Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 178: History Has Been Made... the History Nobody Wanted to Make

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

This episode recaps the organization's record-breaking 27th straight loss in a single season, commiserates with fellow Pistons fans, and apportions blame for the disaster this season (and, to a lesser but still significant extent, the rebuild) has devolved into.

Welcome back, everybody. What's into another episode of Drive into the Basket? I'm Mike, and I hope you all are doing well today on what is a very sad day. I'm kind of waited to record this episode until later in the day than I usually do. Like I've said in the past, I typically record on Tuesday nights, otherwise Wednesday mornings. And I put this one off a bit because I wasn't sure how it was going to properly do justice to the complete and unmitigated disaster that this season, and to an extent, not a complete extent, because it's not unsalvageable, but to an extent. But this rebuild has turned into.

We're here at 27 straight losses, the Pistons have broken the record, a record that even as this season completely spiraled from game four onward, I really never thought that they would reach this point. Even five games ago, I thought that they would find a way to pull this out. And it's like, okay, at the very least, guys, you're, you know, this team isn't going to break the record for most consecutive losses in the season. not even think that they tie the record for most consecutive losses in the season, but this team couldn't even manage that. And so 27 straight, Pistons have beaten out the 2010-2011 Cavaliers who were absolutely gutted by the loss of the best, you know, the best player in the world at the time and arguably the best player of all time in the NBA. And the 2013-2014 Sixers who were in the first season who just embarked upon the most blatant tank job of all

time, a tank job that ultimately got the draft lottery odds changed. to smooth out the odds of the first overall pick, you know, to prevent the reason, you know, to remove the reason for any team to tank that hard again. So these are two teams that we're just certainly not, simply not trying to win. And then we have the Pistons who are in season four of a rebuild. And they've been planning to turn the corner and very much trying to win games. And now, I mean, they have eclipsed those two teams in terms of losing 27 straight games. That is absolutely an incredible, incredible failure by any standard. So I'm just going to do my best to do this justice and not in my way get very, very overly perfectionistic as I often do.

Whatever this, there's really no reason for me to get into that. But I've been talking quite a bit, I feel, about how we got to this point. And I guess just talk more about how we got to this point. You know, just dissect it really down to the granular level. And then just talk, again, where do the pistons go from here? and I really try to keep an even keel when it comes to sports. I mean, I try to keep an even keel when it comes to anything. And today I'm just feeling kind of a little bit angrier.

It really didn't help that Tom Gores came out last week and just said a whole lot of nothing. And so I'll cover that as well. But let's just break down exactly, you know, all of everything that had to go wrong for us to reach this incredibly low point. like incredibly low points. Pistons fans have gone through a lot. This team has not been good in more than 15 years at this point. This is season 16 of struggles. There has been one winning season since Jonti Billups was traded.

It's just been a lot of futility and ineptitude. Pistons haven't had a good coach in more than 15 years. They haven't really had a good GM in more than 15 years of Dumas spiraled. Like, my goodness, this is just unacceptable. This is just completely inexcusable. and all right, let's talk. So you can obviously break this down into a bunch of different sectors as far as what has gone wrong here. So let's start with the players.

What has gone wrong with the players this season? Well, obviously the roster just really wasn't very well constructed, but we'll get into that when we talk about the front office. So let's look at the players who have underperformed. There are, there's Blayn Bogdanovich, for example, who has been everything you want him to be on offense, but even worse on defense. like worse on defense now to the point where it's like what can you really do last year it was okay definitely a pretty darn bad defender but at least you know it's the kind of guy where it's like bad but not tragic this season has been tragic and that's a problem especially with the guys around him alec burkes was a very important role player last season and into boy on and burks the pistons loaded

a great deal of their of their high level perimeter shooting like there's not a single young player on the team right now, who you can look at and say, well, that guy's a pretty darn strong shooter. I could say Marcus Sasser comes closest as far as perimeter shooting, and he's been incredibly inconsistent. So the Pistons loaded a ton of their shooting into the veterans. Alec Berks, who was very important last season, even for a 17-win team, but they were really going to be leaning on the guy this season because they really need to decept off the bench. Has been absolutely in utterly terrible since his return from injury, like genuinely horrible. I would say without equivocation, one of the worst role players in the league.

he's he's always been a below average defender who is you know who has gotten generally gotten it back to a you know to a significant degree in last season to a to a very significant degree on the other end he like boy on has been worse than usual and he has been horrendous on offense he can barely hit the broad side of a barn so to speak and just has almost reacted to his slump by increasing the degree of difficulty of a shot attempts which obviously doesn't help and has just led to a bunch of ways to possesses. sessions. So when he decides to create something out of nothing, well, sometimes he can make his way recklessly in and flail around and get to the free throw line. But for the most part, it's bad pull-up

threes, bad pull-up twos, and bad lay-ups. And he has no compunctions about continuing to just take them. Alec Burks them very sour down. The guy seems very, very cavalier about what's been happening with this team. He's a journeyman. It just seems like he's really just in it. I mean, anybody's in it for the salary, but the guy really doesn't seem invested at all. Just, you know, take his paycheck, do whatever to do what he wants on the courts, and just move on to his next team, which seems like basically a certainty at this point. I'm surprised if he even ended the season with the Pistons, though, given his horrendous slump, I mean, what are you really going to get for him in a trade?

Whatever, you take it at this point. Also really, really rubbed me the wrong way last night that's in the midst of, you know, after the Pistons had just set the record for most consecutive wins, most consecutive wins, most consecutive losses in the season. And Alec Berks had just had, despite scoring 15 points, yet another whole. horrific night. Just, what, maybe horrific is exaggerating, but another really bad night on the court in the midst of what has almost invariably been very bad nights on the court over the course

of those 27 games. And a night in which he had played badly on defense, he had played badly on offense. If you believe, Monty Williams, he had hijacked a play at a critical point at which a red-hot Kate Cunningham should have gotten the ball to take a three in the final minute. And Alec Burks decided to take a, you know, a long contested pull. up three instead. Just decided to completely hijack that play at a key moment. So, and then after the game, like, I get it. We don't expect guys to be completely miserable, but, like, I don't really get the sense that he really cared all that much. Just smiling and laughing and joking with, you know,

with players from the Nets and whatever, get rid of this guy. Just get rid of him, honestly. Like, go away, Alec Berks. Isaiah Livers, who the frontoff, nobody should have depended upon this guy because he can't stay healthy in the first place, but T has been one of, you know, you can make a case for worst rotation player in the league, a guy who has averaged about 20 minutes per game and has generated nothing all season at least Alec Berks had his first, what was it, three games in which he did well. And at least he can handle the ball and get to the free throw line.

I mean, this is basically the positive comparison. of Alec Berks to somebody, which shows you how bad Isaiah Livers has been. And again, this guy should have just been a, this is a peripheral role player. I mean, he was a guy to Pistons. You picked him up in a second round. He was a guy who conceivably have gone late first as just a solid 3&D character, steady guy, whatever. If he hadn't been injured two seasons in a row,

hadn't sustained significant injuries two seasons in a row in college and wasn't expected to miss significant time going into his rookie season. But he's been horrible. He has provided nothing. He has been comically bad from the floor. Just can't score. Provides just nothing. It primarily plays power forward as averaging about two rebounds a game in 20 minutes because he's just not a good rebounder.

The guy is relatively slow and can't really jump unless he's got a full head of steam. Hasn't been good on defense. He's been absolutely incommically bad. James Wiseman and Marvin Bagley, I mean, they've only been disappointing in the sense that you would hope for something out of them. And while Bagley has not been horrible, he definitely has not played at an, you know, at a solid NBA role player level. And James Wiseman, aside from some bright spots, has been really horribly bad. I don't know why he was even playing yesterday when the Pistons were trying not to match the losing streak.

But that's just a, that's a different subject. I mean, beyond that, like Cade had his struggles earlier in the season. Ivy's kind of still getting it together. I don't really blame him. because he was just buried for much of the season, you know, buried either, you know, on the bench or just in terms of the usage he was getting. And I don't think really has been allowed to establish a rhythm all that well. His defense doesn't prove, but it's still pretty poor. But you know what, Jaden Ivy is in his second season? You know, he's still a young player who is still developing.

Sasser, I don't, again, don't think, well, you would expect more out of him than he've gotten. He's just been basically Langston Galloway. Incredibly hot, some games and just terrible, most of the remains. in terms of a shooting and has been utilized in a way as a backup point guard as a handler that he's just not suited for he wasn't suited for that in the NCAA is certainly not in the NBA Assar Thompson you can't really say it's been disappointing because he came in as an incredibly raw project player on offense very polished on defense but not on offense at all as a score should never have been put in a position for these minutes Joe Harris you know frankly

was just washed anybody if the front office was expecting something out of him then they were incredibly negligent. And then, of course, we've got the injuries to Jalen Duren, which really hurt because you have three centers behind him, all of whom you traded for, and none of them is really fit to, as you traded for the pick for Isaiah Stewart, none of whom is really fit to step into the starting lineup. Jalen Durham basically just checks certainties. I mean, Jalen Duren is strong in certain things. He's weak in certain things, particularly his defense right now. But he just, he just ticks certain boxes that nobody else in the team does at his position. So is he great right now. I would say no. It's his absence felt, absolutely. Again, young, raw, room to grow.

And so it really hurt being without him. And you got to wonder what the training staff was doing, really, because, I mean, he looked, he was at his best in those first three games. He messed up his ankle in game four. He was brought back and looked bad for a bunch of games and then was left out for possibly a long enough time that he was able to actually recover. Whatever. I know there are plenty of thoughts people had, you know, to be had. Just speculation, of course, about the training staff. You got, and then Monti Morris,

who this team really could have used, but again, the roster should never have been in position to collapse without Monta Morris for his, for his, not collapse, but for his absence to really be that big of a deal. Killian Hayes,

you can only be disappointed if you are actually hoping for anything from Killian Hayes, who was actually improved, but was starting from such a comically low level. Again, arguably the worst big minute player in the NBA the last two seasons. It's really bad, aside from very short stretches that don't last.

But I guess he managed about five weeks last year and sandwiched that in between a terrific start of the season and a very bad end to it, which is everything aside from those five weeks. And I think I've covered everyone. Yeah, did I mention Isaiah Stewart, who's just largely been played out of position, you know, a position that he's not suited to play? And we can bring that, you know, that can just bring us on to the front office. and like the front office did a criminally bad job of building this season's roster. If everything had gone right, this roster could have been fine.

Or even if some things had gone less wrong, this, you know, this season could have gone better or well enough. But this roster was just positioned to struggle. I mean, all right, I'll just go rant mode here, I suppose. Yeah, this roster was meant to turn the corner on the rebuild. It was meant to be an intermediate step between development and a focus on winning. it has been a complete and utter disaster. So let's just take a bit of a deep dive into it. And here's one thing that I want to clarify.

I know that Troy Weaver has been catching a lot of flack and he deserves it. Don't get me wrong. I don't think it's going to be until after these guys are gone, assuming that Weaver is gone and assuming that Stifonsky is gone and assuming that Arntellum is gone. And if one of them falls, it's going to be Weaver. And the other two, I think, are just pretty entrenched under an idiot owner. Ed Stefanski, who I think was actually important in the Pistons pivoting to rebuild ultimately,

I think he was the guy who got through to Tom Goras. But he, to say the least, his career in the NBA has been an utter spectacle of mediocrity at best. The guy has just been immensely undistinguished, like immensely undistinguished. And I still get a kick out of the fact that he came on in part to help bring on a general manager, you know, to help find a general manager in the 2018 offseason and ended up getting himself hired above the general manager. Yeah, but the role of Arndelam and the role of Ed Stefanski and even the role of Tom Gores have been kind of nebulous. You know, of course, Gores has influenced. How much is he involved himself?

That's during the course of this rebuild. It's hard to say. We know that Arndelam has influence. We know that Ed Stefanski has influence. I believe both of those guys technically outranked Troy Weaver in the organization. And so who knows what that we've gotten is just exclusively Troy Weaver. versus just a confluence of three guys and the product that has resulted. But in any case, let's look at this.

All right, we start off with ball handlers. These are guys who can reliably penetrate, break down defenses, and create for teammates. You've got Kate Cunningham. Okay. Doesn't really require a ton of the way of explanation. It's had his issues but turnovers, but this is a guy who is tapped as the weed, you know, potentially superstar ceiling. And I think is showing us a lot of that weed, uh, weed score and playmaker for,

hopefully for a contender going down the room. Okay, great. Montemores sweet, one of the better backup point guards in the league. Okay, that's good. Jaden Ivy, who is much more of a secondary handler, he can do it, but this is much more of just the standard driving kick guy rather than an actual, than an actual sort of leader offense guy. He can do it.

It's best if you don't have to turn to him exclusively to run an offense. I think going to be very capable as a secondary playmaker, but just not all that useful in the primary rule. Or I shouldn't say not all that useful, but not suited to it, is the way I would put it. So after that, typically you have a third string point guard. you know, like a guy who can step in if one of your two primary handlers, like one of your two, you know, in this case, Kate Cunningham and Montemores, are to be injured, a guy who's like, okay, well, you know, respectable third string guy.

And one of those guys has injured, at least he can come in and be the lead handler for the bench unit. Well, that guy just doesn't exist because the front office just decided not to bring one in. And my feeling is that this front office, which has just had a very, very, damaging. It's just really, really placed far too much priority on projects at the perpetual expense of bringing on reasonably reliable role players. Probably decided against getting that third string handler because they wanted to see what they had in Marcus Sasser as a handler. Marcus Sasser, who was not a primary handler or a gifted playmaker by any stretch in the NCAA as a fourth-year player. It's very, very unlikely that a guy like that is going to make that leap in the NBA

against drastically harder opposition and see what they might still have in Killian Hayes. This is the same Killian Hayes who, again, one of the worst big minute players in the NBA over the last two seasons has been completely ineffectual as a handler because he absolutely cannot penetrate. The guy cannot do anything to break down opposing defenses and they absolutely and utterly do not take him seriously. You'll never see Killian draw help on the drive because any defender knows that he's almost certainly going to be able to stay ahead of Killian, who just,

sucks at getting past guys and is going to almost inevitably just pass the ball or settle for a difficult mid-range pull-up or if by some incredibly unlikely chance he manages to get past his defender, he's just going to take a tough shot. He's not ever going to challenge the rim protector what I want to actually beat the guy. So this is a guy who is basically solely useful as a short-drive playmaker and a passer around the perimeter. So if you were really relying on him to take that huge step as a handler, then, yeah, just don't know what to tell you on that one front office. But yeah, it would really, really not surprise me if that was the reason why they did not go out and get themselves a reliable secondary handler, a front office who is just, which is just constantly wanted to see

what it has in project players, you know, which again is just heavily prioritize those projects at the almost invariable cost of acquiring reliable role players. I mean, again, that's been a pretty big problem at this point. Not because investing in projects is, is a bad idea for a rebuilding team, but because you're investing in too many of them. And also because every single one of them has failed, which is a very record that's very impressive in all the wrong ways for a front office that has gone for a lot of projects. So whatever the case, this has been severely harmful to the bench unit that there is really no respectable, like actual lead handler who could, again, you're not going to have a great third string point guard, but he's going to be

something and there is nothing even a, you know, even approximating a third string point guard on this team. So the bench unit has been perpetually, you know, and this is particularly a problem for a dumb coach who constantly turns to the bench, you know, who is regularly turned to all bench units to the team's invariable detriment. It has nobody who can weed that offense, period. You got Marcus Sasse or he can't do it. You hand the ball to Alec Berks. This season, he's not going to do good things with it. And actually, you know, incidentally, the Knicks, Tom Thibodeau, a couple seasons ago, tried to use Helic Burke's the starting point guard. The guy's just obviously not capable of running an offense.

Last season, he was a great shooter. He still wasn't capable of running an offense. Not that guy you want to have. Not a guy who's going to realistically penetrate in and help you to break down defenses. If he's penetrating in, it's to take a shot. Maybe he'll make it. Maybe you won't. He's not a guy who's going to lead that offense, who's going to get into the interior

and start the process of breaking down defenses. So Marcus Sasser, who just can't penetrate, can't do it. And he's indifferent at best as a playmaker for this. position. And Killian Hayes, again, not going to do it either. And those lineups, those all-bench lineups this season in which he has been the lead handler, they have, again, just been very, very easily kept to the perimeter. And that's a recipe for failure. So the front office, despite this being a season in which they wanted to turn the corner, still decided again to go with what do we have from these young players rather than signing anybody reliable. And okay, well, great,

good job, guys, because you decided to neglect this very, very basic roster requirements. Well, that guy just doesn't exist. So if we got to turn to the bench, you know, turn to the bench unit as a whole, or if we just don't have Cade on the floor, well, you're just kind of shit out of luck. I mean, Ivy, you can use him that way. Again, you can do it in a pinch. You ideally want him in the starting lineup as a secondary handler.

There's also the fact that Monty Williams just wasn't willing to trust him with that until four games ago with Killian A's out. But again, that's just you don't want to have to turn to staggering your, you know, your starting back court. So that's where we are as handlers. the front office fielded a grand total of three guys who can achieve penetration, two of whom are actually primary handlers. You know, Boyon can penetrate but can't create for teammates. That telly was inadequate by any measure and left the team a single injury away from being desperately short of qualified handlers.

You look to your other guards. Killian, I'll just summarize again, one of the very worst big minute players in the NBA over the past two seasons and absolute catastrophe is a score over those two seasons, a player whom this roster should never have relied upon four minutes. And the failure of the front office a sign of depth handler made that necessary, though obviously, you know, Monty Williams took it way further than was reasonably needed, like way further. You know, never a good sign when your new coach is, you know, immediately invested in a pretty darned ineffectual player. Again, killing hamstrung as an handler by his near total inability to penetrate and break down defenses. He is treated, he's a completely unreliable perimeter shooter, can't space the floor, can't finish plays from

the perimeter. He is treated as a joke on the drive and at the perimeter by opposing defenses. and basically he's only going to score for you if he's, you know, consistently hitting his difficult shots in the mid-range. And those are tough shots and not enough. So him being a talented passer doesn't go nearly far enough. You know, just being a talented passer is not going to take you far. And this is just not, it's never going to be enough for anybody in today's NBA. So again, I don't think that the front office saw Killian getting his final chance as, you know, in case of injury as a bad thing.

if that's the case, that is a bad thing that the front office thought that. I don't think it's out of the question at all. Birx, can't play in the front office for this one. Burks has been a generally reliable veteran shooter throughout his career. Last season was a career season, and I think it wouldn't have been realistic to expect him to replicate that, but generally a reliable shooter, who unfortunately ended up mired in a horrendous slump.

That one I don't lay at the feet of the front office. However, again, they just went with too many young players. I mean, there's not a single strong shooter. amongst these young players. Cade has not been as good as expected, but they have not drafted a single player. I mean, Sasser, I think, was supposed to be that, but as a, you know, is a bench player,

as a shooting specialist. It's just you brought on all these players high in the draft, and basically you didn't draft a single guy outside of Cade who had his one season at Oklahoma State. He was basically the only guy you can look at and say, okay, well, this guy's going to be a strong shooter. The other strong shooter that you drafted, period, of course, Sadiq Bay, is, well, we all know what happened to him.

So this team ended up depending upon Alec Burke's, Blambeugdonovic, Joe Harris, because it seems that they actually expected minutes out of him. And Isaiah Livers, who again, not reliable to even be on the court, and Marcus Sasser, a rookie for way too much of the shooting. Anyway, Burke's just having a bad season. Really, really, really, really has hurt for that reason. And then you get to Marcus Sasser, undersized rookie shooting specialist. Again, if the front officer was relying on him for anything beyond situational shooting, they really hadn't done their homework because he was not a, an acceptable lead handler by any stretch at the age of 22 and the NCAA, which, though it's a strong league in its own right, is not anywhere even remotely in the same universe as the NBA.

So you take a 20, the guy who's 23 in his first NBA season, you're extremely unlikely to see that sort of improvement from him. So, yeah, had injuries in slumps not have been an issue, you know, Morris, Monti Morris and Burks would have been a fine benchback courts. Unfortunately, injuries happened and Burks was terrible. The only depth was Sasser, who was untested, and Hayes, who has been repeatedly tested and found wanting, and that continued into this season, where in which he had actually, again, noticeably improved, he has still been awful outside of a few strong games and just doesn't have the tools right now.

We go to our forwards. Boyon, strong three-level score, a veteran and a veteran stabilizer on offense, who's actually really done good things for the offense and good things for Kate Cunningham. Solid starter, though, his defense this season again has taken a dive. I didn't really expect that. I just thought it would be as bad as it was last season, but it's been worse. Isaiah Stewart, you all know how I feel about that. Far too slow to play power forward in today's NBA.

The too big model was dumb in the first place, and sometimes I wonder if this front office looked at Cleveland and at, and at Milwaukee, and saw, wow, size, and then just missed the point that you have, Janice is some of your size, and, you know, Evan Mobley is some of your size. are the guys who are playing at Power Forward. And then you have Isaiah Stewart. I mean, this is utterly, if that's how they thought, this is utterly failing to see the forest for the trees.

Guys who can play Power Forward who have their weaknesses that have to be compensated for and Mobley still really needs to learn how to shoot. Isaiah Stewart is, obviously, I don't need to say this far, far from either of those players. Isaiah Stewart is far too slow to play the position, is far too slow to play any weak side rim defense, is far too slow to do much of anything on offense. And he's just, he's not a power forward. And the front office's decision to shoehorn him into that position anyway because we feel like it.

And because, well, if, you know, this is going to work because we say it's going to work, even though there was virtually no hope of it working at all, has made him into the worst big minute starting power forward in the league. Basically probably the worst starting power forward in the league. But either way, you know, period, given that, you know, at this point, Jaron Jackson Jr. has been starting a power forward next to Bismack, Bionbo of all players. Yeah, so you could call Stu easily the worst. The front office put all of its eggs into the basket of its plan, such that it tore a hole in the starting lineup at the position.

That's that, you know, you don't have another guy who can really step in and be a starting power forward. You could have Boyon if you had somebody at Small Forward who was capable of starting, but the persons don't really have that either. So put all of its eggs, again, in the basket of that plan, and did not even bother to field a single true power forward anywhere on the roster, and you can define a true power forward by some bare minimums, number of, one, large enough to defend the beefier players of the position, and that's true of Stewart. Can shoot reasonably well, that's true of Stewart. And this is key. You can move around the

floor at a reasonable speed by the standards of the position, an area in which Stuart absolutely and utterly falls flat, because he's unbelievably slow by the standards of the position. So kind of screwed yourself over in the first place by deciding to do that. Also, again, projects. Let's take a, you know, a solid backup center, and we're going to, you know, instead make him into a long shot project power forward. Oh, and by the way, we're going to a field too long shot powers, you know, two long shot project centers behind him. Asar Thompson talked about him, should never have been in position. This roster should never relied upon him for big minutes of any kind because excellent though

he is on defense. And though I have to say that with proviso that in this league's, you know, in a league in which switches are heavily prioritized. And it's just, it's very possible to get your elite defender switched off of the guy you want him to be defending. Just individual defense in the perimeter isn't as strong in the NBA's that you to be. But nonetheless, excellent defender, I think he's going to be elite in that capacity, is incredibly weak as a score in the half courts in a league in which that's just a massive disadvantage.

He was inevitably going to be a drain upon the offense. There's no way of getting around that. Isaiah Liver is an unproven role player because he just hasn't gotten to play enough time because he's been regularly injured. Who got injured again this season should never have been relied upon for anything given that there was such uncertainty as to his health. you know, that can just end. We can just end that explanation right there without even talking about the fact that he's also been horrible. Joe Harris, formerly one of the leagues elite shooters as of last season, washed up beyond the possibility of providing any productive NBA minutes,

thanks to multiple ankle surgeries. He is way too slow to operate productively in an NBA offense even and is a complete catastrophe on defense because he has no hope of keeping up. And again, if the front office traded for him, not just for the draft compensation and to reach the cat floor, which they could have done by signing bliers, but also to actually get good minutes out of him. Then these guys were not paying attention or they had their heads in the clouds.

Joe Harris was not spry as it was. He was a relatively slow player even before his injuries and even slower afterward. This guy was never going to provide good minutes and they spent $20 million, two-thirds of their cap space on him. He had two future second round picks in exchange for wiping out that $20 million in cap space. And then depth power forward. Again, just like depth point guard. This would have been the contingency, excuse me, for injury for depth and or for Stewart not working out as starting power forward, though that was a virtual certainty.

But as in the case of that third string point guard, the front office just didn't bother. I guess, okay, well, you know, if it doesn't work out with Stewart, though, again, they made no plans for that at all. I guess we'll just see what Rivers can do for us. I guess we'll see what a Sart Thompson can do for us. You know, this is really a season in which we want to be turning the corner, but, you know, we want to see what we've got. You know, again, this is like just wanting to go ahead and do something, but utterly failing

to commit to it, you know, just wanting to, you know, just wanting to stay in the middle, basically have your cake and eat it too. We want to feel the roster that can do better this season, you know, for which we're going to need to have some sort of solidity and reliability. But we also want to see what we can get from our projects. It's like, good job. How do you think that's going to work? So basically in your forward, strong one way forward, excuse me, strong one way forward, backup center tap to the pie in the sky project, starting power forward, a rookie who was overwhelmingly likely to be a half court liability on offense. A chronically injured role player, a completely washed up veteran and no reliable death to speak of.

These players added up to $55 million against the cap, and only one of them was actually reliable. That's Blion. And then we get to the center is Duren, rich in potential, but still raw and still in need of seasoning, especially on defense. He was relied upon to play defensive anchor anyway and was given no help. He was flanked to the front court on defense by a project power forward in Stewart, who's an average defender at the position, but is completely unable.

Certainly willingness isn't an issue for Stewart ever. but completely unable, given his absolute lack of athleticism for the position, and he just, he can't provide help side rim defense. He's just too slow to get there, and he can't jump when he gets there. And then $40 million of two forwards, excuse me, Boyan and Joe Harris were off the fenders, and then a rookie forward who admittedly can't help a lot on defense, but is a major drain on the other end.

So Durenz, Ronis was known. He's young and you typically want a player in a situation who's being asked to play defensive anchor to have some help, that apparently wasn't in the cards. No allowances were made for the possibility that he may not be ready to play that role entirely well, or that Stewart might not work out of power forward. You know, that's just kind of an issue.

I mean, Duran has really struggled on defense. You know, if you put a guy out there who's as raw as he is and who still has a ways to go as a defensive decision maker, and you put him out there and, yeah, you've got a SAR. And sure, there's that. It's just that a SAR causes so many other problems, and then you put a guy power forward who can't really help him much at all.

and then you run a not so great defensive scheme, but we'll talk about that one when we get to coaching. And then we look behind him. And again, you have Marvin Bagley, or just again, rather. You had Isaiah Stewart here as your backup center. You decided to make him a long shot project power forward instead. And you decided that once again in a season in which, oh, we really want to turn the corner.

You know, we really want to start making more wins. But we want to keep prioritizing. You know, we want to keep giving minutes to projects. because we want to see what we got with these guys. You take, you know, so in that case, you kick Stewart's power forward, and you feel too long-shot project centers in his stead. Marvin Bagley, who I don't think is ever going to be able to play center, and I've felt that for some time now because the guy just doesn't have the defensive processing to do it.

That's just sad, but I think it's just ultimately true at this point. He has been awful always. So you decide, okay, well, you know, either he or James Wiseman, who is a blank slate just was absolutely terrible in terms of basketball decisions. making on both ends last season and was one of the worst players in the league during his time at the Pissons. You know, it's going to be one of these two guys, a guy who just doesn't have it in him to play center on defense and is just going to unhinge the defense. And, you know, we don't know if he can shoot yet. There's really not much of a passer. And oh, he gets completely bodied by bigger centers.

So we got him or James Wiseman, who may or may not be actually absolutely terrible. And those are going to be our backup centers. And, you know, I guess, you know, we're just going to have one of them on the floor in the instance that Jalen Duren gets injured well. We either keep Isaiah Stewart a power forward or make him a center. And then, you know, we got to play one of these guys' big minutes anyway. You see where I'm going here? I mean, very young and still we're all starting center and two project bigs. One of them, a virtually hopeless interior defender and the other fully unproven on either

end. I could have had a decent starting power forward. Somebody, not decent, whatever, Sintorian Prince for all I care and a solid backup center. But instead, you've got a pointless, pointless, pointless. pointless, incredibly, incredibly, incredibly unlikely to succeed Project Power Forward and two project centers. This team has traded for four centers. All four of these centers were traded for. You know, Stewart and Durham were those draft picks were acquired by trade. Wisman and Bagley, of course, were acquired themselves by trade. And you've got Jalen Duren, who is, you know, a decent,

I guess you could say at this point even, you know, like a decent starting, he's a decent starting center for a team that just wants to, as pretend, you know, that has ambitions of just being decent. And then you have three other guys who, you know, one is far from preferable. Isaiah Stewart is a solid backup big, but it's far from preferable to step into the starting lineup. And they have two other guys who are just bad backups. So again, well, we want to make a step. But, you know, we also want to just continue trying to develop projects.

You know, we're not going to go with actually reliable quantities. So, yeah, turn the corner. We still want to depend, you know, and also they're going to depend far too much on offseason progress from the young players. So instead of, oh, well, we want to put these young players in a position for maximum success and also for the team to be, you know, for the team to have, you know, these reliable quantities that it's been lacking for several seasons. Oh, well, screw that, actually.

We actually do want that, but we want to have our cake and eat it too. And so, you know, we're going to spend those minutes on those project players. We are not going to stock the roster with reliable veteran contributors in functional depth. We're not going to have anything like, you know, enough creators in this. this team. We're not going to have enough handlers. We are not going to have stabilizing guys on defense. We are just not going to be able to go out there for the fourth straight season. I mean, even though we should have realistically been, you know, at least building a half decent team around K for the moment you've got on the team, doesn't need to be a good team, but guys

who can at least space the floor for him, we're not going to do any of these things. We're just going to continue doing what we've been doing and we're going to hope that it works. And, oh, by the way, and though I think this is a large way ownership, we are going to hire a coach who is not suitable for this team. Let's talk Monty Williams. So the front, you have the players who have to go out there and perform and then you have the front office, which fields, you know, which constructs the roster. And then you have the guy who is going to put it all together and is either going to get, basically is going to determine what you get from the team in terms of utilization and manifestation of that talent. Your good, you know,

your good coaches are going to get more than the sum of their parts. They're going to maximally utilize the individual talents of the players, and they're going to utilize the players as a team in a way that is synergistic and this gets you the most out of them. And then you have, you know, coaches who are not quite so good individual player utilization or at making these players work together and just aren't, you know, quite as, quite as brilliant minds as the best coaches in the league and just aren't quite as good as these things at these things. And then you have the players, the coaches who are actively going to get less. They're going to flunk at individual player utilization and get less out of the individual players. And they are going to flunk at overall

team utilization. And they're going to get less than the sum of the parts of the individual players. And Monty Williams, after 10 years, nine years, and whatever came before, because I wasn't watching the Pistons enough back then to really give you a solid accounting of those coaches before Stan Van Gundy. But after nine years of two coaches who absolutely got Wes out of their rosters, the Pistons now have Monty Williams, who really just combines all of the bad all the downsides of those two coaches without, say, the locker room upside of the likes of Casey. I'm not going to positively relate Van Gunny to anybody because I think he was just absolutely outrageously bad in his last two seasons.

Anyway, I'm not getting into that. You have Monty Williams who has been absolutely and utterly and completely terrible. I'll say it. I mean, of course, deserves to be said that, yes, this is a bad roster. You know, there's no doubt about that. The roster has major issues. Monty Williams has taken it and gotten about his last. little out of that roster as you possibly can.

Coaches need to come in and do what they can. I mean, they are given a roster. Their job is to get the most out of it that they possibly can. Monty Williams has taken a bad roster and done shockingly bad things with it. You don't lose 27 straight games unless you are actively trying to do so, or, you know, unless coaching has played a role. This is not a team that is trying to lose. And just Monty has been a complete catastrophe.

But I was looking forward to most of the season was the Pistons having a coach who was at least competent and did not make his team worse like his predecessors. Instead, we got a complete screw-up who's just incredibly bad coaching, has done a disaster. He's just done a disastrously bad job on the way to beating the all-time longest losing streak in a single season. And he seems utterly and completely clueless as to how to extricate the team from the disaster that he has helped create. And it's anybody's guess as to, well, is this guy just quiet quitting? because there's no way that a coach is as stupid as to say and do the things that he has said and done with the pistons. And he keeps coming out and saying, oh, well, you know, like he said after last game that I probably play the biggest role in this. And, I mean, he certainly plays a very big role, but he's not doing anything different.

He has just continued doing stupid things. Like, you know, a super simple-minded offensive scheme. Like, oh, you know, with so many plays and a complete reliance upon, oh, hey, Cade, just take the ball in the pick and roll. And while everybody stands still, I want you to go and create offense. know, an offense that wax really any sort of dynamism, in offense that, like, Isaiah Stewart, for example, his power forward has very little to offer, but like Monty Williams, this is the case of taking something bad

and making it even worse and getting the least you can up with a limited amount you have. His solution for Isaiah Stewart at Power Forward is BPJ Tucker, go stand around on the corner, have fun, just hold your hands out. Go and watch Isaiah Stewart, like when Kate is on the drive. Literally, the guy the vast majority of the time is just hanging out in the corner, you know, in these plays in general, just hanging out in the corner and holding his hands out.

I mean, at least use Isaiah Stewart for off ball screens, clear space, you know, utilize even the slightest bit of innovation in how you're coaching these players. You know, even just a little bit, you know, do anything with him. You know, instead you're plopping him in a PJ Tucker role on a team that, I mean, on a team and like, goodness, like PJ Tucker, no team can have a player can have a player playing that role unless it has like a bunch of superstar talent that frees him from needing to do anything at all, but, okay, teams are going to leave you open, and he hit your corner threes. And even then, he was very, very minimally used in terms of doing anything else by his last

two coaches, Mike Budenholzer, who is an obsolete coach, and certainly not of anything that could even remotely be referred to as an innovative offensive mind. I don't think he'll coach in the NBA again, and he shouldn't because he just can't do it on offense, and Doc Rivers, who requires no explanation. So, yeah, if you just want that example of a coach, take it. a guy and getting less out of him than he could. It's just an incredibly simple, simple-minded offensive scheme. Another player, like Assar Thompson, again, very raw, gets the least out of the guy that he possibly could. The vast majority of the time, his plan for Assar Thompson is just camp

at the three-point line and provide as little as you can as a result, and, you know, and just be the maximum spacing liability you can for this team, because they're happy to leave you open, and they're also very happy if you get the ball and you're shooting the three. Again, I shouldn't be out there for big minutes and any sort of critical points, period. But Monty Williams is doing his darnest to get the least out of him he possibly can. In terms of Cade, well, let's start the season and give him the worst spacing we almost possibly could. Because why would we want to run a functional NBA offense and put this guy into position to succeed? Hmm, well, why bother?

You know, why should we do that? Jade and Ivy, well, we're just not going to utilize you really at all to your strengths, period, until absolutely forced you. And it may have been that the owner said that I had to do it. Um, you know, boy on, sure, he can do his stuff and he's doing well on the pull-up twos, but, you know, we're just going to make that a staple even, you know, just, you know, we want you to go out there and just, you know, take some difficult twos. We're even going to run some sets for you and other guys that are going to create pull-up twos in the interior. You don't have Devin Booker and Kevin Durant and

Chris Paul on your team anymore. I got news for you, Monty. It just doesn't exist. You know, these guys aren't here. We don't have, like, the guy just seemingly is incredibly unable to, to operate in any situation in which he doesn't, like, have elite talent to lean on. Like, when you look at, he made the playoffs once as coach of the Hornets. You know, when they were still the Hornets, he had Prime Chris Paul. He made the playoffs once as coached the Pelicans in his final season. There he had Anthony Davis and arguably his best season in the NBA to date. Obviously, with the Sons, you know, Devin Booker became a superstar.

You trade for Chris Paul, who was past his prime. It's still a very good point. It's still a very, very good point guard. You ultimately bring on Kevin Durant and Monty's offense in last. season's playoffs was, hey, one of these three guys. And then ultimately, he actually had to do a little bit better of a job of actually coaching an offense after Chris Ball went down. But it's basically, well, we want you to take the ball and create in the mid-range. Have fun. You know, we're not going to try to exploit Jokic in the pick and roll. I'm not even going to

use Ait and who has his issues, but, you know, can still do things. You know, just do that. And that series would have been an absolute utter joke if Devin Booker hadn't gotten nuclear. This is also a coach who seemingly lost the locker room within a month after his predecessor had held together teams that had done a lot of losing for years, whose players have looked completely beaten since mid-November, who are consistently playing hapless, hopeless, headless basketball. All of them look, basically all of them, except for Jaden Ivy, who I think, you know, again, you expect a young player to make, you know, to make his improvements. And Jaden Ivy was very aware in the offseason that he needed to do better on defense.

Even before Monty came out, he came out and said his defense had been terrible and needed to do a lot better. Jaden Ivy is a hardworking player. He was not phoning in on defense last season. He was just making a ton of mistakes. I do not weigh his improvement at Monty's feet. I don't think tough while was necessary there. I think Jaden was already going to be working pretty darn hard, but just about everybody on the roster has been made worse by Monty's coaching on defense. Even have guys, for example, last night the likes of Isaiah Stewart was making a bunch of mistakes. Stewart does not make mistakes on defense. His team is completely discombobulated. Monty's scheme sucks. If he wasn't running, like if he wasn't running the switch everything

garbage that he ran at times this season, including with Jalen Duren out and with just a roster that was completely incapable of running. And he's been running this idiotic drop defense scheme, which makes life more difficult on everybody. And it's like, you know, willingly surrender shots to guys who are capable of grading in the mid-range. Or just backs the center off into a position in which he's just basically in no-man's land and not accomplishing anything.

He's not defending his man and he's not defending the, you know, the guy on the ball either. But this team just looks far more discombobulated on an offense than it ever did under Dwayne Casey. It was a fairly solid defensive coach. It's awful. I think that, I mean, like, it's, like, I thought that this season we were, like, Moni has his shortcomings. He has a ceiling in the playoffs.

We've seen it. He's just not all that innovative. He's not all that able to make the necessary adjustments. He's not that much better than Duane Casey in that respect. And his pedigree is actually, you know, what he's accomplished in the postseason is not all that much more than Casey has. that was the thing coming in was that Monty, yeah, he had made the finals in a season in which he got ridiculously lucky with injuries in which the sons could very, very likely have gone out in the first round if Anthony Davis and LeBron James had been healthy. If Jamal Murray had been healthy in the second round, if Kauai wanted to have been healthy in the conference finals, you know, then Monty Williams would have a less impressive playoff resume than Dwayne Casey, whose team's invariably underperforming in the playoffs. But I thought, you know, okay, we're at least getting a strong regular season coach. He's been the opposite.

And he seems to have absolutely no idea what he's doing wrong and how to do better. And frankly, I just think he has a ceiling. I don't think, I think you put a better roster under Monty Williams and he's still just going to have a ceiling. He's going to do better because he has more talent to work with, but he's not going to be a good coach. I think that aggressively mediocre is the best we're likely to get. And like, I think that I've seen arguments to the effect that, oh, well, you know, this is a bad roster or nobody is making this a good team.

It's true that the roster is bad. It's true that probably no coach could make this a good team. But that's not what's at issue here. The what's at issue here is that Monty Williams has gotten far less than you could reasonably expect a coach to get out of this team because he's done almost everything wrong. And he's gotten far less to the point of this team being actually historically bad and actually agonizingly bad. And historically bad, we're talking this roster has performed as one of the worst rosters in the history of the NBA. You don't get here without horrible coaching. So the thing is that my misgiving.

primary misgiving about Monty Williams coming in was that, well, I don't really want a veteran coach who's got established flaws that aren't going to go away, and those flaws are primarily in the postseason. But it's okay, he's hired. All right, well, at least we can expect a strong regular season coach, and we'll see what happens when the Pistons gets to the postseason, and maybe after four or five of those seasons, he's gone. But now we've got a bad regular season coach, and if we look forward to the Pistons making the postseason, which hopefully is not out of the question in the next few seasons, then we're also going to have Monty Williams having prime in the postseason as well.

So we have those, we have that to look forward to as well. So it's just been a complete and utter an absolute disaster. Like you can come back to the Ivy thing, which was just such utter nonsense, like prioritizing Killian Hayes of all players over Jaden Ivy, who has a lot of promise and this team needs to succeed. And he need his production in the now as well. That is like hold an investigation level stupidity, which smacks of like the sort of rigid, I know best, this is my vision.

he's not part of it, and that's that sort of a stupidity of the Doc Rivers School by a fossilized veteran coach. Again, the way that he was brought on on the team in the first place was completely ridiculous. You do not get a dedicated, hardworking, and invested employee by saying, well, I know you don't want to coach this season, and you might particularly not want to coach for this team, but I'm just going to throw larger and larger and larger bags of money at you until you conclude that it would be financially irresponsible for you not to take the job. And by the way, it's all guaranteed. Like I was talking to my cousin about this and explained in the situation.

He says, that sounds like an ideal situation for quiet quitting. Like, you know, I think that's what happened with Dwayne Casey as well, assuming Dwayne wasn't actually being on the level about wanting to take time off and then being convinced by Tom Gora's vision of the team. And I find that hard to believe because Tom Gores is, I mean, does this require, I don't think this requires any explanation. Tom Gores, if he has had a vision for that team, for that complete mess of a roster that was never going to accomplish anything.

You know, I don't think he's that good of a talk. I think Casey took on the job because he was given a lot of money. I mean, $6 million a year for five years, significant amount of money. But Casey took the job and actually did it to the best of his ability. Best of his ability wasn't very good, but he never gave less than 100%. So with Monty, it's some combination couldn't tell you what's what of ineptitude and not caring. He's going to get the money anyway. Couldn't tell you what that combination was.

Either way, it's just really bad for the pistons. Because it's some part's ineptitude and it's some parts just not care. bearing, you know, whether it's 100 of 1 and 0, the other 50, you know, 50, 50, whatever. It's a bad equation for the Pistons. And the guy who hired him needs to cut his losses and say goodbye to Monty right now because this is a disaster. And if I think if Monty was a first year coach in the NBA, he would have been gone already. I'd be surprised if he weren't.

But, I mean, at the very least, he would be at risk of being fired because, yeah, this has just been a disaster. And so let's talk about the guy who is at the top of the chain here. ultimately the top of the fault chain, the guy who hired Monty Williams, who has been in charge of this team for 13 plus seasons now, a span in which it has been the least successful franchise in the NBA. That is Tom Gores, Tom Gores, who at this point, with Vivek Ranadive of the Kings, having gotten out of the way and hired good professionals, and with Michael Jordan being gone, is now occupying the bottom of the absolute bottom tier of the league in terms of owners with OMW, Tom Dolan, excuse me, only James Dolan, pardon me, for company and James Dolan is not sole company you want to be in if you are anybody. Tom Gores has been incredibly ineffectual as an MBA owner. He has consistently hired personnel who have done poorly. He has involved himself, you know,

consistently meddled in decisions despite being incredibly amateurish and apparently just not getting it. He has continued to do so despite the fact that all of his meddling has led to bad things. And again, this is the guy you have owning the team. I don't think there's much to say beyond that. But let's go and look at this hilarious mess of a press conference he put on last Friday. And I don't know how many of you have seen Billy Madison. It's an Adam Sandler movie from, I think, the late 90s. But it's got a famous line.

Like the main character is competing in the climax of the film and this academic decathlon for control of his father's company. And has asked a question about the Industrial Revolution and gives this kind of meandering and very kind of like feel-good answer that has nothing to do with the subject at hand, but gets the crowd-sharing. And it's at this moment that you expect the guy who's proctoring the competition to, I don't know what you're expecting him to say, but at this point the guy puts out the line for which the movie is best known, which is Mr. Madison, which you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard.

At no point in your rambling incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. This is how I felt after seeing what Tom Gores had to say. It was awful. This was not a press conference where you're going to see the owner get up and say, which is what you want to see in this situation, especially from a guy who's tenure as owner of this team.

Like, he's willing to spend, I'll give him that. But his tenure is the owner of this team has been an unequivocal failure. Again, we're in season 13 at this point, or is a season 14. and, you know, one season with a winning record, just constant failures. But he comes out and says, I think the fans deserve an answer, and then says absolutely nothing beyond that. Well, you know, we expect some results from, you know, from the front office going forward. And it's like, okay, well, I hope you've learned from your time with Joe Dumars and Stan Van Gundy

to not back a front office up against a wall and say, I want immediate improvement of your fire. That's just a recipe for front office making panic moves in an effort to save its job. It was Monty Williams. Again, I'm fairly certain that Tom Gores was the engine behind just throwing enormous sums of money at a guy who didn't have anything close to a whole fame, I'd agree. This is in an effort to shortcut this rebuild and completely ignoring, presumably just like with Casey, which coach of the year was probably what he looked at and had one coach of the year because he had a modern offense forced upon him by the guy in charge and planned by his assistant coach and then flopped horribly again in the playoffs. you know that got left out. I think this time, oh, Monty Williams, well, he took over a rebuilding team and got to the finals quickly and let, you know, just completely let go of traded for Chris Paul. So I feel relatively certain that he was the guy behind this hire. So he came in and just made absolute apologies for Monty Williams worse than apologies. It's not like, oh, the guy is doing the best he can. It's, oh, Monty is so good. You know, he knows what he's doing. And, oh, he's even open to talking about it. It's my goodness, you know, the coach is open to talking to the guy who pays his salary and who hired him. Wow. and, you know, we can't blame Monty because he's new to the team. Nevermind that being new to the team doesn't excuse the fact that he's doing things that are objectively stupid. And, you know, but no, we can't put that under shoulders because he's new to the team.

And he judges himself every day. Well, wow, judging himself every day, that really makes a difference given that we see no meaningful changes. And then he just continues to do stupid things and coach like an idiot. It's like, okay, cool. And then what it comes down to also, you know, in response to the sell-the-team chance. And, you know, these are new. I mean, we're well over a decade into Tom Gora's tenure. I don't think we've heard sell the team chance before.

And despite the fact that the Pissants are where they are at the end of, you know, the four-season rebuild. And, you know, at that point, we're just on the verge of setting, at least, you know, of matching the record for most consecutive losses in the season. And our right now, again, have performed as one of the worst teams in NBA history. He comes out and he says, you know, so those chance are getting pretty loud. And he comes out and says, Oh, well, they're ridiculous. Like, basically, you know, other than winning and we should win more games, we do a lot in the community. You know, if you put aside, you actually said this.

If you put aside winning, we've made a very big difference in the community. It's like, great, Tom. Making a difference in the community is a big deal. Good job. You should do that. I think anybody with your amount of money should be doing that. We should all be trying to make this world a better place. Cool.

If you put aside winning. I mean, this whole community stuff should be separate. You don't put aside winning. Your team exists to win. You are the owners so that you can set people up. Well, you're the owner so you can make money, whatever. But if you're serious about the team, you know, as the owner, you are setting up the team to have maximum success, and the team has been an absolute unequivocal failure under your tenure.

So can this team succeed with Tom Gores in charge? Hmm. Who knows? That's kind of, that's a perpetual question. Bad owners can do a tremendous amount of damage to a team, a tremendous amount of damage. They are the guys who make the ultimate decisions. And if they make bad ones, then that's a problem. And we had thought that Tom Gores had just pulled, you know, it had pulled them to just kind of finally got in the picture,

and I'm going to hire competent professionals and get out of the way. Has he hired competent professionals? Who knows, given the state of the front office? And in terms of hiring money, Williams, the answer is no. And in the first place there, that's, okay, well, we're going to take this veteran coach who hasn't really actually been all that impressive and we're going to give him six years and a massive amount of money, despite the fact that we also know that he has known flaws. Like, this is the guy who's owning the team.

And it's an open question as if the Pistons can actually succeed. So that's how we've gotten to where we are now. Some underperforming players, though the roster at Warridge is a bigger issue at the hands of a, what it's turned out to be a severely underperforming front office that we may find out after the fact if all three of them are ever gone was completely dysfunctional in terms of its decision making, just in terms of how the three of them work together. We've got an inept coach who's being paid a lot of money in a long-term contract, and we've got an owner at the head of it all who has been completely incompetent during his tenure. All right, so we've talked a lot about

how we got to where we are. The question is, what do we do and where are we? So one thing that's definitely been a positive over the last month or so, well, actually for more than a month now, excuse me, has been Kate Cunningham, whom I continue to maintain as a superstar ceiling in this league, and he's shown it lately. I mean, he's, he's been vastly more efficient. You know, there's still some work that needs to be done in his three-point shop, but he's been vastly more efficient. It's been scoring a lot of points. He's been much less turnover prone. He's just been considerably better overall and is in some been very good and excellent on some occasions on offense though sometimes he still has pretty rough defensive games and he's been doing it in a

very difficult situation he doesn't have much help on this team he does not have very good spacing he has a coach running him into very difficult sets but at times he has been genuinely phenomenal in that included the game against the nets last night's game against the nets so there's that positive you know you've still got some solid young talent on this team jayland durin is still very promising Assar Thompson if he gets his shot together. And for whatever reason, I'm feeling fairly confident about that. I think some guys just never learned to shoot. Most guys, well, I want to say most guys, but a lot of guys can do it.

If anybody can do it, it'll be Assar Thompson, who's incredibly hard worker. If he gets that shot together, then he is in the tip-top ranks of elite three and D players in the league. You have Jade and Ivy, who I continue to think has a high ceiling on offense as a scorer and as a secondary playmaker. So you've got those four guys. Isaiah Stewart, I guess, his future on this team. I mean, he's a solid veteran stabilizer and strong backup center.

It's not unsalvageable. You're just far, far, far, far, far where you would like to be at this stage of the rebuild. And I think if you build a better roster around these guys and you see some improvement by these guys, then you, I don't think that the rebuild is unsalvageable. Now, what can you do right now? So one thing I want to say, I think that the Pistons making a costly, short-sighted trade just for the sake of improving the product of this season would be the worst possible outcome. Like we want this team to ultimately be a contender.

Moves that utilize significant assets should still only be made for the sake of acquiring assets, you know, acquiring players who will be sufficiently able to contribute into the long-term. Long-term impact moves are the only ones that should be made. So you probably have to wait until the off-season for that. unfortunately, you still not have your first round picks. Maybe that's not the worst thing in the world right now because you don't want to be making a big trade, like a really big trade when you don't have a team that's ready to take the next step.

When you don't have a team that you know is ready to take the next step, when you still have a lot of unknowns as far as what do we have here. So that sort of big trade, yeah, you don't want to be making it when you have that amount of uncertainty. But if the pistons did have a golden opportunity, they'd have trouble actually capitalizing on that right now because right now all they have to offer is one first-round pick and one swap. And, man, these are at times when you really want to be very careful about doing that.

Like particularly right now, you trade away a 20-30-29 first-round pick and a 2030 swap or vice versa. With the, you know, with a team whose future is very questionable, that might hurt down the line unless those picks are heavily protected. And if they are heavily protected, then they're significantly less valuable. Though picks traded in, well, most of the time, picks traded in, you know, first-round picks traded in, you know, first-round picks traded in big trade. have some sort of protections on them. But as we've seen, for example, in the case of Houston, those protections are not always very high. It really depends upon the team that's receiving the picks,

but they're willing to accept. So what do you do? I think you hope to make some moves around the margins this season to at least improve the pistons. Like, I don't think, some things happens that were unlikely to happen. Alec Burks completely collapsed. Isaiah Libbers got minutes and produced absolutely nothing.

Of course, Monte Morris was absent. Like a lot of things coalesced. just in addition to the bad roster construction and the bad coaching, a lot of, you know, some certain things on a bench coalesced to just simultaneously to have maximum impact and cause maximum harm. You know, I think that if you, like, let's say you just, and again, this is just subject, all of this is subject to what the Pistons can do with, while paying a minimal cost. You know, that's the thing with any moves that have to be done on the periphery this season.

And that makes it very hard to talk about them because who knows who's available and who knows who's available at what cost. And as we get closer to the trade deadline, I mean, there are contenders that are going to want to trade for solid postseason caliber role players. So the Pistons will need to be, you know, bidding against those teams. So realistically, I mean, the Pistons don't need to go for postseason caliber roleplays at this point. They just need to go for guys who can give better than what they are getting right now. And that shouldn't be, I mean, that would be unsurprised if that is doable. Move Isaiah Stewart back to backup center.

Find something in the arena of an acceptable. option to take his place in the starting lineup again, just by the bare minimum criteria that I that I went over earlier, though even that might not be possible because you don't want to be actually paying a lot for a guy like that. So maybe you're stuck at Stewart to power forward this season just because it's the best you have available. Just find some half decent role players who can we shoot the ball and don't play awful defense. Even if they can just shoot the ball, that's going to be a big step. I mean, it may be that just what we have to hope for. I had hope that what we have to hope for with some stretches of actually good basketball from this team this season. And it's possible

that we'll still see that. But I think that the goal on the front office's mind at this point, and I think this is reasonable, is to simply not continue to be this bad. But they have to accomplish that by not giving up significant assets in any situation, aside from one in which the return will genuinely help them going into the future. Because the idea is still to build a contender, that is still the goal, or at least that should still be the goal. All right, folks, So that'll be it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed listening. Keep your heads up.

It's a very, very tough time. At the very least, I know this is a meaningless platitude that Pistons really only have, they can only get better from here. But I don't think this is an unsavageable rebuild. This season has definitely been a severe blow. It has been an incredible disappointment, and it has been something in the realm of a humiliation even. And now I've gotten to the end of this sentence,

and I realized that I didn't know how I was going to conclude it, because typically there would be a butt at this point. There are no butts in this situation. Things are in a really tough spot. Changes will need to be made. And all we can do is fans is keep the faith and hope for the best. So as always, folks, hope you're all doing well. Thank you for listening.

I'll catch you in next week's episode.