After 3 quarters tonight, Memo is 23 and 11, and for the season so far, he's 21 and 9. No offense to Darko, I love the kid's potential, and think he will be the real deal, but isnt this the kind of output we were hoping for?

I used to think Mike James was the biggest loss Detroit had, but starting to think it might be Memo. My questions are: is this a fluke start for the Turk, or is he the real deal; in hind sight should we have matched; would we have been better with Memo off the bench instead of Dice; and any chance Darko and Memo could have been better than the Wallaces?

Have to think, Memo would be better off the bench than Dice right now, and would definately help the team more in the immediate future than Darko.

Memo makes more over more years than what we gave Dice.

The only way to keep Memo was lose Sheed or go into luxury territory. That's a call from the the top.

Btw, you must have missed Mem's #s from 2 games ago against New Jersey. 2 points, no boards in 15 odd minutes. He actually got pulled for playing so poorly. He's still pretty inconsistent.

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Nov 13 LW Milan Lucic had an active night. He scored his first goal in eight games since his Oct. 25 hat trick and also pounded Michael Komisarek in a third-period fight. Lucic cut his hand in a fight with Michael Komisarek. "I'll be fine," he said. "(X-rays are) negative, but there's so many broken bones in there from before you can't really tell."

Micro, going into the lux tax to keep Memo was not an option because we had no bird rights on him.
It was simply Sheed or Memo

I like Memo. He could always score and rebound. But he doesn't do it consistently, as has been noted. And he's still a knucklehead with questionable conditioning and deficient defense. Only now we can ignore all the bad games and point out the occasional good one.

He made a good deal for himself, and so did the Pistons.

Mercs right. The problem was compounded by Sheeds becoming a free agent. Memo wanted the money, he was getting decent minutes and would've got more had he stayed for less green. But Dumars had already installed a tracking device on McDyess back in January and had made his mind up. 24mil for McDyess made him a great 6th man and a great value for a later trade. The green he gets can get you a lot of different players should you decide to entertain offers, it's an 'upside' contract that won't choke a horse.

It is now Darko's 3rd year and he is still riding the pine. Darko has a lot of skills put I don't believe he will ever be a double double man like Memo could be this year.

For a 7' 250lb guy Darko is an autrocious rebounder. He should be getting 1 board every 3 minutes he is on the floor, worst case. For his career he has 93 rebounds in 447 minutes or less than 1 rebound every 4.5 minutes. This is horrible for a guy his size. Even this year he only has 7 rebounds in the 34 minutes he has played, so he is obviously not improving in that area.

Unless Darko can develop into an excellent outside shooter his NBA career will be relegated to a journeyman type career, because he will never become good enough in the low post to start for anyone at the #5 slot.

Memo has great offensive numbers put Sheed puts him to total shame when it comes to defense.

it happened last year too dice didn't do well early, but he delivered late. i don't think memo will come up big for the jazz down the stretch of the season or in the playoffs. so i'd rather keep dice who can deliver along with the wallaces in the playoffs.

You also have to look at what opponents Memo was putting up those numbers against. No way does Memo put those numbers up in the East.

I agree with you. Darko will never put up Memo numbers, at least not here. But then, Memo would not have either, if he were still here.

People can talk all they want about Darko not getting this and that statistic, but when he does not play, he will not get those numbers. Do you realize how hard it is to get a rebound from the bench?

We have all these superstars in front of him and they will still be there a couple of years from now when he is due to sign another contract. Do you see him taking less than he is worth, like Ben, Sheed, and all do? Not when in his own mind, he has not been given the chance to even contribute to the success of HIS team.

He worked this summer, the first one that he could, and worked in camp but he has not progressed beyond the days of 'little ykw', at least in the minds of his coaches. Sure, it is early in the season and 47 other reasons not to panic, but the longer the bench time accumulates, the further behind he gets.

Somebody out there still believes in him and will sign him because he has no reason to want to take less money to stay here. And when he leaves, I will still have plenty of loyalty to root for the Pistons but have enough left over to root for Memo and Darko.

People talk about how lucky he is to have a ring and maybe more by the time he is 21 or 22. Are these people the types of people who prefer riding on other people's coattails, or are they people who would rather work for what they get?

In my mind, they can take my rings and stuff 'em if I didn't do my part in earning them. I would rather work for what I get even if it does not include a 'ship'.

Excellent thread and a topic I knew would eventually be brought back to the table. Although Memo is older he has always shown a lot more desire than we have seen from DMC. He's definitely not more athletic but he just has that drive to fight and succeed, I mean even in his rookie season he pretty much had taken rebraca's spot for good once zeljko got hurt. Darko is still so young it's hard to count him out though, and in my book Memo will never be the defender Darko has the potential to be. But at this point I don't think DMC will ever be as explosive and dominate as Memo currently is now. It just seems that young Darko is a bit too satisfied for now in my humble opinion. Bottom line Darko will basically be as good as he decides he wants to be, therefore if he wants to be as good as or better than Mehmet he will be.