Joe Dumars Interview: "Foundation of Winning"

I would list the hiring of Flip Saunders as one of the worst mistakes of Joe's career. You have a team whose whole identity was defense with volatile egos that thrived under an alpha-dog of a coach in LB. You bring in a coach for whom defense is an afterthought who happens to be very soft on players. I see what he was trying to do; Detroit's stagnant offense needed to be improved. But, he couldn't foresee that the pricetag for that was giving up everything that made us a championship team. Imagine what would've happened if the Spurs fired Popovich with D'Antoni.

Defense numbers didn't really suffer, compared to offensive gains.
Regular season highest win percentage of all time for his 3 years.
Joe just needed to tell Flip to get in their grills.
Team won 10 postseason games each of those 3 years.
I believe players woulda overrun LB at some time during those years also......IMHO.

I can see you hanging your hat on this answer. I didn't though...
He didn't really own up to anything specific........just the "whatever" mistakes.
Maybe I'm hoping for too much here...........

Probably. This is more than we've gotten from Dumars in years. Not sure what you're looking for.

He's not gonna come out in the DetNews and break-down his errors one by one and name names.
Joe's mistakes are attached to actual people (his players, coaches, ex players, ex coaches).
It wouldn't be the most professional thing to openly rip Charlie Villanueva for jacking his ankle up while sleeping or pointing out the fact that on most nights, Ben Gordon's defense is a steaming pile of poop.

I give Joe credit for slapping the table when Darko was mentioned.

We went from a contender to an awesome regular season team. When the time came when we needed to lock down defensively to grind out wins in the playoffs, Flip failed miserably.

Or you could say Flip's players failed miserably....

someone should make this their sig.

I never expected that. I woulda loved to see him use the words, "I made mistakes with some of my coaching choices. or My free agent choices didn't always pan out.........

I just didn't sense enough ownership on his part.
I do agree with laimbeer who stated that he went farther than he has in the past.

Far too insecure for that to happen. I would say that he is part of that 99.9% that could not choke it out...at least, all at once.

Behold the messenger that tries to reason that the news he brings is the result of cumulative opinions.

The damage was done before Flip. The team ran wild because their uniqueness was a combination of things that they thought should become an automatic duplication.
An extremely perceptive GM (whose owner wore always displayed his windbreaker jacket on sunny days) should have remembered those heavy days as a player. Mr D. placed no further demands on JD for the big market repeat. Plain old human nature took over. JD accepted the calm seas, and the inmates soon were to find out about weather patterns and how quickly things can change.

Nice post.

Still, it might be best to remember that it took the circumstances of new ownership in tainting his myth.

New ownership has changed many things. He will have this year and perhaps (showing a big jump in improvement) next year to turn things around.

This is with the understanding that Gores will have to go beyond the balance sheet. He will not have the nanny state tax maneuvering to bale him out of this massive hole. Time to up his ego and formulate talent that can get you back into the playoffs. For the latter to happen, you need to spend like a high profile capitalist entrepreneur that his reputation says he is.

Could be about something that reminds one of a reality dancer switching from hardwood to a hog-on-ice.

Sensed that Joe always try to make best arrangement for his players, he take care of them even if he could be fired and he would walked out of the door smiling.
Personally, I made up following stories to myself :
1. The injuries of Rip and Tay at first week of the season 2009 had made everthing scheme of that year disappeared liked a -- "boom".
2. Sometime, teams have to do things by requist, or in favor of the league, the big name persons or big brand names, like gave AI one last chance, like provided Tmac a place to tout.
3. When Joe found that he could entertain a big NBA supporter while sending CB to his second most loved team, the hometown team on the fly, Joe jumped on the AI bus and took a chance which the rest was history.
There was my fantasy.

Seven unanswered posts by pass99. This reminds me of the 2007 playoffs when LeBron had so many unanswered baskets against the Pistons. Just kidding, of course, Pass. Good to read your stuff.