Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 177: Where to Go From Here

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

This angrier-than-usual episode discusses all that's gone wrong so far in the season and what can be done about it (not likely much) this season.

Welcome back, everybody who listened to another episode of Drive into the Basket. I'm Mike, and I hope you are all doing well despite the losing streak, which tonight hit Drinking Age, fun times. I've got to say this is maybe the worst, I'd say almost indisputably the worst on Pistons team, the most headless and lost and struggling Pistons team that we've seen in what's now going on the 16th season of frustration and futility. The only other season, and that really even remotely compares as far as bad starts is the 2014-2015 season, Van Gundy's first. And they started, I believe, 3 and 24, 3 and 25. And that was largely a self-inflicted wound.

It came as a result of Van Gundy choosing inexplicable to use Josh Smith as the center of his offense. And it was a streak that was done away with just by doing away with Josh Smith. I'm not sure if this team has any such excuse or any such easy way out. So it's been pretty bad. The Pistons are nearing the all-time NBA record of 26 set by two teams that were in the first years of the rebuilds. That was the 2013, 2014-76ers, I believe, or maybe it was the year before. I can't remember. It was the first year of the process, the process in which the sixers were attempting blatantly and openly to be incredibly bad.

And the other was the Cleveland Cavaliers in the year after LeBron James left. So, bestsons are on the fourth year of the rebuild. And, I mean, it's a rough time. It's really, to this point, been characterized by players struggling, which is something that can change by a coach who really seems to just be almost like a mad scientist who just wants to try what he wants to try and doesn't really seem to care all that much about actually coaching well. And a front office that really hasn't, we haven't seen a whiff of communication

or accountability from this season. Anyway, before I get rolling, just want to note again that I've begun doing post-game analysis, pretty in-depth post-game analysis with video after each Pistons game. Sometimes it's up the day after, the day after that. They honestly take a couple of hours to put together. So sometimes I don't really have it in me to do them on the night of a game. I did so tonight, however, right before I recorded this, in fact, recording this just after the game. I typically post on Wednesday mornings.

I decided that I would prefer. to see what happened. It always feels a little bit weird to me to record and post in the morning of a game day, but in any case, so thank you to everybody who's been reading those articles and for the positive feedback I've gotten. Writing is something that I really enjoy doing, and I'd been planning to do this for a long time and kind of getting started at a tough time, but I've been enjoying it nonetheless. Also I want to note that it's probable I won't be posting an episode next week, just the product of being out of town for some of that time. In any case, let's get to the meat of the episode.

One thing I want to address first, obviously, a couple of my predictions for the season did not come true. I had believed that this team, if everything caught right, which was going to mean the youth playing well, particularly Kate Cunningham making a big step, Jalen Duren making a big step, Jade and Ivey making a big step, and the veterans playing well and health being good and coaching being good, that's, you know, if all of that cut right in the Pistons can maybe challenge for the plan, obviously, virtually all of that has gone wrong. So I wouldn't necessarily say I was wrong about it. However, I did not expect the team to be quite this bad.

If any of you did, any of you saw this coming, then kudos. You're, you know, you're good for you. that would have been a very difficult prediction to make. Another one that I was wrong about, though I think possibly understandably so was my opinion of Monty Williams. And if you were listening to episodes from back then, you'll remember that I wasn't a huge fan of the hire because I did not want the Pistons to hire a coach who had known flaws. I didn't want a retread. I wanted a coach who could, like I would have been happy with a retread like Eric Spolster

or something, but teams don't fire coaches like that, and they rarely leave those teams. So I didn't want a coach who had known flaws. I didn't want to retread. But my opinion of Monty Williams was that, though he wasn't the most flexible and not necessarily the most innovative, he was still a good regular season coach with whom the flaws would come up, you know, once the Pistons got to the postseason. For whatever reason, I don't know, maybe because I just don't know why I'll share some speculation later on the episode. He's been terrible, like arguably worse than Dwayne Casey. I never thought I'd find myself in a situation after any number of games in which I felt like,

okay, Dwayne Casey is a severely limited coach, but please, I would not be at all unhappy to see him back because things were so bad under the new coach. It's not have seen this coming. So I'm not sure what happened there. I'm really, it's real confusing. So let's talk about just what brought us to this point. I know that there's been a certain amount of talk about that already. I suppose I just have more to say.

we'll talk a little bit more. We'll talk about what could conceivably be done and then just some minor storylines we're seeing right now. All right, so I hope you'll also forgive the congestion. Pretty long-term problem of mine, but particularly bad today. So just to sum up, I mean, obviously there are roster flaws. Those are here to stay. There's really bad coaching, which is probably here to stay.

And then there are player under performances, which can and I believe should improve, just because, you know, the odds are that things won't, that so many players won't concurrently continue to underperform. So, of course, as I've mentioned, this roster suffers from, you know, lack of stability, lack of really reliable, shorthing role players, too many projects, don't have the accoutrements to really run an effective offense, for example, in the NBA, though some of that lies at the hands of, again, underperformance, bad shooting in particular.

Yeah, this front office's obsession with projects, which continued as recently as last season. As far as the roster's issues, shooters struggling right now, you know, also guys, just not enough guys who can attack off the dribble and break down defenses and pass. You know, those are basic things that you want to have. You don't really have all that many guys in this team who can even attack closeouts properly. Only three guys who can really handle and break down defenses and one is injured, or you have four if you count boy on. Betty doesn't really pass all that much. and you know how did we get to this place at least in the recent past i mean just a little bit more about the offseason which turns out to have been a miserable failure the pissons went in with 30 million

cap space they immediately at the start of free agency spent 20 million of that on joe harris when they brought in alongside two second round picks so this was looking back very dumb either the front office thought the team was just fine as it was and made that trade just to get to the cap floor and gained some draft assets, in which case it was still a misjudgment for a team that had too few veteran quantities, two few reliable quantities, just blowing $20 million in cap space that you could have spent on somebody who was decent. Or they believed that Joe Harris was actually going to provide them with decent NBA minutes in which event they made, you know, they, we're not paying attention. You know, we're not paying attention enough to realize the very plain fact

that Joe Harris was physically washed up as a result of his ankle surgeries, and he was not a very mobile player before that. And he's even West Mobile now. He's immobile to a degree that the NBA just doesn't tolerate that. So Joe Harris versus spending on players who can actually contribute, well, we saw which way that went. You tear a huge hole in your lineup at Power Forward because your intent on a complete pie in the sky,

ridiculous plan of starting Isaiah Stewart at Power Forward, even though he's far too a mobile to play there. Probably amongst players who have played significant minutes of power forward this season, he's probably very close to if not actually at the bottom of the barrel. I mean, this was a completely self-inflicted injury and just an incredibly foolish plan in a we want to turn the corner season. You add James Wiseman, you know, who, you know, behind Stewart. I mean, here's the choice you have with Isaiah Stewart. And I think this may be more than anything else, except for the roster that the front office fielded in Cadesburg year demonstrates just the runaway obsession with projects, is that in a year in which

you want to turn the corner, you could either have fielded a solid backup center, which Isaiah Stewart is. He has his issues, but he's a solid backup center. So you can either field him there and put him in a position to succeed and have a reliable backup center and sign a veteran power forward of some sort, just so you can have a true power for it on the roster. And true power forward can just be a dude who can hit his threes, who is big and strong enough to defend the beefier power forwards in the league and can move around the court at an acceptable speed. Isaiah can't do the third of those, needless to say. So you could go with those two things, you know, just have Isaiah Stewart as your backup center

and sign a decent veteran power forward. Again, he doesn't need to be really good. I don't know somebody of maybe like the likes of Tori and Prince who got about $4 million from the Lakers and the Pistons could have easily outbid for that. instead what you do is you take your solid backup center you turn him into a long shot power forward who is not you know do attempt rather to convert him into you know very long shot project power forward whom you're not only you're not only doing that but you're having him be your starting power forward which is pretty darn gutsy so again instead of that solid backup center and a decent veteran you are converting your solid backup center into a long shot project forward and then you are

fielding as your backup centers to long-shot project centers, neither of whom have the accoutrements to really play in the NBA. As I've been over many times, Marvin Bagley is, I mean, he's putting in the work this season. You can really see it. He's putting in more effort, and he clearly cares more about defense than he ever has. However, he is also just about as hopeless as an interior decision-maker as he has been since he got into the NBA. I don't see that ever changing. He's also not really all that impressive as a score or either. It's basically a glorified traditional center can do a bit of creation on his own, but still can't shoot, still can't space the floor, very unimpressive on offense.

James Wiseman is a walking disaster. If he doesn't have, like, the lowest basketball IQ in the NBA, he's very close. I think he had a decent game tonight. I mean, it was notable because, I mean, it was his best game as a piston, because he did a decent job as a scorer and didn't make a bunch of mistakes on defense, which is a big win for James Wiseman, who's coming in an incredibly low point. So the Stewart stuff was actively ridiculous, like, just completely ridiculous. based on just apparently a front office, which just loves its projects.

And more or less in this situation said, whether this was Weaver or somebody else, whether this is Weaver, and again, we don't know the difference between, we don't know the influence that aren't tell them. And Ed Stefansky exert on the front office, though at times when it comes to draft decisions, we've heard that it can be significant, but we just don't know. But this front office basically embarked upon the Isaiah Stewart of Power Forward experiment with, like, we'd want Isaiah Stewart to be a Power Forward because we say so. and we're not actually going to look if he has it, you know, has what it takes to be a power forward.

Or at the very least, they just didn't look at, they just didn't examine, didn't take any consideration what your requirements to be a power forward in today's league are. And simply being able to shoot is not enough if you're incredibly slow. Forwards these days, it used to be 10 years ago, and maybe the front office hasn't stuck with the time somehow. 10 years ago, often your power forwards were just smaller centers for whom mobility was not a necessary quality. today's power forwards are bigger small forwards. You have to be mobile. And it's very much a perimeter position. And I'll just note again that PJ Tucker,

who's basically at the same role as Isaiah Stewart does a power forward, which is just hang out in the perimeter, don't move very much, and just shoot threes. And PJ Tucker's case, corner threes, though. Of course, he's like one of the, that's his thing. Isaiah Stewart can be used for a little bit more than that. But even PJ Tucker, 38, is more mobile than Isaiah Stewart.

at, well, like, 22. Like, even Al Horford at 37 is much more athletic. It's considerably more athletic than Isaiah Stewart. Again, I think 22 or 23. I've talked about that for a little bit too long. So, yeah, so you're running a hopeless project of Power 4 with zero contingency. That was judged preferable at this stage to fielding a solid quantity. When it comes to Assar Thompson, I mean, Asar is the kind of player.

He's very much a project player on offense. We've seen it. Very much a project player on offense. I mean, half-court offense obviously is extremely important, and being a liability in half-court offense is a big problem. So Asar is the kind of player whom you either wants to, you know, ideally send the G-League, where he can get in his reps against, you know, decent competition and be in a position to grow and make mistakes, and it's fine.

And he's not exerting a downward force on offense, you know, on his teammates, on the offense as a whole. Or at the very least, you want to add him to a team with enough stability that you You can play him situationally and in a reasonable number of minutes. And he's got players around him who can be relied upon to do well on offense. Neither of those with the case with the Pistons. He was brought into a situation in which there was such an adequate power forward depth that he was, though this was partly on the coach, who made the insane decision to put him into a lineup

that already had two non-shooters in it. But it was just forcing it too much of a role. And it's tough for him to find a good role on this team, you know, because in part because of just his struggles as a half-court score, but in part because that's being added to a team that has a lot of difficulty in half-court scoring in the first place. And, I mean, it doesn't help that his coach, who started the season with him,

hasn't bothered to properly use him to his very few strengths in a way that even slightly minimizes the liability to present to the half-court offense right now. Like we have Monty Williams say that, oh, I'm going to start using him as a screener, which is like, okay, you should have done that from the very beginning, but then did it for two players before just forgetting about a SAR again. Yeah, and I want to go back to Jeremy Grant.

I mean, that was a very good move by Weaver, and that's a very nice sort of player to have, a two-way guy who can do some creating and is just a stabilizing veteran presence. So what holds, you know, this roster, I was going to say what holds it together. That's not an accurate way of putting it. This roster exists in the hands of a coach,

who has actively contributed to losing, bad decisions, bad game plans, bad utilization. There's bad system overall. The team looks defeated and headless, you know, far more than it did under Dwayne Casey, whom, as I've said, was, I think was a very poor on-court coach, but was excellent at running a locker room and his players never looked like they were defeated. They never looked completely headless. They lost a lot of games last season, especially in the second half of the season, just because the talent was really, really bad, especially as the second half wore on

and they just started deliberately sitting players and doing things like playing Wiseman and Bagley together, which isn't something you do if you're, you know, if you're not very much okay with Wazas. And, I mean, they wanted to get Wiseman as reps. So it's just unacceptable that the team not only has a coach who is contributing to losing, but at this point, after all of these coaches, that the team does not have a coach who is contributing to winning. The fact that he is contributing to losing in any way is unacceptable at this stage. This organization, when it comes to hiring coaches, cannot get out of its own way, Hiring a decent coach is not rocket signs, you know,

but you'd think that eventually they would actually be able to hire a good coach, who makes the team more than the sum of its parts. Or at the very least, just doesn't do stupid things, but ideally makes the team more than the sum of its parts, and Monty Williams, I mean, when was the last time the Pistons actually had a decent coach? I know some would say Flip Saunders. Some say he was just adequate, though, you know, under him, there were three seasons there in which the Pistons were, you know,

had like the fourth, fifth, fifth, and sixth, and seventh best offense, and elite defenses. He had the personnel, but yeah, I mean, don't be completely honest. I mean, I wasn't anywhere near as much of an avid Pistons fans, Pistons fan back then as I am now. And before that, I know that Larry Brown is considered a very good coach, was, I'd say, in the opinion of some people, he was the last actually good coach the Pistons had. Otherwise, Flip Saunders, it was 16 seasons ago. So the fact that we are now on the third highly paid underperforming retread in a row is unacceptable. strategy by, I mean, the strategy, I feel very certain that it was Tom Goraz who really spearheaded

the hiring of Monty Williams, whom he saw it as a shortcut. I'm quite certain, an owner with a propensity for seeking out shortcuts, who I've got to think saw, you know, Monty Williams presided over a fast rebuild in Phoenix and didn't look at traded for Chris Ball, just as he undoubtedly, we saw it between Casey, one coach of the year and didn't see fell victim, you know, a flawed coach, who fell victim to his usual snafus in recent pro season and was rightly fired and said also one coach of the year in Marge Parth because he had been forced by his president of basketball operations to institute that new offense. I think I'm repeating what I said in the last episode. You know, whatever. Just my point is I think it was almost undoubtedly a shortcut hire. And it's also, it's like,

you know, if you want to, you know, if I want to find a good employee who wants to take some time off of work for family health issues and doesn't want to work for me right now. I just offer him more and more and more money until he finally decides that it's foolish to turn down this much money. I mean, that's the way to get a really focused employee. I'm obviously being very sarcastic. Honestly, with a veteran coach in this situation, who's very highly paid, you also put him a position where he's not exactly all that accountable to the front office and

can really get away with the lot, which Money Williams definitely has. has been so far. Not that I think that Tom Gores would ever admit to fault he never has before, but just like Dwayne Casey, who was brought in to coach, you know, to shortcut a completely inadequate team. He was the safe choice. And just like Stan Van Gundy, who was given personnel powers in addition to coaching powers and told, you know, he was a safe quantity too, though he certainly had his flaws, and said, well, I want you to shortcut this team back to relevancy without rebuilding. This is what Tom Gores is all about. He is an amateurish meddler who's meddling, who's meddling has invariably had negative consequences for the Pistons.

But it doesn't, you know, though to his meager credit, Miga's owner should always do this. They should not be meddling in basketball operations. He had kept his head out since the Pistons decided to rebuild, since he okay to rebuild at the beginning of 2020. You know, he decided, it seems, to stick his hat back in a situation and it had predictably poor consequences. And my guess is, yeah, you know, again, he just saw a shortcut and didn't want to,

you know, been decided to go with that safe quantity. You know, just didn't want to go with the first-time coach who might not have flawless, but was less of a known quantity. In any case, like I said, this is an unacceptable situation. Manny has been terrible. He has been disgraceful. This is inexcusable on the part of the organization. He should quit if he cares this little. I feel like he's just kind of in a mad scientist role where he just wants to.

I can't explain it. Like, is it like Space Jam where the Monstars just sucked out his coaching ability so that they can use it in a cartoon basketball game against LeBron James. Like where did his competence to go? How is he just completely drained of it? It's just the situation in which he feels, I don't know. It seems to me like, yeah, he just wants to play mad scientist and do what he wants and not really care about coaching in a way that actually impacts winning. Like he's got more or less absolute job security. He didn't want to coach this season in the first place. He's being paid to think $13 million by the Pistons in addition to the seven million he's getting from the Sons. You know, if he doesn't really feel like it,

then he just doesn't really feel like it. He's going to get paid this entire gun. contract anyway. I don't know what the issue is, but again, unacceptable, you know, painfully slow to quote unquote see obvious things like we're starting to learn that, you know, that spacing, having more spacing allows us to score better. And you'd like to look at a coach and say, okay, well, I think that, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, because benefit of the doubt, excuse me, because any NBA coach is smart enough to know this. But then you look at the fact that Monty is completely disregarded spacing this season, often to a utterly ludicrous degree, like a truly same degree. And you think, okay, you know, maybe he actually doesn't. But at the very least,

there's no way he's, you know, at the very least, he's just being completely evasive with the fans. And just certainly very wistless and wackadaisical. It's like, why did you wait this long? Why does it seemingly take you forever to make very basic conclusions? Like we need more spacing for Gate Cunningham, for example, and then even longer to actually do something about it. It's just kind of surreal. Like, you know, looking at, oh, it seems like, it seems like, you know, Kate and Ivy to work well together. And it's like, okay, well, the game against the Pacers was the very first time that we have seen, and that was in game 22, I think, or 23. That was game 23 in which we have seen any attempt to use Cade and Ivy together toward their individual strengths.

And then against the 76ers, Jaden was back into a completely, you know, he's back into the usage doldrums at the hands of a coach who, like, this, Jaden Ivy's development is important. He is important to the team in the now as a guy who can do, you know, good things on offense that nobody else in this team can provide. So, you know, he can provide those things to a team that is in the midst of a 22-game losing streak and desperately needs them. His development is going to be an important thing in yet another season in which, you know, which we didn't expect it to be in which, you know, maybe the best success we can hope for is for, is for good development by the players. But that's being all completely disregarded by a coach who just doesn't,

really seem to care about that, and is strikingly like Stan Van Gundy in his just staunch dedication to sticking with his preferences, arbitrary though they may be, even if it means doing things that have unambiguously poor consequences. So, yeah, team looks headless, defense the last two games, he's gone to his switch everything system that the, that the team just doesn't have the personnel to go with. It's like, you know, they've got a very undersized lineup. Also, Isaiah Stewart in a switch everything system that caters to all of his weaknesses because he's he's a player who has issues with mobility and he's best used in a role that just kind of allows him to be your defensive anchor and switch on the guards on the perimeter when necessary but you try to avoid

getting him just having him switch on anybody this is an incredibly clunky system which is a literally switch everything in every situation and just don't worry about anything and the pistons right now just don't have the size they don't have the personnel to run this defense and it's made an already bad defense quite a bit worse. I mean, the number of mistakes and just, just whatever. Just defense the last two games has been absolutely terrible. And this is a system that this Pistons roster right now cannot run, and it's being run anyway. Your typical constant fourth quarter collapses, the fact that the team looks dead inside,

all of this from a coach who was supposedly good with youth. But again, it's almost certainly just signed as a shortcut to winning by an idiot owner. I'd say the best, it seems, it seems, we're likely to ever get from Monty, if he really improves, as an aggressively mediocre coach, assuming he decides to start caring again. And again, it's not acceptable that we're getting anything less than a good coach. I mean, like I said, even Casey was better. And that doesn't mean Casey was good. As an encore coach just meant he was less bad,

which is remarkable only because his team has now had a long succession of bad coaches. I'd rate Monty Williams closer to Stan Van Gundy in his last two years. And then we go to player underperformance. Kate is at his issues, though before tonight, at least on all offense before tonight he had averaged about 59% true shooting over his previous nine not tremendously consistent but a great improvement over early in the season where i think he was obviously getting back into game shape after missing almost an entire an entire season excuse me and for the first 10 games was playing in a lineup with comically bad spacing under a coach whose

offense was basically here take kate take the ball and create in the pick and roll you know into horrendous spacing have fun speaking of kate he's been dreadful on defense recently recently, like absolutely dreadful. I wrote a fair amount about that and put up some video my post game analysis on substack about the Pacers. It's just, Kate is looking kind of listless and really discouraged. He's just quit on some plays. He's just not working hard on defense. And that's kind of bad news, you know, especially for a player who was billed as this natural leader, not acceptable. Needless to say, I don't know of his condition. as an issue. At his age, having the energy to contribute on defense, even under high usage load,

should not be a problem. I don't know what the issue is there, but he scored a decent number of points against the Pacers, and I'd say it lost at least that many points on defense directly. So, Alec Berks, who spent most of the season in a slump, boy, and who's missed most of the season, Monte Morris, who obviously is still missing. This front office had far too many bags in the basket of a few veteran performers. And even being without all of them would not have been an excuse for this team to be as bad as it has been. It's a real indictment of the front office and the coaching.

Livers has been bad. Killian has improved and is kind of playing at a bench rotation level for probably an average team or below average team. He's still in kind of a weird role. He gets most of his offense from just difficult pull-up mid-range shots, still doesn't really space the floor. It's, you know, you couple that with the fact that he still can't break down defense. and really act as elite handler, then it's just a weird role.

But it's still improvement. You know, it's taken him getting a ton of minutes as one of the worst players in the league the last two years. And he's just the seventh overall pick. And, you know, the guy who's really supposed to help kickstart the rebuild. Ivy, of course, has been marginalized constantly. Can't really perform as he's not really being allowed to perform to his potential. I mean, ironically, what Casey was doing last year was better.

And Casey was just pretty much, oh, hey, Jaden, take a pick and do something with please. At least he was given the opportunity, even though he's not really put into a great position to succeed. Duran has started off strong and then fell off for whatever reason, whether that was injury or otherwise. Nothing could, I think, realistically be expected of Bagley or Wiseman. Wiseman, who has at times gotten time in the court despite being worse than Bagley because

his front office, having traded for him, of course, really needs to see what he can do on the court. So, of course, it's silly that they traded for him despite knowing that they were going to possibly have a hard time finding him minutes. So as far as what can be done again, it would be kind of just unlikely, just statistically unlikely for so many players to continue slumping at the same time. That should improve. The really bad coaching, there have been some minor improvements as far as kind of playing Ivy Moore. Moore is a very relative thing.

But at least playing Cade and less of a stupid system, at least not running idiot bench lineups anymore. Cool. Still wasting possessions. Shot selection still suck. now running a moron defense. I don't think we can expect, I mean, we can expect possibly very slow improvements there,

which I guess is something. But I just don't feel like there's, I just don't feel like there's necessarily much to, much to hope for with the coaching as far as major improvements. Again, I think that money with the piston seems likely, seems likely at this point, for whatever reason, to top off as an aggressively mediocre coach,

and he's far from that right now. And then roster flaws most likely here to stay. So I know it was reported by, James Edwards that, you know, he'd heard the Pistons could be in on the trade markets. It is December 13th. Players who were signed in free agency and were not signed with bird rights become trade eligible. On December the 15th, players who signed with bird rights become eligible on the 15th of January.

Some of them, like those who signed Supermax contracts can't, you know, can't be traded for a year. And those who signed offer sheets or had an offer sheet match by their team can't. You have right of first refusal for a year, whatever. I don't know how many of those there are. Whatever the case. I think that the front office, unless they're feeling desperate, and this would be a real indictment of Tom Gores,

if he's like, go out and just get us a better product or you're fired, and I don't care what you have to do. It's been done before, of course. Stan Van Gundy was on the hot seat. Joe Dumars was in the hot seat in his final season and did a lot of stupid things. Well, chiefly, making a panic trade for Brandon Jennings, who, you know, not with the... standing that kind of 15 game span in which after Josh Smith was waived in which Brandon Jennings

was pretty good was for the vast majority of this time in the NBA and with the Pistons and no defense chucker. And of course they lost middle. Nobody could have anticipated Middleton being that good, but nonetheless it was it was a loss there. And then signed Josh Smith to play small forward in a three big lineup, none of whom could shoot in a position that was going to force Josh Smith to be a shooter. So hopefully that doesn't happen. And of course you can also reference the Van Gundy's trade for Blake Griffin, which made no sense. Van Gundy had no idea how to use him. Clearly, Tom Gores was deliriously happy about it, and Van Gundy, who at the end of that season was still trying to win games, you know, including continuing to play a hobbled Reggie Jackson,

who was brought back too early and ended up having to not being able to be on the court during the summer because he needed time to recover. And Van Gundy brought him back for a fruitless playoff push and then kept him playing after the Pistons had been eliminated. So it'll be a severe indictment of Tom, you know, of Tom Gores, if he is putting pressure on the front office, just be better now at the cost of future assets. If that's not the case, it's the front office. It's very unlikely to make a trade that sacrifices any significant future assets. Some of this also, of course, I mean, the danger of that making a stupid win now trade that's just going to, it's going to expend future assets for the sake of just making a bad team or a terrible team slightly less bad, not meaningfully better and isn't going to have. a positive impact in the future that's commensurate with the cost.

It is drastically, of course, less likely if they aren't on the hot seat. We don't know anything about that right now. But, you know, in lieu of that, in lieu of them basically being threatened and being allowed to do something like that, I don't think it's going to happen. Like I said, I don't think this roster is going to stay quite as dreadful as it is right now because a lot of things are going into that, a lot of things simultaneously going wrong that aren't wasted the way of player performance likely to continue that way. But, yeah, again, to elevate this roster from very bad to simply bad.

Also, worth noting, impressively in the wrong way, impressively in a bad way, after four years of rebuilding, or in the fourth season of a rebuild, so really after three and a half seasons of a rebuild, this front office is currently very short on tradable assets, whose loss wouldn't make this team worse in the present. I think it's very, very unlikely that, you know, that Kate Cunningham, Jaden Ivy, Jaland, J. Linder, and Assar Thompson

are going to be put on the market. And so whom are you going to trade? Your options are future firsts. You could trade either the 29, 2029 or the 2030. You could trade a pick swap in the other year. That would be a hideous idea, unless you were really getting a good player who's going to help out your future. And then you have guys like Boyan. You trade him or you're really going to be able to get better.

Alec Burke's, I mean, when he's playing well, he makes this team better. When he's playing poorly, right? He just doesn't have all that much value. You have Isaiah Stewart, who is one of two reliable, bigs on the team, and I got to think maybe, maybe you get a late first from a contender who really just wants what he could conceivably offer in the postseason, but wouldn't say he's really high trade value either. You look beyond that at guys who have very marginalable value, Marcus Sasser, who might draw a second from a team that just wants to try him out.

Isaiah Livers, who might have a team who thinks, okay, well, maybe we can make a decent role player out of this guy. Monta Morris, who, like, unless teams are real confident, is going to come back healthy, as minimal value. And then you have, like, tier D guys, like Hayes, Bagley, Wiseman, Knox, and Harris, of course, who just probably have no trade value at all. I mean, Hayes, five, six games. Well, it's really kind of more like four at this point, I think. It was tonight the fifth one of the sixth one. They didn't have a good game tonight. After two seasons is one of the worst players in the league, and as a guy who still hasn't proven that he can shoot. It's going to take a lot more than four or five games to rebuild his trade value, especially because he's a pending free agent.

Wiseman needs no explanation. Already gave my opinions on Bagley, Joe Harris goes without saying. and Kevin Knox, of course, is just a warm body at the end of the bench. So who are they realistically going to trade is going to make this team meaningfully better or really much better at all in the first place to anybody's guess? But, I mean, you trade Boyon, for example, who is this team's most valuable trade asset outside of that top four of Cade, Ivy, Jalen Duren, and Nassar Thompson, that's likely to make you worse, just how you're going to get a guy back. I've heard some talk about, you know, one of the Pistons try to trade for Jeremy Grant's.

And it's like, I don't think the Trailblazers assigned him just to, I don't think they're going to trade him away, really dump him just for no reason. It's not going to help their cap situation. He's the same as he was for the Pistons, which is a good stabilizer. I'm just going on record and say again, I would have gladly taken him, you know, at that contract this season. It's a little bit of an overpay, but he's a good player. and the Pistons are going to be faced over the next two off-season with the potential opportunity cost of not going to use that cabs base on anyone. You have the likes of Ogen, you know, be on the market this season,

but your money is only going to talk if, you know, the teams that these guys are already on don't decide to keep them for a greater salary than the Pistons can offer, or if just a more desirable market makes an offer to these players. Of course, the Pistons couldn't have matched that offer anyway. It's a moot point. They couldn't have just – well, actually, they could have. Excuse me. Jeremy Grant didn't get a max contract, which makes sense,

because his max would have been around $40 million in the first year. So the business could conceivably have outbid, they would have had to, in lieu of, because they wouldn't have been able to offer the fifth year. Because they don't have his bird rights, they would have had to pay him significantly higher on a yearly basis. And maybe he didn't want to come back to Detroit. I don't know.

So, yeah, just so I don't really know what they could do in that situation. Like, I don't know what trades they could realistically make that would not sacrifice the future, any part of the future, like first round picks, and would actually, you know, improve this team in the now and hope, you know, and hopefully for the future as well. So just some minor takeaways from recent games. I know four games have been played since I last recorded. So the Grizzlies game was, none of these games were good.

I mean, the Pistons just, I mean, the Grizzlies game is the one in which Jaylen Duren got injured. Jalen Duren, who would kind of come alive again on offense, but was just playing bad defense. Jayland Duren is still raw. It's still a foot out of place or half a second way to recover or half a second way to contest. Still pretty raw defending the pick and roll. I mean, he's had his struggles on defense this season aside from just straight rim protection, which he's been pretty good. Just everything was a complete mess.

And that kind of continued into the Magic game, which was a blowout. And then into the Pacers game in which at the very least, you know, we got to see Jaden Ivy, you know, get more usage that didn't last. But the defense was terrible. And so the Pacers also have a terrible defense. I mean, if the Pistons are playing really bad defense, they're not going to keep up with the Pacers. The Pacers who currently have the best defense in NBA,

best offense, excuse me, in NBA history. Fun fact, the Pistons in the last two games have failed to take advantage of slow games by prospective superstar point guards, both of whom the Pistons passed on in 2020. One of them, Tyrese maxi, three times. The other, of course, being another Tyrese, Tyrese Tyrese Halliburton. I don't really have too much to say, more to say about these games than I've already said. Yeah, it's been rough. So I'm just going to finish off, as it is almost midnight here, with a couple of listeners submitted questions. Number one, if the season were to end today,

what sort of extension do you think Cade should get? I mean, Kate has had his struggles, and his level of effort lately on defense is really concerning to me. I don't think in this situation you can do anything but go with the max contract brutes. I mean, it's, it's, it's, that's, just, just how it is with the player of Cade's ceiling and you just have to, you know, what he's shown at times and you just, you have to go with it and just hope things go well. You know, maybe it's, it's just such a regular thing that you risk alienating the guy. Otherwise, I mean, I like to think that not everybody's going to be like DeAndre Aiton, but it's a possibility.

And at this point, yeah, Cade has struggled in many ways this season. He's also been in a bad situation. I don't know what's going on with this conditioning. but if he's not able to be the player the Pistons hope he can be, then this rebuild is just kind of in trouble. But you look at, for example, guys like Michael Porter Jr. getting max contracts, you know, working max extensions. So I just think that's just likely how it's going to be. Do I think he necessarily deserves it? I mean, he missed his entire sophomore season and he's struggling right now that he's doing it in terrible circumstances.

is hard to say. I would obviously prefer to wait until the end of his fourth year to give him that contract, but often that's just not how it goes. And finally, it was the difference between practical cap space and cap space. Practical cap space is just the space that a team is going to have just from contracts that expire and leave them under the cap, including cap holds.

And practical cap space is if you get rid of all non-guaranteed salary, renounce all free agents, including restricted free agents. because those will levy a cap hold, which is either the qualifying offer or their free agent amount, which is done by a formula, whichever is higher. And you turn down all options, the maximum cap space you can clear by standard means, a non-standard means, of course, being buyouts and training players. So the Pistons, if they were to renounce anybody could have, everybody, excuse me,

would have quite a bit of practical cap space. Well, rather, that's why they have a lot of practical cap space is because they can get rid of a lot of salaries this offseason. They can, and will, renounce the cap hold of Joe Harris. Alec Berks, they can just let go if they feel like it and renounce his cap hold. They can renounce Montemortez's cap hold. They can renounce James Wiseman and Killian Hayes. They can choose to not guarantee Boyan Bogdanovich's 2024, 2025 salary that will reduce the cap commitment to two million, and they can wet Knox and livers walk, and that'll get them quite a bit in the way of cap space.

think all of those things will happen. Probably not, but we will see. And at that point, you know, you're rolling the dice in free agency. You can always sign back some of those players if they're still available, you know, should you strike out on the targets you want. But free agency these days, it was never a certain thing. Teams have gone into free agency in the past and struck out. And these days, free agency is even less of a sure thing than it used to be. It was never a sure thing, but it was even, it has even west to offer it by way of certainty, though there's a lot of was none in the first place than I did back then because so few good players hit free agency now. All right, folks. So that will be it for this episode. As always, I want to thank you all so much for

listening. Hope you're all doing well. I will catch you in either next week's episode or the week after that.