In December, I gave my kids $20 for a toy store trip and they picked out $90 worth of stuff. They had no concept of money. They didn’t know if our house cost $2,000 or $2 billion. So I started making them pay for small things — Starbucks, Jamba Juice, pizza, whatever — hoping they’d slowly understand the concept of worth. I think it’s working. When we attended Monday-night Raw in L.A. last week, I gave them a $100 salary cap on whatever they wanted. They spent $60 on two T-shirts,1 $13.50 on pretzels and popcorn, and $9 on two Icee Cokes, leaving me $17.50.
Here’s the point: THIS ISN’T HARD. But had I brought Joe Dumars along as a spending adviser, they would have ended up with a $50 Rey Mysterio mask that my son already has, two T-shirts that were the wrong size … and then, they would have had to borrow an extra $30 for food and drinks. In last year’s Worst Contracts column, I wrote about Joe Dumars Cap Space Cologne (“You only have to spray it once, and then you can’t get away from the smell for three to five years!”) and made the following warning:
“One thing we’ve definitely learned: You don’t want to give Dumars cap space. And he has it this summer. So look out, Pistons fans.”
What happened? Well …
Door A: Brandon Knight; Trey Burke or Michael Carter-Williams; $15 million in 2013 cap space. Seems pretty enticing, right? You’d probably want to open that door, correct?
Door B: $80.5 million worth of Josh Smith, Brandon Jennings and Washed-Up Chauncey Billups; Kentavious Caldwell-Pope; no cap space whatsoever. That door has a “BEWARE: DO NOT OPEN!” sign on it … right?
What happened? Dumars busted down Door B like McConaughey during the incredible six-minute, continuously shot drug heist scene that single-handedly flipped my opinion on True Detective.2 Naturally, this was all Mo Cheeks’s fault, so poor Mo got canned recently; he’s the eighth coach jettisoned by Dumars in 14 years. Dumars remains employed because he caught fire from 2000 through 2004 and won a title.3 That magical stretch ended 10 YEARS AGO. Since 2008 alone, Dumars traded Billups for a washed-up Allen Iverson; gave away Arron Afflalo; famously over-over-over-overpaid Ben Gordon and Charlie Villaneuva; handed out way-too-lavish extensions to Hamilton and Prince; overpaid Jonas Jerebko, Rodney Stuckey and Jason Maxiell; then excreted 2014’s Smith-Jennings-Billups cap poop bisque. He remains employed because we’ve become desensitized to NBA teams shelling out dumb contracts.
So, why can’t certain GMs spend money correctly? Many are ex-players getting routinely outwitted by shrewd negotiators with law degrees and MBAs, bulldogs who were basically created by God to take advantage of overmatched former athletes. If your life depended on ONE contract negotiation, would you rather have Dan Fegan (Yale Law School, two decades of experience as a sports agent) … or Ernie Grunfeld? Would you rather have Arn Tellem (Michigan Law, former partner in a law firm, 32 years of experience as a sports agent) … or Joe Dumars? Come on.
That’s not the only problem, of course. Franchises can be handcuffed by a lack of organizational cohesion, owners pushing to win or be relevant “RIGHT NOW!!!,” executives rolling the dice with panic moves as a Hail Mary to avoid getting fired, and just sheer, staggering incompetence.
