Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 180: Mailbag!

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

This episode responds to a variety of listener-submitted questions. Thank you to everyone who sent in a question!

Welcome back, everybody. You listen to another episode of Driving to the Baskets. My name is Mike, and this is a highly caffeinated Wednesday mailbag edition of the show. I wanted to do something to change the pace a little bit, and so here we are. This episode may be a little bit shorter than usual. This is a midday Wednesday, and it don't have quite as much time to record as I usually would. Of course, I've said in the past that an episode is going to be short, and then it ends up being an hour long, so we'll see how it goes. I want to thank all of you, whether on Discord or on Twitter, who submitted questions for the mailbag. and let's get rolling. So I'm going to do these in no particular order, just kind of how I have them written down.

Number one, why Isaiah Liver is suddenly so bad this season and why is he still seeing minutes? So my theory on Isaiah Liver's, and I believe this to be the case, is that his cumulative injuries have just caused him to lose a step. He had two pretty significant injuries in his final two seasons in the NCAA, one of which caused him to miss the vast majority of his rookie season in the NBA. And he's had injuries since, of course, the most recent, a great three angle sprain, which kept him out for the first segment of this season. Isaiah Livers was not a fast player in the first place. He was a markedly below average NBA athlete, not catastrophically so.

But, and it was going to be fine if he was just shooting threes, attack, and closeouts and playing decent defense. I mean, Isaiah was coming in and I think it was overwhelmingly likely to have the ceiling of just a basic bench role player. and from all that I can see in the current season, he has very much lost a step, a step that he could not afford to lose. That's certainly manifesting itself on the defensive end on which he is granted making a lot of mistakes, but also he just can't keep up. You run the guy around a screen, he's going to get there late, and he's just not going, it's just, it's going to unhinge the entire defense. He can't really rotate very well either. If you make him attack a close out in any capacity, he's likely to get just jetted past. he's, it just all looks very bad. And from all I can see, he's now just too slow to play defense at the NBA level.

This happens to players. If you lose a step in the NBA against the best competition of the world, that's going to have an amplified effect. And if you didn't have a step to lose, like livers, who just, you know, as I said, was not very athletic in the first place, then that's a big problem. As far as on offense, why is he shooting so badly all of a sudden? Also hard to say, does injury have something to do with that? who knows, whatever the case, I'd say he has unambiguously been one of the worst players in the NBA this

season. We're talking rotation players, guys who are actually consistently getting minutes. He has been awful on offense. He has been terrible on defense. He offers very, very little. Why is he still getting minutes? I think you can weigh that at the feet of a coach who has just done a persistently bad job at everything this season and has a penchant for making horrible decisions, including lose-lose decisions, as you have in the case of Isabel Lerbers. in which event it's do we, you know, we're going to be, we don't have any particularly good options here, but are we going to give the minutes to a player who is better than Isaiah Livers and or a player who is young and could benefit from the experience? Or are we going to give the minutes to a guy who, once again, is unambiguously one of the worst players in the entire league,

who is not going to help us do anything in the now and almost certainly has no future with the team? Because when you're Isaiah Livers and you're 25 years old and then you've reached this point, which case, you know, a point at which you're probably hobbled per good. And again, your ceiling was not particularly high in the first place. And once again, you're 25 years old. Why give this guy minutes? I would say in this particular instance, I mean, with livers, I would give those minutes to Stanley and Moode A over livers.

I don't see that he could possibly be worse. So it's an absolute lose-lose situation with livers. Why is he still getting minutes? Frankly, because his coach is an idiot. I mean, I can't think of a single competent coach in the league. and we can just lump, oh, maybe Monty is actively making the wrong decisions because he's quiet quitting into the realm of incompetence because it's just doing a bad job either way.

No self-respect incompetent coach would look at a player like livers who has been unambiguously horrendous and say, I want this guy to start just because I'm throwing things up against the wall. And if he said that he just didn't really even think about it, well, that's the only context in which that would make sense because any coach who had put even the slightest bit of rational thought, into the equation would never have made that decision, let alone just continued doing that, continue doing that, excuse me, even though livers has been an unambiguously bad in the starting

lineup as well. And also he did it after a Celtics game in which Livers had been completely horrible. And after a Raptors, a game against the Raptors in which Knox had been pretty darn good, Levers had played for no reason in the final minutes and had been completely awful in the final minute that almost saw the Raptors come back and win the game. And then a game against the Rockets in which You know, Knox wasn't good, but he was one of the only non-bad players in the lineup, and it just doesn't make any sense. So why is he still seeing minutes? Why is he starting, even though he's playing relatively small minutes?

Because the coach is stupid. Or the coach is incompetent, whether it's deliberately or because he hit his head really, really, really, really, really hard in the off season, and we just didn't find out about it. Sorry about the repetition. Like I said, I had a little bit too much caffeine. Why has Wiseman seeing minutes? I think Wiseman is seeing minutes because probably, I would say primarily, at the behest of the front office who made a completely silly and ill-advised and nonsensical

trade for him when they already had three centers and another project center on the team. I think, I continue to think that this was primarily motivated by Troy Weaver. Who knows how much Arntellum is actually involved in management. I think it's been said, though I didn't listen to this firsthand. I think it was by James Edwards or Vince Goodwill on their podcast. Yeah, I haven't listened to this firsthand that Stefanski is now primarily just the involved in the business side of things, but who knows, we just can't see behind the scenes. I've got to think that Troy Weaver probably is making the majority of the decisions.

Tom Gores said in his largely incoherent press conference that he has been involved as well, that he and Weaver have made these decisions in lockstep. Who knows? Whatever the case, my supposition, and sure this is just speculation, is that Weaver, who really liked Wiseman at the 2020 draft. And according to the information we have, had Wiseman at number one on his draft board, and I'm really hoping that meant number one amongst players he thought might be available. Because my goodness, if this guy actually thought that drafting, I mean, if you're going to draft

a center number one in a draft, I mean, he'd better be pretty darn special. And we didn't even have data on Wiseman because he only played three games in college. And my goodness, the thought that he might have drafted Wiseman over Anthony Edwards and one of a ball, yikes. So in any event, I think he was just really high on Wiseman. And that Bay got traded primarily because Wiseman became available and also because Weaver apparently thought that Isaiah Stewart was going to be a power forward bait, continues to just be a good shooter this season and a bad defender.

Nonetheless, the kind of player, you know, power forward-sized shooter, the Pistons could really views this season. So, Wiseman getting minutes. I think the front office wants to see if they can get a return on investment. I think Monty Williams as well, who knows, throwing stuff up against the wall, just saying it can't get worse than Bagley. I don't know. That would be, I would say, arbitrary and highly inconsistent from a coach

who certainly hasn't prioritized development, who has been perfectly willing to just pump minutes into bad players and neglect development and just say, well, guys like livers and Hayes and whoever else are just going to get minutes while we've got Sasser and Ivy, well, we're just going to bury Ivy for the first 20-something games of the season. And Sasser, we're not going to bother playing him when other guys are playing really badly and so on and so forth. Yeah, Monty Williams has been incredibly arbitrary and in a mentally insincere in explaining his actions. So probably a combination of both. I understand that the front office wants to see what they might have.

and Wiseman, on the other hand, and yes, this season is lost. On the other hands, this season has also become an outright humiliation in a way that I don't think is particularly good for the players. Certainly not good for the fans, but that's a different story. And Bagley is bad. He is nowhere near as bad as Wiseman. I will say with Wiseman, he is so bad on a regular basis that him putting together a quarter or a half of basketball in which he just plays at a third string level is cause for note, is cause for yay, good job James. His standard is, that low. For the most part, he just makes incessant mistakes and his decision-making is far below NBA par. The average player, the average rotation player, the average solid rotation player, put it that

way, which is the vast majority of rotation players in the league, may not be good, you know, or somewhere between, you know, above average and below average if we're talking at, well, we're just talking like role players, not starters. No, of course, as we can see, some starters are very bad, but, okay, you look at self-respecting teams or decent teams. The average, role player will range between above average and below average, but their common state, their default state is an NBA player. James Wiseman's default state is drastically below NBA caliber. So if you look at him play, if you look at any one of his games on any given night, his baseline is incredibly low. So when it comes to a team that just desperately needs wins,

it would just be good for the soul, so to speak, and you're playing James Wiseman over Marvin Bagley, who is bad, but nowhere near is bad. I don't think that necessarily makes sense. I do to fix things this season. So I don't think there's any real easy way to fix things this season. I think that certain things just are as they are. But what would I do? Number one, fire Troy Weaver. There's no reason for Troy Weaver to still be in his role anymore. He has proven himself drastically less than competent in putting together this unmitigated disaster of a roster. He should not be in charge of trying to make changes to improve it for two reasons. Number one, again, he's proven himself to be less than competent. And I don't think should be trusted with that. Number two, backing a

GM up against a wall and saying, well, we want immediate progress or you're fired as a recipe for him to do stupid things to save his own job. You do not want to create the conditions for that. Tom Gores did that with Dumars. He did that with Van Gundy. He should know by now that it's a terrible idea, but he's a terrible owner. I don't think he's really necessarily learned at all. He seems to have learned extremely little from more than 12 seasons of being the owner of the least successful franchise in the NBA. Monty Williams, I would fire as well. You already know how I feel about that. whether he is just quiet quitting or has just somehow transitioned from competence to absolutely disastrous, I don't, I mean, he's just been terrible.

I mean, he's been bad in every way. And I don't see him just substantively improving. If you want to improve this season, just find an interim coach. I don't, I've seen Casey raised. I don't really particularly want Dwayne Casey back. And I would guess that he does not want to come back. My impression was that he wanted to be done with head coaching and was happy to move into a role in the office so he could spend more time with his family and just have, I mean, being a head coach

absorbs your life. I mean, that is, that is an absolutely life controlling, it characterizes your life during the regular season. You've got more time off in the off season, but it's, you know, you're on the road constantly, you're working constantly. You know, if you want to have a job in which you, I mean, he's going to get the money anyway, you know, if, like, I'm pretty sure that's, that that was the deal that he signs that extension. He was he was going to get the money anyway. I think it was a, it was a joint decision in which case he's still getting paid. his extension for this year, I could be wrong about that. But just find an interim head coach of some, just, I mean, go for a competent assistant

from another team. It doesn't have to be Kevin Olly. And I think that could immediately improve the team to a degree, obviously to a limited degree, given how bad the roster is, but to a degree to an important degree. And Monty Williams is doing damage in the now and I think damage to the future as well. He has been a complete catastrophe. He has taken a bad roster and made it a great deal worse. As far as fixing things elsewhere, I'll talk about.

trades a little bit later in the episode, but it's, you know, you can, obviously firing Troy Weaver is not going to improve things in the now, firing Monty Williams and replacing it with somebody who's considerably more competent. Would? I don't think it's going to improve things to the point where the pistons are actually going to be a good team, but I think you just have to get them out of here at this point. And yeah, I'll talk about trades a little bit, a little bit later in the episode. There are roster moves you could make. For example, stop using Killian. Killian is terrible. The jig is up. He's drastically worse than an NBA player. He is not NBA player. He is the poster child for getting chance after chance after chance despite not

deserving it at all. Enough. Stop. Signed like a half-decent third-string point guard of the G-League. Make it Mac McClung for all I care. Killing can't can do hardly anything right. He is legitimately horrible and there is no reason for him to be playing anymore. There is no reason for him to be playing over Sasser. There is no reason for him to be playing, period. He sucks and his chances should have long since run out. Instead, you've got a coach who's starting him and making the primary handler while he's on the floor. I said in last week's episode, I mean, Keith Smith, he wrote an article about what he thinks the person should do, did not agree necessarily with all of it, though I thought most of it was

solid. One of the things he said was, you know, if Monty Williams is not willing to stop playing the likes of killing, you've got to get rid of him, so he can't do it anymore. The thing is, I think the front office was perfectly fine with the way things went the season. They obviously didn't want somebody to get injured, and want one of their point cards to get injured, but they arranged it such that Killian Hayes was inevitably going to be the third-string point guard in the event of an injury to Cade or an injury to Monte Morris. They positioned themselves for this. I think that they didn't think it was necessarily a bad thing for Killian to get yet

another chance after an absolutely obscenely bad last two seasons in which he, I think, demonstrates there's a mountain of evidence that he could not be a capable backup point guard or a capable NBA player at this point. Should never have been in line to receive those minutes. So better coach, better rotations, replace Killian, make what moves you can on the margin. Stop playing Isaiah Livers. I mean, there's a small things. and when it comes to trades, just that that's pretty circumstantial.

What does Asa need to do in order to be worth the pick? Oh, and I should note that, you know, fixing things, that kind of depends upon your definition. And this is one such thing, like, what does the SAR need to do in order to be worth the pick? I've mentioned this before. Just when it comes to Assar this season, like actually, you know, utilize and coach your young players, which Monty Williams does not do. He's pretty much forgotten about Asar, who admittedly has very, very, very little to offer in terms of half-court offense. He came in incredibly raw in that capacity.

but you can do whatever you can to capitalize on what little he does have to offer and to try to mitigate the damage he does to the offense and he does a lot of damage to the offense. Instead, his coach does nothing to coach him and literally instead just makes him maximizes Assar's damage to the offense. It's like, okay, you're just going to stand on the perimeter where, number one, you can't shoot, and defenses are happy when you shoot because you're terrible at it,

like genuinely horrible at it. And so we're going to maximize you as a spacing liability also, because as long as you're on the perimeter, they can just easily sag off of you and go bother somebody else. And just we're not going to make use of anything. We're just going to make you do maximum damage. Not ideal. Obviously, also, I mean, you look at situations like the game against the jazz in which Isaiah levers is garbage on offense and is not respected by defenses. It is not significantly better than a Saar as a shooter because, you know, he's a really bad shooter. You don't want either of them taking those shots.

and is literally worse at everything else, like genuinely everything else. Worst defender, worse rebounder, can't vertically space the four, not athletic, worse passer, and so on and so forth. It should be trying to give run to whatever you can, you know, for a deferred player like Assar Thompson, for any of the young players, especially given that the players playing ahead of them are terrible, like actually terrible and a middle future with this team. So what does Asaar need to do in order to be worth the pick?

Shoot the ball. If the SAR can be like a 37% three-point shooter, just a reliable guy when left open, then he could start for a championship team. Then you have a very, very strong defender, a strong rebounder, an elite NBA athlete who can space the floor, who can finish plays from the perimeter, who's going to remain a strong cuter, who's going to remain a vertical space, or who's going to remain strong in transition.

That's all he needs to do. Now, where this pick went terribly wrong this season is that Assar Thompson was coming out of overtime elite as an extremely raw half-court scorer. He was bad, straight bad as a half-court score against overtime elite competition. He was terrible on driving layups as, like, I think, below 50%. He obviously had no in-between game. He was a terrible shooter. You know, notwithstanding, that's just brief Nova.

He went on in the playoffs, which you can call the playoffs in overtime elite anyway, which was absolutely the definition of a statistical blip. So he should not have been relied upon to be really playing any minutes at all. Instead, because the forward goer was terrible, and there were some injuries. He ended up in line for big minutes. and he should not have been relied upon, just period, for any of that. He should not have been in mind for minutes for which he was not ready. And if you have to, you put him in the G.

You can let him get significant run there and work on his offense there. Instead, I mean, he's still with the NBA squad and just really not being used much at all, and he's not really getting any sort of good experience, and this is the worst of both worlds. So he's got to develop as a shooter. For whatever reason, I actually feel decent. I actually feel fairly confident. I think it's just largely intuition and knowledge of his work ethic. There have been certainly guys in the league who have had a very good.

work ethic and just kind of get their shot together like andre roberson for example so it's not a given but i actually feel like assar will will report back to the team next season and be an improved shooter if i would be surprised if he's a good one and hopefully by year three he's he's really improved things as a shooter he he gets his handle together as well and wants to finish through contact better i mean his handle is pretty poor and yeah his finishing through contact is pretty poor too except in transition but as long as he can shoot then then you've got a strong pick there what should the lineup in the system be with Kate out. Well, the system, that's more of a complicated question. I'll go with just the lineup here and again, the system. Actually, where would I start there? With the lineup, you want to give,

the starting lineup I would run would be Ivy as the primary handler. Sasser for very, very secondary handling because he's just not good at it and spacing and also because you want to get him the minutes. Run Kevin Knox at small forward because, or excuse me, that would be Blyon at small forward. He's been playing mostly small forward. They got a little bit mixed up in my head because would often play power forward in Utah. So you have boy on at whatever forward position. Play Kevin Knox at the other one. He is not good, but he's the best the pistons have to offer at the position.

And then you have Jalen Duren. I would start playing Bagley over Wiseman at this point. I mean, it's just that the team needs more wins and he could have been the difference just in terms of being bad rather than horrible in some of the team's close losses. And then your bench sucks. Like I said, if you can replace killing with anybody who might even be reasonably competent of the NBA, you do that. put in a moody in place of livers.

I mean, again, your bench is going to be pretty bad. I mean, you have Alec Berks, yeah, who's going to play, who's going to give you some decent bench minutes. He's really gotten out of his slump in terms of a shooting, though. Like many players in the roster, he's considerably worse on defense than he was last season. I mean, the defense this season is completely headless, you know, in a way that last season's unambiguously bad defense was not. And Burks is one of these guys who's, you know, for whatever the reason, if that's it or not,

he's stepped back from below average to bad. But, you know, in that event, you've got insert point guard here, Berks, Amoudet, I don't know, beyond that. I mean, Joe Harris, I guess, if you want to play a five-man bench lineup, but you really don't have to. That's just Monty Williams choosing to do that. And then Bagley, sure, your bench is going to suck. But, you know, that is what it is. And you can make it suck less by not running all bench lineups. But, again, there are just certain things that are going to happen that are going to be bad, that are going to keep happening as long as this coach is still the coach.

And speaking of this coach, still being the coach, I mean, you do have instances in which a front office will step in and say you have to do things differently. And I would not at all be surprised if Tom Gores had stepped in and said to Moni, you have to find out, you have to stop doing this with Ivy. What Moni did with Ivy was, you know, well beyond the realm of complete and utter stupidity. And he continues to marginalize Ivy. For example, until Kate got injured, it's like, well, Jaden, sorry, you can't be on the court without Kate. I think I went over that a couple of times. Like through, it was like seven games, however many games, Ivy had been as a story. starter. He had spent something like 15 minutes, or I think it was 18 minutes without Cade. Not because

Monty was trying to maximize the times two with him playing together. It's just because he was almost literally not willing to put Ivy on the floor without Cade, even if that meant having Cillian his primary handler. So we can give those minutes to Killian and give that time to Killian instead of giving it to a prospect who could really use the reps, who's better at it, and who has a future with this team and is drastically more importance than a fourth year bust who almost certainly has no future with this team and maybe not in the NBA. With the team of once in one, close games lately with Stuart in the lineup. That's a possibility. So you've all heard me say, you know, speak my opinion that I think, I don't want to call what I say objective,

but I think there's a very strong argument to be made to this effect that Stewart was, you know, the worst consistent big minute power, starting power forward in the league. Would the Pistons have done better? It depends. I think that's against Toronto, if you have Stewart starting and, and you know, have Knox, who actually was pretty darn good on both ends in that game. He was the only player on the Pistons who could slow down Siakum, for example, and Stewart isn't really super suited to that. But even if he is, knocks it a better job and then provided a great deal more on offense than Stewart does. So it's possible that the Pistons lose that game if Stewart is in the lineup.

But you look further, like in terms of close games lately that Stewart has missed, the Utah game, I think that could have been fixed with just better coaching again, Monty Williams, by nature, and he has never been good at this in terms of late game management. Or if it's by design and just making terrible decisions, it really blew that. game. He really blew the Golden State game. With Stewart being in, have mattered in the grand scheme of things there against Golden State. That one, I would say, is possible. Now, if you have Isaiah Livers getting minutes over Kevin Knox in that instance, then the answer is unequivocally no. Kevin Knox, who really should have been on the floor down the stretch of that game, Monty Williams,

went with an absolutely ice-cold Boyon instead. Not only to do that, but he even called to play for Pulleham Bogdanovich, a critical play late in the game, Blonde, got stuffed. I didn't go to Cade, who was, you know, his usual self in the late game. So might they have won the Golden State game? If you just replaced livers with Stewart, I'd say that's possible. The Utah game, if you just replaced Stewart with livers, I'd say that's possible. Now, the Boston game, if you just replaced Stewart with livers. Excuse me, livers with Stewart.

Again, that's possible. So, you know, I would say it's a possibility. again, it comes back to this being a coach who at times seems like he's doing everything he can to lose games. So just changing that one factor, you never know. But he would have helped. That said, helping. It's just so hard to say with Monty Williams is kind of like the chaotic factor here. Why have things turned out this way?

And or why God is another question. Terrible ownership and competent management. Outrageously inept coaching. Those three things. I mean, and some player underperformance. I think a lot more could have gone right. And with this roster, which was just immensely poorly built. I could talk about that at length.

And, yeah, obviously, I have talked about it at length. Just every sector of this roster was built poorly. And then you get a guy who has befuddlingly devolved from competent and to arguably the worst coach in the league to make it even worse. And an owner who just makes all the wrong decisions. I mean, I just keep coming back to the way that Monty Williams was hired in the first place. And I did not want a flawed retread with fossilized flaws, or just flaws that he was never going to improve upon,

and who was inevitably going to have a mediocre postseason ceiling and continue to maintain that Monty Williams would never have made the finals in 2021, if not for injuries, key injuries to the Lakers in particular, but also the Jazz and the Clippers. I think that the Sons would have been out in the first round against the Lakers if Kauai, excuse me not Kauai, if LeBron and Anthony Davis had been healthy, in which events Monty Williams postseason accomplishments would have been less than that of Dwayne Casey at this point, and Dwayne Casey was a bad playoff coach.

Well, bad playoff coach, Monty, I don't think is as bad a playoff coach as Casey, but shares some of his flaws, particularly in the realm of unimaginative and bad at adjusting. Not quite as bad at those, but still bad. I just didn't want another coach like that. I didn't want another retried who was flawed. But nonetheless, the way that Tom Gora's went about getting Monty to join the team would be hilarious. It's one of these things that would just be absolutely hilarious if the Pistons weren't the culprit and weren't suffering for it. Like, same with James Wiseman.

Watching him play would be funny at times, because he's just laughably bad at times, if he weren't playing for the Pistons. And also if they hadn't pointlessly traded a, or just very unwisely traded a viable rotation player for him. But it's like, hey, Tom, you should probably know this from all of your time as a successful, if certainly disreputable businessman. when you're faced with a potential hire who doesn't want to work for you and definitely doesn't need the money, just offering him greater and greater and greater bags of fully guaranteed money until he finally says, well, I think it'd be a little foolish for me to say no. It's not the way to get yourself an invested employee. And you're also creating the absolutely perfect conditions for quiet quitting.

Just saying, Weaver started promising and some good things have happened, like just being bad enough to get high draft picks, though obviously it's a very low standard, just that Tom Gores up until, up until the start of this rebuild, up until the beginning of 2020. When he finally got the picture, I was just not willing to let the pistons rebuild. He also employed bad coaches, bad general managers. So some of it has been an improvement, though certainly the pistons are at absolute rock bottom now. I mean, this is absolute rock bottom in terms of season performance. Who knows if Tom has been involved in decisions that have made it so?

I think Weaver has made plenty of bad ones. and it's, I mean, it's kind of befuddling how he found his way to where things are right now. And then, I mean, you could say injuries, but it's just Monty Morris. I mean, if not having your backup point guard is enough to unhinge your entire team, then obviously you've got much, much, much bigger issues with the roster. How many games will Monty ultimately coach before he gets fired? Depends on the aforementioned very bad owner. I don't believe Tom Gores is likely to make a good decision here.

I mean, what I feel is the right decision, which is just getting rid of. of this catastrophically bad coach who, I mean, it's hard to comprehend that a coach may be actively trying to get himself fired. What other explanation is there for a guy who was limited, but certainly competent, now becoming utterly incompetent? Whatever the case, is Tom Gores going to be willing to take the hit to his ego and to cut his losses? Does he have the acuity to understand what the situation is in terms of money not being so good, as he's put it, but actually that he's been a disaster? That's a different story. In terms of the money, yeah, I mean, I mean, you obviously don't want to give up that amount of money of what was until Greg Popovich signed his extension.

The biggest contract for an NBA head coach in the history of the league, despite that coach having a very not particularly impressive history. And it's now number three because Eric Spolster signed a very highly deserved, like I think eight-year, $120 million contract. Spolster best in the business right now, I think. I mean, that's, yeah, he's just amazing. Fantastic coach. So, I mean, you don't want to have to give up that money.

and pay for a replacement as well. On the other hand, I mean, you might find the Pistons actually losing more money in the long term of Monty remains the coach. I mean, you're going to make quite a bit more money if you actually have a good team, one that people like to watch, and ideally one that can really improve and do well. And I think Monty Williams is going to put a perpetual ceiling in what the Pistons can do. And this season, I don't doubt, has been a financial hit. But, you know, I can't really speak to that. Whatever the case, if you want a successful team, you'll do it.

And, yeah, $13 million is quite a bit of money. If you want to contextualize it against an owner who's worth, I don't know, something in the realm of $10 billion, also it's basically the mid-level exception, the non-taxpayer mid-level exception. So it's a lot of money, but it's not bank-breaking. Of course, it's not my money, but it's not bank-breaking. And if you're Tom Gores and you're actually serious about wanting this to be a good team rather than just being obsessed with you know best, I think that would be the right decision to make. because it is Tom Gores, you know, you'd really like to think that he has learned over the last 12 plus seasons of being the least, of owning the least successful team in the entire NBA, times, you know, a period in which he has constantly meddled. I think basically invariably to the detriment of the team, I mean, if you'd like, you'd like to think that he's learned, but it doesn't really seem so. So how many games will Monty ultimately coach if he's left to his own devices and doesn't take a buyout? And, you know, if the guy's trying to get himself fired, then why would he take a buyout?

Yeah, I mean, that's just a different discussion. I don't know, three seasons, I'd say he would be given, maybe four, just because Tom Gores, I think he's just going to be very slow to, you know, to make a decision that needs to be made. And who knows, maybe Monty by that point will decide that he wants to coach again. But even so, like I saw Monty as, like, I thought, it's like, okay, he was hired. I don't want him to be hired. But I think we're getting a genuinely good regular season coach here.

And hopefully by the time, it's time to move on from him, know, by the time the pistons are in the postseason, it's close to time to move on from him, or it's close to the point at which he wants to stop coaching. The reality we have right now is that he's been very bad, even if he reverts to his previous self. He's still going to put a ceiling in a distance in the postseason. That's the kind of comical aspect of things right now. All right, let's move on. Best Motor City G League players ranked.

I don't really watch the Motor City cruise, but so I would just have to guess. Basically, anybody who's on a two-way NBA contract is likely to be a great deal better than the rest the players in the team. The Gio League is actually a strong league, relatively, you know, speaking relatively to other leagues in the world that are not the NBA. Guys who are on two-way contracts are cut up of the rest, even though they're still sub-MBA player. It's very, very hard to be an NBA player. You've got to be one of the best of the best of the best. Sorry getting this memory of men in black. He's like, we're here because we're the best of the best, sir. Anyway, you've got to be amazing to play in the NBA. So I would guess that, that Amouda and Rodin and Casalone are your best

players there. Of course, Buddy Beheim exists as an exception to you've got to be a cut above the rest of the G League if you want to maintain a two-way contract. Why on earth was he had a two-way contract with this team for such a long time? That's anybody's guess. Of course, just, oh, I'm Troy Weaver, and his father was the guy I used to work for as a plausible explanation because Buddy Beham had no NBA upside. Even if he turned out to be a really good shooter, I mean, the guy did not have the athleticism to survive on defense. It would have been very, very easy to cover on offense. This organization ultimately, I think, just doesn't really care all that much about its two-way contracts. Tends to just sign guys to them for whatever reason, you know, unless of Saban Lee, who is second-round draft pick.

But just tends to sign guys to two-way contracts for, you know, whatever reason and then just forget about them. And granted, you're not often going to get good roster players out of the G-League. It's pretty rare to get a rotation player out of the G-League, but it does happen. And even just ignoring any aspect of management, even neglecting any aspect of management, that's one aspect too many. Again, when you've got just horrendous underperformers like Isaiah Livers and the team, you really should be thinking about, you know, bringing up one or two of your G-League guys to see if they could do better. But instead, we've got Monty Williams who's going to give the guy big minutes and start him anyway. And to Troy Weaver, who apparently just doesn't want to get in the way or isn't allowed to get in the way. Why is the team not sending a SAR and or Sasser to the G-League?

Again, I think that if a SAR, it wouldn't be a bad thing to send a SAR to the G-League. I think he might get his best experience there. And how he's being used now makes no sense. Sasser, I mean, there's space for Sasser in the lineup right now. You just wipe, you know, even if Kades here, you just wipe Killion out of it. There, problem solved. So does it make sense to send him the G League? I don't think so.

I don't think he's really going to be able to make substance if progress as a handle. Or if you're a fourth-year NCAA player and you still can't penetrate reliably and you are still a pretty mediocre passer, even by the standards of the NCAA, you are very, very unlikely to get much better, if at all, against drastically better competition, again, especially, you know, if you're 23 years old. It can happen. It's unlikely. And in terms of everything else, I mean, we've seen him when he's able to make shots. He was a very strong shooter in the NCAA. He's just not making his threes right now, though granted, he's not really being run on, well, I mean, he's not making his open threes either way, though he's also not being run on like rational sets,

but he's just not making his shots. But nonetheless, I mean, we've seen that he's able to do it. I don't think being in the G League is necessarily going to improve that. I think he's just been very, very inconsistent. So I don't think it makes sense to send him down there. Of course, it's better than just DNPing the guy repeatedly, which is what had been happening for a little while. I mean, that doesn't make any sense at all, let him get playing time, you know,

in a league that is better to the NCAA. So why was he not sent down to the G League at that point? Ineptitude. What would be my love poetry yearning for Casey to come back? Something I want to, like something I've seen, I mean, I've seen, you know, should we feel bad about having criticized Casey so much? No, is my opinion.

He was just bad rather than all around terrible like Monty has been. But it's a sign of just how awful it is to have, just how terrible Monty has been that I would happily, well, not happily, I would take Casey back because he's considerably less bad. He was not as bad of an encore coach. He was a bad on court coach, just not as bad. He was a lot better at the locker room compared to Monty, who seemed to lose them in early November.

They've looked defeated and headless in a way that they never did under three seasons of losing with Casey. Less bad shouldn't be conflated with good. This organization just sucks at hiring coaches. And I can't really pine for Casey to return. He was pretty bad, too. He's just insignificantly less bad. But, you know, there's where we are that I would be happy to have Dwayne Casey back

or content to have Dwayne Casey back for the remainder of the season. Would I be confident that the business would hire a good coach after that? I don't know. How do I expect the team to be play slash be coached with K'd out, heavy young player usage or heavy retread usage? I think I've been over this. mostly. I was hoping that Sasser would be starting and Assar would get more run. I suspected, strongly suspected that it would be Killian and delivers just because it's Monty Williams and

kind of in small part. This actually isn't it, but you look at this organization, which just seems to have coaches and just decision makers in general who just do the wrong thing. I mean, it's just kind of become characteristic. So that wasn't most of it, but it's certainly there. Now let's get to trades and free agents. If you're in charge, to the trade deadline is soft buying to make things easier for the kids or hard selling for assets, while consequentially making things harder your preferred path. There was also another question about viable trade targets. So it depends on who's available for a low price.

Basically, I mean, the only moves that it really makes sense for this team to make at this stage are low-cost moves around the margins, which don't cost much in the way of assets. This team doesn't have much in the way of assets to be trading. But also, it just doesn't make sense at this point for them to be expensive. a lot of them, given that they are nowhere near like, oh, we can get this player and we're going to be significantly better going into the future. What you do want is just the trade for guys who aren't going to cost you very much and who can help you going into the future. Please, no more projects. I mean, this team has already had far too many projects. And sure, you want to bring some guys

on who are going to, you know, punch above their weight in terms of what you have paid in order to acquire them. But please, no more projects. This team needs reliable role players. The issue is that if you have guys role players who are genuinely solid role players who can shoot fairly well who can play solid enough defense, then other teams will want them as well. Why would they be cheap? You go up to the deadline and there may be contenders who are willing to outbid you. I mean, what this team has to offer at this point is expiring contracts and second round picks, even though goodness knows it's already blown enough second round picks on, you know, whether the picks themselves or the opportunity cost of second round picks, which it was with

Wiseman on very, very, very little return. But you know what? And second round picks aren't worthless. But, oh, and then there were there were the four that they sent out for Sadiek Bay, for and whatever. These are the assets that you have to work with. I mean, you have Isaiah Stewart, sure. Are you really going to be able to trade him for value? And I think he still has value with the business, just not as power forward as a locker room guy in a capable backup center. And then just a tone set around the courts and a leader and so on and so forth. If you trade him, like, what are you going to get back? Do you really want to say, oh, well, we'll just take a couple of, you know, pixelate in the first round and just continue to punt stuff down

the road. I don't think that's worthwhile. you trade him for some guys who will make more sense for you, some for a role player or two, who will make more sense for you going into the future. You know, if you have that option, then you go with it. But I digress. So in terms of selling, like soft buying, if you can do it, is the question, who's available? What's the price going to be? We're not going to know until closer to the deadline. Does it make sense for the Pistons to try to outbid anybody? You know, what's the going price going to be? It's tough to say how viable soft buying is really going to be is an option. In terms of hard selling, I think there are a couple of considerations. Number one,

I mean, it's primarily Boyon and what are you going to get offered for him? And is it worth devolving from, you know, most likely from bad into like humiliatingly bad into just obscenely bad. Is that a viable option? You know, is that going to be bad for this team's young players? We've seen the value of Boyon just in terms of just providing scoring and providing spacing. Like, that's what you're balancing out. I mean, granted post-debline is like a quarter of the season. But the reality is that the team has been incredibly bad so far, and you want to make them even worse. Like, this stretch has, I got to think, not really been good for the development of players. It's because it's so hard to be playing under these conditions and constantly losing.

You want to be able to run your young players in a functional offense. You might think that that's, like, particularly important in this season when everything is gone wrong. It's hard to think of setting Caden Ivy back by selling Boyan and or Alec Berks, whom I don't think would really fetch a very significant price. This front office stupidly put a ton of this team shooting into them, and it remains that way. It's just a lose-lose situation. I mean, there's no good option either way. You keep them, the team's probably just going to,

Boyon in particular, probably just going to continue to be bad. But if you get rid of them, this team may go into, it may just reach new lows. But with this coach, what's the ceiling anyway? Like, if you can, if you feel like you can make other moves around the margins and then keep Boyon, for example, and think, okay, maybe this team can be respectable going into, going into the end of the season and then maybe like win six or seven of its last 20 games.

I mean, that's a bet, of course. But in that situation, I mean, maybe worth passing up on whatever assets you can get exchange for Boyon. It just all depends upon the price. Like if you can get a solid return for Boyon in terms of draft stock or like a good role player, then I think honestly you go ahead and do that at this point. If it's just going to be marginal, like some weight first, then I think you just look at what the situation is right now and think, okay, well, this is just not worthwhile. And, okay,

maybe we just guarantee his salary next season and trade him, you know, trade him for expiring contracts and some half-decent draft stock then when hopefully we've got more firepower on the roster. So just to summarize soft buying, do it if, do it if you can. And hard selling depends on the return. But you could do both, really. You could soft buy and still sell boy on. And if you can soft by a couple of decent players, then it probably makes moving boy on a lot more palatable. Alec Berks, like, if he can see, he's actually, I think, come out of his swamp. He's giving the pistons the offensive production they were looking for. And honestly, the offensive production, he needs to not be a major non-negative,

given how bad his defense is. I don't think that the value you could get for him would be worth losing his shooting. Like, there's got to be a solid return to justify that. At this point with the pistons, as bad as they are in development, still being important. and Caden Ivy and Duren as well, just still needing that decent spacing, just selling as many players as you possibly can, you know, regardless of the return, I don't think would be wise. Why don't be giving Asar some run at point guard for a few possessions with the second team?

What's the worst thing that can happen? So I agree with what's the worst that can happen. It's just that the possibility, it's just where Asar is in terms of can't shoot, will be given the Westbrook treatment. Far worse than Westbrook, even today's Westbrook, and Westbrook is shooting, like, by far, career low-on drives. Like, it's substantially worse, even than today's Westbrook in terms of attacking the paint.

I mean, you could try it. Like, sure, experiment with it a bit. Just answer that question, why not? Is it likely to succeed? Probably not, but, you know, give these young guys some run. You know, give them dry things. Why not? You know, let him do a little bit.

It's just that you'd be real surprised if this actually ended up turning out well. But sure, give him a shot in the pick and roll. Why not? unfortunately this coach really isn't one to innovate in any fashion whatsoever seems just very intent on following a rigid and very very stupid plan again is running a start at points likely to succeed no but i mean your yeah circumstances are what they are and the tension should be given a development but right now again it's just a lose-lose situation because the coach is an idiot if the kings had taken math runner sharp would i be still been the right pick i think so the pistons did not have a sabonis fox

I mean, that turned out to be better than anybody expected. Sabanis has just really thrived in his role. And Fox last season really improved. I mean, really made a jump. It's just the Pistons didn't have anything like a number two option going forward on the roster in the first place. Kegan Murray has a very simple and straightforward role. He almost all of his offenses assisted, shoots a ton of threes, attacks and closeouts. Doesn't really do much on his own. And just plays off of Sabanis and Fox. The Pistons didn't really need a role player like that.

I mean, a concern with Murray was always just that he just, he just, wasn't going to be able to do much for himself. They needed it better than that. It was a very different situation. It's also worth noting that right now Keegan is being well coached, you know, on a solid team, of course. Whereas Ivey's on a pretty bad team. He also had a promising rookie season, only to have the new head coach come in and decide

to just completely bury him for no reason and continue to bury him for more than 20 games when his development was very important for the team and just the scoring was desperately needed. And a coach who, as I've mentioned, just continues to refuse to trust him. Everything has gone wrong for the pistons. But no, I don't think Keegan Murray was going to be a valuable option. Solid role player. And sure, this team needs more solid role players.

But you also need high upside talent and who is going to be realistically your number two creator on this team. I mean, the team, where were you going to get that guy if not in the draft? And Ivy still remains very promising. I would say, I think Ivy remains very promising. And I think Keegan has a higher defensive ceiling than Ivy, maybe a higher defensive floor as well. But just in terms of offense, you need your super, you need your star creators. and I think Ivy still could very well be that.

Hopefully he'll be playing under a different coach soon, a coach who is actually willing to utilize him to all of his strengths and not just continue to marginalize him for no reason. And I'll just go on record. I'll say it again. I think that Jaden Ivy suddenly found himself in the starting lineup of the bigger role because Monty was told that he had to do it, most likely by Tom Gores. You know, assuming that Gores was being on the level

and who knows how much he was being on the level about in that incoherent press conference, assuming he was being on the level about talking with Monty about rotations, whether it was he or Troy Weaver, whatever. I don't think that abrupt change was just because Monty woke up one day and enrolled out of bed and said, oh, well, I guess it's finally time for me to actually start properly using the guy whom I've deliberately marginalized to a very significant degree for the entire season. And, okay, some guys to look for in the offseason.

So I went over in the last episode, guys whom I'm not really all that interested in, Tobias Harris because he just doesn't really fit this team's timeline. He's going to be heading into the age of athletic decline, and sure it'll be helpful, but another below-average defender. And, you know, just not the ideal situation. I think he'll end up staying in Philly anyway. Seacum, I just think, again, he's going to be big money. He's also heading to the age of athletic decline.

He can't shoot. He's a guy who really needs to have the offense run around him, but just is not valuable enough to justify that. I'm not particularly interested. And if we just rule out the guys who are either highly injury prone or are going to cost quite a bit of money. I mean, you have guys like Demarta Rosen, for example, why would he come to Detroit on a reasonable contract when he wants to win a championship? You know, just go and take a cheap contract somewhere else by the contender. And it's just like, I hate to put it this way, but this runoff, excuse me, this free agent class is very, very flawed.

But, you know, let's look at some guys who could be of interest to the Pistons. I'm a leak monk. I'm impressed. I thought he was really just a flash in the pan with the, with the Kings last year. but he has actually been very good, and he could conceivably price himself out. Because the Kings don't project to be a caps-based team, and Monk only has early bird rights over there, the most that the Kings could offer him in the first season of his new contract

would be about $17 million. You know, if you believe in Malik Monk, who's still pretty young, is averaging 15 points per game on high efficiency, and, you know, upwards of five assists as well. I mean, that's potentially a very strong bench player, you know, a guy who can come off the bench and give you some pretty darn good minutes, and, again, has really developed as a playmaker as well. So he's a guy whom the Pistons could conceivably be interested in, especially with Alec Burke's most likely being gone at this stage,

I would say. You could have a look at Gary Trent Jr., assuming he's willing to play a bench role. You know, he's a solid, he's a good three-point shooter, not so great inside the arc, but also only 25 years old, and might not really demand a huge salary. If you're not keeping Monta-Morris, you could look at Tyos Jones, 28 years old, and arguably the best backup point guard in the league, though I think he's largely been starting this season. He's a guy who really helped to keep the Grizzlies afloat while John Morant was out last season. I mean, the last two seasons, the Grizzlies were, I think, a little bit better without Jod and with him, and Tyos Jones was a big reason for that. Not that they don't have him. I mean, it's been real tough on them,

having John Morant out. I mean, you can look at a guy like DeAnthony Melton, but when he already have Marcus Sasser on the team, if you're pointing on using him, wouldn't really make all that much Oh, Corey Joseph, of course, a guy who can really elevate your team. I'm just kidding. I mean, Kojo is definitely very, very washed. Would he still be better than Killian? No, that's anybody's guess, but that's about as low of a baseline as you can compare yourself to. So looking at forwards, I mean, you have Buddy Healed, a guy who's going into his 30s, strong shooter, bad defender. You really want to pay him the money that he's probably going to be looking for. I would prefer not to. And again, all of this is in the context of is the cap space just going to go poof if you don't use it.

Kelly Olinick, who has actually been pretty good for Utah, 33 years old. Well, I wouldn't say pretty darn good this season. I mean, he's only averaging about eight points per game, but, you know, he has been doing a lot of passing guys averaging four and a half assists per game. But, yeah, 33 years old. Oh, and extremely efficient. So he has, however, been playing most of his minutes at center that he played a significant amount of power forward last year.

I would say not necessarily a bad option as a backup power forward. I think with Jalen Duren, you want to have more defensive heft behind him, or just more of a stabilizer at backup center, and I don't think that's really Kelly Olinick, not a guy who can really play defensive center. Not great of power forward either, but, you know, decent. I think Coenick could probably be had at an affordable price. And beyond that, I mean, honestly, your best power forward probably you're going to be able to find

in free agency is Torian Prince. He's not particularly good by any means. but he can shoot threes reasonably will. He's not a bad defender. And again, when you're comparing to Stewart, this is key. He can move at a reasonable speed for his position. But you'd hope that they find some other way to get a decent power forward. How you're going to find a decent power forward if it's not in the draft,

which isn't really super strong on win now players. Though, again, I haven't really done a ton of research in the draft yet. So I shouldn't say that because things, also just things could change by the time the season ends. But if you're not getting in the draft, you know, Tori and Prince maybe the best you can hope for. I mean, you've got like Marcus Morris and Free Agency, but the guy is very washed up. You've got Robert Covington, the guy is very washed up. I mean, you conceivably have Royce O'Neill, but, you know, undersized, not really the strongest defender, pretty darn weak inside the arc. Options are limited. And then if you're looking at

centers, assuming that Wiseman is not going to be on the team next season, and assuming that Bagley is not going to make a leap, which I think is pretty darned unlikely at this stage. I mean, if you can snare Nicholas, Nicholas, well, not Nickyman. Sorry, Nick Claxton. I just said his first, whatever. This is getting a little bit later in the episode than I anticipated. If you can snag away Nick Claxton, you know, to play backup at a reasonable price, fantastic. You know, that's really good. I mean, Nick Claxton is a strong finisher, strong pick and roll guy, strong defender, you know, really solid rim protector and a solid switch defender. Brooklyn, I would imagine, would really, really want to keep him? And would you

want to pay him a backup salary? Who knows? I mean, he'd be a good stabilizer to have beyond Jayland Dern, he's only 25 also. If not him, then you could always look at Isaiah Hartenstein, who is just kind of a role player guy, but really has been decent for the Knicks. You throw $10, $12 million at him. You really just want to have a stabilizer beyond Jalen Duren, and Hartnstein is certainly unremarkable. But he's a solid finisher. He's a solid rebounder, and he's a decent rim protector. So if you had to ask me the guy you could look at who is likely to be available, likely to be fairly affordable. and, you know, likely to come to Detroit.

And if we're looking at backup centers, yeah, I would say Hartnstein's probably your best bit. So ultimately, free agency just really isn't all that great. I know I've harped on that enough. This team, I mean, ideally you are going to want to find quite a bit in the draft. If you find your power forward in the draft, so far, not so much. Do you have assets you would realistically be willing to part with to get a power forward? Probably not at this stage. You know, assets that will be sufficient to get you a genuine starting power forward

and good enough to, you know, an asset you be willing to part with, again, probably not. So that's an open question. It is an open question how this team will significantly improve with free agency being fairly weak, with the team's available assets being fairly limited, including, you know, future first-round picks, which you really don't want to trade unless there's a good reason. And with just limited talents on the roster right now, it's a question, and just hopefully the team doesn't do anything stupid. You know, that the future should still, in my opinion, be very much the focus.

I think still strongly of the opinion that building a contender should remain the goal. Though we reached the point where it's like I don't blame anybody who just urns back to the days when the Pistons were just fighting for the eighth seed, but still, you know, winning a decent amount of games each season. I don't blame you, you know, given how this season is gone, given that we're in season four of a rebuild, and it's on pace to be the worst season of the history of the franchise and one of the worst seasons in the history of the NBA. I just don't agree. That's all. And finally, how does the livers, and Hayes duo stack next to Kobe and Shaq. To be honest, I don't want to answer this because

I don't want a bad mouth Kobe Bryant by making this comparison. It just doesn't feel right to speak Gil of the departed that way. Anyway, funny question. Obviously, this wasn't, just in case this wasn't apparent to anybody who's listening. I'm being highly facetious. This question was asked because Kobe and Shaq are two of the best players ever, and Isaiah Livers and Gillian Hayes are two of the worst players in the week. All right, folks. So, yeah, this actually happened to, turned out to be what I thought it would be me saying that it was going to be a shorter episode and then it being upwards of 50 minutes. In any case, I hope you're all doing well. Thank you for listening. I'll catch you in next week's episode.