Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 186: February Review (sort of)

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

This episode reviews the month of February -- and gets very sidetracked in the process -- with a particular focus on the post-deadline roster.

Welcome back, everybody. You listen to another episode of Driving the Basket. I'm Mike. Hope you all been doing super well back here after a two-week hiatus. I ended up just choosing to take a bit of a break from basketball altogether, including the All-Star break, of course. I didn't even consider watching that game. There was plenty of controversy about how little the players cared.

And, I mean, it's just been so unintertaining, excuse me, for the last, I mean, since 2019. 2019, I think, was the first year with the Eelam ending, and the players were really into it, and that was awesome, and it really harkened back to the early days, or the old days, rather, of the All-Star game. When players really took it seriously, it was a real honor to be in the All-Star game, and they played hard for the most part. I'm sure a lot of you remember the 2006 All-Star game, which had four pistons, and Flip Saunders was coaching it, and the East got behind.

Saunders brought in his four pistons, and in the second half, I believe, or maybe it was the first half, It was the four of them and Paul Pierce, and they really shut down the West and so on and so forth. And there were like a lot of the old greats really just begging these players to actually play hard in this All-Star game. And the players didn't care at all. Adam Silver after the game was plainly upset about it. And usually, you know, the winning team would get some genuine congratulations. But Rumi's like, well, not to the east. You guys scored the most points.

So good job. And, you know, we'll see. of you who are NHL fans. I mean, the NHL All-Star game is, it's just bound to be worse for certain reasons. Number one, you're just never going to hit anybody ever. I think for the long time, I think it was Jeremy Ronick, I think hit Alexey Schittnick. Maybe not Schittnick. I don't know if he ever played in an All-Star game, but that was very rare.

The NHL ultimately, I think they were considering canceling their All-Star game come 2016. The whole John Scott thing happened. For those of you, don't watch the NHL. A fan vote was... I think determined the All-Star captains back then, and John Scott was just really bad, and NHL player is an enforcer who was just a really bad player, and fans decided to be funny and vote him into the All-Star game, and the NHL decided to get involved because they thought that it was just a travesty, and I mean, it was a little bit of a travesty, but, you know,

they engineered his team demoting him to the AHA, or trading him, and then demoting him to the HAL, which, you know, so it wasn't technically in the NHL anymore. they called him and said, you know, how would your family, basically how would your daughters feel about you doing this? I mean, did some really crappy things. And I'm just telling the story because I love the story. Not this part of it. But anyway, that, of course, turned this whole thing from a joke into NHL fans, him basically becoming like a passionate cause for NHL fans who were, needless to say, very unhappy, very vocally. So he got voted in.

the NHL folded. The NHL in this season had gone to a four-team 3B3 format. So just three guys on the ice for any given team. There are four divisions. Do they call them? Yeah, they call them divisions still, not conferences. Conferences are the bigger ones. Sorry, I don't know why I even screwed that one up.

But what ended up happening is he was the captain for, I believe, the Pacific team. He scored two goals. His team won the championship. excuse me, won the All-Star game, which came like with like a $1 million prize for the team. And the NHL did the All-Star MVP vote by a fan vote. And I think a lot of it was on Twitter, if I remember correctly. And they chose the finalists, and which, of course, did not include John Scott. But write-ins were allowed.

And Twitter just went crazy. Like, NHL Twitter went crazy voting for John Scott. A bunch of the teams voted for him, a bunch of the team accounts. He ended up winning. It was just this incredible feel-good story. that All-Star game will never be matched. But, and now it's not really that exciting anymore for the NHL because, yeah, it's not new. The players don't try as hard anymore, whatever the case.

I think it's a shame. I get that players don't want to get hurt in the All-Star game, but you can at least go out there and try. And frankly, it is an honor to be chosen as an All-Star. And if you want to go out there and try it and just don't go to the game, you know, just say, well, okay, well, thanks for making me an All-Star, but I'm not going to go out there. and play with an absolutely shameful level of effort for these fans who are paying to watch, especially for the fans who are paying to watch, Peter. And this is by no means the first time it's been bad.

My brother was at the All-Star game in New York City back in 2015, and he said, I mean, obviously they piped this out on the TV broadcast, but he said even as far back as 2015, the fans were booing the players for not trying. And the NHL changed it. They put in the EO amending in 2019, and that helped refresh it for a little while. if you haven't seen that All-Star game, go and watch the last five minutes of the fourth quarter. It's like a playoff game. I mean, these players are putting it all on the line.

Kyle Lowry took a charge in the last minute of the game. Like Chris Paul was like going after the refs. Even 2018, I think, if I remember correctly, was pretty good, but not that good. So anyway, it's a shame. But, you know, just back to the beginning, yeah, needless to say, I think this season has been pretty difficult on all of us for obvious reasons. and, you know, in the, I don't have to say in the interest of honesty, this season, as at many points, as I'm sure is the case, but a lot of you left me very angry. I don't get angry a lot, and I really don't like how it feels. And the same sort of thing happened with Stan Van Gundy in his final two seasons, especially in 2016, 2017, because his coaching was just infuriating, but Ammani Williams has taken it far beyond that.

I mean, the roster is bad. He has led the roster to incredible woes. like genuinely a certain low in terms of losing streak that has never been achieved in a single season in the NBA before. His coaching decisions are just unambiguously harmful to the team and he continues doing them again and again. And you all know already how I feel about Monty, but that's been the single hardest part of this season for me, just watching him go out there and just hamstring the team again and again and again and again.

The things that are not a matter of, oh, let's try this and not a matter of, you know, let's see if it works. It's just doing things that number one don't work, obviously. But number two, we're doomed to failure from the very beginning. So it's just been horrible. I like how Sam Bassini put it. Vasini was more of a draft guy. I think if you want to read draft coverage, I think he's the best in the business. I might typically just go to him for second round stuff

because I'm not going to scout all the way into the second round. But he's also the co-host, the game theory podcast, for those of you who know Bryce of Motor City Hoops. He's Bacini's co-host. I think Vassini put it well. We're seeing a generationally bad coaching performance. It's the worst coaching I've ever seen in the NBA, and that includes Jim Boylan, who, and I'm going to stop. I'm not going to, this is not going to be rant about Monty this episode.

I'll talk about it a little bit later, but, you know, for a little while later, but not much. I know I've spent a lot of time doing that. I hope it hasn't bugged you guys that I've spent a lot of time ranting about Monty. I feel like he has really characterized a lot of this season. I don't think this team is as bad as it is. I think this would have been a 20-25-1 team, maybe with a good coach. Maybe you get close to 30.

Not a roster that was going to be good, but a roster has been made a lot worse. But those you remember, Jim Boyle when he came in, I don't remember exactly the years. But he was just this, Bull's ownership is not good. I mean, you're seeing it now with the fact that this team had a second round ceiling at best. And, you know, when it was put together, there's Bull's team and is now going nowhere. DeRosen as a free agent this offseason, he's getting old. They did nothing at the trade deadline. You know, they didn't trade away anybody, but they hired.

I think this is when they fired. Oh, goodness. Hoyberg, which probably wasn't deserved. And they brought him Boylan, who was completely unsuitary to coach in the NBA, both because he just doesn't. I mean, you've got to have a certain sort of smarts to, or just ability to coach in the NBA. I mean, there are only 30 jobs in the coaching and the NBA taking time.

And it's a pretty darn good league, needless to say. He just had no idea how to coach in the NBA. He also, his players just hated his guts. But he basically came in and said, well, this is just the way we're going to do things. And it was horribly outdated. But he did it anyway. Moni's even worse than that. Yeah, so I'm basically just trying to push myself to a point of acceptance that this is just how things are,

rather than being furious at the fact that this is this absurdity is happening in the first place. And it is a complete absurdity that we've been exposed to in terms of the coaching. And, you know, that's what I'm doing my best at doing rather than just getting completely furious during the games, which is, I mean, not like, when I talk completely furious, it's just, maybe furious is exaggerating and just getting very, very angry at the games, which doesn't feel good, and it's just not worthwhile. So the break was a little bit helpful for that. Anyway, now that I've spent about nine minutes talking about that and about All-Star Games and so on, and I hope you enjoyed the little bores. about the All-Star games, particularly the NHL-Star game. Go watch the highlights of the 2016 All-Star game with John Scott. It's just a great story.

It's just a genuine, like one of the great feel-good stories in sports. It was awesome. Okay, so this is going to be largely just a, I guess, a February review. A lot happened in February as far as the trade deadline changes to the roster. And the Pistons still didn't have the greatest month, but, you know, they won three games. games, of course, there were some fortuitous circumstances there and came close and quite a few others. One thing I want to go over it before I forget, it was reported yesterday that the NBA front office, the competition committee I think it's called, is doing a sort of official review,

as the ESPN put it, on just whether or not all offense has gone too far in today's NBA. And it's my opinion that all offense has gone much too far. And it's very, very difficult to play defense in today's league. It's basically like even goes so far as basically like a lot of games are just can't you hit your open threes because it's incredibly difficult to keep teams from getting open threes. That's what any team is stressing is just creating open threes all but a very small number of teams like the thunder are not necessarily stressing that quite as much. It varies. But threes are an incredibly efficient shot and players are getting really pretty darn good at them, including on pull-ups.

and I mean if you're playing a game in which number one just defense is so deeply disadvantaged but number two in which it's basically well we're going to have a hard time keeping you from getting your open threes and a lot of games are just going to hinge on whether or not you can hit them and defense is just not really much of a thing though it becomes a bigger thing in a postseason when you're just playing your best players you're not playing guys you can't play defense because they get completely discouraged by the other team and the refs are a little bit less free with the whistle. The whistle is also another thing, too many fouls, who likes watching guys bait fouls, who likes really weak fouls, and so on. And the number of fouls actually hasn't increased

over the last decade, but players have, but it would have if players hadn't changed how they play defense. The players were still playing the same defense they played before the 2018 rule changes, which stress freedom of movement, for example, then there would be a ton more fouls. If players were playing the same way they played 20 years ago with hand-checking, I mean, you know, 50 fouls a game for each team. So, no, maybe that's exaggerating. But the point is that just because the number of free throws, the average number of free throws per game has stayed steady, it doesn't, average number of fouls doesn't mean that the rules changes haven't mattered. It just means that defenders have had to change how they play because otherwise they be fouling constantly.

You know, the threshold for what is considered now a foul on defense is much lower. But there are some actions that are just unguarded, particularly with five shooters, but even with four. I mean, but you look at certain actions, and some of this is just players getting a lot better. You know, the standard of competition and the NBA is higher than ever, particularly on offense, and everybody has to be able to shoot and so on. Of course, that makes guarding in offense that stresses getting open shooters. Good shooters three-point shots is difficult to defend, especially because basically everybody in the perimeter is a shooter and a solid number of centers as well.

but like you look at, and sure this involves Yokic, but for any other team, I just like to use Yokish as an example because Denver ran this action a lot and doesn't really require Yokish to be a good pass or this action. You can do this as any center. They just take KCP curling around an offball screen and then curling around Yokic to take a handoff and shooting a motion three.

Granted, we've got to be able to shoot the motion three. Not a replayter can do that, but that is an unguardable. It's just something that you cannot guard. Like you can't, because of the freedom of movement, changes you can't impede KCP coming around that screen. So he's going to get, and he's fast enough that he's going to get around that screen, he's going to get an open three. It's a motion three, but he's going to get an open three. And there are a lot of players these days who can do that. The only way you can guard that is to send somebody straight at him from another sector of the

floor. And then in that situation, I mean, it's Yokic, so he's going to hit that open man. And if KCP is going to get the ball and hit that open man, and the help is almost certainly going to have to have come from the corner or from the center, and then you're just screwing yourself. but it's it's just so hard to keep your assignments from getting open because you can't impede their movement for example that's just one part of it again the quality of the competition having gone up is another part of this but and then on the drive I mean some ways you can in some situations you can barely touch guys like good luck playing defense in that situation and again it's that defenders don't try because they know that they will get called for fouls if they play

physical defense and physical defense is fun to watch like I'm not to suggesting that we go back to the era of hand-checking in which, sure, I mean, it was a lot of fun to watch the Pistons if you were a Pistons fan, like the going-to-work Pistons before the hand-checking rules changed. And it was a lot of fun to watch the Spurs play incredible defense if you were a spurs fan. But if you were not a fan of those teams, then you're just watching a bunch of really low-scoring basketball, and that's not so great either. Of course, we're not looking at the possibility of the NBA rolling it back. We're obviously, at safe with as close to 100 percent certainty as one could possibly have, and we're not looking at the NBA, rolling back the illegal defense rules,

you know, the changes of the illegal defense rules that were put in in the early 2000s, because the game has played very, very differently, back with the old rules in which you just couldn't hedge on double teams. You had to either be double teaming somebody or on your man. So that made things different. It was meant to be a sort of play that really stressed superstars attacking in one-on-one situations. And it's a more, it's a more. complex story, but we're not going back to that. So what I would say, roll back those 2018 changes. You know, like let defenders play more physically in terms of impeding others off the ball. Let more physical defense be played on the drive so that it's not, well, you've got this superstar running at you.

And he's really like a, like a Shay, Gilgis Alexander coming at you. And Shay is incredible off the drive. But he's coming at you. And the only way, I mean, if you really play physical defense on him, then you're very likely to send him to the free throw line. So it's a matter of not defending him in a way that is likely to get a stop and then he scores. Or you defend him how you can, even if you're a good defender. And you might get, or even if you play really well in defense. But there are certain things, just physically speaking, that you can't do. And so you end up sending him to the line.

And that's an extreme example. But like, just let teams play physical defense again, please. It is entertaining. I'm not talking about like 90-point games, but let teams play physical defense again. Those 2018 changes. I don't think the NBA saw the continued improvement. I think this was the dumb on their part. And granted, consider that I think that the average fan likes to see a lot of scoring,

you know, particularly fans who are not quite as into the nitty-gritty of the game. This is complete speculation on my part. But if you take the average person off the street who doesn't watch a ton of basketball, you know, you want to see the fast-paced action with a lot of scoring, you might guess. and that's, I think, what they got rid of, but they got rid of hand-checking, because the game had become very grueling and slow back then.

The NHL had the same problem prior to the lockout, prior to the 2004-2005 lockout. It was called the Dead Puck era. In the clutch-and-grab era, there was way too much of that, and they really made efforts after the lockout to open up the game by calling more penalties. You know, less interference. You weren't able to hold up guys at the blue line anymore and so on.

But it's just gone too far in the NBA, and I think that they didn't see where things were going in 2018, in making offense even more potent. Because they haven't made any rule changes since then, or very few. Actually, they've cut down on foul-bating, but that's not enough. And just players have continued to improve in the last six years or five and a half years since those rules, since those changes were instituted. The standard of competition is extremely high.

The weight of the game is coached has really tightened up. The NBA is more and more and more scientifically played, because you have to be keeping up with other teams in terms of, you know, like fractions of a point, in terms of how much you're averaging on any given possession. So, yeah, I think that's why they're looking at it now, just because it's reached crazy levels. So hope to see something come out of that. Coincidentally, the guy who is the spokesperson in this respect has been Joe Dumars, who of course played for one of the great defensive teams of all time,

and then built one of the great defensive teams of all time. And so both of those teams, needless to say, were extremely physical defenders. The bad boys say about the bad boys that they get kind of like a rap that they don't deserve because teams were played very physically back then. I mean, the difference with them is that they were kind of a, they didn't stress superstar basketball. They really played just primarily as a team. They embraced the moniker of the bad boys.

And it was just different. 30 for 30 has a great documentary on the bad boys. If any of you haven't watched, I encourage you to because it's, I think it was, It was just extremely well done. It's pretty old. I think it came out about a decade ago. But, like, for those of you who watched the Celtics back then, I didn't. This was well before my time.

But, like, Robert Parrish, Larry Bird, and Kevin McHale were absolute goons. Like, no ifs, or buts there. And they walked off when the Pistons beat them. And when the Pistons finally beat them in 88, I think. And just like the Pistons walked off after the Bulls beat them in, my goodness, I always forget, 91 or 92? I can't remember. Yeah, that was that was 91 I believe because Jordan's three beats were 92 through 94 and 96 through 98 whatever I go back and look at this not really in him. Anyway, just the point is that like even the Lakers played a pretty dirty game back then like the

Magic Johnson Lakers. It was just how the game was played back then but anyway, I've gotten off topic again. So let's talk stuff that has happened with the Pistons in February. Of course, the trade deadline really changed around the roster. First, the Marvin Bagley trade, which was, I believe, in January, which I'll just start with this one. You know, we're just going to talk additions, subtractions, just evaluations of the new roster, so to speak, and what's been happening. So the two guys who came in were chiefly just for salary matching. livers and Bagley out and Galanari and Muscala who had really not played all that much in Washington in. But what those two guys did offer was spacing off the bench, which was helpful.

There were also veterans who, you know, played the game the right way, both below average NBA players. Don't get me wrong. Below average NBA player means that they are monumentally better than James Wiseman. And that made a difference. It also kind of ameliorated the very negative impact that Asar Thompson has. the offense and his complete inability to shoot. He did hit two threes last night, which I think raised him probably to like 17% on the season, still one of the worst of the last decade.

So it was very helpful to have those guys. You know, they provided some heft on offense. They provided them some spacing. Neither of them was worse than Wiseman, or even as bad as Wiseman on defense. Weisman continues to be one of the worst defenders in the NBA simply because he is shockingly bad at making decisions. Not much better on offense. Pretty darn bad on offense unless he's finishing pretty easy baskets.

So it was just good to have them. And Muscolla in particular was pretty helpful to the team. And we got news last night that he's been bought out. Gallinari was already bought out. And so the Pistons have urinated away to guys who were actually pretty helpful to the youth on this team. And now we're stuck with James Wiseman, who is terrible in every respect for the rest of the season. There's, of course, the question about in which direction of this happened? Like Gallinari, I think it's pretty clear, just asked out because he wanted to go to a playoff team.

Galanari, who is not going to play much in a playoff team, except for in very spot situations, because, again, if you're a defensive liability in the playoffs, I mean, teams attack everything. Teams want to find every advantage they can possibly find their best players. The rotation is shortened. Your best players are on the floor for an enormous number of minutes, and they're attacking whatever weakness the opposition has. And Galenari can't play defense. I mean, he's just a bad regular season defender.

He is an unplayable postseason defender because he can't defend in space, and he can't defend on the perimeter. Muscala isn't much better. So it's not like the Pistons were holding on to these guys when they could go and really have an impact in a postseason team. I'd be shocked if either of them play any significant number of minutes in the postseason. They're just not postseason caliber players and they're Gellonari in particular, but Muscala also defensive liabilities in the postseason. Muscala waited, he was in the rotation for, I believe, 10 games before Wiseman came back in. And it's hard to know in which direction this went. Did he ask,

because the Pistons had buried him beyond Wiseman? Or did he just ask out, and the Pistons started playing Wiseman over him because he had asked out? So Wiseman was out, basically out of the rotation for 10 games. I don't know which one it would be. But it doesn't really add up to me. And I could be completely wrong about this, and I realize that this argument isn't necessarily that strong.

But I would lean, I feel like we just don't have the information. But Muscala played 10 games for the Pistons. Gowanari was out after six. And why would it have taken him so long to ask out if they were stopping, if they didn't play him because he had asked out, then, you know, yeah, I mean, I'm thinking that I guess this probably happened with Gellinari. I mean, but if they'd stop playing him because he asked out, why didn't he ask out sooner?

If he did ask out sooner, why wasn't he in the rotation? and Wiseman was healthy. And, like, I don't know. One thing worth noting, and there have been some almost certain issues with corruption at the front office level, thanks to Arnd Tellem, who was vice chairman of the Pistons. His son, Michael Tellem, was number one, the agent of Davita Servetus, who was drafted in 2019 by the Pistons, despite being an undistinguished player in a bad Lithuanian League. that one didn't make much sense.

It makes more sense when you look at the fact that it would advance the career and the bank account of Arndellum's son, who I believe is an executive at Excel Sports Management. Gallinari is another of his clients. Muscala is represented by another employee of the same company. I mean, you just never know with this front office, with Arn Tellam, who seems to be by no means above letting nepotism into management decisions, which is inexcusable. and Tom Gores, who seems to just let him do that.

So did that play a part here? The Pistons could easily have just said no. Again, this wasn't a situation in which they, you know, in which they were like holding back a decent postseason caliber player from participating in the playoffs. Now they're Galanari, Norma Scala. I mean, again, both very below, both below average NBA players, just drastically better than Wiseman. So much, much better than what they were getting with Wiseman and quite helpful to this

team's youth. and quite helpful to the bench units and to just, like the pistons were just much better with them, particularly in the Scala. You know, it could just say no. I mean, it's not beyond, there's not by any means beyond the bounds of the, of the unreasonable. We need you to play back up center. We need you on this team. We're going to give you a significant amount of minutes.

And that's that. That wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Again, it's not like they would be depriving them of a significant role on a postseason team. so I just don't like it. I don't like that we have to play Wiseman. I don't like that they got rid of guys who were genuinely helpful. And I just don't know how to feel about did the front office wants Wiseman to get that final bit of run. I mean, I feel very strongly that they picked up Wiseman,

apologies for the sniffles, that they picked up Wiseman with the hope that his dreadful decision-making on the court was the product of lack of seasoning. played very little in college. He did not play much for the Warriors. He missed an entire year due to injury, but he also just didn't have a big role in the rotation, not much of one. He played minutes as a rookie, but that's a rookie. In his third season, he was basically out of the rotation too. So I feel virtually certain that they traded for him with that hope. It's like, okay, well, this is a player whom maybe seasoning will make him into a smarter player. And, you know, he's got a great NBA body. It's just amazing NBA, just not amazing, but very, very good NBA athleticism and so on. I've got to think that after a year that ship has sailed because in terms of his basketball

smarts, it's been a year and he has made no substantive progress. He is still an absolutely dreadful basketball thinker on the court. And I mean, I can't picture the front office looking at this and thinking, oh, well, we'll just give him the end of the season when I think it's got to be abundantly clear to them that he just wax basketball IQ at this point. It's not a matter of inexperience. He just wax basketball IQ. And my guess is that Monty was playing him over Bagley simply because he felt like it, not because the front office told him to. From what we heard before the season, I mean, Monty was going to have latitude to choose which one of them made it in a rotation based on performance. I think Bagley just got dog-housed for no reason, just like

just like Monty was doing to Jade and Ivy. So, yeah, I'm unhappy that this happened. And it may seem small, and it's like this is a team for which it does make a difference. And it's a two-fold thing. The Pistons both benefited from having them. And it would have been fine if you let one of them go, just let Gallow go and keep Muscola, whatever, benefited from having them as veterans and what they provided on offense. And also in that James Wiseman is a complete and utter disaster, horrible NBA player.

and it's kind of frustrating that this rotation, it seems to be, I mean, there seems to have been minutes created for bottom 10 NBA players in this rotation at all times, be that Killian, be that livers, be that Wiseman. And now we're also subjected to watching him play for the final 24 games. It's like, sure, his upside remains pretty tantalizing, but I think at this point we can pretty much close the book on the notion that he just needs more seasoning to become a smarter player because he is just almost outrageously dumb on the court. All right. So, but we're talking subtractions. So the pistons have dumped three centers

between Bagley and Muscola and in Wiseman, excuse me, not Wiseman, I wish, and in Muscala. So that kind of sucks. And we're back to just Wiseman off the bench. And I'm curious to see what happens in the offseason. I really hope that Troy Weaver has realized, or more just has accepted, that Isaiah Stewart is not a power forward and that you want to blame a backup center. and that we see that next season. At the very least, I think he ought to have concluded to this point that Isaiah Stewart is not a guy who can start a power forward on a contender. And that the too big lineup and his obsession with size is probably a little bit misguided

because it's not that, it's not necessarily that Cleveland and Milwaukee, and I'm forgetting somebody else play with two bigs, it's that those bigs are actually, you know, make sense. and like between Lopez and and Janus or Mowbly and Allen and are also considerably better all four of them than Isaiah Stewart and Duren for that matter at this point at least. That could easily change if he reports, well, not Janus, but the other three that could easily change if he reports in next season and works hard on defense and has just kind of improved and his ability to play defense. And with Duren, it's, I mean, he plays significantly best. better on defense when he's actually putting forth a lot of effort, but he still makes mistakes. And I know I'm talking about this in the context of James Wiseman.

James Wiseman, not in the context, the same time as I'm talking about Wiseman. Wiseman is an extreme case in terms of his inability to process the game. Medauren, it's still entirely possible that it could improve with time. He's still very young and very raw. Weisman, almost 23, and started a very low point, extremely low point, and has remained at that extremely low point. Not to say that Duren has not been very bad on defense this season because he has. Though again, I think effort is part of that, which is concerning. I will say it again, the Drummond comparisons. Duren as a second year player is enormously better on offense than

Drummond ever was. And in Drummond's offense was always a big problem. But for those rare occasions on which he was actually playing within his abilities, at which point he, this was rare. And after his first two seasons, I think it was only in one stage. And, you know, in one stage. the third or fourth quarter of the 2019-2020 season when he actually consistently averaged for a short time, or he averaged over like a 15-20 game period, if I remember correctly, above 60% for shooting as a traditional big. So, yeah, Duran has already drastically outstripped him as a scorer. So in that respect, you don't need to worry. The effort, again, Drummond, like Wiseman in an extreme case, about anything less, in my opinion, than 100% effort is unacceptable.

So, okay, so let's talk the additions. And of course, you know it, I know it. We're going to start with Malachi Flynn. No, I'm just kidding. Malachi Flynn, who has gotten more run than he deserves while Sasser has been out, but also Flynn, even when Sasser was in, was getting some time. I'm going to not talk about the rotations too much because it still makes my blood boil a little bit. But, yeah, the rotations that were run in this basically moron,

mid-season training camp with a bunch of players who were already completely known quantities between shake milton troy brown junior malachi flynn and and fornier it's like um hmm virtually none of the almost certainly none of these players will be on the team next season if and if evan fornier is on the team next season it's is a depth guy and i don't know why he would do that rather than see if he can find his way into a shallower rotation on a postseason team rather than one more young players are going to be getting the drastic majority of the minutes. It's just like, for example, with Austin Reeves, who was only offered a two-way contract by the Pistons and every team afterward and chose to go to a postseason team. Postseason teams, you know, contenders in particular are very top-heavy and have shorter rotations as a result.

Also, I've not had cap space to sign anybody for a while. Don't have the full taxpayer mid-level exception. If you're over the luxury taxaper and you have a smaller MLE, you don't have the biannual exception and so on. So basically, like, a guy like Fornier, who wants a larger chance at minutes, at least in the regular season, will go to a team that doesn't have as many players it wants to get minutes to. Also, that kind of team is not going to have as many young players that wants to get minutes to.

So basically the entire pretext of, or the entire notion, and you never know with Monty, because he lies constantly to the media, that it's like, oh, we want to see what we have, even if it was true, was dumb, because it's like these are players who are not going to get, who are very unlikely to be in the team next season. And we already know that Jake Milton is bad NBA player. We already know that Malachi Flynn is a bad NBA player. We know that Troy Brown Jr. is a bit of an enigma. I wish he was still getting minutes over Fornier, but we know that Fornier is washed up.

He, at his peak, was a pretty poor defender, but quick enough and a good enough shooter that he was a pretty elite perimeter shooter. now he's just a no defense gunner who has definitely lost a step. It's like, we know that. You don't need to audition these guys. This is a terrible idea. I mean, there's just, there's no need for it and ended up blowing a bunch of games. And of course, he had said just before that, oh, I don't know if we can run 11, 12 guys again.

And of course, just went ahead and did it because with the pistons in terms of the decisions that he has made, the very harmful decisions he has made, he's not going to take responsibility for them. He just lies instead. You know, it's been remarkable. lack of integrity that he is displayed, like remarkable. Everything about his coaching has been remarkably bad. So now let's just start briefly, I guess, with the less interesting guys. Malachi Flynn, who unfortunately Monty Williams seems to like, and we all know how that happens to how things look in that case. It's had a couple of half-decent games, but you look at Flynn,

he is about 26 years old. He is an unreliable shooter better than killing him, but so is everybody. an unreliable perimeter shooter with really no in-between game, struggles to get to the rim, and doesn't score well when he gets there. And it's kind of an average-to-belo-average playmaker for his position and plays bad defense. This is not a player who should be on the team next season. You want a more reliable third-string point guard than that. You have Shake Milton, not a player worth really even considering. Not a good player.

And he hasn't done well. Neither is Flynn. Flynn, who I dearly hope will be out of the lineup when Sasser returns and argue, I think shouldn't even been in the lineup right now. You should be staggering Caden Ivy, both so that you get Ivy more handling reps, and so you don't have to play Malachi Flynn. Of course, as we know, instead, Monty Williams chooses to go with an all-bench lineup with Flynn, and even at times has given Flynn ball handling priority over Ivy.

Again, trying to push myself toward the direction of this is what it is, and this is just how things are going to be, because the other option is getting angry at how outrageously absurd what's happening, you know, with the coaching. as has been all season. Fornier, again, just is what he is. He can go out there and shoot threes. He's also, I mean, he's done a somewhat decent job of that with the pistons. Well, I don't know, like against the Pacers and against the magic, whatever,

he didn't really play too much against the Bulls. But, like, he can go out there and get you threes. The trouble is that he's, well, he's not much of a passer in the first place, but the trouble is he's very limited in terms of his. ability to, he's not going to be really attacking the basket at all or really be achieving offball separation anymore, which used to be able to do because he's really lost the step. And he sucks on defense. He gets the occasional steal, yay, but he sucks on defense. He's not really an NBA rotation player anymore. Troy Brown Jr., he's the one I would like to see get more run because he, I mean,

he's an enigma. He, on paper, has the makings of a decent rotation player. And maybe a guy you just keep it as $4 million player option next season. If you feel like, he can go, out there and hit his threes and play half decent defense. And he's not a guy who's likely to be in your rotation, but he's a decent depth player, you know, with good size, good strength. And, you know, why not? And of course, he's the one who's ended up out of the rotation. It's completely bizarre. So those are your uninteresting guys who, you know, three of whom should not really have gotten minutes in the first place because they were known quantities, but did anyway because the coach is an income poop who may or may not be trying to get himself fired by repeatedly doing highly damaging things. And oh, by the way,

I think we can say pretty definitively, though. I think we've known this from the beginning of the season, that this frontoff isn't minimally involved in the coaching. I think, you know, by all we've seen, the only times they have intervened, have been with Ivy, because all the other incredibly stupid things that Monty Williams has done, including in the course of setting the single season, losing streak, you know, the record for that of all time in the NBA, have not been interfered with. And that includes the, you know, rotational hijinks of the last two games,

which have really been happening all season. All right, so let's talk the players are actually interested in. Fontechio and Grimes, Fontechio, has been impressive. I would say better than I expected in a certain way, which is particularly off the dribble. But he's shooting well above 45% on catch and shoot threes. He's kind of sneaky quick off the ball. He gets him, he's a good off-ball mover.

You know, he moves well, he moves aggressively. He's kind of like a little bit like the Energizer Bunny out there, and, you know, you can just kind of see the pensive energy and just how much he uses it. So he's been shooting really well from three. He's been a sort of solid, but certainly unspectacular defender that I expected. He makes his sure. He makes some mistakes. I think he's just, he's solid.

He's serviceable. He's pretty average. And he can shoot three. His average is fine. You know, he's a guy who's not going to win your games on defense, but he's not going to, he's unlikely to lose you a lot of points on defense either. But in addition to shooting his threes, he's shown more capacity off the dribble than I thought he would. Teams have to play him close as he can shoot with the little space,

and they definitely need to close out on him hard, and he's able to punish certain defenders off the dribble for doing both. He's not the most explosive, but he's got a decent top speed. He's strong. He's got good body control. So he's done some good work getting to the rim or just penetrate into the interior and passing the ball off the dribble. The three-point shooting, of course, has been the big thing. So he's averaging, or I believe around 15 points per game for the Pistons right now, which I don't know if he'll keep that up. But he's definitely been pretty darn good, 49% from the field on the higher proportion of two-point offense than you would expect.

And 42% from three overall, which has been dragged down by the fact that I don't think he's hit a single pull-up so far, at least before last night's game. I don't think, before the Orlando game anyway. I don't think he'd hit a single pull-up and he'd missed all that. the small number of them that he had taken. So I think the Pistons have found themselves a solid long-term bench player. I don't think he's preferable as a starter necessarily, because I think you can just do better than that. But I think a solid long-term bench player kind of first forward off the bench who can play

in the postseason. And I think it's like the difference between good by this team standards and good by, you know, the standards of the contender that the Pistons hopefully will ideally become or hopefully it will become, obviously, ideally is winning a championship. So, yeah, I think solid long-term bench player should be interesting to see what happens in the off-season. I think the Pistons will get him on a bargain deal. This is a guy who's 28 years old, is a role player, of course, and who after the season will have one solid season in the NBA to his credit because he wasn't good as a 27-year-old rookie. This is the kind of guy you've got to think who doesn't really have superstar potential unless he's kind of diluting himself that, I don't know, who knows how he thinks of himself.

but this is exactly the sort of player who's at the point where he can cash in on one long-term NBA contract and we'll take a bargain salary after one season of being good. So the Pistons could conceivably, I think probably less than $15 million in his first year. And bear in mind that like $15 million is just over 10% of the cap next season. Now, there is a small wrinkle. There's what's called starters criteria, which will impact the qualifying offer. Okay, basically qualifying offer is the, Is the cap hold.

Goodness, I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to do this without getting into really complex discussion of the collective bargaining arrangement. Basically, so I'll just go really simple. The qualifying offer, which is what you would send, is what you would present to a player in order to make him a free agent. It's basically guaranteed one-year deal. And at that point, you have right of first refusal because the player is now restricted free agents and you can sign him to a bigger or, a contract that's bigger or smaller than that, whatever, whichever, you know, the player agrees to. But you have given him the qualifying offer, at least.

So in any case, the cap hold is equal to the qualifying offer. If Fontechio starts two more games, then he meets start of criteria and his cap hold rises from $3.8 million in the summer to $6.3 million. So that's less money that this front office, which is really, really focusing on cap space this summer we'll have to work with. That's 20% of what they gained by dumping Marvin Bagley. Does that amount matter to them? It's possible. If that amount does matter to them, then he's probably not going to start more than one game for the rest of the season because he is at 39, because of 41, and his cap hold rises by two and a half million dollars.

That's really only significant if they feel like they can resign him using what's called the early bird rights, which would start at around $13 million, the contract between two and four years of length. And if they do feel like that, if they do feel that they can do that, and you've got to think that they've had discussions with them already, then, yeah, those two and a half million dollars will matter. If not, if they're going to be signing him with Cap Space, then, you know, doesn't really make much of a difference. I mean, if they can, if he's not willing to take an early bird contract. So I would guess that he's signed for at least four years at a bargain price. And if you sign a player who's like making 8% of the cap. And if it doesn't go right, it's not really that big of a

deal. I don't think he's going to demand a lot of money after only one good season and at the age of 28. But he's been real good so far. And in terms of replacing Blyon, he can't do what Blyon can do as far as creating his own offense. He is drastically better on defense. Boyon. Doyon. Blyon is a terrible defender this season, bad last season, very bad this season. So his defense has definitely been addition by subtraction. And the offense, you know, frees up more shots for the, for the young players because Monty Williams can't just go to his beloved boy onsets, especially his beloved Cade boy onsets. So Quentin Grimes only played three games with the Bissons, and only one of those was good. He is coming back from an injury, and in his first game he struggled, and then last night against

the Bulls, he struggled. But his game against the Knicks was kind of an indication. It's just really representative what he can do. This is what Quentin Grimes is in no particular order. Average NBA athlete, a good three-point shooter when things are going well. Strong defender, who's switchable across really three positions, and is sort of not necessarily beefy enough, but, you know, he can sort of hold his own on switches against bigger players. So strong defender, who's very rugged and works hard, smart, is generally hard worker, who doesn't really have much to offer on offense as a score besides shooting. three's. He's just not good off the dribble. He can make the odd pass or two, but he's not a guy

going to give the ball to and say, well, you know, we want you to operate in the pick and roll and attack the basket or even pull up them to. So that's what we saw against the Knicks. You know, he shot his threes. He was strong on defense, particularly against Brunson, and didn't do too well when he tried to create off the dribble and so on. That's what you're going to get. He's a guy who, you know, if he's in the starting lineup and who knows if that ever happened for the piss, and so I'm not saying this one way or another. You got to hope that Jaden Ivy's going to work out. This is obviously the hope. You don't have to hope that, but I think that would be the ideal situation. I don't think you really want to play Grimes at small forward, though really that would just kick Ivy. Ivy is already defending point

guards and Cade would just move up to defend small forwards. Though you would be losing the size advantage that Cade has right now as a jumbo handler. So, but if you if you have him on the floor, you ideally want him to be out there with two handlers, like two guys who can create offense at least. because he's not going to do any of it. But solid role player, you know, by all means, a guy you can also put in there if you really want some extra defense. You know, maybe you have to sacrifice offense a little bit or maybe not. Again, maybe you just move Kate up to small forward and have Ivy out there and along with Grimes.

But, you know, useful role player. It's good to have him here. All told, Pistons really aren't missing, Brooks or Boyan. Obviously, not missing Monte Morris, who, you know, needless to say, didn't really get much of a chance. It wasn't in Detroit for very long in terms of being on. the court. But I really like the changes that were made. I mean, you get a couple of guys off the team who were very unlikely to be in future plans. I couldn't really play defense and did shoot the ball

really well and were veteran presences, but just going forward were not really much of a fit for this team at all. I was surprised that at least one of them wasn't kept for the sake of shooting, but Fantacchio has been doing very well as a shooter. Grimes hopefully will do better. He did well against against the Knicks, but had a zero game against the Bulls last night. Didn't do too well against Orlando in his first game. But I think, you know, throughout his career, he has been a reliable shooter. So you got some of that shooting back. You definitely improved drastically on defense.

And these are younger players who will presumably be with the team for a longer period of time. Also, you, and this is just the theme that with Monty Williams, when he has done better, it has very often been because his bad options were taken away from him. So you just remove the enormous amount of usage. was giving to these veteran players at the cost of some younger players, particularly Jaden Ivy. So I'm happy with the changes. I like the pistons. I like how they look better now than than before that. And my goodness, we're at 52 minutes already. All right. So let's blow through a little bit more here. And I'm saying blow through because I don't know. Those of you want to

reach out, I'd love to hear from you about this. Would you prefer a shorter episodes? Often I can get close to an hour. I often plan for them to be like 45 minutes and then end up talking for or end up just getting on just getting really deep into subjects and I lose track of time. So as always I just want to give the best product and most enjoyable product to you folks. So reach out to me on Twitter, Discord, Reddit, wherever. If you got any feedback on this, I'd love to hear from you about, really about anything. So in any case, just get back to what I was funny including this episode with, which is really what went out of the month of February. And, okay, I'll just get Monty out of the way.

His rotations suck, like against New York. The all-bench lineups are a self-inflicted wound they have been all season against the Knicks. You can look at the officiating. You can look at the officiating against the magic. Really, games, the outcome of games, is a conglomeration of everything that happened before that. So, yeah, and then the last minute of the game

did officiating really make a difference, yes. but Monty Williams, as he has done all season, again, on the way to 28 straight and the Pistons being four and 21 in close games, if we're talking games that were within five points with three minutes left. He hemorrhages an enormous number of points. It's not just that he's a terrible late game coach, and he has been a terrible, terrible, terrible late game coach this season. It's that his terrible decisions, and the rotations are just part of those. Rotations, player utilization, you know, just the offense that he runs, and so on. well and a lot very badly. It bleeds points. And in bleeding those points, this season has turned a lot

of potentially comfortable wins into close games and a lot of those close games into losses. So you look at the Knicks game, for example, where the all-bench lineup in the first half should never have existed in the first place. Of course, coaches in their right mind would never use, just don't use all-bench lineups because it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense to do it. It makes a lot of sense not to do it. And when you're a team with the bench like the Pistons, it makes even less sense. And it was even being done when Monty Williams has even done it, when it is meant that he's had to turn to really bad NBA players.

The points at which he has not done it since it began, coincidentally against the Knicks as well earlier in the season, or when he literally does not have the players to do it, like against the Trailblazers and against the Kings when he just didn't have enough players in the rotation. So, anyway, yeah, so we got that lineup got close, crushed against the Knicks. Basically, just took an 11-point lead and just gave it to the Knicks. And these things make a difference. I mean, the Pissons didn't make up that deficit until late in the

fourth quarter. And all the other stupid things he does, hemorrhage points as well. And these are things that make the difference. I mean, it's one thing in a game if the coach does well. The players have to go out and execute, but the coach does well. He gives his players the best chance that they have a winning or even just does his job decently well. And he doesn't make mistakes or any big mistakes, and then the officiating is the difference, and the same thing is true on the other side. Then it's like, well, I mean, the idea is to play yourself into a point where just one call can't sink you, but this happens, and then it's really frustrating because you really, more or less, just did lose. I mean, again, you can look at the players and how they played, but just the way it was structured with the coach, he did everything he could, players went out there and did their thing, and the game was ultimately decided by officiating.

It's a different story when this coach is constantly bleeding points, a lot of points through idiotic decisions. And so in the most immediate sense, did the refs probably decide that game because the Knicks would have still had eight seconds left or so. Asar, if he'd been followed, would not have gone to the line because the Knicks still had a foul to give. They hadn't committed one of the last two minutes. And on that last play, I think it should be noted. Some of this was just inexperience because Fantecchio had the ball, could have cradled it, wait up for the foul. Asar had the ball, and he passed it instead, though you could argue that he was followed, though. I think that'd be kind of borderline.

Asar obviously was fouled, but he tried to dribble the ball on the court instead of cradling it for the foul. So in experience, these guys presumably won't do that again. But, yeah, did officiating really make the difference there? Well, yeah, if the refs had called foul, the pistons would have had the ball up one with eight seconds left. So, and then Boncaro, yeah, he traveled. The NBA said he didn't. I think case could be made that he traveled. Is the NBA at the last second with a good player going to call that, you know,

little shuffle at any time. I think the answer to that is no. I think that if you had Kate Cunningham in a similar position, they wouldn't call that either. So that one I'm not as upset about. But again, in the magic game, you had a good coach going against a coach who this seemed intent on sabotaging his team at every turn just does things that are unambiguously and blatant way and outrageously stupid on a game-by-game basis and just doesn't seem to care. That it just doesn't seem to care what's happening. It just doesn't seem to care about doing his job. It may even be trying to to get himself fired so he can leave with the giant bags of guaranteed money that this team's incompetent owner offered to him, which may have been offered alongside a promise of complete autonomy.

That's possible, too. Maybe this is just the way that Monty wants to coach, and it's the way that, you know, he's playing mad scientist because he just, he was given that ability, and it was Tom Gores who got involved when it came to Jaden Ivy. He heard, you know, the organization-wide meeting, for example, that could very well have included Gores, and I would be surprised if it didn't. Because for better or worse, he really likes to be involved in the Pistons. I'm going on a slight A side.

I think Tom Gores really cares a great deal about this team. He's willing to spend whatever it takes, and he dearly wants the Pistons to be successful. But it comes with the deadly caveat that he only wants that to happen as long as he doesn't have to change the way that he is involved with the team. And maybe he's just his ego wants him to, you know, because of that, because of his ego, he wants to be a guy who played a significant role in the operation of the team on the way to a championship. Well, whatever the case, when you have a coach just giving up points like that, it's going to make the difference in a lot of games. It made the difference in the next game.

Sure, if just the officiating had gone the Pistons way, they made the right call in that last play, the Pistons would have won. But if Monty Williams hadn't horribly screwed up and put out an all-bench lineup that was basically doomed to failure, again, all-bench lineup should never happen on this team and rarely happen in general, because you want to keep good play. you want to keep some of your good players out there at all times. And the Pistons may have comfortably won that game. They may have comfortably won the game against Orlando if you hadn't done stupid stuff. They may have comfortably won, or even not comfortably, just won a bunch of close games.

The Pistons, record in close games, is comically bad. And it's all because of Monty Williams. I mean, 4 and 21, I mentioned this before. The only team that is even remotely comparable to the Pistons over the last decade was the 2015-2016 Sixers. They won eight games. They were possibly the most ultra-tanking team. of in several decades, Sam Hinky, who was a little bit too blatant about tanking,

got forced out by the NBA near the end of that season, and this team was trying to lose as much as it could. So that's how bad the Pistons record in close games is. So, yeah, that's kind of tough, and it's lost the Pistons. A lot of games all season, lost them games in February. For example, you look at the Clippers game. I think this was the second Clippers game

in which the Clippers went to, small, and as Monty Williams, is this any self-respecting coach, you have a couple options if you coach the Pistons. Number one, you punish them for going small by throwing Jay Wendorne at them. He's very capable of punishing smaller matchups, whether that's on the pick and roll, because nobody in that Clippers lineup is going to be able to defend him on Wobbs or just in more traditional fashion, just feed him down low. If you, for some reason, don't want to punish the other team by using your physically dominant center, then you just throw a Sart Thompson out there at center.

Again, capable. You can neutralize their small ball. They're going to have trouble with him on the role as well. Instead, you do nothing. And you just say, well, basically, I'm going to allow you to rob the bank. That's a bad analogy. A bad metaphor, rather. But I'm just going to allow you to do whatever you wants, and I'm going to give you

this advantage and not punish you at all for it. Stuff like that. Like the first Clippers game, again, relatively close game until it got out of hands. And just the usual mistakes. The Lakers and the Sun's games, I mean, those were just disasters overall and the rotations really didn't help. I mean, the King's game, I'd say, was the pinnacle of this month. Just Jaden Ivy, and this is another thing with Jaden Ivy.

I think we all thought that you look at those two games, and it's like, okay, well, he's finally going to be unleashed because Bion is gone and Burks has gone. Monty's beloved Kade Boyon sets, which had lost them the previous game, arguably, just two horrible sets he ran on the late game in which had consigned Ivy to the corner in so many situations. We're gone. Again, with Monty Williams, the improvements this year of generally. been because his bad options have been removed from him. And you think, okay, well, Ivy's finally going to be unleashed. And then you find out that, you know, as long as Monty has other options, he can find ways to push Jaden to the periphery. Because Ivy, over the last six games or so, has just been, you know, you want to take your elite slasher, you want to take your young players

and both put them in a position to succeed, both for the immediate in the immediate sense and for development's sake, for building confidence, for finding their skills. You know, Ivy has benefited from on-ball reps and for having sets run for him and so on and so forth. But instead, he's just been pushed the periphery again. It doesn't really get to participate all that much, not even in just moving explosively off the ball, certainly very rarely in attacking from on the ball. And it's infuriating. Now, what you would logically do, and again, we know at this point that Monty Williams is not going to operate with anything approaching good logic. He's most often going to choose the lose-lose option. It's terrible. It's infuriating. It's maddening. But it is what

it is. But, you know, logically speaking, what you would do with Kate and Ivy, number one, you would use them more productively together, you know, and try to get the most that you can out of the both of them. But that's not going to happen. So what you would do, ideally you bring off Kate before Ivy, because Kate is handling the ball very heavily. And again, we're talking in the context of Monty Williams and how he operates things here, though even putting myself in his shoes makes, you know, even in a theoretical exercise makes my skin crawl a little bit. So you bring Kate off earlier because he's been working real hard as the on-ball handler. You then let Ivy handle it because he hasn't really been expending as much energy

and you want to get him on ball reps. And then maybe, you know, you can play your third string point guard, excuse me, your bench point guard, hopefully that's Marcus Sasser. If you have to play Malachi Flynn for a bit, okay, fine, do that for a very short time. And then Kade comes back on relatively refreshed in the second, you know, the second quarter. and also with Cade, like we see that he flags at the end of the fourth, you know, the second half of the fourth quarter when he's played too many minutes. Instead, what happens is that Cade is kept on the floor for like the first nine or ten minutes

at the second quarter. Ivy has brought off usually two or three minutes before that. The Pistons have sometimes just a bad pandler out on the floor like Flynn. It was killing early in the season. Ivy sometimes sits on the bench for seven or eight minutes. He sat for that entire stretch with the Pistons got absolutely plows. mastered by the Knicks and hurt pretty bad by the Bulls the very next night. And it's funny that the Bulls, that Monty could not have cared less about the steep cost

of his rotational antics of the night before and did the exact same thing the next game with the same result. And yeah, you just, you want to stagger Cade and Ivy how you can, especially right now with Sasser out. You get Ivy more reps on the bowl and you exhaust Cade less. Against the Knicks, Cade was genuinely on the floor for the entirety of the third quarter. Monty was pointing on bringing him off at 10 minutes, but there was no stop at your play, and it's like, well, you can call it time out. Anyway, Cade came back on, and he was just exhausted.

You could see it in the second half of the fourth. So, Ivy's basically just being pushed the periphery, and it's absolutely infuriating, but this is just how it's going to be with Monty Williams. So we'll just visit a couple more small things here, just other notable games. The win against the Bulls, nice to have, incredibly lucky. The Bulls had what I've got to think is the worst three-point performance in the history of the franchise. I shot two for 29. If they'd even shot 25%, or 1, 30%, the pistons probably would have lost the game. And that probably, again, would have hinged on the all-bench lineup in the first that got annihilated.

Or all-bench or all-bench plus Asar, who is the least useful guy for you to have out there, you know, for obvious reasons, because he's a negative on offense. So the least useful with the starters. And, yeah, Assar's usage in the lineups, that's a different question. but I think we're past an hour now, an hour and five minutes. So I think with that in mind, so I'm going to, and it'll end up being a little bit shorter than an hour in five minutes because there are some periods of silence in here, let me get cut out and editing.

But just with time in mind, I think I'm going to call the episode here next week, and I was planning on doing that this week, talking about lineups and how things have gone, statistically speaking, since the trade deadline. We'll have some more data, of course, come next week because our amount of data with Fontekeo in the lineup, with Grimes in the lineup is pretty limited. So we'll talk about lineups and how they've looked since next week.

And so, yeah, that'll be it. I'll just take this opportunity at the end of the episode to plug my substack. I'm back to doing these pretty lengthy post-game analyses. I think the last one rated in about 2,500 words. I put video in them and so on. Always good to know that people are reading them since they tend to take me a couple hours each. But I really appreciate those of you who are reaching out and saying that you've been enjoying those. and still putting out quite a bit of content on Twitter on a fairly regular basis.

Hope you folks have been enjoying that as well. If you haven't followed, I'm at to the BasketPod. That's T.O. Not the number two. So I would love to hear from you on there as well. So in any event, as always, folks want to thank you for listening. Hope you're all doing well. We'll catch you in next week's episode.