Mistakes happen. We sleep in a little too late or we forget to do a project. But for us, mistakes are simply, just that – mistakes. For the thirty NBA teams, mistakes cost them, potentially, tens of millions of dollars, a playoff appearance, or even a championship. They have been riddled throughout history. It can be draft picks (Blazers fans know what this is like), it can be free agency (can I get an amen from Knicks fans?), or it can be virtually anything else (in the case of the Kings, EVERYTHING ELSE). Thus, we present the worst mistakes from each NBA team over the past ten years.
The Detroit Pistons Biggest Mistake in the Past Ten Years
The Detroit Pistons, in large part, owned the 2000s. Making the Eastern Conference Finals every year from 2003-2008, the Pistons brought home a championship in ‘04 behind a dominant front line of Rasheed Wallace and Ben Wallace. Despite transitioning between two historically impressive head coaches in Larry Brown and the late Flip Saunders, all was good in the Motor City during that period, with a former star in Joe Dumars making the personnel decisions and a locker room leader in point guard Chauncey Billups. The scene changed quickly, however, following the 2009 season.
The Mistake
Following a disappointing 2008-09 season in which the team traded its aforementioned leader for a year of a frustrated and hurt Allen Iverson, Dumars, looking to quickly retool the previously dominant team, signed 2004-05 Sixth Man of the Year Ben Gordon to a five year, $55 million deal, as well as big man/headband aficionado Charlie Villanueva to a five year, $35 million deal.
Now, you may be wondering how an $11 million per year and a $7 million per year deal can be huge mistakes for a team, considering this year’s off-season has seen teams like the Los Angeles Lakers hand out bigger base salaries to towel boys and George Mikan’s corpse. At the time, though, these deals comprised roughly 30% of Detroit’s team salary, but in no way did Gordon or Villanueva’s production match their impact on the team’s cap.
Prior to signing the two, Detroit hadn’t lost 50 or more games in a season since 2002. In the period that either Gordon or Villanueva was on the team (Detroit traded Gordon before his contract expired), the team’s win total would not exceed 30.
Were Gordon and Villanueva Detroit’s problem?
The easy answer is maybe. For the most part, both were productive members of a middling Pistons team for a few years, though Villanueva saw a steep drop in production following an injury in the 2011-12 season. Nevertheless, both free agent acquisitions signed as firm building blocks for a transitioning powerhouse. Never were they able to live up to such expectations.
Neither averaged more than 14 points per game in any season with Detroit (the year before signing with Detroit, Gordon averaged 20.7 PPG). Neither shot more than 44.2 percent from the field in a season, lower than the average across the NBA over that time. These guys were good: not bad, but not great. They were attempts at quick fixes for a team accustomed to success. But scars left by eroding player-coach relationships or roster-dismantling trades cannot simply be covered up by shot happy, cap-eating Band-Aids and be expected to just disappear.
In fact, Gordon’s production became so intolerable in relation to his contract that Detroit traded him and a future first round pick for The Artist Formerly Known as Corey Maggette. And perhaps, by the end of his contract, Villanueva’s only job for the Pistons was to fill a chair, so as to make it look like more people were attending games at The Palace of Auburn Hills. In the 2008-09 season, Detroit ranked first in average home attendance, and during Gordon and Villanueva’s time there, they dropped to as low as 28th.
So what was the problem, then?
Just like Gordon and Villanueva, the team’s problem wasn’t that it was particularly awful. Rather, it was average. Doomed in that mid-late lottery range, Detroit missed on a good number of its picks. It was never a hard miss like the time they drafted Darko Milicic (lol). But rarely did it lead to the franchise cornerstone they could build around. Besides Andre Drummond (a legitimate big man to build a team around), Detroit continued on its run-of-the-mill roster with players like Brandon Knight, Austin Daye, and Greg Monroe. The point is that Gordon and Villanueva ended up seriously impeding this team’s continued growth, not by being bad, but by being average.
The Result
Basketball history has taught us that if you aren’t winning the lottery, you’re losing it. Being outside of the top five selections in the draft leaves you with no guarantees. And picking up players coming off of contract years instead of bottoming out could lead you down a path of disappointing mediocrity. Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva came and went with their cash from Detroit, leaving behind no trail of success or of tears. They just were.
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