Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 195: The Trajan Langdon Hire & Donovan Clingan Draft Profile

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

This episode evaluates the selection of Trajan Langdon as Pistons President of Basketball Operation and profiles prospective top-ten draft pick Donovan Clingan.

Welcome back, everybody. You are listening to another episode of Drive Into the Baskets. I'm Mike, and I hope you're all doing very well on this Friday. Another late episode this week, I'm doing my best to get back to Wednesdays, and I'm hoping to be back there soon. In any case, big news coming out of the Pistons yesterday is the hiring of a new president basketball operations, Trajan Langdon. I know a lot of people are hoping for Tim Connolly. Who knows if that even would have been possible? Hard to say. Who knows if, you know, they had been knocked out by Denver, you know, if basically this hiring was just a matter of we cannot wait, because if they make it to the finals, it could be sometime yet before we even know. Or maybe it really wasn't much of a possibility in the first place. Maybe we'll find out if the whole talk about maybe $15 million a year can draw them away from the timber wolves was just leaked.

Front by his agent, excuse me, for the sake of negotiating. You know, who knows? Maybe we'll find out. Important thing didn't happen. You know, that's the most relevant thing here. So let's talk. Trajan, you know, commonly held to be the most capable of Roman embers and blah, blah, blah. I had this whole spiel in my head.

I was going to go through where I was going to talk about how, you know, he was this great Roman emperor and died at such and such a time and then worked to reincarnate himself and, you know, ended up playing basketball at Duke and so on and so forth. I'm a big student. I know a lot about classical period history, particularly the Roman Empire. I got to go to Italy last year and see a lot of that stuff, and it was awesome. But I think any of you who are not, you know, similarly fans of Roman history

he really would have appreciated or found not appreciated. I mean, appreciated as in found entertaining, me going down that line. I could have talked about it for a while, though I wouldn't have. In any case, that's the one that presumably the person he was named after. Trajan was one of the best known of the Roman emperors. So Trajan Langdon played NCAA ball at Duke, went on to have a three-year career in the NBA before having a pretty successful international career. and then went into management was assistant GM for the Nets from 2016 to 2019 when he became

general manager of the New Orleans Pelicans. And here's what we know about Trayjum Langdon in terms of what he's done as a front office manager. The answer is nothing. Ultimately nothing. He was assistant GM with the Nets. Hard to tell exactly what an assistant GM has done. and he was GM for the Pelicans under David Griffin, his VP of Basketball Operations there,

and David Griffin made, he had final say in all the decisions, and he was extremely involved in personnel decisions. So there was just unfortunately no way exactly of knowing what of the good was, you know, was the suggestion of Trajan Langdon, what of the bad was the suggestion of Trajan Langdon, basically what influence he had and what happens, the good or the bad,

or, you know, what were the situations in which David Griffin just said, no, I don't care what you have to say, or this is what I want to do. So there's no way of looking back and knowing exactly what his fingerprint was on the front office operations of the Pelicans over the last four years or so. He was hired by the Pelicans, I believe, a little bit more than four years ago, or just about four years ago. Yeah, just about. It was about six weeks, I believe, before the Anthony Davis trade was finalized. and in that time the pelicans have done some good things

some bad things, some things well, some things poorly but there's just we don't have any way of knowing without insider information we don't have exactly what role Trajan Langton had he I know has been generally well thought of

for a while when the Pistons were hiring back in 2018 after firing Stan Van Gundy he was a name that came up for General manager. Tom Gores had brought in Ed Stefansky to help reconstruct the front office after firing everybody from the van Gundy regime. Van Gundy himself, of course, was president of basketball operations and employed a GM, Jeff Bauer. And Stefansky, I think was chiefly who, I mean, Stefansky, I think I've almost certainly talked about this before. Stefansky is as mediocre an executive as you

will find anywhere. Just his track record in the NBA is utterly undistinguished. He's, he's been an executive for a long time. He is not good. He is not bad. He was just unbelievably mediocre. And my guess as to why he was the guy whom Tom Gore has hired was because he knows, number one, because he's a long time executive. And number two, because he knew how to handle Tom. And I think that ultimately was positive for the pistons in terms of making the endless chase, you know, the endless pursuit of mediocrity and just making the first round of playoffs in terms of ending that. But in any case, the Pistons didn't end up hiring Trajan Langdon or anybody as GM in 2018 because Stefanski hired himself instead, basically. He ran personnel. He made the final decisions on that,

and the Pistons didn't hire a GM. They wouldn't until Troy Weaver. So in any case, he's been an up-and-comer. So was Troy Weaver, but there's no reason to, you know, to make, I'm not going to draw a parallel between the two. We'll see how he does. It bugs me a little bit just from a, just from the standpoint of not really having any data that we can't look at things and know exactly what he's done. But that kind of is what it is. I'm surprised a little bit that Tom Gores didn't go with the guy who had an actual track record as the top decision maker. That does surprise me a bit given you looked at the three general managers, all of whom have failed, who have been employed under Tom Gores, had been employed under Tom Gores to this point. There was Joe Dumas who, I mean, I know this is a controversial viewpoint.

I think that Dumars got very, very lucky early on. It's undisputed. I mean, there's no disputing that he built the championship team. And he built what was one of the most synergistic, you know, five-man starting units, probably in the history of the NBA. You know, they're going to work, Pistons, Billups, Hamilton, Prince, and the two Wallace's. I think he caught lightning in a bottle. I think that he managed to assemble.

a group that was just drastically more than the sum of its parts. And then he pretty much, after the 2004 championship, just rode that core and let the rest of the team atrophy. And then come 2008, correctly, actually, my opinion, concluded that the window had passed and chose to rebuild, traded the wrong player, and then ended a horrible job of rebuilding. And then from basically the point of the Alan Iverson trade, Alan Iverson, Chaunty to Billups trade onward until he was fired in 2014 was arguably the worst general manager in the league. I don't think he was very good. I think that he made the right trades and the right deals

and drafted Tashon Prince and got the 2004 championship team together and then it was just, it was all downhill from there. He was able to ride that cord to four more conference championships. But the Pistons up until, I mean, from 2005 through 2007, they, basically had only one real bench player, you know, reliable postseason bench player that was Antonio McDice who was already getting along in a tooth. And Brodney Stuckey was number two once they, you know, once he really came out mine in 2008, 2007, 2008 season. So anyway, I think Dumars was not a good GM. And certainly at the end of his tenure when Tom Gore, you know, when Tom Gores, you know, when Tom Gores told him, I, you know, I want improvement now or you're fired, which is a completely

stupid thing to tell a GM because it just led Dumars to make a bunch of idiotic desperation moves. So he showed that. In any case, Dumars wasn't really the sort of like typical professional GM, I would put it, you know, with the long track record. You know, he'd done well for a few years and then pretty poorly for some years after that and then terribly for the rest of his time as GM. He brought on Stan Van Gundy who didn't have any experience in managing personnel. And fun fact, I've said this before. I'm not sure if I think this is relatively unknown and, you know, amongst all. larger NBA fandom circles, that what got Van Gundy to Detroit, because he was being courted by

the Warriors at the time, was that the Pistons would offer him personnel control. Tom Gores offered him that, whereas the Warriors would not offer him that. And so Tom Gora has actually played a really big part in the evolution of the NBA. He's imagined Stan Van Gundy coaching Steph Curry and Clay Thompson and Draymond Green. Things would have looked very, very different. and Steve Kerr himself was very innovative and played a big role in pushing the NBA toward the current era. And also, of course, just that Golden State Dynasty would never have existed. But Van Gundy, needless to say, just had no idea what he was doing as a general manager. I made some good trades early on.

I think, in my opinion, he was incredibly lucky in the opportunity for those trades just falling into his lap. Thanks to the GM of the Sons, the incredibly incompetence, Ryan McDonough. and the GM of the magic, the incredibly incompetent Rob Hanigan, both of whom would be fired shortly, you know, not long after they made these trades. I dropped Marcus Morris and Reggie Bullock and Tobias Harris into his lap, and then Reggie Jackson said, well, I mean, he had this, he was very, very publicly forced his way out of Oklahoma City.

His teammates hated him, and he deserved it, and said, I don't want to go anywhere. He was a pending free agent. I don't want to go anywhere that's not going to make me the primary option. and Van Gundy took this guy who had been incredibly unprofessional and said, okay, yeah, I want you on my team. And I'm absolutely willing to make you the primary option with Jackson never deserved even. And even in that first, even in that one really good season, or not going to say really good, even in his first full season with the Pistons, he was not good enough to be the primary option, you know, for a team that was going to make the playoffs.

It took adding Tobias Harris and Tobias and Marcus Morris really picking up the slack in the fourth quarter of that season when Reggie Jackson really went down. hill for the Pistons to make the playoffs. I digress. Anyway, Stan Van Gundy, obviously, ultimately, you know, he had the opportunity to build a team that was going to fit his specifications as a coach, and he did a terrible job of building a team. He was a horrible drafter, too. So he did a bad job. And then, and then, of course, who had Troy Weaver, who wasn't president of basketball operations like the other two. And it's still not entirely clear how much of a role of Stefanski and tell him played. But in any case, I mean, he was, he was a well thought of AGM, but who hadn't really, you know, who hadn't been in a lead decision-making role. And, of course, has not done

a very good job, to say the least. So I was expecting that Tom Gores would bring in an experienced president of basketball operations, just a guy who had been a lead decision maker with, you know, and had a decent track record. So I'm a little surprised that it's, that it's Trajan Langdon. I don't really feel one way or another about this. I mean, it's good that the guy has a good reputation. And honestly, it's kind of like, well, we'll see what happens. I'm not making predictions either way. I hope it goes well. There is a minor concern in my mind that, yeah, I mean, he was, he has a prior affiliation with Arn'telam. And Arn'telam is basically like the boogeyman of the Pistons front office. We know he has influence. We don't know how much influence he

has. We know that some shady things have happened for his own personal benefit. Like the Pistons drafting Davides Servetus, who, and sorry, Chase, you know, if you're listening to this, yeah, Chase, a friend of mine a long-term, long-time listener who's, who's, who's, who's, stick as being a huge fan of Dave Ada Servetus, aka Dave. But the Pistons drafting him at that position didn't really make a lot of sense, except if you look at it in the context of him being a client of Arntellum's son. And you can look at certain moves like the Pistons, you know, letting go of Gellinari and Muscala because there was some, you know, there were some connections through Michael

Tellum there as well. basically, I mean, it looks at least an awful lot like from the outside. Like Arn'telam has used his power in the organization to, you know, for his own personal benefits in a way that doesn't necessarily benefit the team. And yeah, his role is very nebulous, but I think it's pretty apparent that he does to have some hard power there. And I've got to think that his familiarity with Trajan Langdon was at the very least a positive for Tom Gores and making this higher.

because you're, I mean, the word that comes to mind for me, the two words are crony or henchmen when it comes to our and tell him. And it's like, okay, sure, like if you're right-hand man, which really seems an awful lot like, maybe there are two of them, maybe Stefansky's the second. I think we've heard that Stefanski, I believe, is more on the business side of things, and I guess you can't have two right-hand men, so right-in-a-left-hand man, whatever. I've got to think that that familiarity was probably a positive for Tom Gores, but hopefully it wasn't too much of a factor. But again, no way for us to know. Maybe it wasn't a factor at all. It would surprise me. If it were not, I just hope it was not a big factor. And of course,

the two decisions that will characterize the start of his tenure as present of basketball operations will be the continued employment or lack thereof by the organization of General Manager Troy Weaver and Coach Monty Williams. So I got six words for you, Trajan, fire them both and do it soon. Now, Weaver is actually an interesting situation or an interesting case because obviously with the coach, present of basketball operations isn't going to be out there on the floor, making final decisions on, you know, how players are utilized and, you know, what system is run and, you know, what timeout, out of time out play is called. Obviously, that's not happening.

But when it comes to Troy Weaver, you know, whatever decision making, whatever final decision-making power he has had, again, we don't 100% know where Stefansky was in things. where Tell him was in things, but whatever final decision-making power Troy Weaver had is now effectively null-in-void. Now, and what I think is the unlikely event that he stays with the team, everything he does, he's going to be reporting to Tray Jim Langdon for approval. I don't know what Troy Weaver did well as an assistant GM at Oklahoma City with the Thunder. You know, maybe he's still got something to offer, but I would just think that, number one, the change and roll would probably be a little too abrupt, but also he's kind of poised in the well. I mean, the guys done

a very bad job. And also, I don't think for what it's worth, I mean, this is a bad fan-based relations thing to do to keep Troy Weaver at this point. But I'd say he's the less damned. I mean, I hope they don't keep either of them. If they do, he's the less dangerous of the two to keep. By a long shot, but I think they should both be fired. And it's been kind of bizarre. Maybe Tom Gores just wants to really do things by the book here and just wants to say, well, I want the new guy coming and I want him to be able to make all the decisions. But, you know, in the meantime, the Pistons have continued to employ a very failed GM

and a coach who just put up one of the worst coaching seasons in the entirety of the modern NBA. You know, maybe the worst. I can't get. My history isn't good enough, but ma'am was it outrageously bad? So the fact that it's like, well, we're going to keep this failed GM and this absolutely terrible coach just in case. So now it's the waiting game and the crossed fingers and seeing what ends up happening.

And you all know how I feel about Monty Williams. And yeah, they just can't keep the guy. I don't see how they could ever justify keeping the guy. And it's been, I've seen a lot of, well, I don't think Tom Goraz is going to do this. I don't think that he's willing to, you know, to eat the contract or admit that he was wrong. I don't think his ego is going to allow him to do that. I disagree with that. And I know that my opinion of, you know, that my opinion,

Tom Gores is somewhat higher than the average. Not in that I think he's a good owner. I think he's the worst owner in the league. But I don't think that he's this lazy, disinterested absentee owner who just doesn't care about the team. I think he cares a great deal. I think he's just tragically maladroit, just incredibly incompetent as an owner. And he kept his mitts out of things for a while. Again, I don't blame him for the Troy Weaver hire. Weaver was considered a real up-and-comer, AGM to one of the best GMs in the league and line for a GM job. And Tom Gores, to his credit did keep his mitts out of things for the next few seasons until again he tragically decided to come in and offer you know and interfere with the coaching search and do something that doesn't

make any sense to me in the context of what he does bad owner but extremely successful businessman who should know better than to confront a hoped for hire who doesn't want to work for you by saying well i'll just offer you more and more guaranteed money until you say yes that's how you get a quiet quitter and at the very least the non-motivated employee where he's like, okay, well, I really didn't want this job. But I'm getting offered so much money. I might as well say yes, and I'm going to get all the money anyway. So, you know, all I have is, you know, is my own integrity to get me to do, you know, to do an actual good job. Obviously, Monty Williams doesn't have much integrity.

I think he's shown that. He showed that very clearly throughout the season. And, you know, not just the, you know, is he trying to get himself fired coaching, also the constant lying. But you think about Tom Gores in this situation. how much he probably has a certain degree of antipathy and anger toward Monty Williams, whom he gave this league record contract only to see him come in and at the very, very, very least be incredibly lazy. I don't think that comes anywhere.

I don't think laziness comes anywhere near to explaining the full scope of just how bad of a job he did. But you come in to see this guy be a dude, a zero out of ten, you know, perform at a zero out of 10 level at his job and lead the pistons to the 28 straight losses in the worst season in franchise history. And we know that Tom Goraz, I mean, he talked about actually getting involved in the coaching. I think it's very likely based on what he said, that he was the one who told Monty that he had to start Ivy and stop starting Killian Hayes. And I think that it's also entirely possible that at this big, you know, big organizational meeting where Monty was

told that he had to let Ivy handle the ball, that it was Tom Gore's doing that too. I think Tom promised Monty an unusual degree of latitude and lack of interference, or freedom from interference from the front office, and that it was consequent with he who had to get involved there. Imagine being the owner and having to step in to tell your head coach that he has to stop doing something that's as incredibly stupid as burying Jaden Ivy and starting Killing and Hayes ahead of him. And imagine paying all this money to watch this guy, you know, whatever, you know,

whatever one wants to think as to whether it was just, well, Moni not wanting to do the job or money actually actively trying to sabotage the team and get himself fired so he could walk away with all his money, whatever the case. If you're Tom Goraz, imagine watching this guy, do an absolutely monstrously horrible job and completely fail at everything. Well, at least completely fail at everything you wanted him to do. You know, maybe he was succeeding in his own purposes. But just do an absolutely horrendous job and make a laughing stock of the team. Which again, I think that Tom Goraz cares about the team a great deal. And it was really hoping for Moni to be a bit of a shortcut in getting this team back to

relevance and instead watched this coach who was picking up in this year in which the Pistons were supposed to go back toward being a competitive team and hopefully be somewhat successful, even if they, you know, even if they didn't make the play in, hopefully be a significantly better team. And you've paid him this league record contract. And he is one of the worst coaches the NBA has seen in decades and just does it absolutely gruesome job. And the season is the worst in franchise history, and it's worse than a disappointment, much worse than a simple disappointment in every way. Think about if you were Tom Goraz in that situation. How would you feel toward Monty Williams? So we've heard that Trajan Langdon, the incoming president of basketball

operations would have full authority as to whether or not to keep Weaver and to keep Monty. I don't think Tom Goraz will get in the way. I think it'll suck for him to have to give up that money. But if you were him, you know, would you say, well, look how horrible the job this guy did and look at all the money I invested in him to do a good job only to watch him. be what amounted to willfully or unwillfully, and I think probably more the former than the latter, a saboteur of his own team. You know, I wouldn't just be saying, well, I paid this guy a lot of money, so I want him to stay even though he's a complete catastrophe, you know, and even though he absolutely basically stole money from me, basically just took the money and did not do the job

to say the least. So I don't think Tom Gores doesn't need to get in the way of that. And I know a lot of you have the feeling that Monty Williams would be around for another season. I think if Monty Williams is around for another season, it's because Trajan Langdon made that decision. And if Trajan Langdon makes that decision, oh man, that'll be an ugly first decision. And that's going to cause a lot of loss of confidence in him. I've got to think amongst the fan base. And also just would make no sense. It would be a huge slap in the face of the fans and a real indictment of the notion that this organization actually wants to compete. And an indictment of his decision-making capacity. So the decisions on Weaver and, in my opinion, especially Monty,

are really going to give us the first insight to what we're dealing with here. So that's Trajan Langdon. Sorry if I try, like I said, I don't plan to talk about Monty in his own right. Well, I'll do it if he's fired. And I might vent if he's kept, because that's going to be a pretty big deal for me. And I think for the pistons, you know, for next season in general, you know, for all of us. But in this instance, I was, you know, I was just talking about him in the context of, you know, how things might be for Tom Gores. I'm at this point not ranting about Monty Williams for my own purposes anymore.

Not on here anyway. I'm trying not to think about him at all, to be honest in general, beyond hoping that he's gone and imagining what the moment will be like if I, you know, if I look at my phone one day, you know, hopefully soon and see that, you know, from Shams or Woj, the Detroit Pistons are firing Monty Williams. You know, Williams was signed to a then-league record contract and led the Detroit Pistons to a franchise worst season in 28 straight losses, yada, yada, yada. All right, so let's move on to part two of this episode, which is going to be draft coverage. And today we're going to be talking about Donovan Klingan. So Donovan Klingan of the reigning champion Yukon Huskies.

20 years old, a true seven-footer just about measured in at seven-foot one and three-quarters inches at the combine. MBA heights are done as of 2018 without shoes and typically rounded up. Often NBA teams will round up a player who's like, you know, one-tenth of an inch taller to the next inch. Jimmy Butler was six foot six without shoes at his combine at age 21 and this listed at 6-7. I don't think he grew past the age of 21. That would be a little bit unusual. In any case, I think it was almost 22 at the time, actually, if I remember correctly, but 21, 22. Anyway, I digress. 7.5.6 and 3 quarters wingspan, 282 pounds.

And it's needless to say he plays center. Now, I think this is a good time, a fitting time, to contextualize, yet again, the 2024 NBA draft, in that this is considered to be an exceptionally weak draft class, because there is not even the slightest possibility that in a regular draft, Donovan Klingan, would be going anywhere near the top five, what a one within the top five. I think in a regular draft class, he'd probably be going, you know, if, you know, if, you're going anywhere near the top five, he would be going, you know, if not outside of the lottery altogether, then at the end of the lottery, because I don't think he's going to be a bad player, but he definitely does have weaknesses that would typically keep a player, you know, well outside the top 10. He'll go within the top 10 in this draft because the

class is weak and because even within the context of this being a weak draft, it is particularly short on qualified big men. So let's talk his pros first, though, and he does have strengths as a player. Obviously, his size, you know, you can't teach that, can't teach being 7 foot two, this is almost 7 foot 7 wing span, allows him to cover a lot of space. He was a very strong rim protector in the NCAA, good of positioning himself, good of positioning his arms to contest shots, you know, to alter shots to block shots. He's a smart defender. He has the tools he needs to be a good rebounder. He has surprisingly decent lateral movement on defense for his size. again, that should be contextualized for his size because it's not great lateral mobility overall,

but I'll talk about that later. He's strong enough to be probably a solid post defender in the NBA. It's less important now than it used to be, but it's still useful. And being strong, yeah, it's still a useful thing. He'll probably need to put on a little bit more weights to fill out his 7 foot 2 frame, but he's pretty strong already. And post offense isn't as big as it used to be, but it's still a thing. And you go up against guys like Yokic and Mike M.B.

The ability to keep them from bodying you toward the basket, which Yokic is probably going to do anyway to almost anybody. But being able to stand up to those guys is a useful skill. You know, it's a useful quality, rather. His finishing is pretty good. He shot about 70% of the rim. 73% of his shots at the rim were assisted. And probably that'll rise in the NBA. He's got like a sort of decent floater game.

and I like jump floater game, which, you know, he's not great at it, but it's good to have. I think he's shot close to 50% on those in the NBA, in the NCAA, excuse me. He's got a good catch radius on passes, obviously, for being very tall and having a good wing span. He is an above average passer in terms of his vision and his ability, above average passer for his position, excuse me, for, in terms of his vision and in terms of his ability to make those passes. Obviously, he can pass over just about anybody. I don't think he's likely to be good at it, but it's likely to be more of an option for him, I think, than for the average center. And finally, he was very safe with the ball in the incidentally. Obviously, it wasn't handling the ball, but nonetheless, it's certainly possible to be a turnover prone big,

even if you're really not doing much beyond just finishing. So has strengths as a player should be, as a drop defender, I think should be strong, provided that he's surrounded by the right players. And as a finisher, he's got decent touch on layups. nothing special, but decent touch on layups, enough to be a solid finisher in the NBA, you know, when you couple that with his size. Now, where it starts to become, where as negatives begin, one of those is his athleticism and mobility, both of which are poor.

They're not terrible. He is not in a mobile pylon, the likes of Luca Garza, for example. And so it's not like this is a tragic weakness, obviously. He wouldn't be getting drafted in the top ten. You know, he wouldn't be toward the top end, even of this draft class, if it were a huge weakness, but he is quite below average in both capacities. So on offense, this means a bunch of things. It means that he's almost kind of like a below the rim above the rim scorer. You know, he's, he's almost by default and above the rim score because of his size. But he is almost a below

the rim score because he is a very poor leaper in terms of how much he can leap, in terms of how explosive he is. And, you know, that's a weakness in terms of his ability to catch lobs because he doesn't really jump. Like if he has a runway, then he can jump a little bit. But most of Mostly, he's scoring above the rim in that situation because he's really tall, you know, because he's got really long arms. He's not explosive by any means at all in the pick and roll. He's not explosive in terms of his movements, period. So as a role man, it's very helpful, like we've seen with Jaywin Duren and with,

you're going to be shocked to hear him and give him this compliment, but with Andre Drummond before him when Drummond was, you know, like he slowed down in terms of his explosiveness on the roll, even before he left the pistons. But for a while, he was a very explosive role man. And Duren is certainly a very explosive role man. And those things are helpful. You know, those seconds matter. Those, you know, those high, those inches you can jump higher than your opposition matter.

And Klingin is the opposite of that. He's going to be on the far low end in terms of his ability to, you know, to explode toward the rim off the roll. And his ability to vertically space the floor. Because in the NCAA, in the NBA, excuse me, he's going to be going up against good size and he's going to be going up against good wingspan at the position. and he's going to be going up against more athletic players. And just being 7 foot 2 with a 7.7 wing span, it's not necessarily going to make you a lob threat by default

when there are plenty of guys who can get in your way. When Jalen Duren is about 5 inches shorter, excuse me, 4 inches shorter and a little bit shorter in terms of his arms, I think Duren's 7.6 wingspan. But he can jump way higher than you. You know, it's going to be easier for him to get above you. It's going to be easier for, you know, so that applies on defense as well. it's also going to be easier for him to disrupt you.

So his height isn't going to avail him of as much in the NBA in general and certainly in this area. I guess he's coupling greater than average height with considerably poorer than average verticality. And just elsewhere as a score, I mean, that's going to come into play as well. I mean, he's just not going to move around very fast. He's definitely not going to be putting the ball on the floor and beating anybody. It's just anything you would see from a guy. who is just big and below average and very below average as an athlete. You know, that's going to hurt him on offense.

It's also going to hurt him on defense, which is where he's, you know, he's really going to be making his money. He's what I would call a high variance defender. So a defender whose effectiveness is going to be drastically different between switch and drop coverage. Isaiah Stewart is one of those, what I would call an extremely low variance defender. He's good and drop. He's good in switch.

you make him change schemes, he's not going to lose much either way. Obviously, Klingan's going to be a stronger rim protector and drop. I think he's going to lose a lot in switch because he is nowhere near as good in switch coverage as he is in drop coverage. And he's going to struggle on switches because he is slow. He's just considerably less lumbering than most guys' size. And he can compensate a little bit with his length, but only somewhat, you know, with his length and his defensive IQ, but only somewhat.

But NBA teams will attack this. Like if he's forced to defend from the perimeter on in, if he's forced to rotate, because he got caught on a screen, I mean, he's going to get there late if he has to rotate. And if he's attacked from the perimeter on end, guys are going to get past him. Like his lateral mobility is better than average for a guy his size. Better than average looking at the entire population because obviously Joel Embed isn't, for example, isn't too much shorter and is a great deal better in terms of his lateral mobility.

Guys will be able to get past Klingan off the drive. I think that he's going to have his struggles going up against, you know, if he gets switched onto an explosive guard, he's going to need to be protected to a degree, because NBA teams will attack him in ways that NCAA teams did not, and also just the quality of the competition is going to be drastically higher in the NBA. So that could have in particular very big playoff implications, because high variance defenders like this can severely struggle into some matchups. So there will be situations into which you cannot play Donovan Klingin. because teams will just attack him. Like if any of you remember that series in 2019, for example, the last series between the Rockets and the Warriors, when Quinn Capella got played off the floor

because they would switch him on to Curry, and that was it. You know, he just couldn't keep up with a quick guy like that, and Capella is considerably quicker than, you know, than Donovan Klingan. But, of course, that's a postseason scenario. This stuff is less of an issue in the regular season, but it's something to think about. just the fact that he is likely to there are weak he's going to have significant weaknesses in some schemes he will be strong but this is not a guy you're putting out there and it's like oh he's an all-around

strong defensive player because that's not the case you can ameliorate things a little bit in terms of his ability you know his weaknesses on switches and his weaknesses in terms of um you know the situations in which he has to reposition by surrounding him with stronger defenders but if this is a guy who's supposed to be a strong defender and you need to put strong perimeter defenders around him to compensate for his weaknesses you see where i'm heading with you. this. So very strong rim protector and drop schemes, but should lose a lot on switches, which is going to probably hurt a lot in some situations. So yeah, and again, like on his, his verticality, like defending in vertical space, like preventing guys from catching lobs over him. I mean, he just should

still do fine with that. You know, you couple his size and his height and his length with his defensive IQ, but he's not going to have quite the same effectiveness, even in that capacity, as guys who are actually able to jump high. Again, his verticality, his functional verticality is just very poor. And just sticking with, just on the purely physical side of things, with guys who have his size and his biomechanics, there are two things. Number one, health is always going to be a concern. And that's just basically what it is.

and number two, how many minutes he's going to be able to play on a nightly basis. And he did not actually play many minutes at Uganda. Like they play 40 minutes in the NCAA in his sophomore season at Yukon. So the season he's just coming off of, he averaged a little over half of those. So just when it comes to the endurance side of things, it's often difficult for these guys. So any team that picks him up, you're not looking at a guy who's going to be able to be on the floor for, you know, He's not a guy you're going to want to put on the floor for 30, you know, 32, 34 minutes a game in any situation because he's already pretty slow. If he gets tired, then there's not really much point having him out there.

So the amount of time, the amount of actually good minutes you're going to be able to get out of him. And again, this is just a thing with these kind of, you know, these really tall sort of lumbering guys like him. And he's not lumbering like the old sort of NCAA big men who would just get by on size and skill. I mean, he's got better mobility than that, but he's still, he's a really tall, sort of heavy-footed big. And yeah, endurance is often an issue for those guys, and maybe he finds another gear in the NBA, but I doubt it. So those are both considerations as well. And then when it comes to his offensive upside, limited, like his touch is good but not great. It's entirely possibly he might have no upside as a creator, chiefly just a bully by, bully ball post-up

sorry, a tongue twister there. So yeah, primarily just a bully ball post-up guy in the NCAA in terms of his ability to create. That goes away in the NBA. He's something like he's going to be anywhere near enough, near good enough outside of just incredible, you know, huge mismatches to create post-offence in the NBA. That's something a lot of bigs do in the NCAA and it does not translate because it's really tough to make that sort of offense efficient in the NBA. Again, had a floater game, but that's chiefly just a finishing thing in the NBA. And it may or may not be able to be a go-to for him because you ideally don't want Donovan Klingin. taking shots in which he's going to shoot 48%.

You can find ideally better things for him to do that are going to result in better outcomes than that. And just in general, he's not going to be as physically dominant as he was in the NCAA, where just bigs with some skill can completely dominate because they're up against NCAA defenders. In the NBA, you're up against way better athletes and way better defenses and way better everything. Again, likely to have limitations as a role man.

Those seconds matter, those inches matter. Insert joke here, Michael Scott joke here. That's what she said. And also, it's worth noting here, as free throw percentage sucked. Like, guys shot 52% as a freshman and 58% as a sophomore. That's also a concern. Guys can improve, certainly. Like, we saw Jalen Duren improve.

But that's definitely something you don't necessarily want going in because it's not always going to improve. But, yeah, just what he projects to be able to do on offense is just not all that great. He may have a relatively low ceiling just as a guy who can achieve. just finish buckets that are created for him, like a pretty mediocre vertical spacer and a guy who doesn't really have touch that's all that great and really isn't going to finish much of anything. Excuse me, it isn't going to create much of anything. This is primarily going to finish and is not going to be necessarily all that good at it.

Adequate, but very unremarkable. And in terms of his fit with the Pistons and the value that he would offer to the organization, I just don't think either of them are really there. Now, I know it's tempting to think, okay, well, the Pistons are struggling, defense. I mean, they just, they need better defenders and Klingon is a good defender, so you would really help to solve that problem. It really comes down to value added versus value subtracted, you know, for any player, you know, how much value are you going to add in the courts and what's the opportunity cost to fielding you. Now, Klingon's value on defense, I think is going to depend

a good deal upon him having the right perimeter defenders around him so that teams just aren't consistently attacking his weaknesses. Pissons don't really have that right now. And you would also be taking Cade, who lives in the pick and roll, and you'd be subtracting a very strong role man in Duren and replacing him with a pretty weak role man in Klingan. Also, Klingin is a guy who is not likely to be playing more than half of the minutes in any giving game. Meanwhile, the Pistons are weak on the wing, they're weak in shooting, and finding centers who can play decent defense and operate decently well in the pick and roll isn't altogether that difficult. Also, the Pistons, if they really want to find somebody to challenge Duren and

to just be a contingency plan in the event that he continues to be a terrible defender next season, which I think is going to be necessary. There are guys you can look at in free agency or a salary dumps. I think Klingan would just be a poor use of this pick for the Pistons, who could better use it to address needs elsewhere in a way that would provide better value. And with that, that'll be it for this week's episode. As always, hope you're all doing well. Thank you for listening. Catch you in next week's episode.