Parker tampon commercial idea. I was always wondering why WNBA players were never in commercials, but I think that's due to the fact that NO ONE watches the WNBA. It's like watching pee-wee football, lots of running around, not much structure, & by some miracle one of the teams comes out the victor. I've only watched 3 games ever & that was back in '96 when the league was starting. And the fact that players are taking LOA's every season to get pregnant & give birth doesn't help an already struggling league. Look I love women & am not trying to marginalize the miracle of birth or the difficulty of carrying a baby around for 9 months, but best players sitting out a whole season because they're knocked up has helped maintain the mediocrity of this league.
But back to the podcast, Fred, how can you possibly say that the 03-04 draft class was not that great? LBJ, Melo, Wade, Bosh, West, Howard, Kaman, Hinrich, Mo Williams, Barbosa, Travis Outlaw, & so on. That was one of the best drafts in the past 20 years! And I wanted Wade, badly. I knew this kid was gonna be great. I watched him all throughout the NCAA tourney that year & he was amazing. Like Mark said, he took a mid-market school from a crappy conference at the time, all the way to the Final Four & was scorching the opposing team night in & night out. And Pax had to take a PG cuz if you remember our amazing all-star PG of the future from the all-star breeding Duke University, had the brilliant idea to race a crotch rocket down Fletcher Ave. & found out what it's like to be a crash test dummy.
And I agree with Mark that Dumars was completely idiotic in not drafting Melo, Bosh, or Wade. Melo was a sure thing after LeBron. He won a NCAA championship as a Freshman for cryin' out loud! And Dumars drafts a euro player, who wasn't even 18 yet, because he had Teyshaun Prince? TEYSHAUN PRINCE!!! He's a solid player, but he's nowhere near the talent level of a Melo or Bosh. I understand he could take a risk cuz his team was already good, but no one was predicting Darko to be amazing cuz no one knew anything about him other than he was tall, athletic, & young. Everyone knew Melo would be good, they just saw him win a NCAA title!
Also, Dumars trading Billups was the DUMBEST move he's ever made as GM, even dumber than drafting Darko. You don't trade the heart & soul of your team for the most selfish player on the planet. And it contradicted his entire resume as a GM up to that point. He took players who were hard working, unselfish, & had a chip on their shoulder. Now AI does have a chip on his shoulder but he harbors none of the other qualities that Dumars sought out in the past that helped him build a championship team. And now this offseason has just proved to me that maybe Dumars wants to get fired. The Pistons are a mess & worse yet, a capped out mess, with no hope whatsoever for the future unless they are wretchedly bad & get an amazing player in the draft.
