Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 191: President of Basketball Ops

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

After a long hiatus, the show returns to discuss the organization's search for a President of Basketball Operations and how the hire might impact the team's offseason strategy.

Welcome back, everybody. You're listening to another episode of Driving to the Baskets back after the longest hiatus I've taken since the COVID offseason. So just want to give a quick explanation first of where I've been. And some of it is some personal stuff that I'm not going to get into because, I don't know, I don't figure it's something you listen to the show to hear about. But there are, I mean, that'll just stop as emotional. exhaustion and just real mental fatigue, but usually that doesn't stop me. So beyond that, it's a mix of two things. And one of them was just how incredibly crushing this season was for me.

To go in, just as all of us, this isn't anything that all of you did not experience this season, because I know all of you did. To go into a season with a lot of anticipation for better basketball to see the youth develop, to see better coaching after Casey, who is just not a great encore coach, and Van Gundy, who was pretty darn bad, as bad as I thought it would get with the Pistons coach for a long time. And to be subjected to one of the worst seasons in NBA history, the 28 straight losses. And a lot of it, I mean, the roster went in wasn't great. That ultimately had a lot of holes early in the season. Well, I thought the Pistons, going to the season could be on the edge of the playing conversation if everything went well.

Needless to say, everything did not go well. But it's possible that even if everything had gone well, this would have been like a 30-32 win team. And I don't think that's, yeah, that wouldn't, that would have been close to the Bulls, I believe. I'm not looking at the standings right now. But obviously the roster had issues, had bigger issues than I'd really anticipated. Again, it was like, and if everything goes really well like everything. like the youth are looking a lot better and Asar Thompson can suddenly shoot and everybody's healthy and then Kate has the season that we're looking for and Ivy really progresses and so on and so forth. Anyway, I'm getting off topic. But instead what we got was a complete mess and a lot of it

came at the hands of the worst coach, the NBA, I mean this, the coaching this season for the Pistons was basically akin to sabotage. It should not have been realistically possible for an NBA coach to be this outrageously incompetent. And it just, bad coaching in any sport for me is one of just puts me on tilt more than anything else. And this was the worst coaching I'd ever seen. I never thought it could possibly get worse than what it was under Van Gundy the last, in his last two years.

It just, it shouldn't have been possible for it to be this bad. And we got to see a roster that was inadequate, be coached to lows that have literally never been seen before in the history of the NBA, 28 straight losses in one season. I mean, I know that they're tied with the 76ers from the process era 76ers who lost 28 straight between two seasons. Those teams were trying to lose as many games as they possibly could. This was a Pistons team that was trying to win, that again fielded an inadequate roster that was absolutely and utterly in every way sabotaged by its coach to a degree that has not been seen. And you don't see this in pro sports very often. And I would watch these games.

And with Van Gundy, I would just get upset. And it's like, why is he doing the things that he's doing? It don't make any sense. And, I mean, this may sound weird. I just don't even want to say the name of the guy I'm talking about here. But this season, I would watch the games, and I would watch him horrifically mismanage them. And I would get so angry that I would feel it in my gut. I'm sure a lot of you have experienced that.

Like, when you just get that angry that you just feel like your digestive track tightening up, it was really unpleasant. And again, this doesn't make me unique. This is a terrible season for any Pistons fan. I mean, it was statistically speaking the worst Pistons season ever. But I mean, you combine how it went with, you know, the fact that the Pistons were trying to win.

And it was in year four, you know, after three years of a rebuild, you know, which the Pistons did the right thing and trying to lose games for draft position, I don't buy the losing culture arguments. I think that you see, many, many rebuilds when they lose for multiple years and they're deliberately losing. And I just don't buy the losing culture thing.

I think there was a lot, there were a lot of factors that went into it that had nothing to do with that. And you see teams, you see players on teams that have lost a lot or even trying to lose and everything goes just fine with them. So whatever the case. Yeah. So it was, it was just a really painful season. And the coaching for me was just, infuriating. It was infuriating to see a roster basically. I'm going to stop this in a minute

because I know I'm repeating myself. But that was, I was just excited for a good piston season. All of us were. And this turned out to be like the most soul crushing season. I think any of us could have imagined. I like to think that a lot of my predictions are on base. Like I think, whatever, I'm not going to sit here in. And, you know, give myself plotts here. It's, you know, whatever. I don't need to talk about it if I think my predictions are on base. But, I mean, I absolutely did not see this coming. And I don't think anybody could have seen this coming. They have a coach who did things that no NBA coach in his right mind would do. And when his coaching wasn't genuinely insane, it was merely unequivocally

bad. And you look back in the Pistons won 17 games last season under Casey, who was a pretty poor coach. No one near as bad as Monday. My almost just said his name. No way near as bad as the Pistons coach this season, uh, because nobody in the last 30 years. And my Pistons history only goes back 40 years. He's the worst higher. Um, just, I mean, I wasn't watching 40 years ago, obviously. I've only been watching intently for like nine years. Uh, worst Pistons had coaching higher in that entire time. And, man, I just totally lost my train of thought. But, oh, yeah, nobody could have seen this coming.

And this season was just an absolute calamity. But, man, just watching an NBA coach completely undercut his team and do horrible things for development, too. I mean, that just adds insult to injury. It's like, Jade and I be getting screwed around constantly throughout the season. It's like, oh, well, you're going to have to come off the bench. And, oh, okay, well, I'm going to start you and give you a bigger role because you know, over the player I'd been playing in front of you, Killian Hayes, who's one of the worst players in the league

and has been for his entire career. I'm going to do that because I was told to do it. It's unclear if that was the front office of Tom Gores. Though I get the feeling that in order to get this coach to sign on, he was offered an unprecedented degree of latitude from the front office, so I think it was Tom Gores. So it's like, okay, well, you know, yeah, you're promising rookie, but you're going to come off the bench,

and I'm going to give you a really small role and deny you the ability, you know, the opportunity, even with the bench, unit to play a ball handling role for these ridiculous all bench units that are dying for lack of penetration, but we're going to let Killian Hayes do it instead. Oh, okay, well, I was ordered to give you a starting, a place in the starting lineup and a bigger role, so I'll do that, but I'm not going to let you handle the ball. Okay, well, I was ordered to let you handle the ball, but I'm still just going to shove you in the corner for long stretches so I can run endless Kate Bion sets. And okay, well, you know, Boyon was traded and Bairkes was traded. So I'm going to give you.

give you a bigger role, but it's still going to be very inconsistent. And I'm not actually going to use you and K together. It's just going to be one of you has the ball and the other has the ball, because I'm either too lazy or too incompetent to do anything else. And don't get me wrong, Ivy slumped at the end of the season, just wasn't hitting his shots, but this is a very, very bad thing to do to a young player. And it was done for no other apparent reason than petty dislikes. Completely arbitrary dislikes, too, because as we've seen, all the talk of accountability was complete and utter trash with all the, with the enormous leash that Killian and James Wiseman, and even Isaiah Livers.

These were three bottom 10 players got all the latitude in the world. Jalen Duren got all the latitude in the world, was never held accountable. We can talk about Duren, whose effort under Dwayne Casey was very good, even if he was very raw. And this season just gradually cared less and less about defense to the degree late in the season

in which he was just not playing defense at all in some games. The second game, they played against the heat in March. He just couldn't have cared less. And that is nothing. I've seen the speculation that it has to do with his injuries. Go watch Jayland Duren on offense. he is going full out 100% effort on basically every play because he wants to score. It's not a matter of fearing for his ankles.

It's a matter of him just often being disengaged and at times just not feeling like playing defense. No, he's not going to alter position to try to contest shots. You know, he's not going to move to just often, it's just a complete lack of effort. He'll get in that game, like for example, you guys all remember him, those massive blocks he would have in transition. And now you're just going to see him jog back gingerly. He just doesn't care. So there's another situation in which, you know, look, you look at these young players, and, of course, the responsibility ultimately falls to them.

But then you look at Dwayne Casey, who kept his players engaged through everything. You know, the guy, I think, in terms of his mechanics, was a bad coach. In terms of his leadership, clearly, it was very good. And the opposite happened this season, where, you know, where you have a guy like Duren who just decides that he doesn't really care anymore about playing defense, which obviously is a pretty big problem. So we saw progress from him. him on offense, of course, but on defense, it was a pretty severe regression.

Had nothing to do with the team around him. It just had to do with a lot of it. It was a combination of, you know, number one, him still being raw on defense, but number two, him just not caring. That's bad. It's a bad look for the coach. You know, what changed in an offseason. You have a Sarr Thompson who spent long stretches, and this is one of the most absurd things

in the NBA I've ever seen. Long stretches anchored to the corner. Like, you don't. put a guy, you don't just anchor a player to the corner in any situation unless he's like a guy like PJ Tucker who, it should be noted, was one of the most elite corner shooters in the NBA, but also he was consistently playing in situations in which he had elite teammates who spared him from the need to do anything else like that. You know, that's the only situation in which you just anchor a player to the corner unless you're lazy or incompetent. So obviously the pistons were not

in that sort of situation where it's like, okay, we're going to have like Tucker, for example, with the bucks. It's like, okay, well, Janice is going to be doing the attacking, or Chris Middleton or Drew Holiday. And your job is just to stand in the corner and shoot it, you know, when you're left open and crash the boards, you know, when a shot is put up. Or with the Thunder, not Thunder, excuse me, the Rockets, with James Hardin, one of the elite ISO players of all time. And, and Chris Paul as well, okay, just go stand in the corner. Or who else did he play with? He played with the sixers. It's like, okay, you're with Maxie and NMB'd. Of course, PJ Tucker is too old now.

The point is that, number one, the Pistons didn't have that amount of firepower, but they could afford to have a player do that. And number two, if you're going to have a player do that, he has to be able to shoot the ball. Sorry to raise my voice here, but he has to be able to shoot the ball. Sarat Thompson is, you know, by volume, in terms of volume three-point shooters, I think, I believe the statistic applies to guys who attempted 100 or more threes, were a shooter in the league. Also, it's a situation in which you are putting a player in position to fail

and not to contribute anything. It is a horrible thing to do. It's a horrible thing to do from a gameplay perspective, from a development perspective. This was unambiguously and incredibly ridiculously stupid and made no sense at all. He basically existed to be the biggest spacing liability he could and to do contribute as little as he could. Again, laziness, incompetence, horrible. Bad for development. Bad for the team.

Bad for everything. This is just a completely insane thing to do. And Monty Williams did completely insane and stupid things all season long. You look at Cade and it's like, okay, Kay did the best out of the first. four of them. But in the beginning of this season, you know, Cade had trouble getting his legs. Maybe that was coming back from injury, but it was also Monty Williams. Oh, well, I said his name. Cool. It was his coach deciding that he was number one going to start a starting lineup that the lack of spacing, it was a crime against modern basketball and absolutely

and utterly guaranteed to fail. Guaranteed to fail. And he's like, okay, well, Cade's going to work in this lineup. I'm going to run on an incredibly basic and incredibly predictable pick and roll sets into zero spacing. It's like basically just Jalen Duren is going to be the only one other one who's really moving. Not appreciated. Not good for a player. I mean, that made things pointlessly difficult for Cade. And that was a staple for the rest of the season. It's like, okay, well, these incredibly lazy sets where just Cade moving, just with Duren, whether it's a Sarr on the floor or otherwise. And when you have a Saur and Duren on the floor at the same time, you're asking for trouble on offense, two non-shooters.

that's a big problem. I mean, Assar was maximized most when Muskell and Galenari were on the team, and he could just play, one of them would spot up on the perimeter, and he could just kind of play sort of a center role, where he was effective, you know, at least as just a guy who set screens and roll it to the basket and whatnot. You know, you want to put your young players in position to succeed. You want to put all of your players in position to succeed.

But nope. And so it's, yeah, like on the development side of things horrible. of it was horrible. So I know this was a soul-crushing season, like I said, for everybody. So, but for me, just to go in, or for me to go in and be excited, like, the biggest thing I was excited about this season, it's like, okay, the Pistons finally have a good coach. And Monty Williams was a good regular season coach in Phoenix and a pretty good regular season coach in New Orleans, even though he was very limited in the playoffs, especially with Phoenix as the, as the NBA continued to, to evolve. and he's just and margins of error for poor coaching in the playoffs, you know, not making the right adjustments.

Stuff kind of like Dwayne Casey to a lesser extent. The tolerance for that got lower and lower the margin for error. And it certainly culminated with Monty doing a very bad job against the Nuggets last season. But, yeah, said his name again. So this, I've seen some of the, logical fallacies on this, on this topic, which is like, well, Phoenix Monty did well with a better roster. Phoenix Monty does, did not, and New Orleans Monty do not bear any resemblance to Detroit Monty. It's as if you took a coach who was competent and reduced him to an insane mess.

I don't know, for any of you who are fans of Roman era history, you know about Caligula, who is very well known and brightly known as one of the mad emperors. And I'll do this quickly because probably, I imagine not all of you were interested in history. But it's like, you know, he started off as a reasonably decent, generous emperor and then had what historians believe that was a brain aneurism and became insane and cruel. And, you know, one of the things he did, and this was largely despite the Senate, but it was really, really one of the things he's known for. A consul was one of the highest offices, though it didn't have much power back then.

he made his horse a console. And it's like, okay. Monty Williams is like the colligula of NBA basketball, formerly competent, and then becomes an insane mess. And his making his horse a console was making Killian Hayes' starter. And, yeah, you can point at things this last season, I think the Pistons could have hit 30 wins under a good coach. It was not a good enough roster to compete for, like, the playoffs or anything like that.

You know, that much is clear. But the reason that it was an incredible mess is, was the coaching. That was the fault of Monty Williams. I think, yeah, you can look at it and say, well, nobody is going to, like, do something significant with the roster. True. But this roster was nowhere near as bad as 28 straight 14 win team. So, yeah, that was a tough thing and kind of broke my spirits a bit. And I feel guilty admitting this, but I kind of checked out for the last 10 or so games.

Because it was unlike previous seasons in which it's like, okay, well, there's something to see at least. We'll watch Cade, we'll watch Ivy, which we'll watch Duren. Two seasons ago was Sadiq Bay as well, the Pistons. And Cade's rookie season went on a decent run after the All-Star break. It's like, okay, they're an interesting thing just to watch here. And sure, we'll have fun rooting for losses, so that got, at least for me, less and less enjoyable over the three seasons or four seasons, counting the first season in 2020 before COVID end of the season. but that certainly had lost its luster.

The season had been a horrible grind. Basically, everybody of importance was out. The rotation was filled with bad players who had no future with the team. And it was as horribly coached as ever. And so, yeah, I did something I've never done before, and I just didn't watch. I probably watched one of the last 10 games. And one of the reasons I just, I mean,

I like to have all the information. and all the data. I just really enjoy just having all the data points I can. But another reason I like to watch every minute of every game is so I can be fully informed to talk on this podcast. So, admittedly, though, there was just not a lot to see in those final games. It was just the kid, but it was also just the capstone on a horrendous season, and I had reached my threshold for suffering.

In any case, so. That's one reason. The second is just more of a bad habit of mine, which is that I can often get highly perfectionistic, very high standards for myself. And this is not like one of those situations where they ask, like in a job interview, the classic question, you know, what are your downsides as an employee? And you're like, oh, well, I want to be too perfect. Perfectionism, probably for a lot of people, certainly for me, is a very negative characteristic. It really has, it basically perverts. just wanting to do a good job into feeling like I need to do a perfect job at all times. And it's like, well, if I can't go out there and do like A++ work, then I might just not get started at all. It's a bad habit. It's definitely not helpful. And that was, that kind of gave me a sort of whatever the podcasting equivalent of writer's block was. Like I would sit down, like the first week I missed it. It was like, okay, well, all right, I miss a week. Fine. I don't like to do it, but fine. I sat down the second week, tried to record an episode, you know, got through five

drafts of it, and I just couldn't get myself going. You know, I just, uh, I would just put a ton of pressure on myself and it just nothing would, I just, I just couldn't do it. And then that happened the next week as well. And this week, it's like, you know, it's been a long hiatus. I really don't like missing, you know, missing, uh, too long doing this. I really appreciate all of you who listen and, and I want to be consistent about this. So I'm just going to sit down and, and, And if it sucks, then it sucks, you know, whatever. And as those of you who, you know, who deal with this kind of issue or performance anxiety of any kinds probably knows that the second you take the pressure off of yourself, things get a lot

easier. You go in and you just say, okay, the worst that can happen is that it's not going to be that great and I can live with that. So I'm not trying to make this about, you know, a exposition on my personal issues. That's just, that was the other thing that really came into it. So it was a combination of those factors. In any events, feel a little bit more refreshed at this point. And so I'm trying to get back on the horse here.

Probably play reviews until the lottery. I don't know if I, I mean, you have all been through this. Like especially, excuse me, especially at this last draft, you know, really getting into the draft profiles. Though, of course, we all had one guy in minds and then getting number five. Probably wait until the lottery this season. and to really get into draft research. It's possible the Pistons will come out with another first-round pick somehow, but there's just no way of knowing that.

That typically doesn't happen until draft night. So I just sketched out a bunch of topics to talk about today. One, of course, is the upcoming high over president of basketball operations. So a couple of considerations here. Number one, you've got to think that a guy who's coming in, especially a veteran who will come in, who has experience in the role, and I would be shocked if Tom Goraz goes with anything but a known quantity at this stage. He went with Stan Van Gundy, who had no management experience.

Of course, that didn't work too well. He went with Troy Weaver, who was a touted assistant that unfortunately didn't go too well. And now I think he's going to go with a known quantity. And also this guy's going to be overseeing everything. And I think any sort of known quantity like that who's going to come in and take the job is going to want to have full latitude over whether he keeps the coach in place and the general manager in place. And so that means that we have a reasonable chance of being free from Monty Williams. And though I don't think Troy Weaver has done quite as badly, you know, I think he deserves to go as well.

Maybe there's something he's good at, which he can be kept for. But hard to see at this point. I think it should be noted that with better watery luck, things may look may have looked significantly different. I might get the past into Gott and Chet Holmgren in 2022. or if they'd gotten, you know, Wenbanima, of course, but even Brandon Miller, who's really outperformed expectations, things could look a lot different. But, I mean, you want to be a GM, you've got to build on the margins effectively.

You've got to find diamonds in the rough and so on and so forth. And Troy Weaver has done virtually none of that. Simon Fantacchio is really the first one. The only other good move he made on the margins was Jeremy Grant, who he traded for Durran. And looking back, it's like, if Durran's issues with attitude can do, was getting rid of Grant really the right decision because that guy was actually a real stabilizer even though it was aggravating that Dwayne Casey used him as his take the ball and just score for me please

a player that of the sort that he loves though after that trade debline Troy Weaver and he had had a discussion about about playing more efficiently efficiently and Grant really did that but he was a real stabilizer a guy who can create his own offense who is strong on defense who's a veteran and Ironically, he's exactly the sort of player, whom the Pistons would like to have a power forward at this point. So, anyway, so yeah, president of basketball operations. There are some considerations here. I mean, yeah, and hopefully the guy comes in and fires both of them.

And what we've heard, like the rumors that we've heard, I believe from one or both of the current beatwriters, there are only two right now because Mike Curtis moved on to Dallas. He's covering the Mavericks now. I don't remember for which publication. But, yeah, is that Tom Gores might be willing to eat Monty Williams' contract. Here's what we'll say. I will say this again about Tom Gores is that for all his fault, and there are many,

and every time he actually gets involved in making basketball decisions, things tend to go very badly. It's certainly, you know, certainly this coaching hire, this last time was living proof of that. I'm shocked still that as a very successful business. He made that sort of mistake of, oh, you don't want the job. Here's more money. You don't want the job. Here's more money. You don't want the job. Here's more money. And it's all guaranteed. And this is not a way to get the dedicated employee. Doesn't want the job. And he's going to get paid the biggest coaching salary in NBA history anyway. And Monty Williams even talked about the money being a factor, a big factor as press conference. So, I mean, that's not unusual. I mean, it's not unusual for the salary to be a big factor. deal, but I mean, I think in the situation it was the context of, well, I took the job in part because the money was so good.

Whatever. But Tom Garz is willing to spend. He has always been willing to spend on this team. He bought the team that is now the crews and moved them from Phoenix, from Sarver, who is the owner before Ishbia, who was a cheap skate. So he's like, okay, well, the Pistons would be good for them to have a G-League affiliate in Detroit, who can be close to the team here, not hours away. in Grand Rapids and can use the team's training facilities, so I'm going to buy a G-League team

and bring it here. I'm going to build this new performance facility, so I have the best available facilities for the players. I'm going to spend, again, a crap lot of money on a coach. He's willing to spend. I have no doubt whatsoever. I don't buy the accusation that Tom Goraz is really an absentee owner. Sure, he doesn't live in Detroit, or basically, I don't buy the argument he doesn't care. I think he cares a great deal. I think he's willing to spend whatever takes. I'm not sure if what Ed Stefanski said back in 2018, 2019 was true that that Gores wanted to spend into the tax. And Stefanski had to tell him, no, this is not a good time for us to spend into the tax. But I have no doubt that Gores is willing to spend a lot of money. He's a guy who's

passionate about Detroit. He's a guy who's passionate about the Pistons. I think he really wants to see them win. I think, unfortunately, at times it comes with a caveat that he wants to see them win as long as he can be involved. And the best owners will hire competent professionals. And, get out of the way and let them do their jobs. And unfortunately, he hasn't hired the best professionals, but he also just hasn't gotten out of the way and necessarily let them do their jobs. Mark Cuban is the most successful owner who is highly involved,

and he's made some big mistakes, like breaking up the championship team and overruling Donnie Nelson, his GM, who wanted to draft Janice and was very, very vociferous about it. And Mark Cuban said, no, I want to trade out of the first round that we'll have more money to try to sign Dwight Howard, who was already in decline at that point. But, you know, the amount of money he's saved

was not really going to make a huge difference. But he's the most successful of the highly involved owners. Then you have Mark Ishpia, excuse me, Matt Ishbio, who is like Mark Cuban on crack in terms of his involvement and just the all-in nature of what he did and the sons right now are not looking great in the playoffs. But I think that Gores is, yeah, he's willing to put on the money. I would not be surprised if he were willing to fire Monty Williams after one season

because I think even he, for whatever ego issues he might have, and it sounds like he has them, has to have noticed. I mean, I would imagine he found this season humiliating as well as as as all of us did, and that he has to have noticed that Monty Williams was a severe downward force on the Pistons on the team. know, he was hired to take some of the next level, and instead he played a big part in making an adequate roster do terrible things, like just to perform absolutely horribly. So your other consideration, however, is what model Tom Gores is pushing. If he is saying, I want immediate improvement, and again, you can look at it and say it was a 14-win team. I think this is a 25-30 win team, which is still a little bit disappointing.

but especially if kind of the you have an overcompensation where it's like well i want i want improvement now you know hopefully that's not the case because we might find ourselves back in a situation just hilarious and this would be incredibly ironic where it's like we went through this rebuild just to find ourselves back with the owner prioritizing immediate improvement so that we can just you know hopefully be a playoff team at some point that would be a shame and i think we'll notice it we'll find it early in the offseason after the president of basketball operations is hired if the Pistons decide to sell low on their youth. And they would be selling low on Ivy right now. They would be selling low on Jalen Duren right now. And it's worth noting that a president

of basketball operations, a new one, would most likely have very different priorities than Troy Weaver and would be not attached to certain players in a way that Troy Weaver is. So, sorry about the sniffles. And so, yeah, I mean, if the new, P-O-B-O to use an acronym is just told, well, I want a median improvement. We could be in for some unpleasantness. And here's the thing with the Pistons. I mean, I've seen the questions like, oh, should they use the draft picks that they can trade in the future, like 2029 and 2031? It would be really very, very suspect judgment at this point, as much as I know we all want to see the team improve.

That's the kind of move you make to take. a decent roster to the next level, like to add a Donovan Mitchell, for example. And it's, that's not the sort of move you make when you're a team that doesn't have its foundation yet. Maybe we go into next season, Endurance wouldn't go down on defense, and Assar Thompson can shoot. And whatever, then you have a much better foundation. But at this point, yeah, you'd be selling low on Jaden Ivy. You'd be selling low on Jalen Durham. You don't want to do that.

And I think that for better or worse, the best means and the most plausible, means for significant, meaningful improvement, are still development at this point. I think that unless it's, unless Gores, and I think this would be a terrible idea, just as, you know, I want an all-up push for improvement in the short term. I think that next season could be a sort of, and though it absolutely sucks to put it this way, sort of rebuilding the rebuild, where it's, it's really a transitional year where they're still seeing what they have with the youth. I think they're going to spend in free agency and get some reliable veteran role players. And Troy Weaver completely punted on that last summer.

I mean, Montemoris, unfortunately, was just not healthy, and he would have been a good player to have. He's a genuinely good backup point guard, one of the best, or at least was up until this last season. But what Weaver did in terms of spending $20 million on cap space for Joe Harris, whom, like, I asked one of the beatwriters about this, you know, because they're good sources in the team, if, needless to say, if the team really front office really expected him to contribute, and I was told no, that it was largely done for the draft capital. So Troy Weaver, who is just a consummate gambler, or has been as general manager,

and almost all of his gambles have, virtually all of his gambles have failed. And spending $20 million of cap space on Joe Harris just for two second round picks, he was gambling, number one, that Isaiah Stewart would be do well at power forward, even though he doesn't have the assets, physical assets to do so. That number two, Isaiah Livers, would be able to stay healthy, which is a laughable. It was an absolutely laughable bet to make and would also do well. Obviously, Livers was not healthy, and it seems like he's washed up now from his latest injury or from the injury he started the season with.

And also that raw rookie ASR, who was a zero-level score in overtime elite, would be able to contribute well enough on offense to give good minutes. Also not a good bet. So the Pistons will go in and sign that I'm sure some veteran role players. It is a weak class, unfortunately. And the Pistons are going to be competing with the likes of the 76ers and the Magic, even the Thunder to a degree. Teams that are further ahead and are just in a considerably better position versus the Pistons

who are right now the league's disaster class organization. So I got to look at this from the player's perspective. always, you know, from the perspective of the players, are they going to want to go to a particular team to a particular situation? So is there any guarantee that the Pistons will be able to get some good role players? Not necessarily. Well, they'd be able to, you know, to fill out a roster, what's right now an incredibly young roster,

with a better group of players with, you know, some reliable stabilizing veterans. I would say so. We'll see. But it's entirely possible we just see an offseason in which it's like, okay, we're going to fill some stuff out. so there will be some stabilizers on the team and we're just going to see what we have

in terms of developing the team further. In terms of making big trades, it's like, number one, you have to have a viable trade partner, you know, the trade that makes sense and a trade partner that's, you know, willing to make a trade like me called Bridges, for example. See that brought up? There are a couple of things there.

Number one, I mean, you're going to be burning a year of his contract and there's no guarantee you'll stay in Detroit. That's a given. I mean, you're going to be, burning a year of it when the Pistons probably next season, even if they make that sort of trade are not going to, or unlikely to, like, make the playoffs or do anything in the playoffs unless they see just an enormous amount of internal developments and hopefully are successful to some degree in free agency. I have no doubt then when it comes to Troy Weaver, at least, they absolutely,

their ideal scenario would be to make a trade for like a genuinely, you know, good, like, top three score on a contender's sort of player and lessen the cost of that by just taking the guy in a cap space and not needing to send contracts the other way, which is technically, you know, is a benefit for the other party if they're rebuilding.

You look at the Nets, they don't own their picks until 2028, thanks to the James Hardin trade. And so just getting worse doesn't benefit them at all. You know, so why would they make that trade? If they could have traded for Jalen Green and, like, gotten two of their,

I think it's two swaps and a pick that they own. But if they could have gotten off the hook for two of those, then they were fools not to take that trade. But yeah, with Bridges, it's like, yeah, that's a consideration. And why should the nets trade him? They're not going to get worse. I mean, getting worse just means there's no benefit to it. It's not going to help their draft position. And you look at, like, the Hawks, for example, and I don't really like Dejante Murray or Trey Young next to the Pistons. Trey Young, I think, is a moot point because they'd ask a king's ransom for him. It's not like you got to look at, I mean, I think it's very important to look at things from the perspective of the other team and all these teams want the same

thing as the Pistons do. And so why would the Hawks, who it should be noted, are in the same position as the Nets. They owe draft capital quite a bit of it to the Spurs for the Dejante Murray trade, which they're trying to get off of. I mean, they're trying to get off of Murray at this point because he's at his best by far as a heavily on ball point guard. Trey Young is the preeminent heliocentric player in the league. I'd say even more. more so than Luca Donchich, and so it's just a poor fit. So they have no incentive to just get worse. They're going to want honest,

goodness, value in return. And Trey Young, I mean, of course, number one, I think he'd be a horrific fit with Cade. I think that the point is 100% moot because he would cost more than the Pistons might be able to offer, period, unless they just made an obscene offer. And the one that wouldn't make sense for them. And even then, you'd be pairing Trey Young, who can't really play off the ball with Cade, who's at his best by far on the ball, but it's a moot point.

do you take on Dejante Murray, you're just creating in the same situation that's not working out right now in Atlanta. I think it's, I hope that the new regime, the president of basketball operations does not think of things and just, oh, well, this is just going to improve the team. It's not preferable, but it's going to improve the team. I hope that that's not what Tom Gores is going to send down, is I think that would be very bad. And I think we just might, this may be the ideal thing. I think it's probably is the ideal thing. You just see what you have next year in terms of youth development. that's still going to be the best route for the pistons because of how Troy Weaver has failed in

many areas. This team is now inordinately dependent upon development, and there are some raw players in that mix. You have Cade, and then you have three players who are still pretty darn raw. That brings me to Ivy a little bit. I think that an additional thing that Monty Williams did beyond all the other horrible things he did was really muddy the waters in terms of what would Ivy and Duren have looked like under a coach who was competent rather than a complete disaster. And that's hard to say. Again, Jaden Avey got screwed around by Monty Williams for the entire season. It was a very bad thing for a young player.

And it's like, how did that impact him? I mean, that can be very impactful in a very bad way for a young player. Who knows how J.1 Duren would have looked at, you know, on a more functional team under a more competent coach. when, you know, I think that the roster, Monty lost the roster after like five games. You saw things really fell apart. I mean, that was remarkable. And Asar, I mean, he's got to be able to shoot, period. I think we would have seen, you know, better stuff from him in terms of his usage under, again, a coach who was competent rather than a complete and utter moron.

And again, who knows how things went on behind the scenes, whether he just, whether Monty Williams is actually trying to get himself fired. It's crazy that's the impossibility. but I think there's a plausible argument to be made. Whatever the motivations, he really muddied the waters in terms of seeing where exactly we are with these prospects. But I think ultimately it may just be a question of being patient for another year and just I think that's your highest probability chance of success in what the Pistons are trying to do is to see development from their youth.

There are some other youth on the team as well, of course. I'm not going to put Fun Tacio in this, category because he's 28 and also I think he is probably about what he's going to be and if he is what he was for the Pistons this season then that's a pretty good role player. Quentin Grimes, it's worth noting is, I mean, he was a pretty good starter in his sophomore season. Again, if Grimes can just hit his threes, I mean, you got to accept that he's not going to give you anything off the dribble because he's not, you know, that's just that's a limitation of his. But if he can hit his threes reliably. He's a strong defender. I mean, that's, that's a starting, the solid starting

shooting guard. And you have him next to Asar on the starting lineup. Of course, Asar has to be able to his threes, but that's, that's a pretty potent one-two punch on the wing. These are both very strong defenders. You have Marcus Sasser as well. And also Grimes, it should be noted. I mean, if Ivy continues to suck next season, and Grimes is back to the performance level of his, of his sophomore season. And Grimes was really screwed around. by Tom Thibodeau this season. He started off strong, went into a bit of a slump, and then was basically just kicked to the curb for Devenchenzo.

He's spoken about it. Dibodeau has his own way of doing things, though. He's adapted and grown in certain ways that are actually pretty rare for a coach who's been around as long as he has. So I think he's done a fairly good job this season. So, yeah, Grimes is kind of there. I mean, he's there, and who knows? I mean, again, if he can get back to that level of play,

then he could start for the pistons at shooting guard. You have Marcus Sasser. Sasser for me is, here's the issue with Marcus Sasser. He depends entirely upon being an effective shot creator. I mean, the guy's not going to beat anybody off the dribble. He doesn't score at the rim. His game depends tremendously upon him being able to hit tough twos, tough pull-up twos.

A shot that very few players attempt on volume and even fewer of those actually do effectively. If he can hit his pull-up, up twos, he draws a lot of attention. You know, you can't, you can't have to pull up threes especially, but you just, you can't drop on a pick and roll against him. Guys have to go over every screen and so on and so forth. You see it when he's hitting his shots. He goes around a pick and both the center and his defender have to pay attention to him, and that creates open looks for his teammates that allows him to make plays. If he's missing those shots, they play him one-on-one,

and number one, he's not hitting his shots. Those pull-up twos, he's not hitting his shots, so he's bad on offense, but also he can't make plays for his teammates. He's got to be able to hit his pull-up three is to a degree as well. Again, that's just a big part of his game. He's a jump shooter. But if he's not hitting those pull-up two, is at a good percentage, then everything goes off the rails for him. He's incredibly dependent upon being able to make these tough shots. He was, again, I think he has playmaking potential. I think he's a fine playmaker. He's also very safe with the ball as a playmaker. When he is hitting those shots, it's just, it completely ruins things if he is not, if he is not hitting those tough pull-up twos.

And I think, I mean, he had a big slump of his own down the stretch of the season. So that remains a weird pick for me because he's a better playmaker than I thought. I think he's shown that if he can play his game, then he can be an effective playmaker, you know, of this sort of Lou Williams type. Not an elite playmaker, but a solid one. If he can't do that, he's an underside shooting specialist. Even if he's still hitting his threes, that's just a weird niche. He's a bulldog defender in terms of how hard he tries

In terms of how effective he is You know like maybe average above average And it's a liability I mean guys you see like the likes of Luca Or just larger guards going against I mean Luca it's gonna score on anybody but Larger guards going at him and there's just a lot of time There's just nothing he can do because they just score over him

He's 6 foot one but a six, there's a little shade over 6 foot one So I think it's listed is 6 foot 2 But it's 6 foot 1 and a quarter inches without shoes, which is how the NBA measures things. Almost everybody rounds up. I mean, Kevin Durant back in the day, even back before they changed the measurement system, would actually, he was listed as 6-9 with shoes, which was obviously untrue. But generally, they round up.

So he's, yeah, by NBA parlance, sure, 6'2 with a 6.7 wing span. That hurts things. So I don't think about him as much in terms of, you know, what he's going to be able to offer to the future. Again, you have a president of basketball operations coming in who has no attachment to these players. He didn't draft them. He, you know, even when it comes to Isaiah Stewart may not really be attached to him. Even Grimes, he's not going to be attached to anybody.

So that's going to mean, it couldn't mean things for the future of certain players on this team. But anyway, just back to free agency. It's the nature of things right now. The Pistons kind of need to spend this money. A lot of it otherwise is going to go poof on Kate's extension, which I think is almost certain to happen. you know, even again, even if it's a bad team, I mean, you look at a player and you're potentially turning down generational wealth. I mean, it's like, okay, we're going to pay you $200 million. And that's if you don't make all MBA and meet your escalator clause, which qualifies rookies for what's called a Rose Rule extension named after Derek Rose, which entitles them.

If they make all NBA or if they're MVP or if they win defensive player the year in either their contract year or two out of the previous three, then they're eligible for 30% of the salary. cap in the first year of their extension instead of 25%. So even if it's only 25%, this is an enormous amount of money and you don't just want to say no in risk getting injured and whatever else. You can always just ask out a couple of years into your second contract. In any case, it means that a lot of the cap space is going to disappear next season. You can't just kick it all down the road. And so, I mean, the ideal situation with cap space is that you have a lot of guys on a rookie contract, a rookie scale contracts, rather. And you have your cap space, you spend all that,

and then you use what are called bird rights, which allow you to exceed the cap to resign your own players. You use bird that's a little bit more complicated. There are three different forms of bird rights, including one that's actually called non-bird rights. But just kind of technically bird rights. But, yeah, then you use those to rescind the cap to resign your players, but you want to use that cap space to fill stuff out, you know,

to fill out your roster with reliable role players and whatever else. So that's what, I mean, the Pistons want to spend this, want to spend the space this summer. We'll put it that way. They'll have some cap space still next summer if they want to sign some guys to one-year deals. Generally good players will not accept one-year deals. But you have guys like, I mean, Bruce Brown had like one-season track record as a good

role player. But what he does is just basically sign a one-year deal with that, you know, that paid him a lot of money with a team option on year two. Maybe the pistons can swing that with somebody, but a good player is going to probably want to ask for more, and it's pretty unusual for a good player to take a team option. In any case, so I guess that was probably kind of what I wanted to talk about in this episode, just general implications of the incoming president of basketball operations,

and I really hope Tom Gores doesn't drag his feet on this. You'd like to be able to see this guy get started whenever he can. Fun fact, actually, you can begin to make sense. trades, the trade deadline restriction ends the moment that your team's season does, whether that's at the end of the regular season, if you don't make the playoffs, or when you're eliminated in the playoffs, you can make, you can make trades with other teams who fit the, who fit that criteria on. It doesn't happen very often, but it can happen. But the point is, I think just, I mean, Gores, he really dragged his feet after, you know, on firing Van Gundy. It took him some time to do that.

And some coaches came off the board that was not ideal. But I think, you know, so I think you want to avoid that in terms of if if you fire moni williams and please please please i think that just absolutely is a necessity and also that it would be basically a complete joke if if money came in if you know having come in and been like a disaster of unprecedented proportions for his team and in getting a second year uh that would be not a great sign not a great thing and really a slap in the face of the fans and oh yeah i'm not sure how many of you saw this but the athletics i think the athletic held it, player pull. Little Sears Arena came in as the worst arena to play in by a landslide.

And the cause was not that it's a poor facility. I mean, it's a very nice facility. Like in hockey, for example, players would just trash the, I think it was TD Garden in Boston because it had. And I think the old arena that the Pittsburgh Penguins used to play in for just really poor facilities. That wasn't the case here. The players just said that it's dead.

There's no enthusiasm there. The stands are empty. And that makes sense. I mean, you saw it a lot on broadcast that the arena was nowhere near full. And the fans there, for the most part, were understandably very well on enthusiasm. So, anyway, I think, I guess that's just to say something that we all already know already, which is that things are in bad shape and you want to get somebody in there as early as possible so they can start doing their thing.

And again, also, if... decision is made to make a coaching change so that that can also start as soon as possible, so you're not running into a situation in which coaches are coming off the board after the season when coaches get fired and then they're looking for replacements. That's already happening. Charles Lee, who was one of the Pistons potential candidates before Gores got involved and settled on Monty Williams. As I believe it's in the advanced stages of being snapped up by the Charlotte Hornets. He's one of the lead assistants for the Celtics,

who were excellent this season. And he was the one that I would have wanted out of the three of them between he and Jaron Collins and Kevin Alley, who got to be interim coach for the Nets and apparently didn't do a very good job. He wouldn't have been as bad as Monty simply because it's incredibly unlikely that any coach would ever be that bad. But clearly, I think probably probably,

probably would have been a bad choice. Also, just considerably less of a bad choice. Just looks like below average to poor coach versus the worst coach, you know, worst coaching performance the NBA has seen in decades. So hopefully it happened soon. And it should be interesting. I'm not sure. I feel like expectations should be tempered in terms of how different things will be

next season in terms of a, I think under a new coach and with some better veterans. I mean, I think that would be, and with decent health, I would be surprised to see, and hopefully with player development, I would be surprised to see the pistons win less than 25 next season. Maybe you see them get into the 30s. I would be shocked if, I'd be very pleasantly surprised if they got in the mid to high 30s and made it into the playoffs. But yeah, so I think next season hopefully will be, I think there will be growth. I think it will certainly, you know, barring Moni still being around. because if he's coach,

if he coaches like he did this last season, he's going to ruin everything as long as he's around. But assuming a new coach is in, a good coach, some judicious but prudent moves are made. And we see some decent development. I mean, I think next season is going to be better.

I significantly better. But, yeah, I wouldn't expect a huge leap. I think it will be sort of, again, a rebuilding the rebuild sort of year. But it's possible that the new regime comes in and really hits the ground running and some big things happen. Hard to say.

We'll find out. So in any case, I'm going to move on next to probably player reviews. Really appreciate all of you who have submitted topics for future episodes. I'll be sure to get to all of those. Free agency. I'll cover those questions at a later time in a free agency episode, probably closer to free agency. Who knows, maybe there will be more of a scoop by then in terms of what teams are doing. So probably in early June, early to mid-June.

And then, of course, after the lottery, I'll be doing draft previews. And hopefully, you know, this is one of the few years where it's like you get number one. And there could be some interesting decisions as to what you do with it. That'll be it for this episode. As always, everyone, I want to thank you all so much for listening. And I will catch you in next week's episode. Thank you.