Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 148: Former Pistons, the Heat’s Formula, and More

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

This mini-episode opines on various topics: former Pistons role players, the Heat's formula for success, a Bojan Bogdanovic trade scenario, and more. 

Welcome back. Everybody go listening to another episode of Drive into the Basket. I am Mike coming at you with a, I suppose I would call a midweek mini episode, but it's not midweek. Always post episodes on Wednesday morning. So I guess whenever I'm posting one of these mini episodes, it's typically sometime Friday through Monday, which really doesn't qualify as midweek. But nonetheless, let's skip right to it. So if you don't listen to the first such episode as this that I post, that these are kind of going to just be episodes where I talk about things that may or may not. not be pittons related, mostly pittons related, but I talk about the postseason and just various topics I have seen just in terms of discussion, there are questions that I have seen asked or been asked to cover. So let's start with something Pistons related, I suppose. So has been brought up that two out of five of the Nuggets starting lineup, excuse me, not two out of five, one of five, and then the lead guy off the bench are former Pistons who have gone on to become very valuable role players for a Nuggets team that is now in the finals. As far as the Nuggets, you know, kudos to them.

I thought the Lakers had a real shot against the Nuggets because Yokic is the Achilles heel of that team. But it's just a combination of the Lakers not really having anybody who could penetrate. Darvin Ham doing a pretty poor job of running an offense. And Anthony Davis just kind of letting himself be shot in the foot. I mean, Anthony Davis, there were times in that series. The Lakers should have won at least one game. Anthony Davis in game two, basically the Nuggets.

just decided, you know what, we're going to give you enough rope to hang yourself. And they succeeded in that because they just offered him a bunch of bad shots. And instead of taking advantage of the gravity he was attracting to set up teammates, or at least to just wrong for the Nuggets defense, he just kept taking those shots. That's what some players will do. They just have that sort of confidence that, you know what, I'm just going to keep shooting and eventually it's going to work. And he shot them out of game too.

Beyond that, you know, LeBron is clearly lost the step that is much less remarkable than the fact that he has kept this step, you know, kept this step so long. long. His longevity is really something else, but, you know, he's not the player he used to be. DeAngelo Russell was really bad. DeAngela Russell, who's largely just good if he's making his pull-up threes. And, you know, Austin Reeves, basically they just had nobody who could penetrate. And Darmineham chose not to just run Nicola Yolkich in the pick and roll or get him, you know, attack him in isolation where possible. Yeah. So, and that was it for the Lakers. But if you look at two of those top six guys from the Nuggets, those are, of course, Contavius Colwell

Pope and Bruce Brown. Now, something I'd like to clarify, maybe for those of you who weren't watching as much during the Van Gundy era, the Pistons did not get rid of KCP. KCP left the pistons. So this was in right at the end of the 2016, excuse me, in the offseason, 2017, offseason. So KCP was in a contract year in 2016, 2017. He did fairly well in the first, I mean, he had been a fairly disappointing prospect. That should be noted, just a pretty poor score. You know, a solid on-ball defender, very good all-ball defender, but a real disappointment is a scorer. And he'd done decently well in the first half of the 2016-2017 season. And then it just fallen off and was arguably one of the worst starters in the league for the second half. He

did not have a good season. But that was back when the Brooklyn Nets were just throwing ridiculous contracts of people. And, you know, I think there was Tyler Johnson, Otto Porter Jr., and I don't remember the third one, but the Nets got some guys paid, like really paid, who didn't deserve it. Whatever the case, there were rumblings that they were going to offer KCP and Max contract. I guess he took these a little bit too seriously because when the Van Gundy regime was dumb enough to offer him a contract of $80 million over five years, which was drastically more than he deserved, and even now that would be an overpay for KCP, you know, let alone as the player that he used to be, he said that that wasn't anywhere near what he was looking for.

And so ultimately, when Avery Bradley became available, the Bistons traded a modest package for him and renounced, but threw the offer and renounced KCP. And he would play, I think it was four seasons with the Lakers, not very good in his first two. He was the third best player in the finals for them in 2020, won a championship. And from there would ultimately go to the Wizards before being traded,

if I remember correctly, to the Nuggets. And, you know, give him credit. I mean, he is now playing the right way. He doesn't take stupid shots. He restricts himself the good scoring opportunities. He's a strong defender. He's a good 3-Indie guy over there and a good fit next to Yokic who needs all the perimeter help he can get. But he didn't, you know, the pistons didn't cut ties with him so much as he left the pistons by being completely unreasonable.

And it was a good thing because otherwise the pistons would have been stuck with KCP for at least a couple seasons in a contract he absolutely didn't deserve. Now, when it comes to Bruce Brown, it's a different story. the Pistons did cut ties with him. And you can look at it and say, you know, Bruce Brown is a very solid role player right now. And that is true. Bruce Brown is a solid role player right now. It is worth noting, however, that when the Pistons cut ties with him, Bruce Brown was one of those guys who was really a shot away from being an effective role player. But that shot seemed very far away.

And he was an old third year player. So Troy Weaver came in and, you know, who knows? Maybe it was just one of these things that he wanted to remake the roster in his own image. and he certainly did. I mean, Killian Hayes is still the longest tenured member of this roster, and that became the case, I think about a year after Weaver, maybe a little bit more. I think that was in the 2021 offseason when Seco de Boia was done away with, that Killian became the longest tenure member of the team. So maybe that was part of it. Maybe he felt that Bruce Brown just didn't really have a role in the timeline that Weaver was going to be operating on,

you know, young or not. Whatever the case. case, I think it's worth noting. So number one, he was a shot away, but that shot seemed far away. He remained, you know, he was a solid shooter from, I believe, the right corner, but the guy could not shoot from above the break. He just couldn't do it. He was a spacing liability. Not the most athletic guy, you know, hard worker, really a team first dude. I think one of those guys who would be happy taking no shots every game if that was what was best for his team. He definitely had his strengths, but in his first two seasons with the pastins, he'd been a very unimpressive role player, somehow ended up starting.

in his in his rookie year, thanks to Dwayne Casey. And so the Pistons spent much of the year with two non-shooters in the four. We're basically only saved by Blake Griffin having a Titanic season. Anyway, that's far on the past. So Bruce was traded ultimately to the Nets. And in those two seasons with the Nets, he remained a spacing liability. However, you can get away with that when you're playing next to multiple superstar caliber creators. In this case, playing next to two of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden.

in that case it's kind of okay if you're not a shooter. You know, if you're just one of those guys, Bruce Brown would, you know, play on the short role a bit. That was an innovation by Steve Nash. And he would just make cuts to the basket. He would shoot the occasional three. But only this year with the Nuggets, which would have been his third season

if he had remained in the past, or rather his fifth season, the team in general, but third under Weaver, did he become a reliable shooter? And as a reliable shooter, you know, great. The guy can shoot threes. The guy can make passes. He's good at attacking open lanes.

He's helped by the fact, of course, that he is in the absolute perfect situation with very little in the way of responsibility and playing next to, arguably the premier playmaker in the league, arguably the best offensive player in the league, but a guy who's going to be excellented hitting him from cuts, exploiting through open wains from the perimeter, you know, above the break, getting him open threes. But give Bruce Brown some credit. He's become a good role player, and he's basically six-man at this point for a team

that could very well win the championship. So, was it a mistake in retrospect for the Pistons to let him go? Yes, but that, of course, hindsight is 50-50. And they would have seen him most likely play two seasons in which he just wasn't really all that good on a team that was not able to offer him the buffer of saying we don't really expect much out of you at all. And it's fine that you're a spacing liability

because we've got two or three Super Star creators in the floor with you. Pistons could not have offered him that, you know, would he have been a liability to a team that had a terrible offense? It just would not have been ideal. Number two, Boyan Bogdanovich. Where does he go this offseason? I'm going to focus mostly on a trade package I've seen suggested quite a few times, which is Boyon and whatever else, you know, some filler to the Dallas Mavericks in exchange for the number 10 pick. I would be shocked if Dallas were to make this trade. So Dallas had a top 10 offense and a bottom 10 defense. defense last season on the season as a whole. When they traded per Kyrie, they traded away Dore and Phiney Smith. Basically, they get stronger on offense and even worse on defense, what Dallas

desperately needs. And more to the point in terms of importance to Dallas, what Lucas says they need, and their primary objective at this point is to keep Luca Dantra Chabby, is defense. You know, he's, he was apt when he said it, you know, we can score. We just absolutely cannot play defense. So in Boyan, they would be reinforcing a position of strength in a situation in which he would be the number three guy behind Kyrie, assuming he stays in Dallas, but he doesn't have much in the way of choice there. And in Luca, so his offense would be less valuable than it was with the Pistons, where he was the number one guy. And he would add another weak defender, his Boyon is a weak defender to a weak defensive team. So this is not a trade that would be fit the Mavericks. I've said it before.

Boyon is probably worth more to a bad team than he is to a good team because he is not really much of a postseason player thanks to his defense. He is easily exploitable. Meanwhile, I mean, he does have solid value to this Pistons team as a release valve and an elite shooter, a genuine three-level score who can create a lot of offense and a veteran leader by all accounts. As far as, you know, other potential trade destinations,

Yeah, I just don't know. Like a rebuilder obviously isn't going to be too interested. And, you know, once again, the defense hurts and the less of a role he has in your offense. You know, the less offensive value is providing, you know, the more that defense hurts proportionally. He was a highly efficient 20 point per game score for the Pistons last season and, or this past season, rather, whatever terminology you want to use. And he was still arguably negative value player. Next, let's talk about the heat. I know that Pistons fans, you know, myself included, I love these kind of blue-collar teams that just work super hard, play hard-nose defense, and are really selfless. And I've seen the heat brought up as, you know, a question, you know, is it possible to win in the NBA with the team that is just very teamwork oriented?

It doesn't necessarily have a lot of star power, but just plays great defense and is more than the sum of its parts. So the heat are an exceptional team. Here's what makes the heat so successful. Number one, they are managed extremely well. Not always. I mean, there are the blips, like the contracts for Dionne Waders, and I'm blanking on his name, Johnson, James Johnson. That's who it is.

But on the whole, the heat excel at putting together rosters that may not really be high on talent, but are more than the sum of their parts. And if you're going to win a championship, you need a roster that's more than the sum of its parts. You know, unless you just have an incredible amount of talent, like the Durant are warriors, but even they were extremely well-coached.

Number two, they've got the best talent, identification, and development apparatus in the league. Like, I would say by far, if you look at their current roster, they have three former two-way players in the roster, Duncan Robinson, Max Struce, and Gabe Vincent. They're just very, very good at finding undiscovered talent and developing it into solid role players. Duncan Robinson isn't so good now, but for two seasons, they're just very, very good. He was an absolute terror on the perimeter. And number three, and this one shouldn't be discounted. Eric Spillister is the best coach in the league. He gets more from less than anybody else,

and he's able to make things work than nobody else can. For example, putting two non-shooters out there because Butler is not a shooter during the regular season. He somehow turns it on in the postseason, a way that is pretty uncanny. But Bam out of bio, of course, is not a shooter also, and this is not a team with just an overwhelming amount of star level talent.

Like again, the Nets could get away with having two or three, you know, two really good shooters, maybe another okay shooter. The Warriors could get away with it as well, with Dremont and whichever center they were putting out there. But Spolster does it without that surf it of a lead talent. So those are really three things you need, and even then, I mean, I was surprised that the heat

were able to get out two or three nothing lead. It was very impressive. Jimmy Bell was running out of gas, the Celtics just have more talent, and that's beginning to tell. Of course, the Celtics came literally 0.1 seconds away from being knocked out, so let's not discount what the heat have done. But their postseason runs this season, and in 2020 and last season, were extremely dependent upon.

Also, you know, beyond the factors I enumerated, we're also just very, very dependent upon Jimmy Bolt were carrying. In 2020, I mean, he had a couple of the greatest finals games ever in the heat. won those. And then in game six, he just completely ran out of steam. So even if the heat were to make the finals, I think, I mean, I think Jimmy Bellwer's just been carrying in incredible offensive load. And he's a tremendous postseason player, but you can only do so much. So all of this is to say that Miami, like Golden State, is a very exceptional situation, should be considered the exception rather than the norm. And it's just, it's really difficult for the average team to make that work.

if the Pistons can get that, you know, fantastic development apparatus, you know, great management. And to coach, who is, in my opinion, by a significant margin of the best in the league, then maybe they can pull that off. But that's a lot to hope for. Yeah, if you're anybody else, you just try to get that elite talent and make it work. And hopefully the Pistons will find a good coach on the subject of coaching. I know there's a lot of consternation about the prospect of hiring Kevin Alley. You know, who knows if there's, if there's, uh, smoke around this. I really don't have any idea. But my general feeling around the coaching search is that I just have no idea. None of these guys have been head coaches in the NBA. None of them have really even,

well, Kevin Alley, of course, hasn't coached in the NBA period. Charles Lee and Jaron Collins have been assistant coaches. But it's really hard to tell what assistant coaches are actually doing, you know, especially if they don't get to be interim head coaches for a significant period. Like, say, Mike Brown or Luke Walton, who went on to be a bad coach. And Mike Brown was interim coach for the Warriors throughout a significant portion of the playoffs in one of these last few years. I don't remember when, but even then they're coaching their coaches system. You don't know what it is, you know, what their own agency is. So it's impossible to look in, you know, in the case of Charles Lee, and it should be noted that the

bucks passed him over, you know, for what that's worth. Now, Charles Lee and Jaron Collins, uh, who there has been some talk that I'm not sure any verified talk, that he has kind of, uh, been taken out of consideration for the head coaching job. There's just no way to know how much of whatever was happening in the teams that they were assisting coaches for was they're doing. And Kevin Alley, I just don't know. So in general, for me, It's just sort of waiting to see. I'm glad that the pistons are going with a newcomer rather than a retread. I am happy that we are not getting a bad retread.

I wouldn't have been super unhappy with Monty Williams, and it was reported that the pistons did make a big money offer to him. And, yeah, I believe that was Shams. If I'm quoting a bad source, I'm very, very sorry, but I don't think I am. Moni, I would have been a little bit unhappy with because I don't want the Pistons to go with a retread who has a very well-demonstrated ceiling. and well-established flaws that are very unlikely to change. Now, why did Moni turn it down?

Maybe because he feels like he has better opportunities else where he wants to go to a team that's closer to competing, and it's possible that he's just going to take a year off. Who knows? He's got $21 million coming to him from the sons. The guy doesn't need the money, and maybe he decides to focus on his family. I believe he said something to that effect.

Now, if he'd end up being higher, would I have been extremely unhappy? No, I'd been a little unhappy, yes. Now, what would have made me really unhappy would have been the likes of Mike Budenhouser or Doc Rivers, who are these old fossilized coaches from a bygone era. Mani doesn't really fit into that category. Not quite as much, but these are these old coaches who have managed to limp on because they've managed to be coaching teams with a lot of talent. And I wouldn't be surprised if neither of them get a job in the NBA ever again,

or at the very least, not in a good situation. The spacing and efficiency era, I mean, the era, where in now the era that really began in 2015 is extremely intolerant of a lot of things. For example, players with flaws such as unable to shoot or unable to play switch defense or whatever else. Like the margins are as thin as they have ever been. The level of competition, the level of talent are higher than ever. I'd say the margins are thinner than they've ever been to.

And one of the thing. And so things like bad coaching can have an outsized impact. If your coach has flaws, I mean, those flaws are much debilier than they used to be, 10 years ago or so. And now free agency. So I'll of course be doing a more detailed episode about free agency after the draft when we know where the Pistons stand in terms of positional needs or whatever else. But this is a weak free agent class.

Like it's weak. Free agency, I think, is going to continue to be weak because, you know, players, good players who are restricted free agents generally get retained by their teams. And, you know, really good players on any given team. unless they are limited by extension rules, because, well, this was the case that the first year of an extension can only be 120% the salary of the last year of the current contract

and for players on bargain deals or players who just really got a lot better across the course of their contracts, often that wouldn't be enough. I think it's been raised to 140% in the new CBA. In any case, unless it's players like that, or players who really want to leave their team. I mean, a lot of guys who are above sort of the mid-range,

or even guys who are like really capable of three-indu wings, whatever else, I mean, players will often just end up getting extended. And the really top talent will almost invariably take extensions and then just say, I want to be traded. If they decide they don't want to play for the team anymore. So, for agencies grown pretty weak. Fortunately, the Pistons do not need to spend this summer. They can roll that over to 2024.

you will have cap holds for Killian Hayes, whatever that might be worth. And Isaiah Stewart, assuming he doesn't get extended this summer, Cade hopefully will have had a killer season. He'll be eligible for an extension, but if so, he can sign that after the piston, spend that cap space. He won't be living a cap hold, and it wouldn't matter anyway, of course, because the extension wouldn't kick in. Yeah, I don't know why I said he could sign that afterward,

because it wouldn't matter. Yeah, the extension wouldn't kick in until 2025 anyway. So the Pistons can punt on it. they can choose to wait until 2024, just sign some one-year deals. And that might be the best idea. And it should be noted that CapSpace isn't just something you can use to sign players. Cap Space is flexibility of the ability to take bad contracts. And there will be bad contracts on the books.

I mean, there are not a lot of teams with cap flexibility at this stage. You take on bad contracts, you know, just, you know, make trades in which you don't have to send over as much salary, act as the third party in a trade, whatever. Use that to gain some amount. assets. Now, will teams be really looking to dump salary ahead of a week free agency class? Of course, not unless they have somebody they really like and maybe they've tampered and decided, sure, we really feel like we can sign this guy. But there are also teams looking to duck the luxury tax. Next question. Got in this. Do you feel like you're maybe a little bit harsh on Asar in the draft profile episode you did on him and Amen? I definitely in that episode did not

have great things to say about Osar. I've sort of softened on him a little bit, but I do not want him to be the Pistons pick. I think he does have potential to be a good three-indee, possibly a very good three-indee wing with passing ability, but the shot still scares me. I know that he got a little bit hot at the end of the season, you know, the OTE season, you know, for whatever it's worth. I feel obligated to bring up that the OTE is a terrible league in terms of competition. But, you know, you get hot at the end of a season, easily a blip. The guy's form has trouble. His bricks are ugly. His three-point percentage, of course, overall was not good. His free throw percentage, and again, that's not always a correlation. We've seen this with Killian A's, for example,

who was an excellent free-throw shooter in a very, very rare occasion he actually gets the line. But it is often a correlation, and also, Sarr was attempting free throws at a very high rate. so got to attempt a lot of free throws in the course of shooting a very bad percentage on them. So there are just too many red flags for me there. Also, he just really, really, really struggled as a half-court scorer in a really weak league. If not for the fact that he was getting to the line a lot, because he was getting fouled by bad OTE defenders, as a very good athlete who could just explode to the basket, he would have had truly awful efficiency. Also, his efficiency was raised quite a bit by the fact that OTE is a transition-focused league,

and he is a strong transition score. So he's just not good at anything in the half court. He struggled to attack the basket through contact against bad OTE defenders. He does not have good touch around the basket. You know, he liked his pull-up jumpers a little bit, but he was bad at those. And, of course, needless to say he wasn't good at threes either. It's a concerning thing in a week that is as bad as OTE is. I know I keep saying that, but OTE is a bad week.

It is far below the NCAA, which is, of course, itself, far below the NBA. So does he have potential? Yes, is he the guy would like the pistons to take? No. This is random, but once Assar and Amen are drafted, there will be three sets of identical

twins in the NBA, Marquif and Marcus, the Martin twins, and then the Thompson twins. The chances of that happening are astronomically low. It's just a funny thing to think about. And that will be it, folks, for this episode.

As always, thank you for listening. This week's draft episode will be J.R.S. Walker should be an interesting discussion, I hope. In any case, we'll catch you in that episode.