What is Tom Gores Doing?

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By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
February 10, 2014

Last Friday, I started working on an article about the Detroit Pistons. I had started the column before the team’s two wins at the Palace over the weekend and, of course, before the latest Spinal Tap drummer death Pistons head coach axing.

The post was going to start with the following legitimate press release, which was issued on Thursday:

“This has been a very difficult period for the franchise.  We have severely underperformed against expectations.

Just as this is completely unacceptable to our loyal and passionate fan base, season ticket holders and corporate partners, it is also just as unacceptable to our ownership group. I can assure everyone who supports and cares about the [Fill-In Blank Team Name Here] that we will continue to turn over every stone and explore every possible opportunity for improvement to shift the momentum of our franchise in the right direction.”

Now, if I told you before Thursday that the above press release would be issued by a billionaire owner — who grew up in Michigan and attended MSU — of an NBA franchise that resides in the Central Division in order to mark the firing of his General Manager, you might have been led to believe that Joe Dumars was justifiably unemployed.

Of course, that PR statement was released by the Cleveland Cavaliers and was ostensibly written by owner Dan Gilbert — who shares a lot of traits with Tom Gores but currently shopping the market for a new chief executive isn’t one of them.

But what Gores did order on Sunday morning was absolutely perplexing. As I wrote on Twitter moments after Mo Cheeks was officially shown the door …

You could have fired Dumars and Cheeks. You could have fired Dumars. You could have done nothing. The one thing you COULD NOT do is fire Cheeks and not Dumars.

Joe Dumars put this team together. Joe Dumars hired Mo Cheeks just eight months ago. Joe Dumars has been the General Manager of this team for the last two decades. And Joe Dumars — who is on the final year of his contract — is still the GM today? Ohhhhhhhhhhhkayyyyyy.

This is so fucking confusing that I feel like Adam West whenever he would attempt to decipher a clue given to him by Frank Gorshin. It’s why I didn’t post an article on Sunday night; I felt I needed a night to sleep on everything that developed yesterday.

(Unlike five-tool imbecile Terry Foster of the Detroit News, who rushed to get a column up on their webpage proclaiming the next head coach should be Bill Laimbeer. Yes, Bill Laimbeer is the answer. And the Lions should ask Barry Sanders to come out of retirement, the Fords should sell the team, the Pistons should trade Lindsey Hunter and Terry Mills for Shaq and the Wings need to add a Chris Chelios-like defenseman at the trade deadline. You fucking child.  Bill Laimbeer?!!?!!?!?!?!? Ribs at the out-of-business Foster’s Smokehouse have a longer shelf life than that idea.)

Look, everything that we have been told by the Platinum Equity, owners of the Pistons, is that making the 2013-14 playoffs is mandatory. And they’re not just words either. Every move of this franchise over the last eight months points at that being the prime directive.

Trading for Brandon Jennings. Drafting Kentavious Caldwell-Pope over Trey Burke. Hiring a retread like Mo Cheeks instead of a fresh, young face like Boston did with Brad “Galli” Stevens. Signing Josh Smith to an enormous contract.

EVERYTHING that has gone down at 6 Championship Drive since June has been focused toward earning a postseason berth and getting annihilated by either the Heat or the Pacers in the first round.

Of course, any learned basketball fan knew that that plan never really made much sense for the future of the organization. Everyone reading this article is aware that the Pistons only keep their 2014 first-round pick — in the deepest draft since Darko/Carmelo — if it is in the Top 8.

The prudent course of action would have been to liquidate assets, guarantee a bottom-eight finish and either use that precious first-round pick as trade bait or as another piece to the puzzle while building around a nucleus of Burke and Andre Drummond.

Which is why I am so confused by Gores’ actions over the weekend. If you would have asked ME on Saturday night what would have the optimal way to finish the season, I would have told you this ….

Fire Mo Cheeks right now and hire an interim coach who Dumars could not control.

If Gores REALLY was so hellbent on making the postseason THIS year, he could have easily axed Cheeks and instantly replaced him with the REIGNING NBA Coach of the Year (George Karl) or with a man who took his team to the Western Conference Finals last season (Lionel Hollins).

Instead, he canned Cheeks coming off two victories and substituted him with John Loyer. A guy who NEVER has been a head coach of an NBA team and whose previous head coaching experience was at Wabash Valley College.  Whatever the fuck that is.

How under the radar is John Loyer? Dude doesn’t even have his own WIKIPEDIA PAGE!!!!!

Has someone FINALLY advised Gores that the team is on a collision course with the worst possible scenario of missing the playoffs AND having to hand over their first-round pick to the Bobcats? A deal that only had to be made because Gores refused to amnesty Ben Gordon!!!!??

Honestly, I am getting a headache attempting to decipher the motivations of this man. If he truly believes the best course of action toward making the postseason is handing this team over to a neophyte …. well …. we are even more fucked than I previously thought.

Or did someone with a brain finally get in Gores’ ear and tell him that he needed to insert a patsy as his team’s head coach and then pray the Knicks get their shit together, the Celtics with a healthy Rajon Rondo and the Lakers with a returning Kobe Bryant pass the Pistons in the standings and his “investment” gets to retain their 2014 first-round pick?

I have no fucking clue. We are talking about a man who couldn’t pronounce half of his players’ names correctly when he became the owner and who rushed the court after a victory ….. during the EXHIBITION season.

And don’t even get me started on what was going through his head (the big one or the little one) when he thought that screwing his brother’s wife was a capital idea.

I guess it really doesn’t matter what Gores’ true motivation was in firing Cheeks now because it happened. The only thing we can hope for is that the players immolate another head coach, stop winning immediately and the organization ends up retaining its pick.

And then in the offseason Gores finds his own Ryan McDonough as the team’s new GM and that forward-thinking executive decides to pass on another head coaching retread and instead hires someone like VCU’s Shaka Smart.

Because it is LONG past the time that Joe Dumars should be involved in any key decisions regarding the future of this team. Not only that, he should be barred from making any trade deadline maneuvers in the next 10 days as well.

Why? Well, I am sick of regurgitating Joe D.’s greatest misses, so here is what the Sports Douche Bill Simmons had to say about our GM on ABC’s “NBA Countdown” yesterday afternoon after the Cheeks news leaked …

It was hilarious watching Simmons blast away at Dumars on ABC’s pre-game show while his BFF Jalen Rose sat next to him squirming since Jalen is a good friend of Dumars. And when Simmons finally came up for some air after nuking Dumars, this is what Rose had to say …

“Tom Gores is a great new owner.”

Ummm, Jalen based on WHAT?!??!?! Oh that’s right, BASED ON THIS …

Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores and his wife Holly have donated $250,000 to the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, an open enrollment public charter high school in Detroit.

YOU SHOULD HAVE KEPT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH SHUT, JALEN!!!! First Rule of Journalism — if a man hands you a check for a quarter of a million dollars, recuse yourself from commenting on said man when on national television.

Not that the rest of the media that abstained from taking a $250,000 presentation-size check from Gores performed any better. Once again, Dumars leaked this breaking news to his personal biographer, Adrian Wojnarowski, BEFORE he even told his OWN players.

Well, you couldn’t have expected Vincent Goodwill to break the news to either the fans or the players …..

But at least Vince Ellis of the Freep was around to CONFIRM Wojnarowski’s exclusive. Because, what would we have done without this nugget? Were there people out there who doubted Woj’s Tweet?

But the most despicable comment didn’t come from the usual suspects this time.  Instead, WXYZ talking head Tom Leyden took the prize with this 140-character blast AFTER Mo Cheeks was let go ….

Can you imagine the cowardice of sending that out AFTER the guy was canned? Like, Tom, you didn’t feel like sharing that opinion with your followers or viewers BEFORE Cheeks was dismissed?

Nope, because god forbid anyone in this city ever put their own ass on the line when access could still be denied. Just wait until minutes after the coast is clear to unleash a bomb like that.

Fucking weaklings.

What a joke.

Anyway, at the end of the Simmons/Rose segment on ABC, host Sage Steele asked Simmons if the situation in Auburn Hills was a mess.

Simmons responded that comparing the current Pistons situation to a mess wouldn’t be fair to actual messes.

Yep. These are my basketball team’s decision-makers.