Blame Michael Curry?

I Remember Michael Curry playing in Detriot with Jerry Stackhouse and Ben Wallace, when the Piston's kept getting into the playoffs off the strength of wonderful coaching by Defensive Minded coach Rick Carlise. As a player, Curry was a very smart, hardnosed dender who started at Small forward for the Pistons under Carlise, even though he was 6'6 and barely ever scored any points. If my memory serves me correctly Curry ended up being cut after Larry Brown took over the team and played for Toronto and Indiana, reuniting with Carlise for his last season. He stayed on as leader of the players union even when he was having trouble finding a roster spot, none of the players seemed to care, so I think he must have gotten a lot of respect.

So Detriot goes on without Curry on the Roster, hirers Larry Brown to coach, trades for Rasheed Wallace, wins a title, looses in a championship series the next year, Replaces LB with Flip Saunders, looses Ben Wallace in 2006, Looses Flip Saunders after 2008 when the team decides the guy can coach to get wins, but not a championship.

In all honestly I always thought those Detroit teams were overratted, Curry got replaced in the Rotation by Darvin "Ham-Slamwich" Ham, who was like 8th or ninth in the rotation between, the Wallaces, Tayshaun Prince, Rip Hamilton, Chauncey Billups, the rest of the bench filled up like this:

	Mehmet Okur
	Corliss Williamson
	Mike James
	Elden Campbell
	Lindsey Hunter

Okur wasn't the player he was then that he is now, Mike James Rarely played, I never thought this roster was a championship calliber one, but still, for the next four years Detriot would stay winning with basic variations of this Roster, Most importantly, Ben Wallace left for Chicago and got replaced by Antonio McDyess.

At Whatever point Joe Dumars finally decides he is going to shake things up, gets rid of Offensively minded Flip Saunders and Replaces him with the defensive minded, inside-the-organization favorite Michael Curry.

But at what point was this team ever going to become defensive anyways? They had a bunch of old guys in a team that out-gunned the others. Their undersizes and probably need to play more up-tempo basketball. Chauncey played two games this season for the Pistons before being traded for an undoubtedly bigger talent - Allen Iverson.

So Iverson goes into this new situation missing training camp, but believing with Detriots Record in the last few seasons, that they can be a championship contender. Ask any basketball analyst if they actually believed this.

AI lost his first game as a Detroit Piston when Devin Harris dropped 50 points on them in a close loss to the Nets? Why? Because new Point Guard Rodney Stuckey couldn't keep up With Harris, and the much quicker, but smaller, AI had to guard Vince Carter because "In Detroit you guard your posistion" according to Michael Curry.

Wouldn it have made more sence to switch the Defensive schemes to have 6'0 180 pound Iverson to guard Harris and the slower but stronger 6'5, 205 pound Stuckey to guard the shooting guard.

Does this really make any sense in any situation?
I thought Curry was sabotaging the team.

Still a media love affair began with Iverson, who was willing to sacrifice for the betterment of the team. And Sacrifice he did, AI averages 18 points a game in Detriot, and he takes less shots. Before the season Iverson was 3rd all time in scoring Average only Behind Jordan and Chamberlain, he's sacrificing History right now to play the way they want him to play on a sub- .500 team.

The Piston's actually beat the Lakers soon after the Nets game, and hopes were high again. Of course, this was with little coaching help as Iverson had not yet adjusted to the trade. If you believe his is now, they just suffered an eight game loosing streak.

For the people buy into the fact that the Piston's would be better this season with Billups, who is flourishing right now in Denver are kidding themselves, you can't tell how the Pistons were going to do with Billups, he was only there for two games. Obviously Detriot wasn't going to win a championship, they got no better than last season and were pretty willing to get rid of Chauncey. Who now plays for the up-tempo type team Iverson would fit great on if they didn't have so many scorers.

Curry was always a defensive player, its hard to imagine his type of player mentality fits the ones of those he coaches now. Rasheed Wallace is guarenteed a technical if anything ever gets to physical, Hamilton and Prince are too skinny to guard 3's and 4's, and that why having all 3 guards in the lineup never worked.

Throughout this whole time, Stuckey has been the most inconsistent, he has up and down games all the time and has proven he is not a defender. Sorry Pistons, but he is not the franchise.

Now Iverson is going to come off the Bench (when he returns from injury), making this the forth major change in the lineup this season. Is Detriot really going to be any better taking their only all-star off the Bench, or did somebody else handle the situation wrong? If you ask my, I think it's the latter.