Enough with Pistons Starting 5 already!

I respect their achievement as much as anybody, but Marc Stein's suggestion that the Pistons would have had a tough time choosing today had they drafted Dwyane Wade that fateful Darko night, is downright ludicrisp.

Yes the pistons have great chemistry and a team first attitude, but does anyone seriously think Wade, who has been happy to defer to Shaq and anyone else in Miami would not have fit in with the Pistons?  A young star on a contending team?   Does somebody actually think the Pistons wouldn't be as good defensively with Wade in the lineup?  Or that he wouldn't have been able to pick up the Pistons systems?   Please! There's not a chance that he wouldn't be starting either.  We're talking about an all-NBA caliber player here! A richman's Chauncey Billups. 

I'm sure a 19-year old Bosh would have been happy to defer to the vets as well.  For a chance to make the playoffs?  Bosh put up with a whiny ass vince carter for two seasons and is being asked to carry the Raps already, I think he'd be able to follow the lead of a grizzled veteran team.  I don't know whether he'd be starting over Rasheed right now, but the 21 year old would definitely be the one to get the Max deal.

Jury's still out on Carmelo.  But he did win in Syracuse and every Denver team he's been on has made to the playoffs. So I'm gonna say that he wouldn't have killed Detroits championship aspirations (or made them a horrible defensive team) and could have easily been their leading scorer by now.

The Pistons starters are great because they don't have a weakspot.  But that doesn't mean that substituting one of them for a better player wouldn't make them better a team.  Not everyone in the NBA is Kobe.

I think a better question is: how well would those guys have developed if they hadn't gotten the minutes?