Post-Flip Funk Continues

Flip Saunders might feel a bit vindicated right now. The Detroit Pistons fired Michael Curry yesterday after one season, continuing a troubling trend for the men who follow the current Wizards coach. Joe Dumars, the team's president of basketball operations, dismissed Saunders in June 2008 after losing in the Eastern Conference finals for the third consecutive year because Dumars reportedly wanted to hire someone who would hold his players more accountable. Curry went 39-43 in his only season and Cleveland swept the Pistons in the first round. Detroit hired Saunders's former assistant, Curry, and remade the Pistons at the start of the season when he traded Chauncey Billups to Denver for Allen Iverson and Antonio McDyess. The Iverson experiment was a disaster, compounded by Curry's alienation of Richard Hamilton when he benched Hamilton in favor of Iverson. That decision eventually led to Curry losing the entire team, especially its core (link)