You can thank LB and Flip for preserving the value of our lemon.

The Pistons won't make it out of the first round if they don't play Darko and Arroyo.

@Cloud, St8, good job arguing without it getting ugly. I was reading through the thread, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Thankfully it never did!

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To all of my friends, comrades and companions at PF.com

Thank you for another great season!

St. Cloud and reasonable people can disagree... And so can I.

Elevating one player isn't diminishing another. Larry Nance was a better athlete than Barkley & taller, but that didn't make him a better player.

He was a low mileage Yugo in pretty much every sense of the word.

I agree.

I remember one guy with the handle Darko Fan who started posting on the Magic forum right after the trade. He would agree too.

When you look at the other players that were available at the time Melo, D. Wade and Bosh, I still think we came out pretty good when you factor in getting Stuckey as a draft pick.

Wade is often injured, for a young guy, I think his shelf life was a good year, I now think he is damaged goods, he may have another 1 or 2 good years in him that are injury free. I think he had a half dozen surgeries, I am looking at him as a Grant Hill injury clone.

Melo - When, where, and how much time would he have actually gotten on the floor. He may have ended up as the Human Victory Cigar and played only in garbage time. Tayshaun would have been a back up, (I don't think so).

Bosh - Would have been the second coming of Amir Johnson, he may have played a little more, but he would not have gotten the start in front of Rasheed or McDyess. On the other hand, he probably would be getting the same minutes as JMax is getting now, and where would that leave JMax?

Stuckey - I can't think of another Rookie point guard that is suddenly thrust in a starting position in the playoffs, has zero turnovers, maybe a little jitters, but all in all he played like a veteran.

Yep, I think we made up for the Darko Fiasco.

Pretty much what Billy King said today when I revisited the subject. He said that Darko never got the minutes, but agreed he has become just a bench big. Stuckey was fortunate in that CB's injury has given him the chance to shine like Tay did a few years ago. And he came through. He did agree that Stuckey has been more of a value to the Pistons than Darko was to us.

Nice discussion guys!

Have to agree with everything you said. Also, Darko ain't quite the bust people make him out to be. The pick was a bust, but not Darko. And now considering we essentially got Stuckey for the #2, it's not so bad anymore.

BTW, for all the people who consider Darko the biggest bust ever, ponder this. Darko is the same age as Bargnani, the #1 pick in 2006, and Darko had the better season last year. Remember, at 22, Darko is the same age as Aflalo, and 3 years younger than Maxiell.

Getting rid of Darko, and going small ball really helped them in the playoffs. Orlando had a superstar at PF, serviceable centers, an average at best pg, a nonexistent sg, and a potentially good sg on the bench. So what do they do? Overpay for a 3, move him to 4, push their 4 to 5, dump their center, trade their only good potential at sg, and keep the pg.

Dumb. Rashard and Dwight are 2 men wrecking crews, Peja ok, the rest of the team is garbage. Keeping Darko, Ariza, and signing a real pg would have helped Orlando a lot more than overpaying Lewis.

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Orlando was obviously hurt by Battie's absence too. Last year they had 3 bigs who were playoff ready. This year they had 1.

Nelson and Turkoglu were much better this season and Rashard was pretty dangerous, but all of that couldn't make up for only having 1 big man, who we happened to match up very well against.

Even with all that, I would say that we were lucky to win that series 4-1. It could have easily gone the way of these other series, with the home team holding serve throughout. We had multiple players come up big at the right times and we pulled out some close games.

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"I’ll just say this: We’re not talking to teams about their second- or third-best players." Joe Dumars talking about his plan to get other teams' 4th best players.