I've been on the Austin Daye bandwagon forever. He's like Jordan without all the fat.
Or because way back in the day in Live 2000 I drafted somebody who looked exactly the same and was like 6-11, 195 and he wound up 99 rated and averaged like 25/9/7 as I won like eight titles. Clearly a prophecy about the coming of the Austin Daye era.
Isn't Amir Johnson (Advanced Stat for BESTGAF members) is like 6'8 right, not 7ft?
Yeah, 6-9 I think.
He crushed the shit out of the D-League. But Michael Curry wouldn't play him because he "hadn't proven himself in the league yet" which is great circular logic.
but it's impossible not to get into arguments over the Pistons around here.
Really? Everyone I know gave up on Joe D when he turned the Iverson cap hold into Charlie V and Ben Gordon then the Curry and Q debacles.
I thought Chase Budinger was drafted by the Rockets though, and still played there.
He was essentially, the Pistons drafted him for the Rockets.
To be fair, the ownership situation is fucked so it's almost impossible to do a good job as a GM there. Witness Sacramento, Portland, New Orleans etc etc. Crazy short-term Hail Mary plays called by GMs desperate for one more season, great trades shot down because of cost etc...it's just impossible to implement any kind of coherent long term strategy somewhere like Detroit I think.
The ownership thing is "fixed" now but it wasn't really because of that. It was Joe D fucking himself by first extending Rip and so on from the constant Eastern contender teams even though they clearly needed more pieces, then deciding to can Flip (to be fair the players were revolting led by Sheed and Prince) so he could hire his buddy who the players respected even less, then dealing for Iverson to get the cap space and squandering that while dumping guys like Amir.
I wouldn't call him great, but Joe D is still a pretty solid drafter. I do think he's too tied to trying to recreate the Pistons title teams and their style though.