Atma-your crazy for this one!  killin' it as always with the photo narratives.

The notion that Dunleavy makes his team worse is poorly supported.  He doesn't seem to make them better, but he doesn't make them worse either.  (Note: before mentioning that he made Indy worse, please note that if you use that argument, you forfeit any argument that the players we received in compensation were simply better players and Indy, without two players they traded to us who several here seem to think were better than average players and with a one-legged Jermaine O'neal, wasn't going to be as good when they replaced them with Joe-Average).

Dunleavy had a very neutral +/- for several years.  That doesn't support that he made his team worse.  It doesn't support that his defense was so terrible that he brought his team down either.  It supports that he's average, boringly, unspectacularly average, replaceable by about half the guys in the game (but better than about half as well).  

Point of fact: he was very, very, very average.  Don't confuse this with wanting him back, but these grades get whacky fast.  They're more like Jr. High popularity contests than any actual evaluation of the game and players.  Supporting his evaluation with boos and labels like bust actually sound much more like the popularity contest, not so much like basketball.

But, I'm trying to call attention to the fact that his actual performance was really, really average.  Not terrible, not great.  Average, and average by a real definition of average that's verifiable, empirical, supportable with something other than opinion.  

He didn't put up "super below average stats."  He put up remarkably average stats.  So average that I couldn't find a more average player, though I looked at every single guy to suit up in the league.

I'd reserve bust for a player who cannot really stay in the league, who struggles to get into games and does damn little when he's in games.  POB presently looks like a bust.  Dunleavy was much, much better than this.  Dunleavy was disappointing because he never lived up to the value people thought he had, and perhaps the pick was wasted since it's clear that some second round/non-roster guys can play as well or marginally better, but as a player, he was better than the host of guys who can't last in the league.   To call him a bust means that there's got to be something 10 levels below bust for guys like POB.

Dun was right.  He wasn't properly utilized, but I suspect that how he should have been utilized and how he thought he should be utilized were different things.  He never should have been a starter. Proper utilization would have been to used him on average about 24 minutes a game coming off the bench.  He was adequate in this capacity.  But people, including coaches and management, got blinded by the draft position and used him more than this though he wasn't good enough to handle it.  Then they doubled down on the mistake by paying him as if he was still a promising player worthy of a high pick and, blinded by that kept using him more than they should have.

Dun never helped his cause by his comments though again, I think that more was read into them than should have been.  Once people started hating him, there was more or less nothing he was going to be able to do right unless he averaged quintuple doubles nightly.  (OK, hyperbole--being an above average starter might have been enough, but hopefully you catch my drift.)  Since he had high expectations -and- he wasn't a particularly likable guy, he was doubly doomed.  Average wasn't going to cut it.  

I don't miss him at all.  He became a distraction, probably more so to fans than to the team, but a distraction nonetheless and his salary was soon to cripple the team.  So trading him was the right move.  But to give him an F?  I still think that the F should be for guys who, when they're on the court, hurt the team (like POB, who did nothing right).  He didn't hurt. He just didn't help. Or if he did either, it was pretty muted.  Incredibly average.

Tough to say about Bowen.  His team seems to do much better when he plays, but he's always playing with Duncan. It's rare that Bowen is in the game without Duncan or Duncan is in the game without Bowen. The big result with Bowen is that he's used heavily on a team that wins championships, suggesting that he's got to be at least an average player.  But some may be context.  It's tough to imagine a perimeter defender like him really helping the Warriors as much because someone needs to grab the rebounds after he causes a missed shot.  SanAnt has those players.  We don't.