Alright, today I will mainly talk about team building, which is a pretty hard thing to do and will explain the problems Detroit and Miami are currently having. Obviously, I'm a Pistons fan and I take the losing pretty hard since I only started following them in the 2004 season and have stuck with that team ever since because I loved the unselfishness and I want to get back to that. On the other hand we have the Miami Heat with a spoiled superstar and Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh who seem to have found their liking to the sense of self-entitlement and poor work ethic the self-acclaimed King is putting every day.
Building a contender is not an easy thing to do. A casual observer would think one only needs to put together great talent and you automatically have a competitor. See, you can get a competitor that way, but not a championship caliber team. A competitor can get into the Playoffs and as far as the Finals on basically one players' amazing skill set (e.g. Cavs in '07 and Lakers '06).
Championships are won with a complete team that has fitting pieces throughout the roster. Duh, some people might say now. I've stumbled over a great metaphor a couple of days ago and it goes like this. Building a championship team is like building a house. You need bricks, you need steel, you need windows and you need the isolation, the energy cable, etc..
The Pistons are currently made up of bricks and windows and energy cables. We have no steel whatsoever. Stuckey and T-Mac have the potential to be steel, but I doubt Stuck will be the Man on the team and I don't think T-Mac will ever be it again. We need this building block (no pun intended). We have way too many bricks and windows and what have you. We don't have that frame though that makes our house withstand the storm that is coming.
To stay in this metaphor, the Heat currently have three frames for a championship house, but they don't have an energy cable or bricks. While all the three players have the skill set to morph into a brick or whatever is needed to win, they are struggling because they are not used to this roll, nor will they be any time soon. All three of them are used to being the frame and not the brick (except for LeBrick James, sorry for that joke).
So, you see, although the teams have very different expectations, Detroit and Miami are pretty similar when you've come to think about what they are missing. Actually, they are similar, because they are the complete opposite of one another. Detroit has way too many roll players, while Miami has three Superstars but no skilled roll players.
I don't want any of the three in Detroit, especially not James. I make no secret out of me hating him and everything he stands for. He takes his blessings for granted and for a, well, a blessing. He calls himself The Chosen One and he actually doesn't seem to feel chosen, he plays like it's a burden.
Detroit needs a star, either develop a star or trade for one. Joe D is having a rough patch. He's trading away players that excell in other places and takes on bad players that played well in other places. I really don't know why that is, I'd assume it is coaching to some degree, I wouldn't call Flip Saunders a bad coach though and John Kuester is doing a lot of things right and I really like how he's handled the tough situations thus far this season. He's gotten Stuckey and Tay back on board and my heart was filled with Christmassy love when Tayshaun had that great game against the Knicks. It felt like we had a good team again. Unfortunately, we always tend to lose close games against the Knicks.
That's it for now! Take care!
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