Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 187: The Unevaluable Rebuild

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

This episode compares where the season stands to where the Pistons stood at this time last season, recaps the previous week of basketball, discusses rotations, and speaks on why it's hard to truly evaluate the status and future of the rebuild right now.

Welcome back, everybody. Listen to another episode of Driving to the Basket. I'm Mike, and as always, hope you all are doing super, super well today. Another week of Pistons basketball in the books was not a particularly good week of Piston basketball, but we've kind of grown to accept that. I know it's been a severely trying season for everybody. And, you know, for those of you who have stuck with it to this point, I mean, we've got, I'm going to believe, less than 20 games left.

that was, excuse me, 21 games remaining. So just about three quarters of the way through the season. And it's been a tough one. It's been a real tough one for me. This has been the worst season, the most trying season I've lost in any sport. You all know the reason. It's probably the same reason as it's been extremely difficult for all of you. You know, it hasn't all been Monty Williams, but it has been largely in Monty Williams. I know every game I'm going to tune in and see him do something that's unambiguously stupid. So one thing I want to specify, I did mention in the last episode and episodes before that, the Pistons, a horrible, horrible record in close games and who it compares to over the last decade.

I'm referring to past seasons in that case. The Wizards and the Spurs are actually right in the running there with the Pistons in terms of record and close games. They, however, are not trying to win, whereas the Pistons are. but all three of them are going to, at this rate, place amongst the very, very worst teams in close games over the last decade alongside those 2015-2016 Sixers. Of course, the real crime for the Pistons is that they are absolutely trying to win those games and they're still real bad. Speaking of previous seasons, let's look back to where we were a season ago.

And again, this is just for other things that I just find remarkable in terms of just demonstrability of how awful this has gone. The Pistons actually last season started hard tanking almost exactly a year ago. It was the 4th of March was the last game that Boyan Bogdanovich played. Alec Berks only played one game after that. And at that point, last season's roster had a better net rating, six more wins, albeit in four more games, but we see the rate of which team this team is winning games. It's probably not going to make all that much of a difference.

and an 11 and 19 record versus 4 and 22 in close games. If you want to have a fun statistic, the Pistons up to this point last season had a negative 4.2 net rating in close games. It's negative 48 this season. That's real great. Let's remember that Dwayne Casey was neither a good coach nor at all a good late game coach. He had this habit of really losing control of the offense in the late game. And of course, that team hadn't lost 28 games in a row in 35 or 36, and that roster had a lot less talent than this. one if you want to remember and I'm separating this out just at this point of the season last

season you know just up to up to early March because you all remember what happened in those last you know from from March onward I mean the Pistons that that team only ended up with 17 wins for the most part because they just absolutely hard hard hard tanked from March 5th onward won two of 18 games within one of those was against a Bulls team in a meaningless game in the season finale the Bulls didn't care it wasn't going to impact what we is going to happen for them. And the Pistons had a 13 point average margin of loss in those final, in those 16 losses. And you all remember those lineups. Killian Hayes and James Wiseman were the second and third leading scores over that stretch. The Wiseman Bagley's

starting lineups. Omar Rui, Hampton, Rodin, Buddy Beheim saw some run. And if you just look at the roster as a whole last season, it was just significantly less talented. We only got 12 games of Kate. Ivy was a rookie who really struggled in the first half of the season. Well, not struggle, but he wasn't all that good. He picked it up in the second half. We had Sadiq, who, I mean, he had a rough season, but, you know, even just having him as a forward who could shoot, would have been nice, would have been nice this season, though, granted, he is really struggling in Atlanta. You had Killian Hayes after, after K1 down, who started 56 games, needless to say he was horrible. You had a rookie Duren who was a lot less polished than Duran is today, and so on and so

forth. Just the roster is significantly worse. Corey Joseph playing quite a few, you know, quite a few minutes. Amato Diallo playing quite a few minutes. And, of course, that roster's goal from the very beginning was not to win games. This was very much a development year. This roster, this season came out from day one. We want to win more. You know, development was going to be a priority, but, you know, it's we want to win more games.

And, of course, we saw what happened. It's distressing, you know, I just, but I just thought it was something worthy of notes. And, of course, we know who, like I used to call a, Dwayne Casey, the Phantom menace at times because, no, he wasn't really much for a Phantom. I mean, he really helped the Pistons lose a lot of games. Not on purpose. But my goodness, there's Money Williams. No, he's not really much for Phantom either.

He's up there right in the front, screwing everything up. This is basically just illustrative of how completely and utterly and horribly and generationally bad he's been. But let's talk the week in review here. So Pistons 0 and 3 this week had one game. that was very winnable. It was against the Cavaliers in which Monty trotted out would end up being his final all-bench lineup, well, hopefully. But we finally, you know, after he brought in these all-bench lineups,

starting when I believe was around the end of November against the Knicks, they may have showed up before that, but that's the first one I remember. This, aside from the games in which he just didn't really have the option to do so, which was in between, you know, which is. the Pistons have traded away a bunch of guys and there was just no realistic way of running a 10-man lineup in the first place. You know, this is the first time. We have not seen it in so long. And of course, it's because money doesn't care. I think we've determined that already. He's all bench lineups where there's something, especially with the talent on this team, but it's like

you stagger your starters for a reason. So you can keep some of your best players on the floor at all times. But especially with this team, which doesn't really exactly long on bench talents. I mean, it was just something no caution in his right mind would have done. And I just think it's worth bringing up again and again. For Moni Williams, this guy who just wants to portray himself is a man of high integrity who basically just did incredibly stupid things. And then when the media reasonably asked, why are you doing these things, he would just a lie, give nothing answers.

Like the answer he gave yesterday about spacing in the starting lineup with Duran and Osar and Isaiah Stewart who's struggling from three. He gave some nonsense answer about, oh, I'm not just going to look at analytics, you know, and two point out offense. set our defense better, which is completely, it's completely untrue. If you're finishing a, if you're finishing a play from three, then you miss, I mean, just inherently, it's going to get you better. You know, you're going to be able to get back and transition better just because of where your players are. You don't have one who's deep, whether that be near the basket or even in

the mid-range, it's going to disadvantage you there. So he just gets, he just gives garbage answers and sometimes just outright wise. And with the all-bench lineups, one of the beatwriters, you know, was asked, you know, what does Monty say? This was a couple months ago. What does he say about the bench lineups, all bench lineups? And he said, well, we've asked him a million times and all he says is he's going to stop using them. He just kept lying and then stopped even bothering to lie. It's just remarkable how much of a sleaze bag the guy has been this season. You know, in addition to obviously not caring about how his team does. So in any case, you put in an all bench lineup, which should flop the previous two games as well for the very good reason that

it had like two NBA players in it. It would be Grimes and Fun Teckio. Though Fentecchio was in the starting lineup, I guess, I think, no. What, the important part here is that it had three non-MBA players between Wiseman, Flynn, and Fornier, who just continues to suck. And it's funny to see him playing for a coach who initially benched Jaden Ivy and buried him for supposedly for bad defense, though. I think obviously Monty Williams doesn't really care about bad defense. He just dislikes Ivy. Fornier is a no defense guy. if he's hitting his shots, cool.

If he's not, or if he's asked to play any defense, he's just the sub-MBA rotation player, the better than the other two. Anyway, it got stomped. Cavaliers beat that lineup 12 to 2 in like about four minutes. Pistons ended up losing by 10. So many times coaching the difference. The magic, Pistons just came out very, very flat. They kept it close in the first half, got annihilated in the early stages of the third quarter,

in which, of course, no adjustments were made. and Jaden Ivy, in both of those games, spent the entire time on the periphery. I've noticed that it's a choice for Monty Williams. It shouldn't be a choice for a guy who's an NBA coach, but it is a choice. He will either use a SAR in his sets or he will use Ivy in his sets. If it's a SAR, then he's moving around and doing things and not just standing in the corner, which I'll reiterate as the absolute and utter worst place you could possibly be because it's just a big gift to the opposition.

just a big gift. It's like you're a horrible shooter. You're standing in the corner where you can't, you know, you can contribute minimally if you get the ball rather than, you know, being out above the break and at least being able to set some screens and maybe roll to the baskets or maybe catch the ball and attack through an open lane. No, nope, you're just standing in the corner, even though typically that's where you put a shooter. But you can't shoot. And so your man is thrilled to help off of you. And you know what? If you get the ball, sure you're shooting a little bit better lately, but it's, you know, from a mathematical standpoint, it's still wonderful for defenses if you're taking that shot. So if Sarras being used, Ivy is just kind of hanging out in the periphery and doing nothing, not even moving off the ball. This is an explosive offball mover. This is a guy who, yeah, he is struggling lately. I mean, there's no doubt about that. But he needs to be tracked by defenses. He's a threat in being, so to speak, as long as he's moving. Defenses really need to pay attention to him because he's going to beat his defender off the ball.

so but in this situation he's not even moving off the ball he's just basically being turned into a three-point shooter which is needless to say a huge waste or you have ivy being used as he was last night and then a sarah gets glued to the corner for the entire game spolster had a great time with that you know he really really made the piss and suffer for that in the second half and i mean Monty had even when he drew up a play and out-of-timeout play after the heat had gone on that big run his out-of-time-out play was, okay, I'm going to give the ball to Jade Navi. He's going to curl around Duren for a handoff. Oh, but I'm just going to keep a Tsar in the corner right, you know, just adjacent to his lane,

that, you know, which we're trying to get him into the basket. Okay, well, you have just willingly committed suicide on that play. That is an astonishingly and incomprehensively stupid thing for any NBA coach to do. This is a basic thing. You know, number one, if you want to score, put Fantecchio in there, not a SAR. But number two, it's like you know that Duncan Robinson, who is defending a SAR, is going to help. There is not even the slightest doubt about that, because it is 100% the right thing for him to do. There is no ambiguity there.

It's like, why the hell do you have a SAR sitting in the corner right on Ivy's route? You know, if you want to have him in, have him set an off ball screen or something. But it's like, no, I just don't give a damn. Use the language. I just don't care. You know, to the corner you go. it's just this sort of incomprehensibly idiotic thing. And again, I don't buy that there's really anything to this beyond, like Monti was competent enough again last season. We didn't hear that anybody had taken a baseball bat to his head and just whacked all of the, you know, the basic coaching principles and ability to make basic common sense decisions out of his head. We haven't heard about any cognitive degeneration. So, yeah, anyway, what it comes down to is that he's been, he's just been the difference. in so many close games.

He was the difference in the Cavaliers game, you know, even beyond just the all-bench lineups. And yeah, the Cavs did hit a lot of, did hit a lot of really difficult threes, but the Pistons still could have been in that game. Pistons could have been in plenty of games. This roster is not quite as bad as he has made it look. And, yeah, against the heat, yeah, I mean,

this roster is not as bad as he has made it look. And like I've said, I really dislike the degree to which his coaching is kind of altered public perception because, yeah, this team has done horribly. But I think, in my opinion, this team would be sitting at or probably a little bit above 20 wins with a good coach because it does have talent and is just spectacularly mismanaged. So anyway, so we're finally, I hope, done with the all-bench lineups. Only took him 60 games. That's a game 60 to start running a decent rotation, which, again, any NBA coach in his right minds

would have done very early. Instead, in the first game, we got, even before the all-bench lineups. I mean, at the beginning of the season, it's like, oh, we're going to put three non-shooters starting lineup out there, have fun. Goodness. And I feel like, I feel kind of bad because I inevitably get back to talking about Monty Williams on every episode. And, you know, I can't, I would imagine, and hopefully I'm wrong. That's, well, hopefully it doesn't get old. Just the issue is that this season has revolved so much around his bad coaching. You know, the outcome of this season so far and how everything has gone. His horrendous coaching has been at the center of the vast majority of that.

And it just remains incredibly incomprehensible how an MBA coach can be this dumbfoundingly incompetent. And again, the incompetence may be deliberate or just purely negligent. I can't see really any other outcome. Oh, something I do want to mention. And this is a positive thing. because I never actually wish bad things about Monty Williams as a person. I just want him to be fired as a coach or to step down, and I think he has absolutely no shame in that capacity.

Since I've seen it, asked, you know, is he still distracted by his wife's condition? And fortunately, his wife has been cancer-free for some time. He announced that in December. So, you know, thank goodness for that. Great that she's healthy. And I think it can pretty safely be said that, no, that doesn't. play a part and how bad his coaching has been.

And, of course, if he felt like he wasn't able to focus on the job in the first place, if it had been different, he shouldn't have taken it. But again, I don't think distraction is going to make a coach make as many, you know, frankly, from a basketball sense, suicidal decisions as Monty Williams has made all season. So I wouldn't buy that as a factor anyway. Just being, having a distraction, and this would be a very, very big distraction, I think, for the average person, isn't going to make you do stupid things, like really, really, incredibly senseless things.

and that has characterized his decision-making all season, his senseless stupid things. So in terms of the rotation, I mean, the Pistons still really haven't benefited from having good health after the DeBline. Marcus Sasserb was out first and has been very cold since he got back. And now Quentin Grimes is out, and who knows what the Pistons will do with him for the rest of the season.

I mean, at this stage, with 20-something games left, maybe they just take it really easy on his knee. It would be disappointing, but if it's an issue, probably the best idea for the future. but in terms of the rotation so it hasn't exactly been made clear what the situation is with Simon Fontechio who again if he plays

if he starts two more games then he hits what's called starter criteria in terms of his qualifying offers restricted free agent and his cap hold goes up from 3.8 million to 6.3 million and this front office of course has been very very salary cap focused is that the reason he's not starting or is just Monty Williams being stupid

been out that hasn't come out quite yet but let's assume that he has to come off the bench which kind of sucks yeah um but if he does have to come off the bench i mean you can easily just run an eight-man rotation with grimes and sasser and and fantecchio or if you absolutely need to have a ninth man then you can bring out evan fornier where necessary though again i still don't think he's particularly ideal but you know here's what you do and yeah stewart assar and Duren, that's horrible spacing, excuse me, especially with Ivy in the mix. Stuart, unfortunately, he had one good game against, I think that was against the Cavaliers, or was it against the magic?

Sorry, I haven't checked, but Stewart at this point is just not reliable enough of a shooter to, you know, be considered a strong spacer, whatever. So you bring out Stewart early, you bring in Fontechio, and then you bring Stewart back as the backup center, so you don't have to play James Wiseman, who actually had, a half-deas in game against the heat, which is to say he played at a third string caliber NBA center level rather than being a walking disaster. And, you know, beyond that, again, it's not rocket science. You know, you bring in Sasser, you bring in Grimes. You just manage the rotation like a competent NBA coach. Here's something I would actually like to see is Sasser, Stuart pick and

pop sets. Again, Stuart's going to have to hit the threes to make that happen. Or you bring in, you take the radical step of bringing in Sasser with, with Kade, for example, for some minutes, just be innovative in your rotations. Again, this is all a pipe dream because it's pretty unlikely than anything is like this is reasonably going to happen for this under this coach who seems bent on pursuing lose-lose options in every situation. You've seen in two games recently now. Duren gets in foul trouble.

You could move Isaiah Stewart over to center and just bring in Fontechio. But instead, as was the case last night, and I think against the magic as well or whatever that game was in which Daron got in a foul trouble. You bring in a James Wiseman, and you have Wiseman and Stewart and Asar instead. Woo-hoo. And, you know, you've got the added benefit, excuse me, added detriment of having James Wiseman out there in the first place. Okay. Well, I've drone down enough, enough about the games this week.

It's just basically more of the same. Coaching somewhat improved. Coaching's still terrible. that's speaking of Wiseman, we pretty much got confirmation by way of James Edwards that Muscala didn't ask out. He was willing to stay. Unfortunately, the Pistons told him, well, we're playing Wiseman instead, and so we'd be happy to buy you out. Not a decision that I'm a big fan of. Muscala is a below-average NBA player, however, he did have an unambiguously positive impact on this team.

You know, he's a solid, you know, he's a decent veteran. You know, again, below average, a decent veteran. who can be counted upon to make decent decisions. And he also offered a certain amount of flexibility in terms of lineups that James Wiseman, of course, does not. And, of course, again, if you're a Muscala, you have the benefits. The team has the benefit of you not being James Wiseman, who for the most part is an absolute walking catastrophe whose brain seems to operate, like one or two seconds behind at all times.

So what Muscala offered you to do, of course, more spacing. You can, assuming that you have to have Isaiah Stewart starting, because you're not willing to bring FonTecchio in or kind of game the system by like, oh, Isaiah you're going to play for like the first 10 seconds and then we'll bring FonTecchio in, which I don't think is likely to happen. Then, like, here's what I would do. And assuming Fontecchio's cap hold isn't an issue and we haven't really heard about that one way or another. So, you know, in that case, you just, you start FonTecchio,

you bring a SAR off the bench and a SAR can come off the bench with Muscola next to him and alongside Grimes and alongside Sasser and whoever in the, the starting lineup stays out there, and then you've got a SAR on the ideal situation for him to contribute in the half court. Well, now that's no longer an option. Now, you don't have the benefit just in general, also of what Muscollo was able to offer. Again, just like a half-decent veteran for a team that is now extremely young to boot. Now, I'm just going to reiterate what I said about Wiseman. I don't think Weaver is at the core of this. Wiseman fell out of the rotation for 10 games after the liver's trade.

And then, you know, he fell out of the rotation for a game again against the magic where Isaiah Stewart was just playing power forward. I mean, if Troy Weaver is part of this, then he has been spectacularly inconsistent about it. I've got to think this is probably Monty Williams. And, I mean, here's the thing about Wiseman. If you get him to play like he did last night against the heat, then it's like, cool. You have a third string caliber center. It's like, where's that realistic we're going to get you?

I would just be shocked if James Wiseman actually made some. substantive improvements, and I'd rather have this team able to actually play functional NBA basketball for the rest of the season. Now, again, that's going to be contingent upon their coaching at a bare, at least like D plus competent level, which he hasn't done. So just getting into the roster as a whole. And like I mentioned, I think that this team kind of defies evaluation at this point. I understand why people are very, you know, if anybody who is very upset with Troy Weaver,

because you say, you know, he just hasn't done a very good job at building this roster, I agree he has not been very good by any means he has done. Going into the season in the roster he field to start out with was very bad. And the way he's comported himself as far as stocking this team with decent role players and guys who can do the fundamentals has been very bad. Too many projects. All of them failed. He's done a lot of things wrong.

At the same time, I think that looking at that and saying, I don't think, I think there's more to it than just looking at it and saying, while Troy Weaver built this terrible roster. Troy Weaver did not do a good job building this roster that much is, I think, beyond dispute. And I think that with a good coach, you'd be looking at, you know, maybe in the mid-20s and wins on the season, which would be an improvement over last season, but still a great disappointment in the year four of the rebillum. We're really looking for the team to win. But at the same time, I think that, sure, you can point at the roster for one of the reasons this team hasn't been doing well.

I have to reiterate that this team has a coach, it's possible that a worse coach than Monty Williams or even an equally bad coach has not been seen in decades. He has been that bad. I'd say almost, I'd say unequivocally the worst major hire that this team has made in the last 40 years. And I say 40 years because that's as far back as my Pistons history goes. So I think so long as Monty Williams is the coach, this team is going to defy evaluation to a degree. I don't even want to think, well, I have thought about it. but, you know, the degree to which he may be impeding developments, I'd say, particularly for Jaden Ivy, who again is slumping, but it's been an uphill battle for him against a coach who just dislikes him

from day one. And for some time now, even after those good game, very good, you know, a couple of games he had, it looked like he was going to be unleashed. I'm not very good against the Trailblazers, but it looked like he was going to be unleashed after the trade deadline. And then he just abruptly found himself pushed to the periphery again. And in some games, not really allowed to handle the ball, it's like, hmm, does the front office have to remind Monty again that this is a possibility.

Again, reminds in air quotes there from what Monty said about that big organizational meeting at which it was pointed out to him that maybe we should let Jaden Ivy handle the ball more. To go, I just hadn't thought of that. So again, I just don't think you're going to get a good idea of what the Pistons have as long as he has the coach. Unless he just decides next season that he's saying, you know, they're just going to start carrying again in which events I will not go and say, oh, hey, you know, maybe the higher was a decent one after all because it's like this guy who just in that case just deliberately

tanked a season in the worst possible way. I'm just decided he was going to be the worst, one of the worst coaches in NBA history, you know, at least recent NBA history, blah. So unless we get kind of Phoenix Suns Monty back. And again, I think he was, he was a solid good NBA coach in the regular season, or not quite as good maybe as I thought he was after a previous examination, but certainly competent. And again, my thought was that, okay, well, once the Pistons make the playoffs and start making waves, you know, hopefully he just won't be there past like year four or five. That's why I thought six years was crazy because he sucks as a playoff coach.

And again, referring to the finals, yeah, he did make the finals in 2021 as a result of incredible injury look. I'll maintain that if Anthony Davis and LeBron James have been healthy in the first round, I think those sons go down in the first round and then we're not in this mess. if Jamal Murray had been healthy in round two. Remember, this is a Nuggets team that had made the conference finals the season before. And yeah, if he had been healthy, then I think the suns go down in round two. If Kauai wanted have been healthy.

It's always an eternal if in the playoffs these days. Kauai, I mean, I know that he's been a little bit forgotten because he has not been healthy. He's been very unhealthy the last few years. Kauai wanted when he's healthy is an unstoppable score. I mean, he is an incredible basketball player. is also very strong on defense. I've seen him referred to as this generation's Grant Hill, but we've won a championship, two of them, in fact, and two finals MVP.

If he's around around three, I doubt they win. And in round four, they bought a two-win lead to a team coached by Mike Boodenholzer, whose offense is here, Janus, here, Drew, here, Chris, take the ball, please score with it. We need either all three of you to have solid games, two of you to have very good games, or one of you to have an amazing game, or our offense is just not going to be able to get the job done. So yeah, that was a concern. Of course, things have gone much, much worse than just, oh, we'll worry about the playoffs when they come over. So I just, yeah, I don't think that we have really the ability to look at this roster and say, you know, and really make an evaluation of it.

Beyond that there are some things it needs, of course. He needs more guys like Simone Fontecchio, who's been a surprise since he came over. You know, he's, uh, he's, of course, been a very, very good shooter, but he's also been much more able off the dribble and, you know, make some good passes as well. And you got to watch him. Teams have to either give attention to him and you have to guard him fairly closely because he can shoot without much space and you got to close out hard on him. And he uses that to attack off the dribble. And he's, you know, he's pretty good at that. Whether it's attacking a closeout or just attacking somebody who's guarding him very closely. I mean, he's been surprisingly effective at that. And of course, if you leave him open, you're in trouble.

So any more guys with the fundamentals. You still got to figure out what you're doing it forward. If a SAR comes back and next season and can shoot, it's like fantastic. That's a big boost. You're going to want to look for your power forward of the future. That's obviously not Isaiah Stewart. Fontechio, with all respect to him, I think is probably best off being your first forward off the bench. It's not a matter necessarily of just a guy can do it. You want to field an optimal starting lineup.

I know that's windup in small minutes with the Saur in it, which I believe was with Fon Tecchio. I actually did okay. but it's never going to be worthwhile to field non-shooting ASR. Even if you have a lineup that might do all right, it's always going to be much more preferable to field somebody who can shoot, you know, a better player. Yeah, it's just, it just hurts so much to have a non-shooter on the floor and your starting lineup or just in general,

or particular if he's playing big minutes. So, yeah, this is just going to be a long-term confounding factor for a coach who has come in and screwed up basically in every single respect and has the team, which struggled so much on defense last season, it's hilarious that he came in talking about instilling this defensive identity. You know, if you can't guard two dribbles, you can't play because look at all the players in the team who are not able to, like, boy on, he can't really guard two dribbles pretty well, they're very well.

Now, Ivy is actually at times impressive in his ability to stick with athletic players off the dribble. His issues remain awareness, but the Pistons are far more headless than they were on defense last season. It's unusual to see a team this headless, unusual to see a team that, that, that, He lost the locker in very early. They're just, yeah, it's just, it's two different things or maybe similar. But he's just a black hole, you know, who sucks up any real hope of this team playing functional basketball. So I've been on this for a little while, but it's like, I don't think blow it up is the right way to think about it at this point. We just, number one, this rebuild was always going to depend a lot on development, you know, extremely on development.

and it would have been nice if Troy Weaver had found some, you know, some young talent on the periphery that didn't flop because you really got to find those moves in the periphery. You got to find good talents outside of the top five, for example. Which, of course, it's just Jalen Duren. Remains his only major move in the periphery. I'm just going to link that with Jeremy Grant. Fontecchio, all right, solid role player, but you kind of need more than just Jalen Duren and Simone Fontecoe.

So, yeah, it's just, it's just hard. to look at at this point. I know we all hope dearly that Monty Williams will be gone next season. And I think that's just going to be a necessity for this team to go anywhere again unless he decides he wants to start carrying again. But, I mean, if you look at the best case scenario, okay, Cade continues to improve. And I think he still maintains a superstar ceiling. You know, Ivy gets his shooting together, just continues to smooth out the edges. That's a good player who could be, you know, really solid number two or number three guy and a contender. Jalen Duren can just get his defense under control.

That's a guy in kind of tier two of centers. Again, to be in tier one, you just in this league, unless you're like a genuinely generational defender like Rudy O'Bare, then even he, I guess, you could argue, is below the tier of like, you know, M.B. Eden and Yokic, and I don't think you say Carl Anthony Towns anymore, but Sabonis, and I'm forgetting somebody. at the upper tier of centers is always going to be guys who can score at a really high level.

That's just an extremely valuable skill to have as a center versus guys who can't really do much for themselves. Duren can do more than most, even at this point, as a traditional big. And again, I'll note that I don't think any comparison should be made between Duren and a certain traditional center who is with the Pistons for the entirety of the 2010s. Oh, excuse me, most of the 2010s he was drafted in 2012. You know what I'm talking about because Duren has already, monumentally more polished on offense than that guy. It's just the question of the effort is sometimes inconsistent

and as defensive processing. And again, still raw, still 20. And so, yeah, let's say Duren gets together defensively and a Sarr becomes a solid shooter. You have a strong core there. Maybe you still need one more piece, which you can hopefully get somewhere. I mean, we're far removed from that.

But that's a team, as long as you have some, some, you know, some solid guys to fill the rest of the positions. You have, you know, Grimes off the bench, hopefully Sasser can be more consistent in terms of his scoring. And you just, you got to, and you have Isaiah Stewart playing power forward off the bench. And whether it's through the draft or free agency, you have a decent starting power forward. Again, I think you need one more guy who's going to be an elite scorer, but there's a team that at the very least is probably going to be able to challenge for the conference finals. Challenge, not necessarily make it every year. That's not bad. You know, that puts the piston.

and in pretty decent stead, all things considered. And they hate to say it, I mean, a lot of rebuilds end short of a championship. To get, you know, to rebuild into a championship roster. I mean, you have to be able to find those pieces around the periphery, pretty much. Or we secrue enough resources to trade for a star. Trade for another star, excuse me, or another superstar. And you have to generally have a genuinely good GM. This is why I don't look at, at, uh, very good.

example, the 2020 draft and say, oh, well, I'd very, very much disagree with the philosophy that, well, you know, X number of other teams missed out on Powell Burton, for example, where you go back to the 2017 draft. So X number of teams also missed out on Donovan and Mitchell. It's like, if you want to build a contender, one on a championship team, you have to do better than almost all of your peers. You have to be an excellent GM. So it's not a matter of, well, other teams screwed up too. If you want to be that really good GM who builds a contender and you're not getting like LeBron James in Miami or Los Angeles or Cleveland's for that matter, then you have to be better than just about everybody else at your job. So, well, other teams passed on them too. It's like,

well, the best that's saying about you is that you screwed up and so did other GMs. And that's just not good enough. You have to be actually good at your job, not just average, which I think you can whatever you want to argument we want to make about how well Troy has done average or better or worse. So this just all comes back to say, I think you, I mean, I think you got to get rid of Monty well before you consider blowing it up. But let's look at other outcomes. All right. So I think Kate is fairly safe. I think Kate is going to continue to improve.

I think that Kate is going to be a very good player in this league. I don't think that there is anything, and hopefully I don't have to eat my words here. I don't think there is anything to the idea that he's not going to sign a max extension this summer. You know, you're offered, goodness, I haven't calculated it, but it's going to be, I think, close to $200 million. Without, you know, before the escalator clause, I can't remember. I didn't look it up. The escalator clause is basically, if he makes all NBA or defensive player the year or MVP in his final season, then he becomes eligible for his first year to be at 30% of the cap rather than the standard rookie max of 25.

at this point, only Trey Young and Luca Donchich have gotten what's called a Rose Rule contract. You know, named for Derek Rose, of course. Who, if I remember correctly, they made that change afterward. Don't quote me on this. I don't think he actually got a Rose Rule contract because they said, well, player wins MVP, should be eligible for more. So, yeah, so I think Kate is a relatively safe bet, though he needs to get back in his horse defensively, and at times lately he's been better.

He's looked more like rookie Kade in terms of his ability to play defense, though the conditioning remains a mystery as far as just him slowing down in the fourth quarter. Of course, that should be coached for and taken into account and is not. Blah. So, Ivy is more of a question mark. Again, would benefit from a coach who doesn't dislike him. If he can even just get the shooting together, then that's a strong score who can probably get you close to 20 points per game.

and if emphasis is put on using him to his strengths, which is as an elite slasher, whether from on or off the ball. I mean, that's a very solid player, one of the most athletic in the league, super hard working. And how do you use Cade and Avi together? I think, again, to a degree things are being mixed up as, oh, well, you look at the season and you see Cade and Ivy having troubles working together. I think it should be kept in mind that this is a coach who is putting no effort into having them work together.

He was putting, yeah, basically extremely little effort into use. using them in conjunction according to their individual strengths, and I think they can be used synergistically. You see on plays where Kate handles the ball and passes it to Ivy who blitzes in and attracts coverage, and he passes it back to Cade or somebody else who now has a much easier route to the basket, and just the defense gets out of sorts from there. Cade is always going to attract attention to the pick and roll. Ivy is an elite off-ball mover. You can't let him have any path open to the basket because he's going to blaze through it and score.

So there are easy ways to use the two of them together in ways that are ultimately going to break the defense down, whether it's at the first step of Cade, for example, passing to Ivy, and Ivy just blitz into the basket, or Ivy passing back to Cade who will either shoot or make a pass, and Cade being able to shoot right now, his shooting is dramatically improved, and that just really opens up a new dimension for him, both on and off the ball. Because if he can shoot pull-ups in particular, which he's been doing well lately, then he's a three-level guy, and you absolutely just, you have to basically hedge on every screen. to keep him from just shooting it.

And teams have been hedging hard lately, and he's been making them pay for that. So he either shoots it or drives in and passes to somebody else, Ivy or whoever else, and you just continue with these passes as the defense gets increasingly more discombobulated and hopefully you get a high percentage finish. Instead of often you just get Cadeball, where he's taking a, you know, going around a pick and just trying to do something himself while most everybody, including Ivy stand still. What are you going to do with that? I mean, you look at what Ivy, even on a basic level, just have a move explosively,

curl around the screen, catch the pass, either blitz to the basket or pass to somebody else. That alone, if you just get him the ball in full tilt, is going to draw multiple coverage, and then he can pass the ball, and the defense there right away is wrong-footed. This is a very, again, we come back to this. You can't count on Monty Williams doing anything that makes sense. But this is just a basic thing you can do with Jaden Ivy. is a basic quality of his that is going to get you positive benefits. His off-ball movement in general is going to get you positive benefits.

The idea, of course, is to use every player, maximize every player, maximize what they can offer in terms of, and just incorporate all of that into your offense. Of course, that doesn't happen under the current coach of this team. I don't think there's any reason to necessarily believe that's going to change at this point. But I'm not concerned about the fit between Cade and Ivy. Ivy, just as an NBA player is going to need to be able to shoot. the ball. And he's done that better or worse at times, both last season and this season. Ivy also a guy, I think, really needs to get into a groove and have a consistent role, neither of which have been the case. But yeah, he just needs to continue working a shot.

That much is obvious. And Ivy, no matter what role he's in, will do his best. But I think you can really see, in my opinion, he's just a guy who looks different when he gets more of a role in the half court. So I'm not concerned about their fit. Ivy just as an NBA player is going to need to shoot, period. And next decade, also, I mean, it's not just next decade for the fit. He has to be able to shoot, period. Asar is more of a question mark. Can he improve from incredibly bad shooter to solid shooter?

It has happened before. The odds are, you know, just the historical data is against him. Excuse me. But, yeah, I mean, and I should reiterate, I feel very strongly about this, that if a SAR can't shoot, if he stays an on-shooter, it's not just going to be okay. It's not just, you know, he could still be a good role player. If you can't shoot in the NBA as a perimeter player, that is a monumental weakness. It makes life much easier on the defense.

It really reduces the breadth of options available to the offense. And it means you're basically unplayable and wait in close games. And in the postseason, in the postseason, they'll just hardcore punish you. It is a monumental weakness in terms of basically the mandatory skill for all perimeter players who are not Jimmy Butler or Janice and Dutigumpo or Dreamy. Green, who are in ideal situations with offenses basically built around them. And yeah, Draymond is the center of that offense in terms of, you know, as the playmaker and also having the greatest shooter of all time and one of the other greatest shooters

of all time next to him is very helpful. And then it comes to Duren. I mean, the main concern about Duren is that his defense won't come together. And it's been a mix of efforts. And Ackerman, he sometimes is just a half-second wait. He's not Wiseman late on things, but he's a half-second weight. And sometimes having me being a half-second wait, making the right to say. decision is going to, I mean, there's a game of inches in the NBA with the greatest basketball

players in the world, and that's going to lose you points. Sometimes it's effort too. Effort is not, that is not okay. You know, if you're just learning, and that's hopefully the case with Durham, your options are, A, he's just learning and he's still raw. Again, young player who's whose first year in college would have been his senior year in high school if he hadn't reclassified and whose rookie year on the NBA, who's based on his age, would have been his year in college if he hadn't reclassified. So that's your option. Is he just a guy who's raw and needs to continue learning? And that's what you hope for, because the other, you know, the alternative is that he just doesn't really have the acumen, that he's just genuinely not good on defense.

I think he was better in some ways in terms of his decision making, however, as a rookie, where his struggles were often just not really using his length quite as, they're what I would call micro errors, which are still problematic in the NBA, but less than just making actual honest to goodness, just big mistakes on a regular basis. There are more micro errors of just, you know, not necessarily positioning himself to use his length to disrupt things. You know, on his contest, just not, you know, being in position to contest, but just not really positioning his arms to contest a shot well.

Or, you know, just a little stuff like that. He would make mistakes, but he was always a hard worker in this season. I feel like there's been a certain amount of regression in terms of his work ethic and also his decision making. How much is his coach to blame for that? That's a good question. and Cade is much worse too. I don't know what that is.

And again, that's some effort. There's some effort-based stuff as well. I mean, again, this is a coach who lost the locker room very early. Definitely not the motivator he was portrayed as, that's for sure. But if Darn can't improve on defense, then that makes things much more difficult because right now he's basically, this season for the most part, he's been butter in the interior. He has learned a bit about playing more physically or just started to play more physically against guys like, you know, Sabanis, for example, whom he went up against that second time against the Kings when the Pistons won and suddenly wasn't, he was planting and not letting Sabonis just throw a shoulder into him.

And nobody should be moving Duren by throwing a shoulder into him unless it's Yokic or maybe Ambid. Yokic, we ever get the chance to walk to watch him up close. You'll see how incredibly strong that guy is. You know, he looks pretty puffy and, yeah, he probably is not, uh, the body fat is probably a good amount higher for him. and then for the average NBA player, but man, is that guy strong? I got to watch him up close against the, you know, against the pistons about a year and a half ago. And, well, I think this time, it was a couple years ago. And Stuart is huge just in terms of how muscular he is and in terms of how dense he is.

And Yokic was just, you know, taking that large rear end of his and just knocking Stewart back toward the basket. It was really something else. So, you know, basically nobody should be. pushing Durran around. Very, very few players should be pushing Durrne around. Sabanis is not one of them. And Durran apparently got in his head or was told this that he really should have known it, that you know, you plant your feet and you hold your ground. Because if you let them push you around, they're going to get a good opportunity to get better in that game. So that's a big question mark. And because Durran, I mean, it's been remarkable how much he's improved on offense.

And if he can just be even a solid defender, you know, just solid, then, I mean, that that really pushes the pistons far ahead. We're not far ahead, but that's a huge deal for the piston, to put it that way. I think under a better coach, you have Duren utilized more as a playmaker as well. You know, he's been able to create some offense from center, whether that's just from around the basket or off the dribble, where, of course, his handle is good enough that he can attack slower centers, both in transition and in the half court. I mean, his improvement on offense has been very remarkable.

I didn't see this. I didn't see this coming from him. It's just all about the defense right now. So, and then, of course, it begs the question of what's going to happen with the draft pick. I think that it is this front office's dream to try to trade that draft pick away for a big difference maker and just trade it right into cap space, which they can do. You don't have to send out matching salary if you can, if you can just take it into cap space. And if you have some cap space and bet it's not enough, then you just use matching salary to make up the difference. There's a little bit more to it as far as multipliers on cap space and whatnot.

that gets a little bit more complicated. But yeah, I think that's their dream. You know, get a strong power for it. I mean, I'm sure they'd love Lori Morkinen, for example, and you just take him into cap space and you renegotiate and extend his contract because he's only got one year left. And also you have to renegotiate

because it's only 100%. The max extension you can give is 140% of the last year's salary, and that's far less than what he would get. But the Pistons could easily give him a max. extension. That's their dream, I'm sure. Utah has set a very high asking price. But hey, you know, if you're able to trot out a starting lineup of Cunningham and an improved Ivy and an Saar who can shoot and Lauren Markinen and Jaywin Duren who can play defense, then you've got certainly a top 10 starting lineup in the league. The question is who's going to be available?

Again, I think if the Pistons come out of this offseason with just Tobias Harris as their major acquisition, it is going to be extremely disappointing. Just if he's the best available, because I just don't think he's a good fit for this team or really necessarily even a particularly good player or at least not in what the piston system is likely to be because if you push Tobias Harris down the offensive pecking chart just very much a guy who needs to get into a rhythm and is not very good if he can't and is not very good

if he just ends up he lets himself basically get squeezed out of the offense if he's not being prioritized. If you got Cade and Ivy, then he's number three at best and I don't think you even want Tobias Harris to be more than number three, not a knockdown shooter. I think last I checked, he was at 35% in the season on catching shoots, 35% two seasons ago, and not an ideal defender. Also, it'll be 32 years old, which is an age at which guys start to, often start to athletically decline.

Or the Pistons end up drafting high and take a French dude. To be honest, I haven't. I'm late on starting on draft research this season, possibly just because the season has been very distressing, and I was hoping, well, actually entirely because the season has been very distressing. And it would be interesting to see if the Pistons hard tank the rest of the season, or start to hard tank at some point. But I don't see how that's possible, given that they're not just going to be able to sit the veterans.

There basically are no veterans left. So, yeah, I mean, if you look at, if you just look at that eight-man rotation I spoke about before, then, I mean, Fontecchio, who's 28 in his second season in the league, is your veteran, unless you're talking to Evan Fornier. Or it's speaking of veterans today, the Pistons signed Taj Gibson to a 10-day contract. You could look at it and see a little bit of corruption, you know, with the link between him and Arn, tell him. But it's a 10-day contract, and this is a sort of, I mean, Taj Gibson was for a long time a strong defender at the NBA level. He's a smart defender.

And if you're just bringing this, I doubt that the idea was that we're going to bring him in as a mentor of some kind. Because frankly, if you don't have guys already who are in there, you know, guys who are no longer NBA players and is fine, just touch Gibson is not an NBA player anymore either. To are in to spend a lot of time with your players off the court and just help them with their defense. You know, that would be Jalen Duren primarily. I'm not sure if James Wiseman would really benefit from that because I'm not sure you can learn, not substantively anyway. You know, honestly, with Jalen Duren, you could just put him on the court with Isaiah St. who is already a very smart defender. Watch Isaiah Stewart defend a pick and roll.

You know, if you haven't, if you haven't seen that in the past, it's just an example of he's a very smart defender. You could just put him in a room with Isaiah Stewart with Duren, you know, all summer. And if you have that extra veteran on there who can help you out too, but it's like if the Pistons hadn't already taken that step, I mean, that's just, I'm just having somebody good out there to really focus, you know, off the court with a guy who is as important as Jalen Duren, And then, you know, that's, you know, there's just a certain ineptitude of that as well.

Because this is just kind of a basic, easy thing. But if this helps with that cool, beyond that, I'm just not too concerned with it. It's a 10-day contract, you know, whether it happened because of our intel-in or not. So, all right, folks, that'll be it for this week's episode. As always, hope you all are doing well. Thanks for listening. Catch you in next week's episode.