Ben Gordon To Pistons: No-Win Situation

Bulls look especially bad in pointless loss of talent

By EAMONN BRENNAN

Updated 4:26 PM CST, Thu, Jul 2, 2009

Print Email Share TWITTER FACEBOOK

Getty Images

First, let's be honest about what Ben Gordon is: He's an accurate, relatively efficient scorer. And that's basically it. Gordon isn't a particularly good passer; he can't run a team from the point guard position; he's undersized; and his lack of defensive ability cancels out some of his scoring. He will give you 20 points per game -- nothing to scoff at in the NBA -- and not much more.

With that out of the way, Gordon's move to Detroit is bad. For everyone. Especially the Bulls.

See, the whole point of acquiring and developing talent in the NBA is to do something with it. You draft a player. You nurture the player. You bring him into his fourth and fifth year and if he's good enough, you sign him to a major deal. If not, you attempt to keep his value high and trade him for something -- for another player, for an expiring contract, for a draft pick. The Bulls did none of these things. They drafted Gordon, slowly (probably too slowly) brought him along, saw his talent develop, and then, for whatever reason, just let him go. No trade, no sign-and-trade, no expiring deals, nothing. The Bulls let talent walk and got nothing in return.

In the meantime, the Bulls have Kirk Hinrich -- the best, most overpaid backup point guard in the league -- and Luol Deng -- whose contract was mystifying before Deng's injury spree -- sitting on the bench. For a team that supposedly prides itself on thriftiness and efficiency, the Bulls do an awfully horrible job at both, huh?

Meanwhile, the Pistons just signed a one-dimensional player to a $55 million deal. Gordon is overpaid. The Pistons' other big free agent signing is Charlie Villanueva. Villanueva is similar to Ben Gordon: decent, not great, and probably not someone you can win an NBA title with. Joe Dumars seems out of ideas.

For Gordon, well, he just chose to live and play in Detroit rather than Chicago. Ouch.

No one comes out particularly well here. Especially the Bulls. Let's hope Gar Forman and John Paxson figure out how to maximize this current roster quickly, before more Bulls -- Tyrus Thomas seems next in line -- suffer the same pointless fate as Gordon.

Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.