Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 161: 2022-2023 Player Reviews - Isaiah Livers, James Wiseman, and Marvin Bagley

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

This episode takes a dive into the season performances of Isaiah Livers, James Wiseman, and Marvin Bagley. 

Welcome back. Everybody, you listen to another episode of Driving to the Basket. I am Mike, your host, and I hope you're all having a great day. So I also hope you'll excuse the obvious congestion and the snivel is pretty sure I'm coming down with something. Probably just feels like a common cold. In any case, this is going to be the first episode of the season review series. Kind of did killing a couple episodes ago. Don't know if he's going to be on the team next season. This is just going to be players who are going to be on the team next season, at least as far as things currently stand. Before I get into that, and we're going to be talking today about the guys who really didn't play all that much of the season, that'll be Isaiah Livers, Marvin Bagley, and James Wiseman. Let's talk about the USA Select Team Scrimmage against Team USA, of course, and that's just Kate Cunningham and Jalen Duren. They don't really have a ton to say. I know it's a hot topic amongst Pistons fandom. I talked quite a bit, actually a fair amount about Cabe last weekend. Not last weekend, what am I saying last week?

And a message remains the same. I'm very high on Cade. I think he's got superstar upside. I think he's going to be a three-level NBA score with, of course, a great deal of passing upside, extremely high IQ. Just, yeah, smart, three-level, size, leadership, et cetera. Don't sleep on him. I think he's become kind of forgotten, well, not by Pistons fans, though he's out of mind, of course, because he hasn't really played healthy in more than a year at this point. Don't sleep in the guy. He's got a lot to offer. There's a reason he was the number one pick in a very strong draft. And Duren just showed us, I think, a lot of what we saw last season, just in terms of his ability on the role.

His ability, as a finisher, at least when he can dunk the ball. Hopefully, it'll be improved on layups this season. Seems to have good chemistry with Cade. And they'll be playing under a coach who doesn't hate vertical spacing. Dwayne Casey was a close-minded offensive coach. Did not utilize vertical spacing despite the fact that for all but basically two-thirds of one season during his business tenure, he had capable vertical spacers. He started with Drummins, then he had Christian Wood. I'm Mason Plumley.

It wasn't super athletic, but is more than athletic enough to catch lobs and dunk those. And then he had that just two-thirds of a season in which Troy Weaver bizarrely decided to not have an athletic big on the roster. And Cade, who operates in the high, who just lives in the high picking rule, got to spend his first two-thirds of a season in the NBA with the center rotation of Isaiah Stewart, Kelly Olinick, and Luca Garza. And then Bagley came in, and then in this final season, of course, the Pistons had. Jaylen Duren for almost the entire season, and Marvin Bagley and James Wiseman for parts of it, but Casey just does not like, did not like using vertical spacing. And Duren is, of course, an excellent vertical spacer. And strong rebounder, strong finisher, et cetera.

So it was cool to watch. It was just cool to watch K-play basketball. I think he's going to be a special player. So let's move on to the player reviews themselves, and we're going to start with Marvin Bagley. And I don't have many great things to say about Marvin Bagley. I'll kind of leave with that. But let's just get into the raw stats real quick here.

42 games played of which he started in 25. This was another injury-riddled campaign for Bagley, who has struggled with injuries throughout the entirety of his NBA career. In his first five seasons, in which he would have been able to play a total of, you know, counting what he would have lost from the shortened season in 2019, 2020. That's five seasons,

He's 410 games. I think he'd take away 10, so about 400. He's played 208. I hope I didn't completely butcher that math. I'm quite confident. I did not. Yeah, so he's played about half the games he could have played in his NBA career. Oddly enough, he's most injury prone in his hands,

which is not something I've seen with any other player. But I missed almost half the season with the Pist, and some of that was due to, I believe it was an ankle injury in preseason. In any event, 12 points per game, about 6.5 rebounds, 0.9 assists. I think everyone doesn't like to pass the ball very much. 53% from the field, 29% from 3. Got to the free throw line about 2.5 times per game. And overall, true shooting of about 59%.

So is the issue with Bagley. Number one, he sucks on defense. I've been over that a lot. And this is an area in which this is random, but it's sort of demonstrative of why defense. stats always need to be contextualized because, for example, if you look at just NBA's just basic defensive stats, which they'll show about how a player's opponents shot against him versus how they shot, you know, just on average against all the opponents who are guarding him,

guarding them, excuse me. And if you look at Bagley, it's like, okay, well, he kind of struggled at guarding the three-point line, but inside the arc he was very good. Okay, well, here's the thing with Bagley. He's actually decent at stick. He's actually pretty good at sticking with guys inside the arc just in one-on-one defense. But it falls apart past that because the guy has absolutely horrific decision-making when it comes to switches, you know, when to switch, how to switch rotations, just processing the game. And so he'll eventually screw up. And then the defense falls apart around him. If you play him at center, he does not have the processing ability. So basically, if you want to be the primary interior defender, I mean, that's basically the defensive job that's going to require

the most decision-making, the most tracking, because you always have to see what's going on all around you, and run around the interior being in the right place, and so on and so forth. And Bagley, if you play him on defense at center as an absolute and utter catastrophe and your defense cannot function, period. He is a horrendous decision-maker there. If you move him out to the perimeter, he has less issues because it's, you know, in larger part, it's about just sticking with your man. That's not all of it. But in larger part, it's about just sticking with your man, and Bagley does not do a bad job of that by any means. Again, he's pretty good at sticking with this guy. That's not his problem. The problem is that if you ask him to make decisions there as well, just be aware of what's going on, make the right switches,

make the right rotations, you know, watch your man to make sure that he's not cut into the basket behind you, something like that. Bagley and opposing offenses know this. If you run him through a bunch of rotations, for example, and require him to track player movements on the other side, he will eventually screw up, and the opposition will get an easy. bucket. And that's that. And he has been a bad defender since his days at Duke when Shoshaski had to move to his own offense for a season, in part just to protect Marvin Bagley, because he could not defend the pick and roll. He was a horrible defender at Sacramento, and he's been just a terrible defender with the pistons also. I've said this many times before. God, I have to stop saying that. Whatever.

Bagley, I think, just doesn't have it in terms of defensive processing. Defensive processing is, you know, like offensive IQ, a skill. And some guys just have a low ceiling on it. I mean, you have to be able to make split second decisions on a continual basis against, in a very fast-moving game, against the best basketball players in the world. I don't think Bagley can do it on defense. And that alone, if he can't improve upon it, is going to disqualify him as a postseason rotation player because he will be constantly targeted in the postseason. Teams will just run schemes to undermine him, and that's all it takes. And those margins are even smaller in the postseason than they are in the regular season.

So continued to struggle on defense. Made some minor strides as a drop defender just in terms of staying with guys in contesting shots, but was still a pretty darn bad rim protector. It just did not position himself properly. It was not good at contesting shots. So that defense, again, is on its own and must it improve significantly enough to just think, this team is building toward competing in the postseason. Players who are absolute defensive liabilities are not, I mean, Bagley is basically

he is not playable in the postseason. He won't be unless his defense improved significantly. If we want to talk his rebounding, that's nothing special. Not a very good rebounder. That's not helpful, especially because he basically has to play at center now, at least on offense, on defense. He better protecting, better playing a power forward. Again, new defense isn't going to function. But let's talk offense. This is ostensibly where Marvin Bagley should be making his living. Where Marvin Bagley is good, you know, or where he looks good is for a bad team on which he can just score a lot of points because he's being given the ball a lot. like basically the center version of like a Kelly Ubre, who is just a ball-stopping black hole who can put up a certain number of points without actually contributing very well to an offense.

So Bagley, his chief strength is just as a finisher in the interior. And, you know, he's good at that. He shot 72% in the restricted area. A lot of that was on unassisted offense. And that's perfectly fine. 72% of the restricted area is nothing to sneeze at. That is a very strong finisher. It doesn't get blocked very often.

It was blocked only nine times all of last season. He's got good touch. He knows out of position himself. He's good there, unambiguously. So as a finisher. In terms of creating his own offense, really not quite as good, whether it's around the basket or otherwise, but not horrible. Surprisingly, not horrible.

And his attempts in which he had the ball between two and six seconds, he shot 52%, effective field goal percentage 52%, this is almost all within. in the arc because Marvin Bagley, of course, is not holding the ball at the three-point line and taking a pull-up three. So not great. You know, that that's really not the efficiency you necessarily want on the opportunities he's getting that he's creating for himself in the restricted area. And we're not talking post-up offense. He's primarily a face-up player. On post-ups, he's bad. There aren't many players who are good, but he is bad. But he did a decent job. Unfortunately, that's where his utility ends. It's just as a finisher, whether that's on the pick and roll,

where he's quite good again getting the ball into the basket getting the ball over the basket he's athletic he can catch it up there i mean you can't take the fact that he has good touch around the basket away from marvin you just to give him all the credit there because he is quite good at that he did very well at it with the pistons in his first one-third of the season there and he did very well at it last year but that's where it ends beyond just him as a finisher just on on standards just under the basket actions and on the pick and roll because he offers nothing else And again, Marvin Bagley needs to find his value on offense. Maybe he'll improve on defense.

He has to. But even if he makes enough improvements that he's not like a horrible liability, he still needs to get that value on offense and he's not getting it. I know we saw him put up some big games later in the season. But these were for a team basically, these were like good stats and a bad, aside from one game in which he actually shot well from three, these are basically like good counting stats and a bad team games

because you're giving the ball to a guy, not necessarily because you want him, just give him the ball and have him go to work, but because you don't really have any better options in this case, because, you know, so many, you're not a good team in the first place, and so many of your players are out with injury. So what does Marvin Bagley have to do in order to be a really valuable offensive presence? Number one, he has to be a reliable shooter, a guy who can get out of the three-point line and shoot these on volume if he has to and shoot them at a good percentage, particularly one left open. on a wide open threes this season. Wide open threes with defenders nowhere near him, he shot 28%. A little bit better, oddly enough, when defenders are a little bit closer, where he shot 32%. But on the whole, if you add these two together, still means he was, you know, shooting in the area of 30% on wide open threes.

Now that's an improvement on the previous season with the pistons where he shot like 18%. But the fact is that Marvin Bagley is far from a reliable shooter. His form is still bad. His touch is still bad. he made no, he made basically no discernible progress on this. I mean, you can say, sure, he went from 18% to 30%. He's gone up and down throughout his career. He's just been inconsistent.

He was like, he approached kind of like half, half decent in his third season when he got up to 34%. Even then, he was still very unreliable. But, I mean, it's like he went from 31% in his first season to 18% in his really short and second season. into 34 to 24 to 24 to 28 or 29% in total. We're not just talking open wide open 3s. So the vast, vast majority of the shot he takes. Shots he take with the 3s he takes are completely uncontested. And opponents are glad to give him that shot at this point.

That is a shot they will live with because he's bad at it. So he's not able to offer that to the offense to give that high efficiency, you know, the high efficiency play finishing. and for him to just have that asset. And there are two things to this. Number one, he just needs that to provide value, whether he's playing at power forward or center. Right now he's basically exclusively being played at center for the Pistons

because he can't, at least during his time of the Pistons so far, and that's because he can't shoot. Can't really play him with power forward. But no matter where he's playing, he needs to be a reliable shooter. So that's first and foremost, no ifs ands ands, buts has to happen for Marvin Bagley to be like a genuinely valuable presence on offense. and again he's got to be valuable on offense as if he's going to compensate for that bad defense

which needs to improve regardless of what he does on offense unless he develops into like a superstar that you're going to build a team and a defense around and that's never going to happen with Marvin Bagley. I feel pretty comfortable saying that. And, you know, that was kind of like a reference to Yokic who is a bad defender but still better than Bagley. His defensive IQ is nothing to write home about for sure

and Denver basically built a defense around him but he's nowhere near as bad as Bagley. Anyway, I digress. So, yeah, like I said, about 30% on open and wide open threes. It's worth noting that, again, on wide open threes, the NBA average last season, I believe, is about 39%. So again, 28% for Marvin Bagley. Beyond that, you know, ideally some off the dribble game, you know, he showed or at least the ability to attack closeouts, which he doesn't do right now because nobody closes out on him. Kind of hard to attack closeouts if nobody respects due to the 3.1.

And so got to be able to do that. He showed some upside just from the face up on short drives. That would be nice, excuse me, if you can continue that. And pass the ball. This is something Marvin Bagley does not like to do. And I don't think he has the greatest offensive IQ either. Basically, we live in an age in which, I mean, basically everybody can pass, everybody, but the most dedicated to play finishers.

And again, this is going to be an especially operative concept if Bagley is playing in the perimeter. But it's something that, again, you've got to find that. you on offense, you want him to have at center as well. Just that ability to make the right pass when you need to, whether you're operating around the basket or operating on the drive or wherever you are. Marvin Bagley doesn't like to do that. Marvin Bagley likes to finish plays. Is he just not thinking about passing? Does he just want to score? Does he not have the, does he not just have the ability to make those proper reads and passes? Basically, the result is that the ball just very, very often stops with him. It doesn't keep moving.

in a way that can help to generate a better scoring opportunity. It just stops with him. He doesn't really operate within the flow of an offense as a passer. He doesn't really help to set up his teammates at all. He doesn't really pass the ball very much. That's a problem too. So basically, if we have to talk about this season as a whole, Marvin Bagley improved very, very little.

I was not impressed whatsoever. It was actually, you know, I found myself a little bit irritated because, you know, dude, you know that you're here as a reclamation project. You know that you had the second overall pick, you had a tough time in Sacramento. This is a new chance for you. I expected Marvin Bagley to come in and have worked quite a bit in his shot to be a better shooter. He didn't work on a shot at all.

He certainly wasn't a substantively better shooter. And he just, he seems to have improved hardly any from last season over this, you know, from 2021, 2021, 2022 until this last season. And though he looked good at the end of his first kind of snippet of a season with the Pistons, I think that was in part because the Pistons, He looked better than he was because the Pistons had not, and Kate in particular, had not had an athletic big on the roster of that season until then was a shocking omission by Troy Weaver who admitted that that was an oversight in his part.

So Bagley is under contract for two more seasons at 12.5 million apiece. Not an ideal contract. Again, not like a disastrous thing. This is about like 8 or 9% of the cap this season. And of course, that will continue to go down. And it's a flat, you know, it's a flat contract. It does not increase year over year. it is a negative value contract.

The fact that it's a small percentage of the cap doesn't mean that any team is going to want to take it. Cap Space is cap space. And I think I continue to think that Marvin Bagley's future on this team unless he really improves a great deal, which is looking increasingly unlikely. It's only been one year, but again, the progress that was made was minimal at best,

that his likelihoodest future with the Pistons is as salary filler in a trade. If based on how we looked last season, if we're going based on that, I would say that Marvin Bagley is the rotation player likeliest to be out of the rotation starting next season. He is going to be fighting for minutes. There is nothing about Marvin Bagley's minutes that is guaranteed at this stage.

There's nothing about most players, minutes that is guaranteed, but he just, he made so little progress. And, you know, I've seen it asked, well, you know, look at the counting stats he puts up. Wouldn't he just be a solid bench player? And the answer is no between his defense and the fact that he is a limited offensive player. right now he is a very negative value player in the NBA.

He needs to improve quite a bit on offense in order to be a viable postseason rotation player. He needs to improve quite a bit on offense and he needs to improve a fair amount on defense as well. So if I had to give a grade to Marvin Bagley, it would be like a D plus. He wasn't awful, but he was pretty darn bad and he did not, he just didn't make the improvements that he needs to make. He made hardly any improvements at all. And in order to have a future in the NBA, in order to be, a postseason caliber rotation player. I don't think you're ever going to play Marvin Bagley at center just because he can't play defense there. And I don't think you'll want the awkwardness of

needing to play him at center on offense and a power forward on defense. So I think his future is a power forward. At the same time, so much of his strengths as a player are found in playing in the role and finishing at the basket. Can he do that at power forward? Where is he going to really find value there, enough, you know, enough opportunity to provide value to compensate for the defense that still remains pretty bad on the perimeter. Hard to say. I think that the Pistons would probably happily move on from him right now if they could. And I continue to sort of idly wonder, very idly wonder if the acquisition of Wiseman

was in part a vote of no confidence in Marvin Bagley. If so, then it was a vote of no confidence after, you know, basically like two-thirds of a season into the first season of his new contract. and that would be pretty damning. And finally, the first ability, you know, the ability you've got to have, exclusive of all your other abilities is availability. And Marvin Bagley has to say to least not had that in spades or anything like it so far in his NBA career. All right, let's move on to Isaiah Livers.

I like Isaiah Livers. You know, I think he stands a solid chance in making of the NBA as like an eighth or ninth man sort of role player, who just shoots his open threes at a high clip, plays hard. working smart defense makes the right play on both ends he's a he's a player with good basketball IQ and it's just the character dude and a leader unfortunately again like bagway you got to stay healthy to do that and whivers has had his issues with that and he also had his he also had some other issues in this last season but just going over his stats played 52 games started 22 of those 23 minutes per game about seven points per game three rebounds close to one assist got to the

the line about one time per game, 42% from the field, 36.5% from 3%. And he attempted about 75% of his shots from 3-point wind. So one of those, you know, an absolutely essential quantity to Livers being an NBA role player. And I think he could be one of those kind of like last guys off the bench in a postseason rotation. And if Wivers is a postseason rotation player of any elk, I mean, that's a major win, he's got to hit his 3s at a high percentage. He was a very strong three-point shooter at Michigan. In very, very limited action in his rookie season, he's shot 42%.

He has got to be a high-percentous three-point shooter, or he's not going to make it in the NBA, I think, period. Reality of livers, he doesn't have a ton to offer inside the arc. And he is, sorry, briefly lost my train of thought. I forgot to turn off notifications for work. So he's not the most athletic player, to say, the least he's below average athlete. Definitely not a killer thing.

It's just one of one of his downsides. He's not worth, he's very little to offer within the arc. He's not very good at attacking the basket off the drive. He's not much of a creator. He's a little bit undersized for the position he plays. He's listed at 6-7. I believe he's actually a little bit short of 6-6,000, according to the Combine, which just makes him a little undersized for power forward,

which I think is probably his preferable position, given his not-so-great mobility. He's not an immobile player, but he's really not all that agile, excuse me. His first step is pretty bad. And, you know, on defense, he's mobile enough, but he's not going to be a guy who's bouncing from place to place, for example. All this is to say, I think his upside is a guy who shoots threes at a high percentage and plays solid enough defense. And again, just makes the right decision on both ends. So in this last season, he was not a good three-point shooter. Isaiah shots a little bit south of 37% on open threes.

Not ideal. again, league average on those wide open threes, which he's thought the shot 36% on is around 39%. You want him well above average. Also, he struggled quite a bit as an above the break three-point shooter, only 34.5%. And that is how you're most effectively spaced the floor as above the break threes for the vast majority of players that's going to account for the vast majority of their threes. And I mean, so this is the single most important thing for Isaiah Livers is to be able to shoot the three at a high percentage.

This is going to be the vast majority of his contribution on offense. don't anticipate he's going to be a guy who's going to be effectively attacking the rim. He didn't really do that even against NCAA opposition. And here's one thing about Isaiah delivers. He may have, well, we haven't really gotten to see a lot of him in the NBA so far. The guy is already 25. He turned 25 in late July. And it doesn't mean the book is closed on future improvement,

but of course the older you get, the less likely that improvement is going to be. It's hard to say that he has more upside because we really just haven't gotten to see him play like a truly complete season in the NBA yet. And just like with Bagley, I mean, that's availability is going, is the most important ability. And Isaiah, who was injury prone at the University of Michigan, of course, has got to be significantly healthier than he has been in the NBA so far. But here's, and when it comes to, you know, the other aspects of the game,

I mean, Isaiah, he's not going to really be a guy who's going to be a volume playmaker for his teammates, but he knows how to read a play and decide whether to shoot or pass. He can pass from off the drive like if he's attacking a close-out. He's got solid vision. Again, he makes the right decisions. I mean, that's an asset of Isaiah is that he's got above-average basketball IQ. But, you know, so that sort of thing he did fine. You know, it was fairly safe with the ball and so on and so forth.

And on defense, again, hard worker. He's not the most mobile guy, but he is mobile enough. He's not somebody who's going to be dashing from place to place as an interior help defender or anything like that. And he's not going to be, it's just not a very good leaper. he's not going to be flying out of nowhere to, you know, to block a shot, for example. But he's serviceable. He's fine on switches, and he doesn't really make many mistakes. So how would I have called this a good season?

Basically, if he had shot about 40% from three and had played more than 52 games, I could say he played 70 games, I would say, okay, you know, good for you, Isaiah. You had a solid role player season because you shot the ball well from three, which is going to be your primary duty in the NBA. You were available to play games. You played solid defense. You're probably a more than your stats player because you're going to again make the right decision. And, you know, Bravo, my expectations for livers are not high. And my upside projection for Isaiah livers is not high. Again, part of that is due to the athleticism. And it's the, the athleticism is like, it's not, by no means is athleticism enough to make you a good NBA player. It's just,

it's a floor razor and it's a ceiling razor. Of course, you can still be a great player. without it, just very, very nice to have it, and it makes your job a little bit more difficult if you're less athletic than the average player you're playing against. Like implication for athleticism, Isaiah's first step is pretty poor. He's not going to be beating anybody really off the dribble and doesn't really have a great handle either. He can attack closeouts and maybe do a decent job there, but it doesn't really have much capacity as a creator at all. You know, the capacity, the likewise capacity you would see for him as a creator inside the arc would be as a pull-up two-point shooter. And they're, if you've been listening to this show for a while, I mean, you've heard me

Yeah, again, I got to stop saying that. Very, very few of those guys in the NBA who are capable to pull up two-point shooters. And indeed, he's just hardly tried to create anything at the NBA level. And I don't think that was a matter of the coaching staff, just telling him focus on three-point shooting, we don't want to do anything, because we've seen that, you know, the coaching staff, Casey, just where the organization was over the last two seasons, has been willing to give the youth quite a bit of leeway in terms of trying things

they might not be great at. Who knows, maybe Oliver's is just very comfortable playing that role of just the vast majority, vast, vast majority of his scoring just being the three-point shooting. Whatever the case, in terms of the grade I would give him for the season, it would almost be sort of an incomplete. We saw very little women in his rookie season. We didn't necessarily, we didn't really see a ton of him, I mean, just over half a season this time around. And I just feel like we just, like the upcoming season is going to be very, very important for livers because when you're talking about like eight men off the bench, well, obvious off the

bench to the eighth man. You know, so these guys are, like, if that's what you're projecting as, you're not going to be given, like, a ton of time to develop. So, especially, like, when you're a player like Isaiah Livers, who is coming in as a four-year college guy and is going to be entering season three, like, you know, two months past 25. So what I would have liked to have seen more from Isaiah, like I said this season, which is just better three-point shooting and being able to stay on the floor. And if he can just nail that down and, well, be healthy.

in the first place and be a guy who can shoot just that standstill spot up three to high percentage and also reposition catch and shoot which pretty confident he can do he has to do that as a high percentage too at a high percentage too rather just just a guy who's going to find his value on offense as a play finisher and as a guy who's going to make the is going to make the right pass make the occasional cut attack closeouts make the right decision again and play a solid defense on the other end, then Isaiah could have a career in the NBA certainly. This is a guy who's probably, well, by the standards of the general population, paid an exorbitant amounts, by the standards of the NBA not paid all that much.

Maybe a guy you pay like, you know, less than $10 million a year. And I know that sounds crazy, you know, 10 million a year. But, you know, at this point, with a $136 million cap, that's well under 10%. You want to pay your eighth man like $9 million. That's not a ruinous contract by any means if he is a postseason caliber. player, postseason caliber rotation player. But, you know, I like livers. I know the organization likes livers. He's a high character guy. They really prize that highly. He's a leader, super hard worker. He just, he has to manifest those skills on the court. And so this season was a little

bit disappointing. So I'd say I'd give him a C maybe. I'd realize I don't really know what the baseline I'm giving. And we're just saying C is adequate. In this situation, I would say C is really not that great. So maybe like a C minus, I don't want to, but I just gave Bagley a D plus. and Livers, I guess, wasn't as bad as Bagley because he was, you know, he played his role more effectively. He wasn't the high percentage three-point shooter we're looking for. And again, he was pretty poor from above the break. He played decent defense. He was an average three-point shooter by percentage.

Again, if you're pretty poor from above the break, that makes you a little bit less than your stats, three-point shooter, as funny as that may sound. But, yeah, it was, you just, you got a dock in points for the fact that his three-point shooting performance was below. low what we would consider part for him, but also just that it is the absolute and utter keystone scoring skill he possesses and he has to be good at it. And he managed that on, like a short sample size in his, in his rookie season, only about 20 games, or 19 games. I don't need to say on about 20 because it's right in front of me.

It's 19 games. But he wasn't able to continue that on into his second season. You want him to be a knockdown. He has to be a knockdown shooter in order to survive in the NBA, barring some very very surprising manifestation of skill as a creator. If you can do that, then sure, you can shoot a lower percentage from three and still, you know, and still stay in the NBA, but I'm not very high on the, I don't think the odds of that happening are very good, who put it that way. And finally, we come to James, I can't pronounce his middle name, Wiseman, Montanez. Yeah, I don't know,

I don't want to butcher it. So Wiseman came to the Pistons, of course, in February as part of the trade that sent Sadiq Bay to Atlanta. And for a second, round picks from Atlanta to the Golden State Warriors. Also, Kevin Knox ended up going to the Warriors as well. They traded him to Portland alongside two of those second round picks in exchange for Gary Payton the second. So Wiseman, 24 games of the piss and started 22 of those, about 13 points per game, eight rebounds, well under one assist, 53%. Field goal percentage, 17% from three. I got to the free throw line two and a half times per game. Well, he did attempted two and a half free throws per game. I put it that way. I realize I've been saying that

incorrectly. It had been saying that incorrectly for the other two we've done already. And true shooting percentage of about 56. So I've got to say that almost like the late stretch of this last season was rough. It was very, very rough, I'm sure, for many of us. And I like to joke that the punishment from this season was not the 17 wins. It was having to watch Wiseman and Bagley on the court together. My goodness was that ugly. I mean, not only could neither of them play defense. but there's just so much overlap and how they play on offense. It was just a mess. Great formula for losing games.

Incredibly unpleasant for me to watch. So Wiseman is in contrast to Bagley. So Bagley, I kind of feel like at this point, some of his book has been written. I think the ship has sailed in terms of him really improving on defense. On offense, maybe he can become a shooter, though I'm not feeling super bullish about that either. Weisman, I think the person's traded for him on the hope that it's just rawness. his lack of experience having hardly played in the NCAA before coming into the NBA and getting kind of a limited opportunity in his rookie year, missing his entire sophomore year,

and then just getting very limited run last season with the Warriors on a team that was trying to compete and just didn't really have the space to develop a very, very raw, James Wiseman. And that's what it comes down to with Wiseman. Is he just raw or is the basketball IQ that we've seen, that is the decision-making that we've seen Tim exhibit with the pistons, just the result of absolutely horrid basketball IQ, because James Wiseman makes absolutely horrible decisions on the courts. He was a very, very, very, very with the Pistons less than his stats player.

I mean, you look at his stat line 13 and 8 and, you know, in 25 minutes per game. I mean, on paper, that looks, you know, that looks decent. But I would go so far as to say that during his time at the Pistons, James Wiseman was one of the worst players in the league because he was, horrifically bad on defense. Like, just his decision-making on defense was truly something to behold. And I'm like, well,

like when Bagley was, actually when he was on the floor with Wiseman, Bagley was defending in the perimeter, which is better. Wiseman was playing interior defender, and he was just about as bad as Bagley is at that position. Like, truly horrible. And on offense, he had no conception

of how to play within the flow of the offense. I'm not sure. I mean, maybe Dwayne Casey felt like, okay, we have to let this guy try to block. awesome and he let Wiseman do whatever he wanted. You know, he let Weisman post up a lot, for example. I saw somebody, I don't remember who you are, but I'm not taking credit for your joke that Wiseman would post up on I-96, if that meant that he could get the ball and try to score with it that way. He was, like amongst guys who shot from the post, and I believe, like two and a half or more field goals per game, field goal attempts per game, he was by like a giant margin.

the least efficient. He was horribly inefficient from the post, and he just loved his post-up opportunities. Didn't set good screens. I mean, he's got tremendous potential on the role. I mean, James Wiseman has a fantastic NBA body. You know, he's, he's got excellent length. He's super vertical. You know, he's explosive enough. I mean, he, uh, he's mobile, you know, particularly for his size. And he's just got excellent athleticism and, and just, just excellent measurements. It almost kind of brings up, you know, for those of you who have seen the Wizard of Oz, like the scarecrow, if only I had a brain, if you could put a good brain, if you could put Isaiah Stewart's brain in, uh, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, Stewart's not, like, a basketball genius, particularly

in offense. He's a very, very, he's a smart defender, without a doubt, and a super, super, super hard worker. If he could put his brain in Wiseman's body, I mean, you'd have a genuinely very good player. Unfortunately, Wiseman has his own brain in his body, and Wiseman doesn't make good decisions and he also like the screen setting for example got to be willing to put your body on the line there and he's not quite there quite there yet either so just going back to last season so yeah on the defensive end horrible just made an enormous number of mistakes was basically bad everywhere and didn't use his length effectively didn't protect the rim effectively he was arguably like the worst room protector in the league you know if we're talking uh you know during his time with the

Pistons, whatever. Do you want to say the worst? One of the worst. He was awful at it. Just didn't know what to do in general on defense, didn't know where to go. Mental lapses, mistakes. It was ugly. And on offense, again, the decision-making, not good. Just did not know how to operate within the flow. The offense didn't pass the ball. Just constantly wanted a post-up. Just, again, very bad decision-making. And I feel like I should sort of fault Dwayne Casey for letting him play like an idiot. The post-up should never have been happening. I mean, it's not like we want to see what we have. Post offense is not a necessity for centers these days.

And, okay, maybe it's like, okay, we'll just give him the shot and see if he can do it. But even Casey did that at the cost of the remainder of the offense, just letting the Wiseman pretty much just let it curtail, you know, just letting him curtail the offense by being a black hole that wasn't good for the rest of the offense either. And as a score, he wasn't very good. I mean, this is a guy who took the vast, vast, vast majority of his shots from around the basket and logged a true shooting percent and should feel. 56% that's not good for a big with that shot profile who's not really creating offense either.

And I mean, he was just so much of a less, between this, not just a sufficiency, but the overall impact he had upon the offense, he was so much of a less than a stats player. So, yeah, like, what did he do well? I mean, he was a pretty good rebounder. I mean, James actually did a fairly good job as a rebounder. And he was a pretty strong score in the restricted area at around 70%. You know, again, the vast majority of that was just finishing. buckets that were created for him. That was about all he did well. He wasn't a particularly

strong player on the pick and roll, just because the guy doesn't really like to set picks. If he would just set picks with that big frame of his and roll hard of the basket, I mean, he could be a pretty darn strong role man. Not easy to stop, plays very much above the rim. His hands aren't the greatest, but that's kind of less of an issue on the role than it is when he tries to seal off and post up, which again, he should be doing, in my opinion, zero times per game. If he can really improve at it, cool. But again, you've got to be real good at post-up action. in order to justify giving you guy the ball and letting him go to work like that. It's not a super efficient action for the vast majority of players

versus, for example, just passing the ball around until you get a good open three-point opportunity, which is going to be much, much higher efficiency than just about anybody. Of course, if you can give somebody to the ball and say create it, and you can do it at a high level that's a valuable skill to have. But it's wise we're going to get there. Odds are against him. So, yeah, basically rebounding, finishing in the restricted area, that's all he really did well.

Again, the difference between, and he did basically everything else badly. Again, the difference between Wiseman and Bagley is that you hope that, okay, we give Bagley time, excuse me, we give Wiseman time, and he'll show us that he can blossom, that he just needs to season himself in the NBA game. that is the hope. Is it going to pan out? Who knows? I would anticipate that next season, he'll be given the backup center minutes, and he'll be given part of the season for them to test whether that hypothesis about his rawness is accurate. And if it's not, then, you know, it just goes into the analyst of Pistons history. I don't think there's any reason why they would keep him. But it's not like he came, but I didn't really have any expectations with him when he came to the Pistons. I mean, he was a player who had struggled in the NBA so far, who had his warts.

And just what he showed was really not altogether encouraging. Now, you go into Summer League, and you went to game, you know, if you look at the first game he played, when he played more in the flow of the offense, he actually passed the ball. He wasn't attempting any stupid post-ups. And I think he was setting screens a little bit better. He was, and he was just focusing on doing, you know, focusing on his strengths, again, just on the pick and roll.

And as a finisher, though, you know, that's not going to be enough on offense unless he improves. Well, he has to, just like Bagley, he has to improve on defense, period, a lot. but, like, Wiseman has the body to be, you know, he has the body to be a very high-level defender. It's just all about the brain. And Summer League, in Summer League, in Summer League, it's, you know, even though the Pistons were playing against in that game, against the, against the magic and against the Rockets, it's against a fair number of NBA players. I mean, in Summer League, even then, just based on how it's coached and how the players play is going to be considerably easier. But even there, he's struggling on defense, particularly in the second.

in game. God needs to work in his attitude a bit, you know, work on his work ethic, you know, just be willing to lay his body more on the line, be willing to, you know, to make the right team decision. I'd be willing to work hard on every possession. So what do I see as the upside for James? I don't think he's got like an elite basketball mind by any means. Just the hope is that he can get to average.

And if he can be just sort of average on both ends in terms of his basketball IQ, he can be an acceptable defender, he can be a strong role-man and finisher. And if he can get that three-point shot together, which is going to take some doing because his form is ugly. Then maybe you have a guy who will be on the higher end of backup centers. The ideal situation, of course, is that both, you know, that against all odds, he develops into, you know, a pretty darn good center. He endurne both, and then you trade one of them.

I would assume that that would be Wiseman, but we're far removed from that being the case. So he said he's working hard this summer. Of course, players can say that and not improve at all. He's got to be working on the right things, and he has to have the, you know, the actual capability to improve, and that remains to be seen. as far as his time with the Pistons, I'm going to give him an incomplete, just because the guy, Yam is coming in as a very raw NBA player. He also only played a short time with the Pistons.

He was definitely an eyesore for the most part, but I just don't, but I don't feel like he got, you know, enough run time with the Pistons to really give, you know, to really fairly give him a grade. But it'll be the early stages of next season, I think that are going to tell us a lot about James. Anyway, folks, that'll be all for this week's episode. As always, want to thank you for listening.

Catch you in next week's episode.