Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 176: Evaluating Monty Williams, Recent Developments, and the Zach LaVine Question

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

This episode discusses Monty Williams's performance at the quarter-season mark of his first campaign with the Pistons, evaluates recent system changes, speaks further on flawed front office strategy, and talks Zach Lavine's availability on the trade market.    Recorded just prior to the Wednesday game against the Grizzlies. 

Welcome back, everybody. You're listening to another episode of Drive into the Basket. I am Mike, and I hope you all are doing super well today. Again, better than the best since I've been doing lately. Been another week, another couple of losses, though there were where I feel some positive takeaways from the games against the Knicks and the Cavaliers. Nonetheless, of course, we're still in a 2-18 season at this point and mired in a franchise record 16-game losing streak. Fortunately, you know, game tonight against a pretty darn bad team. The Grizzlies, well, bad because they're missing a lot of players. And even one win would feel good. You know, a single win would feel good for the fans and I'm sure also for the players. So today, you're going to talk a bit about Monty Williams. I'm going to speak more about the front office, you know, front office's strategy and, you know, where the roster stands with regard to that. If you missed last week's episode spoke at length about,

My feelings of where the front office went wrong in its strategy. It was an episode that I really put a lot of thought into, and I hope you guys enjoyed. So consider checking that one out if you haven't already. I'm going to talk recent developments just in terms of what we've seen over the two games. The Pistons have played since I recorded last week. We're going to talk Zach Levine for a bit, because I know he's a very hot button topic amongst Pistons fandom. And then I'm just going to answer a couple of listeners submitted questions. Before I go any further, I've actually started to do some blogging on Substack.

I've been wanting for a while to start putting out long-form content, kind of deep analysis with video. I just posted a couple of game recaps so far. Just takeaways. You know, what works, excuse me, what has worked, you know, what's not working going going forward, you know, top performers and so on and so forth. I'd been wanting to do this for some years, but there was just this voice in my head that said, Mike, you've got to wait until the Pistons.

have lost 16 straight games before you start doing this. And then another part of my head said, well, Mike, you should probably start sleeping more than two hours a night so that your brain will actually work properly. And I'm just joking, of course. It's just something I wanted to get started on, but didn't until this point. So in any event, it's a driving to thebasket.substack.com. Hope you guys will check it out.

Let me know what you think. And I hope you enjoy it. So let's get rolling. And we'll start with Monty Williams. I never want any of my episodes to be rent. You know, I just, I don't like to get that angry about basketball, and I don't think it's really all that enjoyable to listen to. But it's not really a butt.

And I will admit that bad coaching makes me, just makes me angrier in sports than anything else, just because it's extremely difficult for me to watch. And, you know, whether it's the Pistons or not, the way I think about coaching is that it's a coach's job to go out there, regardless of what he's given, take the roster that he's got, you know, independent of any issues with that, and just give it by way of good decision-making, good system, et cetera. Just go out there and give whatever that roster is the best chance of winning on any given night.

You know, maximize through the actions of the coach the ability of that team to win. You know, to the maximum extent you can, make it more than the sum of its parts, and so on and so forth. So like I said, that's independent of whatever roster a coach is given. It's just his job to go out there and make the most of what he's got. And needless to say, the Pistons haven't had much success with that. I'm not going to claim to have been watching during the late stage Joe Dumar's era. With that carousel of coaches, I don't know if any of them were particularly good or not. I can only ask others.

Of course, the reviews were, I know are not so great. The Pistons were doing a lot of losing back then. Whatever, I just can't speak to how good they were. I can speak to Stan Van Gundy. Of course, I don't like to talk about that guy, but he's coming more to mind with Monty Williams lately, unfortunately. he's a guy who you know started off as a decent coach in his first year with the pistons and then the next season as things really began to evolve in the NBA toward the spacing era that really got started after the 2015 after 2015 finals after the 2014-2015 season in which the warriors really just helped to revolutionize

the league so that really got kicked off you know starting in that next season though things really hadn't changed tremendously he was a little bit worse than that season and And then things really changed the season after that. And from then on, you know, in a league that required coaches to innovate, that required coaches to coach in a certain way and was just increasingly intolerant of bad coaching. But just had certain necessities that you increasingly just had to go by. Van Gundy was just terrible in his last two seasons. Like absolutely not really terrible.

The 2016-2017 season was my most frustrating as a Bissons fan because between his rotations and his on-court work, I think that in that season, even though, a lot went wrong. I mean, he made his team a lot worse. It was really hard. It was just incredibly frustrated to watch how he was managing the team. I thought he was just absolutely awful in those last two seasons and really detracted from his team's ability to win. There are some coaches who are just kind of average and, you know, they'll get just, they take what they've got, and it's basically just kind of an even thing. They don't help their team win, but they don't help

it lose. There are good coaches who can make a pretty poor team solid, a solid team good, and a good team rate by just getting more out, more than the sum of our roster's parts. And then, unfortunately, there are coaches who will take what they've got and basically make it worse. Teams will punch below their weight on the court. Bangani was one of those. Dwayne Casey, unfortunately another. And how I see it with Dwayne Casey is that, I mean, he was brought on at a point at which he was already beginning to become outdated. And I think just watching him with the Raptors, that was fairly clear to me, I did not want

him as the coach of the Pistons in the first place. It wasn't okay well. You know, they hired Dwayne Casey and he has some positive things about him and it's not what I wanted. But, you know, but, you know, he's a decent coach. At that point, I said, this guy is outdated. He cannot coach in the modern NBA. I mean, we've seen him basically just get by on talent with the Raptors, but invariably underperform in the playoffs, you know, the Pistons were still, even though they had basically roster that had no chance under any coach of achieving meaningful success. It's like, you know, you you want to maximize what your roster can give. It's not that, oh, well, this roster has problems, so cares about the coach.

And it was just like this guy does not innovate, excuse me, does not innovate. He is not creative. He doesn't really have it in him to coach an inefficient and dynamic offense in today's NBA, which is an absolute necessity. And we've seen time and time again his flaws, you know, one of which is kind of like, well, number one, I mean, he doesn't know how to optimize a team for the modern NBA, which is, again, just a thing you have to be able to do. Another is that he's pretty rigid and not as much as Van Gundy, who is brutally rigid.

But also just he can't make in-game adjustments. Like his system, for the most part, wasn't outright awful, just very, very simple-minded and just not good enough. And he wasn't really able to maximize his players. I mean, he did make some idiotic lineup decisions, particularly in his first season. But just generally speaking, his issue was just that he couldn't, in my opinion, couldn't keep up with what needed to be done by a coach in today's NBA. And his systems weren't awful. A system on offense, you know, in the last few years was not terrible. It wasn't good, and he wasn't able to adapt it to circumstances. And he would constantly lose control of it late in

games. But, and I thought he was a solid enough defensive coach who could often, you know, get at least, if not more, you know, the sum of his parts. Excuse me, the sum of his team's parts on defense. So I don't think he was bad there. But I think overall he was a very below average NBA coach. So another coach who did not contribute to winning and often contributed to losing. Though always says it's about Twain Casey, it seems like his players loved him, and he was able to keep his team motivated and working hard and never looking despondent or demoralized even through a lot of losing. And that's a skill. That's something that shouldn't be undersold, in my opinion. That even when, like, for example, last season the team was, I think, winning five, if I remember correctly

out of, like, its last 41 games, you never saw guys looking checked out. They always went, they went out there and gave it their all and kept their heads high. And we're not quite seeing that this season. You know, we haven't quite seen that throughout the losing streak. I think that they, I think Monty Williams has come out and said that the team really just hasn't dealt well with adversity. I think that they are dealing with it more poorly than they did under Casey and I'm not talking in terms of dealing well with adversity. I'm not saying winning games, but just not letting things get them down. Like there have been times this season when I've seen them more despondent than I've seen any Pistons roster since the Van Gundy era. So whatever the case, though, Casey,

below average blow up our NBA coach. And one of the things I was really looking forward to this season was having a coach come in who is at the very least going to be solid and hopefully good. I thought with Monty Williams that I didn't want him. He was the safe choice. He has known flaws. You know, if I've been on the record in saying that. However, I thought that we're going to get a guy who was going to come in

and be a good NBA coach who is, you know, who is going to run things well, even though it was likely that whenever the Pistons were in the postseason, his flaws there, which are not tremendously dissimilar. from to Casey's but you know to a to a significantly lesser extent we're going to rear their heads just you know not the just the ability to make adjustments he struggled with that unfortunately that hasn't been the case and it's only been 20 games but this is a particularly frustrating subject for me because it's like I just I just wanted that guy who was going to come in and at the very least not be really frustrating to watch not not not being looking at him and saying you know there are things you're doing

that don't make any sense and why is this happening? So feeling a little bit bamboozled. Like, instead of getting that good regular season coach, if one who's still fought in the postseason, instead we've got it in the coach who, and who knows how likely any of these options are, does he not care? I hope not. He knows he's probably doing bad things with unlimited latitude.

Does he just suck? Again, I hope not. But he has actively contributed as losing streak, whether it was with, or this start to the season in general, whether it was with, for example, the horrible starting lineup he ran for the first 10 games that was just a complete abomination that had no place even existing in the first place in the modern NBA. That lineup was unambiguously a tire-firing guaranteed to fail and should never have been attempted. And just his bad lineups and rotations in general.

Look at his bench lineups, for example, and over the last seven games, we'll go over those. We ran a garbage offensive system for 18 games before final. advancing to something basic that we saw against the Knicks. What the business did against the Knicks was nothing special. It looked a lot better than what had been run before, because what had been run before was terrible. It basically in the starting lineup boiled down for the most part to hey, Kade take the ball and please create in the pick and roll on traditional sets into horrible spacing. And, you know, and Kate had his own set of issues, but that was just putting him in a position to fail. It was an incredibly simple-minded and predictable offense that was guaranteed to fail. There

were no benefits of this at all. You know, his constant, I should have been doing this or that, like, oh, K, needs better spacing. Well, yeah, obviously, you should have known that in the first place. You know, I mean, I mean, it's like, like the, you can come out and say things that are incredibly obvious, and you should have known better, and I think he did know better. And I don't, I don't really know what him doing certain things was, you know, was about, because I don't think he's incompetent. I don't think he just sucks as a coach. I just, I don't get what's happening. But yeah, the lack of adjustments, both in-game and game-to-game, you know, painfully slow to adapt in terms of, for example, getting that better spacing. Though, again, I think he knew what he was doing in the first place.

No competent NBA coach is going to run lineups that he was and then be surprised that guys are having trouble penetrating to the interior or just that the offense is flunking in general because you don't have no shooting on the floor, you don't have proper spacing. But also just lack of in-game adjustments, you know, like when the opposition goes on a run, for example, the Cavs going on a 22 to 7 run in about 5. and a half minutes in Monty Williams, not only not addressing what the issue was, which was having, well, alternately nobody on the floor who could penetrate, and then having a guy in the four who could penetrate, but basically pushing him off to the periphery, but also just making no meaningful adjustments at all. So 22 to 7, 4.5 minutes, no adjustments made, and that lost the business the game. Failures and player utilization.

I mean, that's, I feel like kind of a widespread thing, just in terms of running a really crappy, predictable system. But marginalizing Jaden Ivy, for example, Jaden Ivy, thanks to the front office, and yeah, the front office has its share in this team having issues. But again, it's the coach's job to maximize what he's got. But Jaden Ivy, the only athletic penetrator on this team, you know, the only really good perimeter athlete aside from a Sark Thompson who cannot do anything for himself on offense right now, whom the Pistons have. So definitely the only athletic penetrator the Pistons have, as we've seen, a solid playmaker when he's given the chance. can handle the ball really was the Pistons primary playmaker for much of the second half of last season

and did a decent job of it, willing passer, not really a floor general, but, you know, but a decent handler who's also quite good, has been quite good this season to get into the basket. And again, as we've seen, can be a reliable shooter. But, I mean, so this is, this is a capable young player, even just leaving aside the importance of his development of this team. This is a capable young player who can provide things in the now that nobody else in the roster can. But instead, you know, Monty Williams seems intent on marginalizing him to the maximum degree he can. Jaden Ivy has had some big games. These have almost invariably been due to him creating in broken plays in transition and so on

with hardly anything in the way of basically being given the ball, even when Cade Cunningham was struggling horribly. It's like, oh, well, maybe you can give Jaden Ivy the ball and let him do some handling. Or at least play the two of them off each other. Well, no. I mean, Jaden Ivy has basically never been given the opportunity to actually handle the ball. even when it's been desperately needed, even when the pistons, you know, desperately need a guy who can break down defenses,

even when you've got bench lineups that have no penetrators and can't function, and you've got Jaden I, he even got him on the floor. Well, we're not going to let him handle. You know, it's not only that, but he's rarely going to feature in sets. He's largely going to be on the perimeter, you know, periphery of the offense, even though, again, this is a guy who can do things that nobody else in the roster can. But, you know, whatever. I'm just going to, you know, we're going to continue doing it this way,

just keeping him around the periphery. Why, who knows, is this something. happening beyond the scenes. We haven't heard anything about it. We know that Jaden Ivy, at the very least, has been, you know, throughout his time with the Pistons, at least last season that we saw on over the offseason, an extremely hard worker and very bent on being a good teammate. So this doesn't make any sense, and it's helping the Pistons lose. And this is a thing with Monty that, unfortunately, is reminding me of Stan Van Gundy to the point that in my head I'm thinking, man, you know, Stan Van Monty, which isn't fun.

And that thing is that it's almost as if he has his methods that he was like to pursue. And he would be, you know, and he's content for those to actively reduce the chances of the Pistons to win. That was absolutely a characteristic of Stan Van Gundy, who I think Noop didn't simply did not know better in some circumstances. There were some things he did that were outright stupid. But in others, he really could have, I think he just had his way that he liked doing things. and there were certain aspects of his system that he just didn't want to change. For example, you know, we're going to play through our guards. Even if, you know, even if our best scorer is Tobias Harris, who cares, we're going to play

through our guards. Well, I like this handoff offense. So even though Avery Bradley is incredibly inefficient and I shouldn't be using him this much, well, we're just going to stick with that. I like Andre Drummond as a post-up player or whatever else, basically, or hating analytics, for example, that never went away. I have this vision of the whoever analytics staff or just the analytics guy

from the Pistons may have had just Stan Van Gundy basically giving him the Milton treatment from office space just shoving him in a dark basement with a flashlight and yeah it was just not ideal his yeah whatever

I really don't like talking about Stan Van Gundy so you have Monty Williams who is actively doing these things that are contributing to losing and it's like why you're doing that I don't doubt that some of these close games better coaching could have been the difference with the Pistons have been a good team, but they have been in position, you know, close to 500,

who knows, probably not. Would they have two wins? I feel very, very strongly that that would not be the case if the Pistons had had competent coaching. And to this point, and it's been less of an issue the last two games, where, you know, in which Monty Williams has coached with something close to competence. But in the games before that, and the other Pistons did. It's minimize these, managed to rack, you know, rattle off a couple of wins against really kind of bad struggling rosters before the shoe of playing against good competition,

or I'm missing on this metaphor, I can't remember it right now, or this waiting for the other foot to drop, the other shoe to drop, whatever the case. After basically they started playing against good teams, you know, things went wrong, and of course, they haven't won a game since. I feel very, very confident that coaching would have made the difference, a good coaching, or even competent coaching the business would not be sitting on two wins. And again, it's the job of the coach to maximize this team.

If you're talking about, okay, well, we're giving, you know, important development minutes in some respect to, you know, to players and that makes the losing worthwhile. I mean, at this stage of the rebuild, should that really be happening? That's anybody's guess, but you're not doing that. You're marginalizing one of your most important players who, again, can offer things to this roster on offense that nobody else can. So it hurts to see that characteristic in Monty Williams and it's worrying. And when it comes to well, I need to, you know, get better spacing or like I need to work on the lineups. And it's like, no kidding, you're putting out bench lineups that have no hope of success.

Or stuff like, well, Marcus Sasser, yeah, he's like he's not a surprise anymore. Defenses are covering him. It's like, no, Sasser just isn't hitting his shots. Stuff like that. And it's like, are you being coy? You just not get it. Like, again, two coaches ago, we had a guy who was rigid and didn't get it. I think Monty is just being coy, but it's still, it's still like some of it's just

impatience because it's like we've sat through enough bad coaching already. but whether it's coyness or ineptitude and I think it's mostly the former, it doesn't change what he's doing. So is any of this the product of him just being able to do things very much his way, being given extreme latitude that's afforded to a veteran coach to whom they just gave a boatload of money? All of it regardless of where the team is, how many games they've lost and the fact that they're doing it near Ford of rebuild. Is there some master plan that is that we're just seeing play out? That doesn't make sense right now, but we'll find out later.

I mean, I guess that's possible. If so, it's hard to see right now. And one would question if that's really the right way of going about things where the team is right now. But it's just been very frustrating. And he has done a bad job so far. I say that very, I feel very strongly about that. And hopefully it's leading to something. Hopefully it doesn't continue to be this way.

But it's been worrying and it's frankly just sucked. And you've got to wonder what's coaching him, causing him to coach differently didn't Phoenix. Again, is it more latitude? is that extreme job security. I know I mentioned this, I think it's unlike for just lack of motivation. Where do we stand? Will he improve? Right now, it's just, it's understandable

for everybody, you know, anybody who's feeling frustrated with the coaching. I think it's very understandable to be very frustrated. And there's always the question, you know, the back of my minds, did Gores intervene, Tom Gores, the owner of the Pistons,

intervene for the safe hire, as he did, I'm quite certain with Dwayne Casey. Did he look at the shortcut hire, rather? Did he look at Monty Williams and see well he purses? provided over a fast rebuild, presided, excuse me, over a fast rebuild in Phoenix, and failed to see trade of a Chris Paul, you know, who was still a very, very good player back then. Just as with Dwayne Casey, I don't doubt that he looked at Coach of the Year and saw awesome without

looking at, well, one coach of the year largely because of a new offensive scheme that was literally forced on him by his president of basketball operations, Messiah Ujiri, excuse me, and was formulated by his assistant coach and ultimately his successor, Nick Nurse, and it was fired because he flopped in very typical, a typical fashion of the postseason. And I think it basically been on probation since 2015 when, I think it was the third-seated Raptors got obliterated by the six-seated Wizards in four games.

And I was surprised case he wasn't fired back then. So, yeah, it's been bad. And unfortunately, all we can do at this point is hope for better. Now, let's, you know, let's look at some of the issues. We can just look at the Cavaliers, for example. this issue, bench lineups, for example. Like, if you feel they bench line up with five non-penetrators, good luck to you. You better have a really special player out there.

Like, I don't know, like some very, very special perimeter player who's going to make your offense stick. Otherwise, you're just passing the ball around again and again and again on the perimeter, maybe on short drives back to the perimeter. And the defense has no incentive to do anything but just cover you one-on-one. You're doing nothing to break down the defense. You're doing nothing to get it scrambling, to open up shooters or anything like that. if you are running a lineup of, say, you know, Marcus Sasser and Isaiah Livers and Marvin Bagley

and Assar Thompson and I don't know, my brain's failing me right now, even, even Alec Burks, you put him in there. You have zero penetrators, really zero guys who can take the ball from the perimeter and by way of a pick or anything else. Really stand much of a chance of getting into the basket. Berks, he mostly just pulls up from two occasionally, you know, sometimes gets the free throw line. He's not a guy who can reliable. penetrate, nor is he really all that much of a handle or who can create for others. So these lineups, you're asking for them to struggle. And they're, that's just, this is just a basic thing. They're very, very likely to struggle. And we've seen it happen, a lot of wasted possessions.

For example, that lineup, which Monty Williams fielded for about the last three and a half minutes against the Knicks in the first quarter, which scored two points in that three and a half minutes or the lineups that he had out there against the Cavaliers from about the three-minute mark, three minutes left in the third quarter until about a minute 40 into the fourth quarter when again the Cavs outscored the Pistons 22 to 7. Thanks to the Pistons not being able to score, the Cavalier is getting a ton of transition opportunities as a result and also just some questionable defense, but the Pistons couldn't score and those transition opportunities were very much there. When first it was Sasser handling, and I don't know why Sassie.

Sasser is handling. Sasser is 23 years old. He was an indifferent playmaker, even by NCAA standards, really struggled also to penetrate and get to the rim and score there, even against NCAA defenses. This really isn't something where you often see a guy finds another gear in general, but certainly not at the age of 23. But yeah, these lineups, for example, just suck. Like he's running a better offense in general in the starting lineup, but these bench lineups, this is something that shouldn't be happening. He can come out after the game and say, well, I need to look at my lineups. It's like, no kidding. An NBA coach should know that a lineup like this is going to flop and not try it.

And it's not just the last two games. Again, failure to adjust when the opposition goes on a run and so on and so forth. I think I've said all that I need to say about Monty Williams, basically just that it's frustrating. And I dearly hope that it changes. And I hope that, yeah, it's, I just spoke about that for a while. Sorry, the time can sometimes fly. So we move on to the roster, which always has issues, you know, which of course has issues. I covered that in the last episode, just that I think that just the management strategy for this rebuild has been terrible, basically just focused far too much on mashing together as much raw talent as possible and trying to develop it simultaneously without making any efforts to just feel basic coherent rosters and also just create a decent development environment and have enough stability on your team.

So it's not just far too many young players, you know, some or many of whom may not really be able to contribute right now to winning, VA basketball. So that's where we find ourselves right now. Like you look at, for example, like no true power forward on the team because the front office put all of its, you know, power forward eggs into the basket of Isaiah Stewart who simply lacks the athletic gifts necessary to play at that position. Being the team starting power forward going forward, presumably, or at least this season, didn't even bother to stock the roster with depth at the position. Maybe they thought that was going to be Joe Harris. If so, then they really should have watching more tape and seeing that he was completely washed last season after his surgeries,

which made an already not particularly quick player very painfully slow and unable to play productive NBA minutes. Was it, okay, well, we want to see what we can get from Isaiah Livers. It's like, okay, well, this, we want to see what we can get out of a player. It is something that they're doing far too much, and Isaiah Livers is barely 6'6, you know, only about a 6.9 wing span. He's very undersized for the position in every way, but his weight. He weighs, I think about 2.25. And it doesn't really have anything like the athleticism to compensate. It's definitely not going to be playing any help.

So defense is not a guy obviously on offense who's going to be exploiting to the baskets or vertically spacing the floor or any of those things. He's also just extremely limited on offense. He can barely just, he can basically just shoot open threes and attack closeouts. To his credit, he does often make the right pass when he is attacking those closeouts. So this team only has three guys, really, who can reliably take the ball and penetrate into the interior. those are the team's three handlers, Cade, Ivy, and Monta Morris.

And so they were, you know, not only do they have far too few guys who can actually penetrate from the perimeter, which is a problem. You can actually create offense, which is a problem. But you have those three guys near one injury away from only having two of them. This front office didn't even bother to go out and find a half-decent third-string point guard, even after how much Killian Hayes did struggle immensely over the last two seasons. It wouldn't be surprised if it was, oh, well, if we have an injury, we can see what Killian can do And, all right, well, if you can't do it, then you're kind of screwed in that area, right?

So should we really be just kicking the can down the road, like we've been doing constantly? Oh, wait, we're 2 in 18. Killian, who has played better the last two games, but still can't penetrate reliably. You know, certainly, you know, it's, I mean, he can do it in off the move if he has another, you know, lead handler on the floor with him. But he's not going to be getting there on his own. So bench lineups with him, or he's the lead handler. That's not going to work out. as I said, was unlikely to bring it. And yeah, so we're there. And so our two guys who can really do

at Arcade and then Ivy, whom Monty Williams will not give that responsibility to for whatever reason, even though the team needs him to do it. Doesn't get any handling responsibility, even though he could really be good at it. He would be very, really be valuable, put it that way. So it's like, yeah, why bother showing up the steam of stabilizers and contingencies, like depth and the general basic accoutrements that are necessary to operate in today's MBA? nah, we'll just trade for a washed veteran and Joe Harris and, you know, and trade for Monta Morris. And again, who knows what they knew about his health issues? And just call it a day.

It's like more veteran stabilizers, nah, you know, the necessities like shooters, nah, handlers, guys who can penetrate, create out the dribble to some degree. Nah, any power forwards, no, my bother. You know, we're just, we're just going to put together this team of guys, you know, we just want to develop these guys. And if, if things don't work out, if, you know, if we don't have, if we still don't have the ability, to run a coherent team, then, you know, whatever. I mean, that's just, you know, whatever.

We'll just kick the can down the road endlessly. And I mean, the front office's plan to just match together talent, you know, potential talent from the draft and from their very long list of reclamation projects who have pretty much all failed. Though even if that had worked, they'd still have really failed to find any talent. Well, I guess that would have been talent found in the periphery. So it's like it could have worked if a lot of these things had gone well, like if a lot of the reclamation projects had gone well if a lot of just if development had gone perfectly

with the draft picks but that's a I mean that's betting on a series of long shots and your management strategy shouldn't just be based on a series of long shots that completely neglect you know where it's like if this doesn't work out then we have no foundation or like we don't have the fundamentals we can't field a coherent team we can't even provide a good development of a development environment like if these things don't work out then well there's always next season and we'll have another high pick. And then we find ourselves in year four of the rebuild and we're starting the season two and 18. So yeah, at this point, I mean, I think you can look at it and say that there's time for things, you know, number one, this is just a qualifier. This would not be the first thing I'd say,

is that there is time for things to be turned around. It's like the book is not closed in this rebuild, the book is not closed on this front office, though I think time is running out, it was to say. But to this point, they've failed. And there has been some bad well. but there's been much more than bad luck there has been very bad decision making so like i know that houston and oklahoma city in orlando all started out and a little bit further ahead than the pistons like the um the rockets were for example able to trade i believe they traded one of the future hustiff one of the future um brooklyn picks i don't remember how they did it trading up for send for shangoon and so they did get terry ysson who i don't think is really as far as i know hasn't really

contributed a great deal this season with one of Brooklyn's picks, I think. They didn't really start out super ahead. I mean, they had traded for Russell Westbrook and that depleted some assets. That was an awful trade. And that's why Houston is fully intent and not being a bad team this season because, I mean, not only when they're, you know, signing Van Fleet and Brooks, I think that was partly just a move to when their team's some stability, you know, the team that would otherwise just be full of young players, it was probably to get to the cap floor so that they could partake in luxury tax revenue sharing, but also it would have been pointed with them to be bad this season because they owe Oklahoma City a very lightly protected first-round pick. So they actually had

some assets in the hole. And they got some of it back by trading away hard, but not like a, not really like a great haul because Brooklyn's, again, Brooklyn has no incentive to be bad because they're not going to own their picks. They don't own their picks. It's picks and pick swaps until I think 2027 or 2028. Orlando got ahead by trading Vucovich. That was for the Bulls perspective, one of the worst trades of the last 10 years. So in most ways, that you get Franz Wagner, Franz Wagner out of the bargain. And OKC, of course, had their bevy of picks.

Nonetheless, this is season four were rebuilt. And this team didn't, they didn't start horribly in the hole. They started, they were able to create more or less a blank slate. And we are where we are today through, again, I think just a very, very poor strategy. It's not a situation, for example, in which, I mean, some teams, you go out there and you have a very, very capable player and he just gets injured or just a lot of things go wrong. That hasn't been the case. I mean, I don't know if Greg Oden, for example, who just never got to have a career. Though, you know, you pick him over Kevin Durant. That was a questionable decision even, I think even at the time. So all this is to say, yeah, the front office hasn't helped things. And I don't blame anybody for being frustrated. And we'll see what they can do. Of course, I'll talk about, and I know Zach Levine has been brought up in this vein, excuse me, and I'll talk about him a little bit later. So let's just talk briefly about some of the new developments that I brought up earlier in the episode,

just new developments over the last week. Number one, running a scheme, at least in the starting lineup with Cade, that isn't a completely awful system of, again, here, Kade just take the ball in the pick and roll and please create offense into bad spacing when the defense absolutely knows what you're going to do, and please continue doing it, even though you're obviously exhausted in the fourth quarter. Against the Knicks, they played him more off the ball.

And I think this is brought up to an extent, like, oh, is he best as an off ball player? I think more of what you're just seeing in that circumstance is contrast, like a really broken, incredibly on ball role versus just playing some off the ball. I think the more operative question here is balance, so that it's not super predictable. And also, he's just not being asked to create offense in every possession. Kate is a capable handler. He could be a very capable handler. We saw it in the final three quarters of his rookie season,

and we saw it in particular in like the final six weeks of his rookie season. I think in March in his rookie season, he averaged like 22 and 7 as the unequivocal primary handler. And for the most part, a primary creator as well for a team that was not well set up. I mean, you put Cade in a good system, and you put Cade with decent teammates. I think he'll do well in that role. Of course, you don't want it to be incredibly predictable,

and you want him to have some help, you know, cough, Jaden Ivikoff. So I think that was the question against the Knicks in which he did play primarily off the ball and did pretty well. You know, he got to attack in more advantageous circumstances. He got to shoot more catch-and-shoot-threes. He still had some of his stinkers of just attacking, you know, putting up weak layups or taking, you know, weak turnaround stepbacks, which you just shouldn't be doing. And he had some turnovers in that game too, but just in general was able to play a freer

form of basketball. And then against the cabs was very much back to playing primary handler, just in a system that didn't suck and with more spacing. And, you know, his, his efficiency kind of tailed off due to struggles late in the game, but still had a reasonably efficient nights and had 11 assists, though more like eight or nine that actually had meaning and weren't just so, I mean, some assists have less meaning, I put it that way. I'm not short sellingade who had a very good passing game. Even if you look at the assists that were other like in the last minute of the game or, you know, I passed it to a guy who then created and I just still get the, assist. He had eight of them and his single turnover was boy on not catching a catchable pass.

So that much looks good. Cade is, you know, it was good to see more intelligent Cade, you know, back in the mix because he is a very high IQ player. And that's been one of the most befuddling things about this season is that he has just not been operating with high IQ, but against, against the Cavs. He was back to just getting into, you know, getting into the interior, drawing help, making the right pass, you know, just directing the offense very ably. And again, And just that balance helps. I think Jaden Avi is better suited to provide it than Killian Hayes. Killian has had a decent last couple of games.

Let's talk a little bit about Killian. He's making more of his shots now. That's going to be essential. He's attacking into contact more. I wonder what made that happen this season. Was it the knowledge that his future with the team or certainly his future with the rotation was going to depend upon him playing more effective basketball, of which this is unequivocally apart.

This is a way he can unequivocally help himself that he has refused to do in the last two seasons. You know, against the Knicks, I mean, it's worth mentioning from that particular game that, you know, there are two things. You can look at the starting lineup and say, wow, this worked a lot better. Again, I think just the balance for Cade was helpful, you know, just not handling the ball on every possession. It was also, oh, Killian Hayes actually had one of the best scoring games in his career.

One of the worst scores in the NBA, the last two seasons, had an excellent game from the field. And, you know, that's part of it, too, Killian, in order to make that lineup worthwhile, has to score. Oddly enough, guys still sometimes defend him, but at least the Knicks were sometimes on the perimeter, though we only have one three that game. But, you know, Killian, if you can at least just hit his threes. And certainly, you know, that's, that's all he needs to stay in the NBA. It's not there quite yet. Can we depend upon Killian to continue doing well? I mean, that's,

that's really the big question. But at least the tagging into contact is something that, you know, something that has been good. Jayland Duren kind of came alive on the offensive side of things, you know, largely through the pick and rolling in transition against the Cavaliers. And though he did struggle a bit from the free throw on, one for six. though, again, work in progress there. I mean, Duren's a guy who is going to be strong in the role, very athletic, can get above the basket. You know, if he's below the basket, he's going to dunk it, has really demonstrated a surprising touch around the basket for a guy who really struggled on wayups last season. And, you know, it's going to struggle to create for himself, though occasionally he, you know, he puts up, he just handles the ball and just drives past somebody very surprisingly.

And I think he can exploit mismatches. But, yeah, this was his first solid game on offense since game number three. and from game number four onward, I mean, whether it's his angle or otherwise, it's been a pretty disappointing thing. So it was good to see him, you know, come alive a bit on offense. And yeah, it was largely a product of Tim playing a productive duo with Cade Cunningham. Now, on defense, things were not really quite so good. Jaywin-Duron has a certain amount of growing to do in just still being raw on defense and having his, is just his issues making what I would call micro-decision, like particularly on the

pick and roll. where often he'll just advance too far back and not put him in position, put himself in position with his length and just where he's standing, to contest the shot or just not having, just not being positioned in the right place or just being half a second weight and his rotations or whatever else. And again, I think this is something he can work on, an area where he's just raw rather than just being straight bad

like the likes of Marvin Bagley. But it does have an impact. Look, for example, at him versus Isaiah Stewart, who, when he's defecive, finding the pick and roll is expertly positioned to both contest a shot, and if necessary, make the rotation of the big and expertly contest him as well. He's fantastic in space. And Duran has his issues in space, not because he gets beaten because he's too slow, just because he doesn't really, he's still learning how to position himself and how to use his

length. And it was very apparent against the cavaliers. I mean, he hasn't been very good from game four arm and again, injury, whatever. This I think is just a matter of decision making. and like when he goes into drop coverage, he goes way too far back and just surrenders a shot. He hasn't able to see, oh, well, like my man is, you know, the guy who's defending the guard or whoever else, you know, my teammate is too far behind to really contest the shot. Well, if you just step back, yeah, he's going to have to take a different, you know, more difficult shot. But if this is Darius Garland or Donovan Mitchell or a guy can make these difficult shots, if he's just given space in the midrange, then you're giving him a good opportunity.

So it's just a matter of learning, but he's kind of been struggling on offense. defense, excuse me. We've got Isaiah Stewart, who, like, again, I've been asked, like, why don't we just give Isaiah Stewart more time to show what he can do with power forward? I think it's because, you know, two reasons. Number one, I don't think it's possible for him to be a decent power forward. Just between that, you just can't take a center, for example. It's not so simple as taking a center and saying play power forward.

He's far too slow. He's very, very slow. Power forward is a perimeter position. This is not 10 years, you know, 10 years ago, a lot of power forwards were just smaller centers. Now power forwards are just bigger, small forwards. And you've got to be able to move around the perimeter, for example, beat your man. It's just not okay to be this really, really slow guy in the perimeter, which is what Isaiah Stewart is. He can, you know, though Monty Williams doesn't really use him very creatively.

And in all fairness of Moni in this situation, there are hard limits given what Stewart can do. Like in terms of what he can do on the perimeter, it's basically just stand there in a PJ Tucker role for a team that absolutely cannot handle giving anybody a PJ Tucker role in terms of the production. they're asking PJ Tucker in the past has worked fine where it's like, okay, here's your role with the bucks on offense, go stand in the corner. And if they leave you open and there's a solid chance that they will because we've got, you know, the superstar creator and a couple of other star guys in the team and, you know, you're the guy that'll leave open and then you can hit corner three as a high percentage. And your only other job on all offense is to just, you know, run in and try to grab offensive rebounds, which, you know, even that you can do better than Isaiah Stewart because

you're even PJ Tucker of two years ago, even PJ Tucker of now is quicker than Isaiah Stewart, like noticeably quicker. But the Pistons can't have that. You know, they just, they don't have the talent to have a guy playing that role. Can't handle anything either, which makes everything that much worse because he can't create really anything from the perimeter, whether that's posting up a mismatch or anything else, certainly not driving in. Like, if you see, if you see like the Pistons passing around the perimeter, if there's a

guy closing in on Isaiah Stewart, he can't just drive in an attack there. He's just going to continue passing the ball around. So the whole wrong footing the defense through drive and kick and drive and kick and, I don't know, maybe get an opportunity. the rim for the guy who's driving in is not going to happen. So yeah, attacking off the dribble period, not happening. Vertically spacing, not happening. You can't do anything to compensate for his poor speed whatsoever. He had those high-low actions with he and Duren earlier in the season, where Isaiah Stewart would post up a mismatch, but that's very easy to defend. It's a tough pass to make.

We saw the thunder even in game four, just go and just swamp him when he tried, you know, when he tried it because they had the time while the pass was in the air, they knew what was happening. So, but like, we can segue to, again, why he's strong at center. You know, this and this reason number two, I mean, it's a fool's errand. You're taking him away from a position in which he has very little capacity for success. When it's not just about growth, I mean, he has real limitations he's up against. And he's a strong backup center. Like, Moni is, Moni Williams talking about changes to the starting lineup, you know,

depending on whether we have Isaiah, you know, whether we're up against a beefy matchup at Power Forward. You know, we'll have Boyan start. We'll have Isaiah Stewart start at Power Forward. hopefully to just be Boyon. That's another development I forgot to mention. I mean, Boyon, I've talked about him a lot before, provides a lot to the offense. He'll be nice to have back. Also, just the stabilizing presence. The guy is a, you know, like 20 point per game, elite off ball player, you know, who makes all the right decisions, can do some creating of his own. But for the most part, it's just an elite offball player who can either shoot or take the ball in flight

and score in the midrange or at the rim and doesn't really need the ball. It isn't really on the ball very much at all to do it. just that he's going to be a very, very valuable player to have back, particularly in the starting lineup. But again, Stewart at center, good all around. A wheat switch defense on guards so that offense has completely lost an option there. A elite defender in the pick and roll, you know, in space. That's a very good skill to have. Very strong defense of the pain against drivers. He's good at positioning himself, and you're not going to knock him to the side when you're trying to drive on him.

You're going to hit a brick wall. He is strong at head-on brim protection, knows where to position himself and uses his length expertly. And, you know, even a shooting is going to be more valuable there. The lack of, you know, the lack of mobility isn't as big of a deal there on offense or defense because he's not just hanging out of the perimeter. Sets hard screens, you know, create space as few do with his hard work ethic, incredibly hard work ethic in his frame. You really get the most out of, you know, you would call his craziness, just his willingness.

And I don't know if you call it eagerness even to muck about physically in the interior. And like, yeah, he maybe, you know, he sucks on the pick and roll. But you can ameliorate that to a degree by having an athletic. big at power forward. It's just in general. It's a much better position for him. Maybe he ends up back at backup center long term. That'll require the front office to basically punt on Bagley, who I think would be better off and reinventing himself or just playing more power forward if he can shoot, a position at which he's not nearly as bad defensively, that he's still bad. And also James Wiseman, again, you made not an expensive trade for, you know, after a whopping 30 games,

that would pretty much be it for him unless they keep him, or unless he gets another opportunity later in the season due to injury and does drastically better. Bagley himself, And I'm speeding this up because I know I'm getting very, very close to the hour mark here. Or maybe not quite that close. Bagley himself, Cavs game, I think was an example of why Bagley really, really just doesn't have the defensive processing ability. It's just second by second stuff. Like there was a space of about three minutes in which Bagley made three blatant mistakes on defense. One, just knowing what was happening at all, this head was swiveling around and he missed a guy driving right at him.

you know another failing to make proper rotation giving up a three to max drus another failing to pick up his man in transition also max drus and giving up an open three that was eight points um just at the NBA level you need to be able to make these split second decisions particularly as the primary interior defender and bagley is just a second or more late and a second or more late in the NBA generally will very often mean an open opportunity whether it's for that player or whoever he passes to whoever it gets passed to after that uh to his credit he has improved much more than i thought he would as a head-on rim protector, and he's certainly putting in the effort, but that's not everything, especially against defenses that move as fast as that of the cavaliers of JD-Bicker stuff.

So, again, I think Bagway's only going to make it in this way he gets a power forward who can shoot, catch-lobs, hopefully do some creation off the, you know, off the dribble, and being like just a below-average defender, which he'd be more able to do a power forward. He's actually able to stick with his man pretty well, though he's still at this point really going to have issues with any defense that causes him to make a bunch of decisions in quick succession. It's just less of an issue than it is at center. And finally, let's talk what I know is a pretty hot button issue amongst Pistons fandom at the moment, which is the availability of Zach Levine of the Chicago Bulls on the trade market. Adrian Mojnaroski reported that he's been made available

at this point. There isn't a market for him. I would first just before any talk about Levine. No market doesn't mean that the Bulls are looking to just dump the guy for whatever they can get. They're just looking to dump him for expirings and some marginal assets. The Bulls are almost certainly headed into a rebuild at this point. Boyd has made clear that they want to get some return for Zaglevine. So in any case, you know, when it comes to the Pistons, question, of course, is, well, it always surrounds the long term. You know, when you're going to make a major trade, you always want for it to be the long term move. We are, yes, watching a completely miserable product at the moment, but the front office, their outlook should always be for the long term. Well, certainly for

a team where the pistons are right now. Making an asset costing trade for the sake of just improving the short-term product of a bad team, maybe moving the pistons from very, very bad to only somewhat bad, even if it's going to improve the long-term product possibly, but in a way that's not really necessarily ideal is not something that the front office should do. And it's a, you know, I feel pretty strongly about that. And I also feel very strongly, you know, I feel it's a very, very strong probability that they will not do something like that, that they wouldn't make a trade of that sort. their focus is is and should be on the long term. So when it comes to Levine himself, you know, let's talk to player.

You know, one thing he is, and I don't think there's any disputing this, is a strong score. You know, he's strong at attack in the basket. He's a strong three-point shooter, both on the catch and on the pull-up. You know, he's somewhat half-decent in terms of his ability to score in the in-between. And, you know, he's highly athletic, can vertically space the floor, can run the floor super well, and, you know, can do some passing, even though he's not great at that. He's owed for the next three seasons, 43, 46, and 49 million.

The third season is a player option. I want to talk about my misgivings about Zach Levine, completely irrespective of, you know, where the pistons stand. Number one, of course, he's paid an enormous salary. That's always going to be a factor. Capspace is useful. There's an opportunity cost to using cap space. And here's what I don't really like about Zach Levine.

I mean, number one, there is, there are the physical concerns. He's injury prone. He's missed a lot of time in his career. He has already lost some of his really freakish athleticism due to his injuries, his lower body injuries. He is an athleticism-dependent guard who, again, is prone to injuries, and these can add up like they did, for example, with Blake Griffin. They just continue to have an additive effect, and the injuries just get worse and worse, and the athleticism continues to decline. He's also getting close to 30. He'll be about 30 years old at this point next season. And that's often the point at which, you know, particularly for highly athletic guards, they begin to decline. So you have this very athleticism-dependent guard who faces multiple threats to his athleticism. And this is assuming that his health doesn't become a real issue in a way

that makes it difficult for him to stay on the floor. I don't think it's quite at Blake Griffin level. Like Blake Griffin, when he was traded to the Pistons, had already undergone some severe athletic decline. I think he'd had three knee surgeries already. And I think at that point, as we found out, but I think that was predictable even back then was a taking injury time bomb, who might only be one injury away from really having his mobility at the NBA level completely destroyed, which is unfortunately for the Pistons, ultimately what happened. So with Zach Levine, would you be trading for an expensive player on the edge of decline? I think that would be a major concern. His defense sucks. That was one of the major concerns about Chicago, you know, one of the major probable

points of failure with the lineup that they fielded the last two seasons is that DeMardo Rosen and Zach Levine are both quite poor defenders. Nikola Vuccivic, who had spent a career, is just a sort of average defender also is, you know, with age, lost some of his mobility and is now a bad defender as well. So that's a concern. You are going to lose value if you're a bad defender, and that becomes a bigger issue in the postseason. His culture fits, Zach Levina's kind of a questionable attitude. Always, it's always a concern when you're talking about bringing any player onto your team, but particularly one who's paid an enormous amount of money. And overall, does he play winning basketball? Strong score, for sure. Does he detract from the offense in some ways by not

necessarily playing as playing his team first part of a cohesive hole. That's a question. Again, the defense. Like, basically, we've got, like, we have experience in Detroit with highly paid players, one in particular, you know, who put up very big stats, but had a crappy attitude and by no means played winning basketball. That's not the sort of player you necessarily want to trade for, and then you lump the injuries on top of that.

And, of course, this is all contextualized by his huge salary. This is for a player making $10 million a year, and you can get a lot. get him cheap, then obviously that's, uh, teams would be lining up to do that, but it's not. So, uh, would I do this? If the price per low, I'd kind of have to get a better look at his medicals. If this is a player, you look at his medicals and it's like, man, he's a serious injury risk going forward. Then in that circumstance, you're looking at a player who's getting paid an average of like $46 million a year for the next three seasons, then, you know, even, even if the price is low, any team is probably going to say no. I don't believe that he's likely to be, you know,

be available just for expiring deals that there aren't, you know, some somewhat significant assets that are going to need to go the other way. I also just question if he's the right player for the business at this time. But of course, right player, the injury concerns come into that. And it just makes it very, very hard for, you know, for me to know exactly what his value is. Of course, we don't have access to his medical charts. But I've got to think that given the very apparently non-existent market, what I would, you know, for what I would guess would be probably not a super high asking price, asking price by the Chicago Bulls, I would think that injuries are probably a very big concern, or a very big concern that potential suitors have. Now would I trade Jaden Ivy for him?

The answer to that is no, you know, just given all the concerns that I just went over and given that I think Jaden Ivy could be a very good player in this league, no, that's not a risk I would take. And then finally, a couple of listeners submitted questions, just as always. Thank you to those who submitted topics. Really appreciate it. First one, I've wondered about Cade Cunning. him, he has an alarming number of shots go in and out. At a certain point, is this just a result of extreme shooting variance in bad walk or is there something mechanically that could be causing this? I don't notice many bad misses.

Many of them are on targets, and when they don't front iron, they dance in the rim and fall out. This one, I've realized, I kind of want to see if I can track down a shooting coach or somebody who knows more about mechanics than I do just to get a more solid answer. I would be shocked if this were the case. Just in and out misses, I don't think those are generally the product of bad touch. I mean, good touch can increase your chances of, or at least Cade didn't not miss, as good touch can increase your chances of a shot going in. You know, you have what's really what people call a soft touch.

But it doesn't really seem like it. Does Cade have that sort of soft touch? No. Does he have bad form? I don't think so either. But I'll see who I can track down, who's more familiar with the shooting mechanics side of things. And finally, who would be the most ideal player to put next to Cade in our core,

if you could choose anybody, maybe not including obvious ones like Kevin Durantle, on Yokochkuri and so on. So if we're going to look at the superstar level here, but not guys like the ones who are listed who are like just superlative talents. Devin Booker, he's definitely a superstar. Right now, 27 and 8 is the lead handler for the Phoenix Suns, an excellent efficiency with a lot of mine assisted offense. He's a player, I think, could play with just about anybody, and that would be just fantastic. And I'm not going to get into how the Pistons could have drafted, and we all know that. Michigan boy who loves Detroit sports. So we'll go with some kind of more tier two, tier three guys. So we want somebody who's

strong off ball, but can do some handling. Again, I think that Cabe would be the primary handler for this team, can be the primary handler for a contender. So you could start with Mikal Bridges, who after really just lighting the world on fire, after his trade to the Nets last season is averaging a more reasonable 22 points per game. Still very good. But as a respectable passer off the drive. You know, strong three-point shooter. They're shooting lower than usual this season. And it's proven to be a pretty solid creator. And obviously he's a very strong defender as well. Another option who would be quite good, a tier two, tier three guy, Desmond Bain, just one of the league's elite offball players, still young. And still he's somewhat short-armed. He comports himself

decently on defense. And again, solid enough at just like Michael Bridges of taking advantage to the gravity that he attracts in order to create for his teammates, though. Both of these guys, I'm not saying that Bain and bridges are not able to create from on the ball, because they are. They're also just very good at playing off ball rules. And in terms of getable guys elsewhere on the roster, I mean, Jeremy Grant's, they're concerns about his age, but I continue to maintain that he'd be valuable on this roster, solid two-way veteran athletic guy who can create, play good defense. I think that we've sort of missed a Jeremy Grant-like player. Do I regret that he was traded for the opportunity to draft Jalen Duren. No, but I think that he was maybe a little bit

underappreciated in Detroit in terms of what he brought as just that solid, stable, two-way veteran presence. Who knows what he would cost in the open markets? Will the trailblazers look to just dump him? My instinct is no. Would the pistons be interested if he became available at a very reasonable price? I would guess that they would be, and I wouldn't blame them. And that contract, though the dollar amount looks big, is roughly in the arena of just a quality starter, number three option. And we've got to look at these things in terms of percentage of the cap versus the actual dollar amounts. And these salaries and dollar amounts are getting very, very high along with the salary cap. And another guy who could fit very well next decade

Cunningham is already on the team and his name is Jade Nive. A highly athletic compliment Decade who's excellent at slashing into the basket is a solid playmaker. I've shown what I think is solid shooting upside is already on the team and the Pistons would not have to pay anything to acquire him. But I think we've talked plenty about Ivy in this episode already. All right, folks, so that'll be it for this week's episode, actually posting this one just a couple of hours before the Grizzlies game. Hopefully nothing I've said in this episode becomes outdated. As always, I want to thank you all for listening. I'll catch you in next week's episode.