Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 11: Trade Deadline Talk

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

This episode discusses the trade deadline (and all that subject encompasses), and speaks a bit on what may come next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, everybody. My name is Mike. I'm here with Tommy. Welcome back to a post-deadline episode of driving to the basket. So we all know what happened today, but let's just start with what I felt was a very fitting sort of transition from what I guess we can refer to as the old era into hopefully a little bit of something different in the future. And that was last night's game against the Phoenix Suns where we saw the combination of just. Jackson and Drummond, that duo around whom the team had meant to be built years ago, performed quite well. We saw Jackson, his typical self in the pick and roll, we saw Drummond's for once or for one of those rare moments really operating within his bounds, just grabbing rebounds, taking easy baskets, getting easy baskets from within the paint, rather. And also a squad of teammates who were capable of properly spacing the floor, operating as part of a motion offense and so on and so forth. And it just makes you think, you know, what would this team possibly look like if, you know,

because we were without Blake Griffin and have been pretty much all year. And so you think you look at this team that's kind of operating properly and you think, you know, what might this team have been if you don't trade for Griffin? but instead you have a really good guy in the wing and some additional depth pieces with his salary. And of course, that's a big what-if, of course, and probably things wouldn't have gone all that great anyway. But it's something to think about. You know, I know you had thoughts about that as well, Tommy. What about those?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's funny to me that Stan Van Gundy almost stumbled his way into a pretty good team if he had maybe drafted Donovan Mitchell. I'm not one of the people who like who's up at night thinking, oh man, we could have had Donovan Mitchell or we could have had Devin Booker. I'm not, that's not me. But yeah, I don't dwell on it too much. I'm just, I'm pretty excited about what's to come now, you know? Yeah, I completely agree.

Van Gundy almost kind of half accidentally ended up with a good team despite being a poor drafter and not very good in free agency. you know if you've been if you've been able to feel the lineup of of uh jackson mitchell harris drummond and somebody else maybe you do okay uh but in any events yeah so andre drummond no longer with the pistons it happened at the last second it didn't happen how any of us thought it would i think if you pulled a million people on whom you know to whom do you think drummond will be traded i think probably zero of them unless it was somebody who was just from Cleveland and didn't know about any of the team. But the Cavaliers would have said, oh, yeah, he's headed to Cleveland. This was a pretty bizarre trade destination.

I hope you'll excuse the sniffling. Anybody who's listening dealing with a bout of allergies here. But completely bizarre. Cleveland is a team that is in the midst of a rebuild, kind of a rocky rebuild at the moment, having issues with their new head coach, John Bayline. and not looking to win this here. You already got Tristan Thompson there, you know, if they think they need a center. Kevin Love is pretty pissed to be there altogether. Maybe he's on his way out this summer.

Who knows? But this just didn't really make much sense. And I, you know, just to get on the topic of the deadline, I really don't like how the front office handle things with Drum. And not in terms of trading him. I think that was absolutely necessary. and just the fact that he was moved, termed what other OIs have been

an incredibly unsuccessful deadline into a decent, not good at all, in my opinion, overall. But you had these talks with the Hawks. You probably could have gotten him off early and maybe you get a small return like a couple of second round draft picks. I think Atlanta has a bunch of them,

maybe something this summer even. But instead, you hold the price up high and you don't budge. And Atlanta comes around to thinking, well, we don't want to trade away a first-round draft big for a guy who might be gone next, who might just be gone next summer and who has some pretty significant salary demands. So we're going to go negotiate with somebody else. They go and get Capella. And I get the feeling that the front office got bailed out by the Cavaliers because I can't think that the Cavs were a suitor all this time.

And I can't think that that would not have leaked somehow. I think ultimately they got bailed. that. A 20-23 second round draft pick, whatever. I'm not upset about the return. I would have been happy if he'd been traded for expirings alone because you've got to get the guy off the team for several reasons so that he doesn't opt in next year. So the pistons will be worse. And the reason number three personally, so I don't have to watch him play anymore. What are your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, it's exactly that. Drummond, he didn't fit what we needed long term. I think that the front office, somebody had mentioned at the beginning of the year, like all the

moves that we made and all the stuff that we were doing had kind of pointed to the fact that we were stealth tanking. And I didn't believe it. And even now, I can, I'm still a little bit, you know, cautious about believing that we really are tanking because I've seen those Fred Van Vleet rumors and he's going to cost a lot of money. And we have that money now. But yeah, he just needed to be off the team because we needed to reset. We have been trying to do this thing where we take these few pieces and we try to add something onto it and then those players age and they get a little worse and then we try to build onto that and it's it just wasn't working properly. So the idea that maybe the front office wants to start from scratch and find a bunch of guys whose timelines

all work together, that's a lot more appealing to me than trying to make drummond work. especially considering the fact that, I mean, yeah, he could have opted in. And that would have been just, it wouldn't have been good at all. I think maybe he could have had some value as an expiring at the end of next year. I think some teams might strike out and maybe you can trade him at the end of the year next year. But whatever, he's gone. We can focus on the pistons now and the fact that they are going to hopefully start over and do this thing the right way.

Yeah, we'll see. I mean, of course, we still got, unfortunately, the Griffin contract on the books, and that's a complicating factor unless they find some way to get out of that. I find it pretty unlikely, but we'll see. I mean, I'd say, yeah, Drummond wasn't working. I mean, we had seven and a half seasons of Drummond, or rather, is that number right?

Yeah, I think seven and a half. And, yeah, that's definitely right. And yeah, it was important for him to be off the team because, I mean, just the team needs to grow past that. You don't want them on the team next year because you want to be able to have more control over where your money is going. But also next year, if you don't, it's possible. I mean, it's possible the Pistons will pivot and try to make the playoffs next year. And in which case, you might see them go after guys like Van Fleet or Harrow. And I think those are trap contracts.

Like one of Joe Dumar's worst qualities was that when he had cap space, you know, know, by goodness, he was going to spend it. And the first time that was Ben Gordon and Charlieville and Aleva. And he just overpaid them because, you know, oh, hey, we have cap space. He went on and did that in his last offseason when he was desperate. Oh, hey, we've got cap space. Josh Smith is available. Let's go pay him.

And sometimes you just, you know, that's a never a good idea. You don't want to trap yourself into a contract and into a really big contract for guys you don't deserve it. Just because, hey, we've got space and we don't want to throw a season. I think that's the organization really has to be willing. probably to just consign next season to, hey, we're going to play the young guys and probably be bad and get a high pick and what's likely to be a loaded draft. So if you're going to do that, having Drummond around is counterproductive. He's going to win you more games. He's going to take usage because Drummond, as we've seen, if he doesn't get his looks, he just eats usage from other people.

He does it in a bad way. So very important that he's off the team. and we'll get to see how the team looks without him, but also he just wasn't working. I don't think he was ever going to work. James Edwards wrote a really good article today, James Edwards from The Athletic, a very good writer,

my opinion, the best of the Detroit beat writers. I just talked a bit about the organization's viewpoint. I know Dwayne Casey last week talked a bit about, it was kind of like a back, and sort of oblique criticism of Drummond saying, well, you know, he passes the ball out of the post 50% of the time, which I think is a significant overestimate. I'd say it's probably more like 15 to 20% of the time.

And he said, we need to have him passing out 90% of the time because, you know, the era of post players is over. That's just not how you do it anymore. You can't get enough good looks to score from the post. And I think I have said very uncomplimentary things about Dwayne Casey and his ability run at offense, particularly last season. And this season, he remembered how to use such basic things as off ball screens and to, you know, just have guys moving off the ball and whatnot.

And the Pistons have run a somewhat decent offense. That gets guys open at the three point line, a decent amount of time. And Drummond didn't fit. He didn't want to stick to his role of pick and roll man, of garbage man, of only get high percentage looks. He got the ball and he wanted to pass. He wanted to be a facilitator. He wanted to score as a face-up guy.

he wanted to shoot threes, which that ended mercifully. He just don't want to stay in his lane, and you could see it when he wasn't in the lineup, that the offense just flowed, more like a typical NBA offense, because he wasn't just taking the ball and saying, no, I want to do my things with it. He would never stay within his lane. And also, you rarely saw him come out and play a sustained stretch of games, his average teammate, his average teammates, and his average peer in the NBA, plays hard as a matter of course, plays professionally as a matter of course,

plays a team game. It's a matter of course. And he just, he does. He's never done that. He's inconsistent and he strays outside of his lane. And I don't think that was ever going to end. So, yeah, you know, I wish him well. But I'm believed to have him off the team. And again, it's also the team is probably going to win more games this season with him on the roster. And now he's not on the roster.

anymore. It's just, it's all good, and I can't perceive any negatives to this trade. So, yeah, that's where we are with Drummond. But beyond that, I think a lot of people expected more to happen to the deadline. Blue Canard was briefly mentioned in a possible trade with the Sons that fell through because it was going to be Kennard for salary filler plus the son's first round pick and the upcoming draft, apparently the protections couldn't be decided upon. So let's talk about, first off, why you would trade Luke Conard to begin with. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. So Lucanard is going to, he's going to get extended because he's a good player. He's a good shooter, and he can definitely help some team either as a really good sixth man or as just like that fourth or fifth

best player, catch and shoot guy. And that's valuable to a lot of teams because shooting comes at a premium these days. But the Pistons shouldn't be that team who is going to pay him. One, because now our timeline has changed. And two, you don't want to commit a lot of money to Luke Kinnard. Kinnard is one of those guys who I think is pretty much already reached what can be reasonably expected of him. You know, he's not fast enough to be a point guard.

He showed some passing, but a lot of his, like, shovel passes. It's not a lot of, like, crazy court vision or, like, whipping it across the floor. You know, it was just he did his job and he did it well enough. And the thing that he did is going to cost a lot of money to some team. And I'm really happy that the Pistons are looking to trade that. Because for that, for mentioning Fred Van Blyte and the idea that the Pistons are going to, you know, to compete again immediately. I think the fact that the Pistons tried to trade Cannard for a lottery pick

shows that the Pistons are really maybe taking a step back because if we want to do this rebuild right, we want to make it so that we have a lot of cap space until the first real big extension starts. So if we do hit in the draft and that guy is going to be like a max contract guy, and hopefully there are a few other good players who are also going to be getting, who are also deserving of some big money. At that point, you don't want to have Luke Kennard's $15 to $20 million contract on your books

because then you can't sign like the role players who are going to take your team to the next level. You know, having Luke Kennard signed like a $20 million contract and take touches away from young guys, if you really want to build like from scratch trading luke canard is the right move in my in my opinion i'm happy that uh the pistons looked at it and i'm i'm sad that they didn't get that trade but if if the deal's not there if that if those protections have a good shot of causing that phoenix pick to not convey that i'm i'm still happy that they didn't make make that trade it's not ideal uh because now undoubtedly Luke saw that his name was in those rumors and maybe he's not happy with that. But it's just, it's reassuring to me that maybe the Pistons are really about to do this rebuild thing the right way.

Because let's say that you think Seku is a real building block. He's under contract as a rookie for three or four more years. If you tank for three of those years. Yeah, three years. Yeah, those rookie contracts are always four years. Yeah. First round rookie contracts, rather. Got four years. Gotcha. Yes.

And if you want to tank the right way, you don't want Luke's contract who he's been in the league since 2017. Yeah, he's in his third season. He's got one more season under team control. Thank you. Yes. So you don't want that contract to be perceived as like the start of your rebuild because you want to get as many of those high picks as possible. And hopefully those players are good. and then right before those first big extensions hit,

you can sign those good bench players and good role players, and you can do it properly. So I'm really happy that they're looking to move Canard. I think that's the right move, absolutely. If it's not there in this trade deadline, that's fine. Hopefully, Luke Canari comes back after the All-Star break. And yeah, that's the other thing that is a real thing. concern is his knee issues. He's already missed 22 or 23 games with that. And you don't want to

commit a lot of money to that as well. I mean, you hope that whatever it is, it's just not a big deal. And maybe it doesn't plague him for the rest of his career. But I don't want to consider Luke a building block if that's going to be something that's like a recurring issue. You know, we already saw what tendonitis did to Reggie Jackson. It took away his athleticism. and Luke isn't the fastest guy to begin with. That would potentially really limit what he can do. And you don't want to sign a guy like that to a big contract and then try to rebuild with that on your books.

I mean, we already have one Albatross in Lay Griffin. We had another one in Andre Drummond, and that's part of the reason that I'm still happy with the fact that it was just expirings and just a very, very, very, insignificant second rounder. It's the fact that he's off our books and we have flexibility now that gets me excited. Yeah, I mean, I think, like I said, and I don't know, hopefully the Pistons will use that space this summer, but the fact that he's just gone, yeah, as far as, and, and hopefully

for a rebuild season next season. But so with Luke Canard, I agree. I'm also glad that they tried to move him. I don't think he'll get paid quite as much as, as you predicted. I'd see him maybe as like a $15 million a year guy. Who knows, though? You can always, you never know what will happen. He'll put it that way because, you know, with the guy like Bogdanovich, I believe,

got $17 million. I think that's probably Luke's ceiling. But I agree it was a good thing that they tried to move him. Number one, I like just the initiative that it showed. It's not that, oh, here's a player and he's good and we can use him to win now, which would have been the added. prior to this season. So here's where I see Luke, as far as his future with the Pistons.

Number one, your idea doesn't fit the timeline. I mean, the Pistons are going to have to pay him before they're really going to be able to contend. That's not ideal. And number two, the health concerns. Those are big. So he missed time last summer. So the summer of 2018 with a knee injury as well. He missed time to start the season.

And then he suffered from again. And this season, it's bilateral knee tendonitis. If you have a guy who's that young already suffering from persistent knee troubles, that's bad. It's just not good. I mean, tendonitis is by definition an overuse injury. It only gets better, really, with rest. I mean, if it's something that you're afraid is going to become chronic, obviously, you want to get what you can for a player without, you know, instead of extending him,

instead of keeping him with the team, especially again, because she just doesn't fit the timeline. there's a third thing and that's that Canar just occupies sort of a kind of precarious niche in the NBA if you want to try to get the most out of him

so like you've said he's not particularly athletic the guy there's no wingspan I mean that's not athleticism so to speak but he's got a short wingspan he's got a small standing reach that hurts him on defense

it hurts him on trying to score any of the basket as well but he's also he's not quick laterally he's not explosive. We're talking by NBA standards, of course. And that hurts him both on offense and on defense. On defense, anybody who is significantly quicker, stronger, or bigger than him is going to be able to switch onto him. And more or less, unless he pokes the ball away, they're going to have a really good chance of scoring or somebody who's going to have to come help. And in the quicker, stronger, and bigger category, that's the vast majority of the NBA.

And on offense, he's very unlikely to be an in isolation. It's going to be hard. for him to get to the basket, so on and so forth. Basically, you have a guy who, in order to get the most out of him, you have to put the ball on his hands, and you have to run stuff around him. And I'm a little higher on Karnar than you are. Like, I think that, I thought that this season they should have just made him the backup point guard, just giving the ball on what him act like Lou Williams.

Lou Williams, who is longer and more athletic. Granted, we give him the ball and when him shoot a ton. So basically, so in order to play a lot of, playing like that, yeah, he has to have the ball in his hands. You're always going to have to have to be helping him on pick and rolls. He's going to have trouble getting into the baskets. And there are going to be other guys who might just benefit more from having the ball in theirs.

So he just, it's really, it's tough to put in a position we're going to get the most out of him. The sons by what Woj said, saw him as a really big minute six man. And I think that's his best role. But probably not for this team going forward because the sons are aiming to compete right now. There's also the fact that the front of the front of the. office may think the emergence of Svea McAlyok makes Luke expendable. Svi, I don't think, will ever be the ball handler that Luke is, probably not the facilitator either.

However, he'll suffer on defense himself because he's got the T-Rex arms as well. But he's substantially more athletic. Like if you go and look at his draft combine numbers, the guy is actually pretty athletic. And he loves to shoot the ball. He just loves to shoot the ball, which is great because he's good at it. And whereas Luke can just disappear for long periods because he just, I don't know, gets off his game pretty easily or something. So if I'm in the front office, I'm looking at him and saying, yeah, he doesn't fit our timeline. We're concerned about his health.

And we have a guy who is probably not quite as good as him, but who just fits the future better and it's going to cost less. So I agree. I think it's good. They didn't just settle for a package. I mean, it's clear that Phoenix was trying to have its cake. to two. We want canard and we're going to give you a first round pick, but oh, we want pretty heavy protections on it, even though we're a bad team this season. It's like, get out of here. And but I think, I agree it was a hopeful sign that they were willing to move him.

Yeah, I mean, maybe it's something that they revisit after the draft lottery and they know where that Phoenix pick is, you know. Yeah, possibly. Or they train them in the off season at some other point, which again, would be encouraging because it means that the pistons are not bent. on just signing guys whoever's available this summer, which just has to be avoided at all costs. So that moves us on to some other guys who didn't move. So number one, first amongst those is Derek Rose, who's now injured. It doesn't look to be severe. It's been kind of bizarre lately how Dwayne Casey going up to the trade deadline had a lot of him to exceed his minutes restriction, whatever.

Rose could have been a value to somebody. I think when we heard the reports that the Pistons were asking for a lottery pitch, and basically set down the situation as we probably want to keep the guy if you want to get him on your roster, you're going to have to blow us away. And nobody was going to blow the pistons away with the lottery pick for Derek Rose. The guy's just health is just too uncertain. Another guy you kind of have to play around. He's been pretty darn good this season.

But like there was only one. like real first round draft pick if i'm not uh if i'm not mistaken any only one pick that uh that looks to be falling in the lottery uh actually no there were there's zero picks that are likely to fall in the lottery uh in the upcoming draft that were transferred to the trade that mine uh the only unprotected pick was the clipper's first round pick which will probably be between 28 and 30 uh and the net's pick which went over to uh i don't remember where the net's pick You know, went over to Houston, yeah. That, yeah, the nets are likely to make the playoffs, even if they don't.

It's really the pick in the low lottery. So, I mean, just nobody was going to toss over a lottery pick. There are only a few teams with playoff aspirations who could have. I know the, the Celtics could have. I don't remember who else. So when you look at the situation with Rose, I still think it would have made sense to train him. You get something for him. And he's not on a team.

You have to play you guys like Jordan Bowen. You lose more games and so on and so forth. And I think we're dealing with a situation where the front office says, well, we got three things working in the favor of don't trade up. Number one, he's the only really entertaining thing about this team right now. Number two, maybe you have it for next season and who knows what happens. And number three, we made a handshake agreement with Arn Tellem, who's his agent. that we are not going to trade him without his consent.

And he didn't want to be traded. So it's basically like, well, we'll modify that a bit. And we'll say if somebody just offers us a package we can't refuse, then we'll trade him, but otherwise we won't. And who knows, you can still revisit. This is another person you can revisit offers on in the off season if he's healthy, because he's only being paid about $7.5 million next season, a little bit above $7.5 million, I think.

And who knows, maybe that might be valuable to some other teams. So I understand the way why it went the way it did. I, like you, would prefer that they just go all out at this deadline and just trade whoever they can. But I'm not all to get surprised. Yeah. For the most part, I wanted to keep Rose. Everybody else pretty much, including Luke, I wanted him out.

But I like Rose just because I know there are a lot of people who are just fans of Rose. And I like the way he played. I know in the first quarter of the season, I gave him a C grade. And as the season's gone on, that's made me look. bad because he's really put it together. But I like the pace he plays with. The young guys seem to respect him. He gets along with them.

And it's some stability, you know. Yeah. So Rose stayed. And like I said, I'm not altogether surprised. I was surprised to see a couple other guys stay. And those were Langston Galloway and Marcus Morris. You got to think, I got to think there was some market for these guys. Now, there were only three players.

This was a relatively quiet time aside from, aside from a couple of major moves. I mean, they're just in terms of the number of trades, it wasn't really altogether that great. You had that four-team trade, but your center piece of that was Clint Capella, who, you know, really just isn't,

is a good but not great center. And then you've got DeAngelo Russell and Andrew Wiggins moving. That's fairly big. But beyond that, there's not much happened. basically three guys who moved, you know, outside of that four-team trade, where a lot of guys just moved just for the sake of matching salaries and it would have been of matching values. You only had kind of three of these second-round-pick caliber guys who moved.

One was James Ennis, who was moved to the Magic, I believe, because he still had the ability to veto the trade, but I don't believe he did. And then you had the same team that sent him out, Philly. brought in Glenn Robinson the third, who, after a terrible season with the Pistons, actually did decently well enough with Warriors. I think he was nailing about 40% of his catch-and-shoe threes after Markov, I think, you know, below 30% with the Pistons.

It's kind of frustrating because the Pistons could have had him under team control for $4 million, excuse me, for, they actually think it would have been $8 million, so it would have been not their weight. I don't remember. Whatever the case. Actually, I think it would have been a pretty forgettable player. Yeah, I can't even remember his contract value. I think it was less than the mid-level exception.

So for him and for Alex Berks, Alex Berks, rather. And I got to think, you know, couldn't you look at Philly and say, oh, we'll give you Galloway and we'll give you Morris, and in return, just give us two second-round draft picks instead of the three they got. It's just, it gives me the picture, along with just the, the dilly deli-dying on Drummond of the front office that kind of said, you know what, we are just going to wait and try to drive up bidding, and then we're going to get screwed as a result, which I think is kind of what happened.

I think they just went ahead, as I said, with Drummond and ended up almost having him stay on the roster and getting probably less than the little that they would have gotten from the Hawks, which would have been better than probably like a number. 55 overall pick. Again, I don't really care about the return, but this is just, in my opinion, demonstrative. I've got to think that they waited on those guys, too. Galloway's not a, Galloway has had a pretty good season.

He's a good, you know, he's, things I've said about him in the past. He's undersized. He doesn't really have much of a game inside the arc, but he's a fairly good perimeter defender, and he's shot pretty well from three this season. So he's a guy whom you'd think that fairly would have been interested in, and they were linked to him. Morris again guy on the cheap

he could have helped them out and you know I got to think if they'd gone to Philly like last week and said we'll trade you these guys for two second round draft picks I'd be surprised if the answer would have been no or if you'd gone to the magic and said well we'll trade you Markief Morris for a second round draft pick you know because I think Markiev Morris is a better

is performed if I'm not incorrect better than James Ennis this season I think that the front office just thought we have these assets. Somebody's going to give us stuff for them. So we're just going to wait until the last day and try to get the most that we can. And maybe you can't blame them for thinking that way, but it sure backfired. Because I think these are guys who could have been moved. Even just for second round draft picks, again, you've got the benefits of off the team, so you'll lose more.

And even though you only have like a 25% chance of finding even a run. role player in the second rounds, you want to have those picks. And why not? These guys cannot do any further good for the Pistons. And if you want to bring Galloway back next season, and it's been said that, I think it's James Edwards

suggests that because he's a veteran, he's very well-liked. Then you bring him back with the tremendous amount of cap space you have. And Markief Morris, who terrible is a starter, pretty good as a bench player, is

he's got a second year option and the by and the dual exception, which she will absolutely decline because he can get more than like three and a half million easily. So I'm not too happy the way that went. It's not like a big deal, but I think maybe the Pistons win one more game from having those guys in the roster. That's a bad thing. And I would have liked to see more Lewis King because, you know, why not? You got the young guys. You don't want to have to play them behind Markief Morris, who's going to play if he's here.

you know who knows maybe i've heard there was there's a little bit of talk about oh who knows maybe they value out jackson i mean it's got the reports have been called premature quote unquote at this point and i'm all for it it's like just you know let the young guys play let jackson go off and be six men somewhere uh it surprises me that for example uh you couldn't have gotten off i don't know trade jackson to to phoenix for it for Tyler Johnson's contract and a second round pick or something. Though I don't know if that would have worked under the luxury tax for the business. I think it would have, but, you know, I was just not impressed with what looked like a complete lack of, a very, very lackadaisical.

We're going to take no initiative and wait for teams come to us approach for this deadline. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if that's how it happened. I mean, obviously, we're not in the Pistons front office. We'll never know. guessing but yeah but the other thing or the thing for me is that I kind of like that they didn't settle you know I don't know if they waited till just a few days ago or today to start you know really letting these guys go but I don't think that if they stuck to it if they wanted to get rid of those guys Galloway and Morris I'm sure they could have you know found a buyer

and I'm sure they knew that I like that they didn't take like a really crappy deal because if Stefancy is going to be running our front office in the long term, I kind of like the fact that he, he didn't, you know, just back down. He's like, all right, fine. He didn't give it up easily. You know, I like that he held out. And hopefully, you know, if teams come to us again or if we go to them and it gets to that point of negotiations where, you know, it's like a game of chicken, I don't want other

teams to think Stefan's going to, you know, turn first, you know. I like the fact that he let these guys stay. If it was a bigger deal, if it was Drummond and he didn't move Drummond because he couldn't find big enough offer, yeah, that's obviously, that's a problem. It's Galloway and Morris, you know? So it's just, it's $7 million expiring at the end of the year.

It's Morris who declines his option, and that's another three. He'll probably go sign somewhere else. I'm fine with it. You know, it's not a huge loss. And like you said, maybe it's one extra game that we win. but hopefully people will kind of realize, all right, you actually have to, you know, meet these guys in the middle on these trays. Maybe they don't look at us and they're like, oh, these guys are clearly tearing it down.

They're just having a fire sale. This is where I can get stuff for cheap. And I can wait till the last second and they'll cave. I like that he didn't cave this time because ultimately Galloway Morris, they don't matter. It doesn't matter if we keep them on or take them off. like you said, it's hard to find guys in the second round. They're not a big deal, and they're not going to add to our win total too much. Maybe you hope that Galloway regresses again, and maybe we'll lose a few extra games.

Yeah, who knows? I just would have liked to see them go all the way. I mean, I think in this situation, you take what you can get, and I don't think there's much to be gained by saying, well, we'd rather take, I know you're in a We're talking minor guys here in a minor return. I don't think that's anything to be gained from saying we'd rather take no deal than a bad deal. And like the 76ers paid out three second round draft picks.

I mean, that would have not have been a bad deal. Even if it was only two second round draft picks, that would not have been a bad deal. And who knows? I mean, the reason you get so many draft picks, even if the second round picks, is that maybe a hit-up. guy. And that one guy you hit on out of maybe three three or four second round draft picks is more valuable than these two veterans on the team who if they help you, then they're hurting you. So that's what I'm concerned about for the rest of the year is I feel like the Pistons wanted to

put themselves in position to A, lose as many games as possible. And B, let the young players take as many of the minutes as possible. So, you know, you lose Galloway, who knows, maybe maybe Kyrie Thomas, who's finally healthy again, comes in and shows you that, hey, he's actually a decent NBA player. He's never going to get that chance now. And I know that was an outside chance, but I would have preferred to see him get it. And so I just wasn't particularly happy with the way it went. And I don't think very highly of Greg Stefansky either, to be honest. I mean, this is a guy who in New Jersey took over a team that had recently made two finals,

Two consecutive finals presided over its decline, moved over to the 76ers. Had a very mediocre tenure there. I mean, after getting fired by the Nets, moved over to the 76ers, had a very mediocre tenure there. Got fired as well. From that position, he went through six drafts. He only drafted one notable player. That was Drew Holiday. He, the vast majority of the rest of them, rest of his picks busted, I think, every single one of his picks with the,

the Nets was a bust I think Devin Booker out of all of his picks in those three drafts was the only guy who really had an NBA career not Devin Booker excuse me

Trevor Booker right yeah pardon me yeah definitely not Devin Booker you know the the less good Booker I think he's peripherally

still in the league so he drafted Evan Turner before three future All-Stars, DeMarcus cousins, Gordon Hayward and Paul George. And he moved on to the Raptors. In the three years he was there, they averaged 25 wins.

He moved over to the Grizzlies. In these positions, he was just, he was executive VP of basketball operations, I believe, in Toronto. He was executive, he was VP of player personnel in Memphis. And Memphis, again, they presided over the decline. He didn't preside over it, but he got there just as they were beginning to go on to decline. like the decision to they could have traded a couple seasons ago Tyree Kevin's they wanted a first wrong pick

nobody offered it they didn't do anything and that kind of smelled a little bit like him who knows what his impacts were at these last two places but he was a guy with a very very very unimpressive management pedigree who came to Detroit's to he was appointed as an advisor to help hire the coach and a new coach and a new GM

ultimately hired himself as GM I don't think he should ever have had the job. And I don't really have much confidence in him. He's made to date a bunch of small moves, mostly good moves, but they've been small. This was really the first test of dexterity as a front office, and I don't think they did well. So as far as if I had to give a grade to this dead one, purely based on how they operated. Now, if it's basically how did it end up with and with Drummond leaving, Sure, you give him a B-minus, you know, because it's not all bad.

You get rid of Drummond. Okay, that's good. You don't get rid of the other guys. You know, you get whatever you can for them and just get them out of the way so the youth can play more. Okay, whatever, B-minus, C-plus. I would go ahead and give them a D because I still feel like, I'm pretty firmly believe here, that they drove away Atlanta by asking for too much, and then they got bailed out at the last, last, last second by the Cavaliers.

And it could have easily gone very badly. And they also got nothing for the other guys. So I think that this went very poorly. I think, or rather, I think that it ended up kind of okay. Not good, but kind of okay. But I don't think that was through agency on their part, unless just everything was hush-hush, and Cleveland of all teams was in it from the beginning,

and I find that unlikely. So you, I take it. would probably be a little more friendly toward them when you're grading. Yeah, yeah. Like you said, it's different philosophies. I like that they didn't settle at this stage. And they moved drumming, yeah, maybe they could have gotten a slightly better return from Atlanta. But if, I mean, it sounded like they really almost did get that Atlanta pick.

So I'm kind of happy that they had that asking price. maybe it works out differently. But the important thing is that Drummond has moved. It really does seem like they're making moves for the future. And a lot of the small things, not even like the moves that we made, bringing the drive over to Detroit in a year or two, I know you saw that post on Reddit about how they want those guys close so that they can bring more guys up from the D-League

or they can send some of the young guys down. Because I know, I read an article, I forget who wrote it, but it was about Seku and his time in the D-League. And he said he really liked his coach down there and he had a really good relationship with him. So the idea of maybe that guy, I don't remember his name, don't remember anybody's name right now,

but that guy being close by, I really like that. I thought when they were bringing the team, team down or up here maybe it's just because like there's a better market here uh but the fact that they made that move with development in mind and the fact that they tried to move canard uh because they want i think they want their timeline to be four years which is what i've been hoping for for the longest time i don't i don't like the idea that some people are putting out there of like a one year rebuild or we get this cap space and when we sign up of role players and we try to compete again for the playoffs next year. The quote from Tom

Gore's, and I can't believe I'm about to say this, is encouraging. He said he wants to maybe take a step back and so that we can compete for more. And I really hope that he understands that the best way to do that, in my opinion anyway, is the full four-year rebuild. I made a post about it ages ago, like detailing. The best way to do it is not to expect to do what Philly did. I'm not advocating for a Philly, you know, signed the worst roster possible. I think we're already ahead of that schedule because we have Saku,

we have young guys that potentially could be part of our future. And the other thing is that Philly had a ton of injuries. The process was, it's not the sort of thing that you can replicate. It was not an accident, but almost all of their rookies missed, like, significant time, which caused their win total to drop lower for a couple years longer, probably. And it's, I mean, I know Philly is not the best team right now, but I think that's more due to fit than talent. They've got a lot of talent.

It's just their talent doesn't work well. Anyway, that's off topic. I'm fine with what they did this time. Yeah, you would have liked to have gotten maybe more for Drummond. It's hard to grade them just because we don't know what happened leading up to that point. We can just try to make a guess based on what we saw and what we heard from the insiders. But for what we saw and the results and the things that we got real confirmation from Woes, I'm fine with it.

They tried to move Kennard. I wasn't expecting a huge return for Drummond anyway. I mean, a second round pick or an extra second rounder. That's negligible. And I'm just happy that the move that mattered we made. So I'd give them a B. You know, sure you could have gotten maybe a little bit more. But the important thing is that it really seems like they're going to start over

and maybe do this thing the right way. And I say that I'm still hoping that Gores doesn't change his mind. He's like, oh, we could get Fred Vland Bleet or some other role player and talk to them a big contract. And, yeah, I don't think that's what they're going to do. I think maybe they've learned their lesson and maybe they'll do this thing the right way. I know a lot of people aren't looking forward to that.

But, I mean, out of the last 10 years, 12 years, honestly, of bad basketball, has it really felt worth it? The fact that we didn't ever truly tanked, that we always spent all our money and that we always just, tried to compete. Me? No. There's like one or two really fun moments. And even when I watch games now,

it's kind of sucked the joy out of it for me because I know that it's not going anywhere. But now it feels like it actually could. And this deadline has caused that. You know, it feels like they're finally making the right move. So for me, yeah, I'll give them a B. You know, honestly,

just for that, for that, and in that context, I'd give them an A, plus because if they really are going to rebuild properly, that's the best thing that could possibly happen in my book. Actually, I also have to say there's just reading up on some emergent intel from, again, from James Edwards, that apparently there was just very little market for Langston Galloway and for Mark Keith Morris. That Galloway, according to sources, he says, Galloway just had very, very little interest in the

trade markets and the Pistons did their due diligence on Morris but never got anything they were really interested in. Trade offers didn't really develop. So I guess that was a little bit too harsh on them. I still don't really like how they went about the whole drummond thing, but I guess I could say that if there really just was no market for those guys, then the Demline wasn't, their performance, the Demline wasn't quite as bad as I thought. Apparently one guy, multiple sources reported on Twitter, anyway, according to their

sources that there were a lot of offers made for Christian Wood, but the Pistons said no to all of them. I approve of this. Yeah, I think Christian Wood is, he's just, there are a couple things about the guy. I mean, somebody, if you're looking, if you're the kind of person who is in favor of kind of like a full process, but like total sell, everybody rebuilt. I'm sure you see, you say take whatever you can from the guy. Christian Wood's fun to watch. And maybe he can be an important guy you can sign moving forward, even if he doesn't necessarily fully fit the timeline. you got to have some things to like about this team.

You do. And you mentioned the process. That's something I think the average, or some fans, I believe, worry about, oh, it's a rebuild. Are we going to be like the worst team in existence for the next five years? The process will never happen again because of lottery reform. It was an extreme experiment in the first place. Like you said, they never would have been that bad if their first round picks hadn't constantly missed a full first season. Like MB had missed a full season.

Simmons missed a full season. A few seasons. No, I think, no, he played in his second season. He just played kind of lighter minutes. Fultz missed his first season, though he turned out to be bad. But in the first place, looking at the, you know, for anybody, looking at the process is that, is the, you know, saying that's what a typical rebuild looks like is many tantamount

to looking at Mount Everest and saying, oh, so this is what a typical. typical mountain hike looks like. It's not true. They're both the most extreme examples of their kind. And I think, honestly, yeah, you might be right that a several year rebuild is the way to go. And there are teams who have successfully done that. I mean, recently, like the grizzlies are on a very good place now,

even though I don't necessarily know if I like them taking on that much salary in exchange for Igodala. Excuse me, in exchange for Justice Winslow. but they got two really good young players, three if you include Brooks. And the Mavericks have their own kind of three-season rebuild. They're going to make the playoffs with a decent season in the West. So I think honestly the best we can hope for for the Pistons is a one-and-a-half season rebuild. But I think that if they get themselves a decent pick, they hit in the draft fairly well this season and then go on the next season with just the young guys not looking to win.

don't sign guys in free agency to any more than like one-year contracts with a team option if you have to. And then just don't look to win and look to aim for a high pick in that draft. And then look to compete after that. I think that's the best we're going to get from the Pistons. And maybe that'll be enough. So finally, let's just look at what we want to see from this team heading forward for the rest of the season. And I will just say, I'm looking forward to seeing Andre Drummond list basketball because I feel like the team just everything flows much better with a group of guys

who are willing to all buy into the system. Also, you'll be running a stretch five as the center, starting center. That should be nice. Just be fun to watch. I don't expect the Pistons will mend many games. Let's be honest, Drummond has just been terrible for the most part since the trade rumors came out. They'll still be worse, I believe, than they were. And so I just want to see the young guys get a lot of time.

I'd like to see Jordan Bone work his way into the rotation, and I believe he will, unless they give that time to Brandon Knight, which would be a crime, or Bruce Brown. Why start him a backup point card? Just want to play shooting guard while Rose is injured, and who knows, maybe Richard Jackson will get bought out. I'd like to see Lewis King get more of a space in the rotation, because, again, why not to see what you got there?

And just watch the Bistons play some fun basketball. They got nothing to lose at this point. Well, the only thing they have to lose is losing, rather, which hopefully they will do a great deal of. Yeah, your thoughts? Yeah, pretty much that. Let the young guys play. It would be great if we would do the thing that you've mentioned a few times that Rick Carlisle did and put in the scrubs at like the end of close games, make sure that you lose. I don't think Casey will do that.

I don't know how in he is on this rebuild thing. I don't know if he'll be the guy once his contract is up. We'll see. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more Seku, see what he is. Let the young guys make mistakes. That's one of the things I didn't like that Casey would do is, not just Casey, Stan, is if the young guys make, a mistake, they were gone.

Like, their attitude was, you have this chance. Show me something amazing so that you can stay in. And if they made a mistake or if the pressure got to them, you didn't see him again. And we saw what happened is guys like Dinwiddie. They go off somewhere else. They get a real opportunity to make mistakes. And maybe it's like a change of scenery thing that helps them too. But it's unfortunate when you see guys like that go somewhere else and shine just because

they didn't get the opportunity here. That's why I didn't know that Kyrie was healthy again, and I'm really happy that he is because I really do want to see him get like real extended minutes. He looked really good in the first game of Summer League, and his game, I think, would translate just fine to the NBA. He's just a 3-D guy, and I'd like to see more of him. So I am looking forward to seeing just young guys play. I'm excited about them already. There's finally something to look forward to, you know? So I'm good, man. Like, I'm flying high.

Yeah, one of my concerns remains that Dwayne Casey, who likes to play veterans, will play his veterans. And of course, he's going to play the guys who are still around. You're not just going to tell Marquif Morris, you know, hit the road. I mean, I don't think he's even a buyout candidate because he still has an option left. Maybe you, they probably want to keep Langston-Ga-Lay around. Like I said, it's been set. that he's a useful veteran, a real professional.

And I'd love him, Fredji Jackson, you know, I like the guy more than I used to. After that awful second season he had with the Pistons, he kind of came back with a different attitude. And if you can give him the chance, if he's willing to, you know, to take a decent buyout. Well, basically, I mean, what do you have to lose? So let the guy be bought out at this point

and maybe go play back. I'm on a contender or something like that. I'd just like to have the pistons in a situation where you get the young guys as much look as you possibly can and as much chance as you possibly can. And I think Dwayne Casey, when he's given the choice, it's going to default to playing his veterans.

So in any event, that'll be it for tonight's episode. As always, thanks for listening. We are always happy to hear feedback and ideas for future episodes. And we will catch you next time. Thank you.