Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 2: Electric Boogaloo

Episode Date: April 10, 2019

This episode deals with topics including the team's recent offensive woes, the CBA, and the upcoming offseason.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everyone. My name is Mike, otherwise known as Narrowen. Welcome to the second episode of the unofficial Reddit Detroit Pistons podcast. Getting into just a couple days later than I planned, my initial plan, which continues to be my plan going forward, is to release episodes every weekend, probably Sunday, sometimes Saturday. Before I go any further, I'd just like to say thank you to everybody who listened to and also gave feedback on the first episode of the podcast. It's very much appreciated, and I hope you'll continue doing things. so on future episodes. It helps me to improve as a podcast, or I'm still very new with this. Also, it is certainly nice to hear that people are enjoying the content, so thank you for that. Also, if anybody would like to be a guest on future episodes of the podcast, that would be wonderful.

I didn't have any volunteers for this week, but I am looking to have people on the show as often as possible. So let me know in any of the threads I post on the podcast or by private message, if we'd like to guess. obviously microphone is a necessity. So being that I do not have a guest this week, it's going to follow the same format as last week's episode, which is me giving my take on questions asked by you. Now, one of the questions I was asked concern the playoff picture, playoff race, key games, and so on and so forth. I'm recording this on Wednesday.

We all know the playoff picture right now. Everybody has one game remaining, Charlottes, Orlando, and Detroit. Those are the games that matter. Charlotte plays Orlando, in fact. Detroit plays the New York Knicks tonight. So our scenarios, for anybody who listens to this before the game, if the pistons win and the magic lose, the pistons are the seventh seed. If the pistons win and the magic win, the pistons are the eighth seed. If the pistons are the eighth seed, if the pistons lose and the magic lose are the hornets,

then the hornets are the eighth seed and the pistons are out of the playoffs. Obviously, the ideal scenario would be for the pistons to play against the Raptors to gain the seventh seed. the Raptors are still a very good team. Don't get me wrong. The Bucks are just on an entirely different level. That is a fantastic team. I think that they have a solid chance of beating the Warriors in the finals, if that ends up being the finals.

And they're just a fantastic, well-balanced, deep and very well-coached team. They're deep even without Malcolm Brogden and Nicola Muratich, without whom they will probably play the entire first round. There's still a spectacular team without them. Toronto, the Pistons match up better against. Now, Toronto, realistically, if the Pistons play against a healthy Raptors roster, even with a healthy Blake Griffin, which is looking increasingly unlikely, it would take something amounting to a miracle for the Pistons to win that series. The Raptors are just a significantly better team. In the first place, upsets, like seven-seed versus second-seed.

Upsets even are extremely rare in the NBA. Generally, you have a team that gets in decisively as the second seed, and they're playing against the seven-seat. it's because they're a significantly better team. And in the NBA playoffs, generally, the better team is going to win a seven-game series nine times out of ten. Those kinds of upsets are very rare. But playing against the Raptors will give the Pistons a better shot at a competitive series, which I'm sure we would all like to watch. It'd be good for the present, it'd be better for the future. And I think they're unlikely to get that against the Bucks. So we hope for the Raptors. Second question concerned the Pistons' recent first quarter woes mentioned three recent games

where the Pistons had a great deal of trouble, early in particular in the first quarter. And I'm asked, is it a scheme problem, opposing defense? Tough luck misses are just being without Griffin. I'm going to go largely with coaching that ties into being without Griffin. So essentially, Dwayne Case's offense depends a great deal upon Blake Griffin coming in and efficiently and on high volume creating his own offense offense that doesn't deal with the offensive scheme at all. It just entirely deals with Griffin taking the ball and doing something with it. And that's something Casey has asked him to do night in and night out on high volume every single night.

And the pistons have not often won when he's failed to do so. In general, if they have one, it's been because other guys have stepped up and at the same time, they've been playing against a pretty bad team. So when Blake Griffin isn't doing that effectively, and he's struggled since the All-Star break, now it wasn't an issue at first because everybody was shooting well, and the Pistons had a pretty darn easy schedule. However, now we get to a point where not everybody is firing at all cylinders anymore. Because you had Reggie Jackson, Luke Kennard, Wayne Ellington, and Langston Galloway, all shooting super well at the same time. That was unlikely.

They were all shooting at really well above what could be expected as a reasonable baseline. and they were playing against bad competition. So the Pistons were able to weather it Griffin having some bad games. Some of those guys have aggressed, actually. In fact, all of them, Ellington only very recently, but Jackson was bound to regress from shooting around 45% from 3. Galloway was shooting well over 40%. Kinna was shooting well over 40%.

That's just for no team is that going to last. So now you have situations where, There are Blake Griffin struggles, and Dwayne Casey's offense is kind of shot as a result, because there really isn't very much to his offense. Without Griffin doing well, it becomes exposed as the very, very simple-minded thing it is. There's not very much ball movements. The offense doesn't really have much of an identity at all, and things just generally go very poorly. And there's a parallel to be drawn between this and how things were for Casey and his final years in Toronto as well, where he was similarly extremely dependent upon

Demar de Rosen and Kyle Lowry efficiently creating their own offense in isolation and when they couldn't, his offenses tended to stumble quite a bit. Now, in fact, this led to a pretty significant change in Toronto during Casey's final year as a coach there, during his coach of the year campaign, in fact. And I think a lot of people don't know this,

but Casey during that season, during his final season there when the Raptors won 59 games and their offense got great. Reviews was not the architect of that offense. Over the summer, after the Raptors lost for the second straight time to the Cavaliers in the playoffs, Masai Ujuri, who was the general manager of Toronto, said unilaterally, we're moving to a new offense.

We're going to build a new, modern, efficient NBA offense. And he did not tap Casey to plan that. Revealingly, he went to Nick Nurse instead. Nick Nurse is one of the assistants. He's now the head coach of the Raptors. And so the situation, more or less, for Casey was we're not running your offense anymore. You're going to have to give that over to one of your assistants and you have no choice in the matter. That's a really bad look for an NBA coach

to be so unable to work within the necessities of modern NBA offense to be so bad at that that his boss has to say, you know what, we're giving the job to somebody else. We'd still like you to be the coach here, but we don't think you have what it takes to plan and run that kind of offense. and the unfortunate fact of the matter is that Casey has never been a very good offensive coach. He's never been very creative. He's never been very good at efficiency or anything like that. And that became a greater and greater issue over the course of his final years in Toronto because since, say, 2014 or 2015, offense has really changed a great deal in the NBA.

You've seen shooting become everything. You've seen efficiency really become a big thing. Teams wanting to have as many shooters on the floor as they can to take the most efficient. shots that they can. The Houston Rockets being the most notable example of this, of course, but everybody's doing it. And then you have the NBA this year stepping in and expressly making rules to allow shooters more freedom of motion. And just essentially, scoring has become more and more and more efficient. And so it's extraordinarily important. It is the most important thing for a coach in the NBA to run a good offense, to run an offense, you know, to run the most

successful offense, the offense that gets the most out of your players, that's the most efficient, and so on and so forth. And this is something Casey has never been particularly good at, and in fact, it's pretty darn mediocre at. And that's a big problem, needless to say. Casey does have his strength as a coach. He is well liked by his players. He's good at running a locker room, by all accounts, and he's a solid defensive coach. He's a solid defensive mind. By all accounts, he was heavily involved as an assisting coach for the Dallas Mavericks in formulating the offense that very effectively handle LeBron during the 2011 finals, which the Mavericks won. But he is not a good offensive coach. In fact, he's a pretty weak offensive coach, and that is a damning

weakness in today's NBA. Indeed, it's probably the worst weakness for you to have in a league in which scoring is king, in which you're all but required to win on offense because the rules themselves strongly favor offense over defense. Now, another thing that figures into these slow starts is another one of Casey's very well-known flaws, which is notorious tardiness in making adjustments. Casey, generally when things aren't going well, we'll just continue doing the exact same thing. Nonetheless, he'll call a timeouts. Maybe they'll yell a bit. They'll go back on the floor. They'll feel the same lineup. They'll make the same decisions. They'll run the same office. offense. He's done a decent job at making adjustments out of halftime, for example, but that can

often be too little too late, and a lot of the time, they're glaringly obvious things. So when the pistons start slow, they're likely to continue slow until halftime. We've seen it time and time again. And against most good teams, you're not going to be able to come back like that. There's also the fact that Casey doesn't really game plan for individual games. He doesn't make changes based on the opponents he's facing. And so if, or at least before the games, and so if the opponent decides, hey, we're going to throw something special at you, the pistons are likely to take it on the nose, on offense, early on the game at least, and they might not recover again until half done, if ever. For example, the Nuggets in the game a few weeks ago, in which I believe the Pistons scored eight

points in the first quarter, here's what the Nuggets did. They said, okay, well, you've got Bruce Brown on the floor. We know he can't shoot at all. And so we're a more. more than happy to sag off of him. And we're just going to take his defender and double team whoever's going into the lane, whether that be Jackson, whether it be Griffin. Even if Drummond has the ball, we're going to go and double team him because you can't do anything about it. If you pass the ball to Brown, then what's he going to do? Take a three. He shoots those at like 28%. That's a shot. We'd love to have him take. And so the Pistons just couldn't get anywhere. Griffin has to get down low. He's a good three-point shooter now. But really, still, if he wants

to do maximum damage, he's got to be able to operate. down low and he couldn't do that there. They couldn't get the ball to any cutters. Guys just couldn't get, just basically the offense stalled out because the Nuggets were able to throw a wrench into Casey's very predictable offense, that offense, which essentially depends upon Blake Griffin being unstoppable. And, you know, as we saw, the Pistons came and really got back into it in the second half. It helped that the Nuggets went extremely cold, but they had a gigantic deficit to dig themselves out of. And that's just not okay. And it's something that is. happened on a very regular basis. Now, I guess why don't we just take this time to launch into

what else Casey hasn't done particularly well as an offensive coach? You can look at lineups for one thing. That's pretty easy. We can go straight with Bruce Brown through his lineup woes. Now, let me just reiterate this first. I've said this out, but I'd like to say it again. I like Bruce Brown. He's a hardworking kid. He's got a lot of potential. He never takes a single moment off. He seems to be very team-focused. He's got a lot of potential. If he's He can get his shooting together. He can become a little bit more refined as a defender. He's got a future with this organization.

He looks to be very versatile. He could potentially line up at three positions. He's a pretty good passer. He's got pretty good court vision. He's actually quite athletic. And he could be a real leader on this team going forward. And I've, you know, felt that way since I saw him play in Summer League, where he had pretty much all of the exact same flaws he has now.

And right now, we're dealing with the Bruce Brown we have in the moments, not the Bruce Brown we might have in a few years. And the Bruce Brown we have right now is arguably very, very unready to be playing in the NBA at all. And it's certainly not ready to be starting and is certainly not shown anything that demonstrates he should have had a starting gig to begin with. Certainly not that he should have maintained it this long. And you should note that Bruce Brown actually started for this roster in the very first game of the season because Reggie Bullock was injured. So this is not a fluke. And whereas guys like Stanley Johnson, for example, he lasted only seven games in the starting lineup because he couldn't shoot. Bruce Brown was allowed to start in the

first game and then brought on as a long-term starter despite the fact that everybody knew he couldn't shoot. I mean, with Stanley Johnson, it was kind of like, well, you know what? We're hoping he's made the leap because that'd be huge and we're going to give him, you know, it's his job to lose. It's like, okay, well, that's perfectly reasonable. With Bruce Brown, everybody from Dwayne Casey on down, on up to the management on down to everybody, including everybody who watched the guy in Summer League or preseason knew that Bruce Brown can't shoot and generally just provides, can't provide anything on offense at the NBA level these days. So the fact that he's in the starting lineup, nonetheless, is a mystery, even if he were an elite defender, which he isn't. I mentioned in last

week's episode that defensive specialists in the rotation anywhere who just can't shoot, who don't provide anything on offense, are exceedingly rare in the starting lineup. There are zero of them in the starting lineup of any team in the NBA. Bruce Brown is the only one. And of course, I'm not including centers. There are plenty of centers who can't create their own offense. But if I work in every other position, Bruce Brown is the only one, and he's not an elite defender. He is the worst three-point defender on the team. He is one of the worst three-point defenders of any starter in the NBA, again outside of centers. And he's incredibly foul prone.

He's a terrible pick and roll defender. This guy doesn't really provide that elite defense. So there's no real arguments be made for him in the starting lineup at all. But what's so worrisome is that Dwayne Casey doesn't seem to realize the gigantic no-no. he's committing and putting out on the floor a guy who just can't provide anything on offense. It's like we've said, offense is king. You know, it's the most important place to be successful. And you'd much rather have a guy out there who can provide some semblance of shooting and bad defense

than a guy who can provide nothing on offense and provides pretty good defense. Nonetheless, you've got Bruce Brown who started more than 50 games despite being a complete offensive zero. and what he does is render the starting lineup four versus five every single time because he pretty much can't do anything. And that's a big problem. We saw it, you know, as I mentioned it with Denver, they're one of many teams who has just simply said, well, we don't need to defend you, so we're not going to. And that's a big problem.

It lessens the effectiveness of the offense, and it makes things difficult than everybody else. You know, who knows how much extra beating Blake Griffin has had to take because he has one less guy to pass to when he said that, you know, he's had to fight through. how many more double teams because Brown's defender on a great deal of plays is just going to go cover Griffin instead. What's the worst that's going to happen? Brown might shoot. He'll probably miss close to 75% of the time.

And if he doesn't, maybe he'll drive the basket. Statistically speaking, he is one of the worst players in the NBA layups this season. He's terrible at it. So if he wants to try that, well, that's great for the opposing defense too. Or he'll do what he usually does, which is just passed the ball off and the offense has to reset. and that's great for the defense too, because then the pistons have to reset, and they've used probably half or more of the shot clock, and then maybe the possession's wasted.

Now, I think we can be reasonably sure that Dwayne Casey has Bruce Brown out there for his defense. I've got to think he's somehow aware to some degree that Brown's defense isn't at the elite level, but I digress. The fact is that Dwayne Casey seems to be a coach. When you look at what he's doing with Bruce Brown and what he's done with Thaunt-Maker since he's been around, He seems to be a coach who believes on an unfortunate level that you can still win by emphasizing defense at the tremendous expensive offense. And that's just not the case anymore. You can't defend the same way that you once could.

We certainly can't defend the same way that Pistons fans were around, for example, for the going to work, Eric, Ann. That defense has been legitimately by the letter of NBA law illegal since, I believe, 2006, the rule changes were. it's just it's not possible anymore so you see casey give up a lot of offensive firepower on guys like brown and guys like maker because he thinks that they're real defensive stalwarts and sometimes they do well on defense but the cost on offense is tremendous and not worth it at all but this brings us to further examples of lineup issues where Casey actually takes it one step further. So lately Griffin has had games that he's missed, games where he hasn't been able to play very much. So who do you replace him with in the lineup? Well, if you want to run an

effective offense, really your only option is Glenn Robinson III. He's not a great player, but he's the best option because he can play with power forward, and he provides at least something on offense. You've already got Brown out there. Ideally, you don't have to play Brown, but let's just call that a given at this point. You can't put yet another guy out there who just can't contribute anything, yet that's exactly what Casey did instead of playing Glenn Robinson, you put ThonMaker out there. Now, when you put Thon Maker out there with Andre Drummond and with Bruce Brown on the starting lineup, you are hamstringing your starting lineup on offense right out of the gate because you have three guys there who cannot create their on offense and you can't shoot.

So you've got only two guys on the floor who are able to actually create any offense who are actually able to shoot, and that makes things tremendously easy on the defense. And so the results were very predictable. Every time that lineup came out, they did poorly on offense, and the Pistons ended up behind. And Casey did that for two straight games. And indeed, in the game against Indiana, the second game against Indiana, rather, when Griffin was out, he went one step further than that. Now, Glenn Robinson had played decently well in the first game against the Pacers. He had seven points. He'd done all right. Throughout the second game, for the vast majority of it, they were only two shooters in the floor for the Pistons. Casey was playing

some combination three at a time of lure, maker, drumins, petulia, Brown, and Smith. And you know what? That means easy days for the Indiana Pacers. That's a really easy offense to defend. On the other end, like I've said, unfortunately, just can't defend the way that you used to be able to. So the pistons ended up behind. The Pacers were still able to score. The pistons were not. And those were winnable games, both of those. You're missing Ola Depot. Not only him, you're missing Darren Collison, the starting point card. You're missing Wesley Matthews, who's played a lot of is a shooting guard. Ever since the trade deadline, those guys have averaged 25 points between them on good efficiency. The Pistons, even without Griffin, had an easy shot at winning both of those games.

And maybe they would have won one of them had Dwayne Casey done things a bit differently. Unfortunately, he didn't. So it's just these kinds of lineup decisions that really make you question, you know, what's going through Dwayne Casey's head. And, you know, if he really knows what he's doing well enough to run an offense in the modern NBA, at all, let alone for a team like the Pistons, where you don't really have a ton of offensive talents, and you really have to maximize what you've got. And he doesn't really do that either, unfortunately. I mean, you look at guys that like to bring up a lot, Luke Kinnard.

So if we look at Luke, he's a guy who is at his best when he's allowed to handle the ball. He's at his best when he is heavily involved in the offense. He does his best when he's shooting on volume, generally when he's doing those things. He does very well. and when Casey has allowed him to do those things, he's done very well. When he's given him help with picks, off ball screens, and so on and so forth, Luke is really delivered. Unfortunately, Casey seems to forget about him a great deal of the time,

and Luke is either shooting on low volume, rarely, and he does poorly at that, or he's barely involved in the offense at all. So this is a case where you have your best shooter, and you're just simply not utilizing him how you should. Luke Kennard under no circumstances should be standing idly in the corner for long periods of time. For a couple of reasons. Number one, it's a waste. A waste of a very important asset for a team that doesn't have much shooting at all. And number two, it makes his presence on the court worse than pointless because Luke isn't a good defender. He's just he has very poor lot of mobility. He's got poor wingspan.

If you want to put him out there, you better be using him on offense because he's a defensive liability. Yet, for example, against the Thunder, not only was he not being used, Casey was leaving him out there to get. eaten for lunch by Paul George. Like, he was defending Paul George for a significant stretch. And he has not the, I mean, Luke could, Bless him could work as hard as he wanted to, you know, to just put up the defensive performance of his life. He's not going to defend Paul George. It's not possible. He just, he can't do it.

At other times, he was out there defending Westbrook. And again, you ask Casey, what are you doing? You're not using your best shooter. And at the same time, you're leaving him out there to get obliterated on defense while you're doing that. you look at, you know, just a stellar example against the Hornets. So down the stretch, the Pistons made that big comeback. And so down the stretch, what do you have? Well, instead of having Thon Makers setting off-ball screens for Luke to get him open,

you have Thon Makers shooting spot-up threes while Luke stands idly, completely forgotten in the corner. This brings us to another point where Casey just doesn't understand the certain aspects of efficiency, which are getting your best possible shots for your best possible shooting. warning guys away from shots that they're bad at, getting the shots the guys they're good at, eliminating the bad shots from your offense to the degree that you can. And Casey, unfortunately, doesn't really do any of this. And it comes back to bite the pistons. It just does.

None of this stuff is really acceptable in today's NBA yet. It happens constantly. Even you look down to the level of how it took the guy 40-something games to start using Reggie Jackson on the pick and roll on high volume. Reggie Jackson was brought to Detroit to run the pick and roll with Andre Drummond. It's what he does. If he could pick his ideal NBA game,

he would be running a pick and roll on every play. He has said that. He has said in the past that his ideal season of the NBA is him running a pick and roll on every play on the way to winning a championship. You've got him alongside Andre Drummond, who is a guy who sets a lot of picks and rolls to the basket. That's really what he's done during a lot of his time with Detroit.

and it took Casey about 40 games to start using them a high volume because his offense was essentially sent Griffin to the basket. So, you know, other minor stuff like, you know, the usage of Griffin in the first place, Griffin, when he's with the clippers, Doc Rivers used to run him on picking rules pretty often as the ball handler because you know what? You run him around a DeAndre Jordan screen and then DeAndre rolls to the basket, the defense has the choice. We can have their double team Griffin on the way to the net. He's a good pass for a little bit to DeAndre Jordan, and that's it, because he'll run it. you know, you give up two points. Or you defend Griffin one-on-one of the baskets and take the pretty good chance that he's going

to beat you. As Duane Casey used that on any volume? No. Why? Who knows? He's just not creative enough. Doesn't like the change his offense up that much or what? I honestly couldn't tell you.

Other things, Doc Rivers and Blake Griffin's last season with the Clippers, they built that team around him so that he would be surrounded by shooters because the idea was, you know, what you put Blake on the low block in the paint and you back him down. And the choice on the part of the defense is either you double team him, which you're going to have to do with somebody from the perimeter, and thereby leave somebody open, or you let him just back down to the basket and take a pretty darn good chance he's going to score. And Doc Rivers had his perimeter guys navigating off ball screens

and doing what they could to get open. Now in Detroit, what happens? Well, Griffin, you know, 80 to 90% of the time is just going straight for the basket while his teammates just stand idly on the perimeter and nobody does anything. And that makes it a lot easier on the defense and considerably harder on Griffin himself. So I'm not going to go any further with this. Just the point is that we have, unfortunately, another coach yet again in Detroit, who is unable to get anything like the most out of the players he has available,

is not able to make them on most occasions, even the sum of their parts, but I want more than that. Now, does he have the greatest personnel to work with? No, this team, as we all know, is not particularly well-built for the rigors of the modern NBA, certainly offensively speaking. And he has done a pretty good job defensively. But coaching is something that's a variable. You know, you can't control your roster.

Sure, you know, these guys are going to play it at a better or worse level, depending on the game. But something you always can't control is putting them in a position to succeed, putting them in a position where they have the greatest chance to excel, the greatest chance to win. And at least speaking from an offensive standpoint, and Dwayne Casey doesn't do that and it's a big problem. And it's a problem that I don't see any easy solution to barring Ed Stefanski

deciding to do the same thing in Detroit that Masayu Jiri did to Casey in Casey's final year in Toronto, which is just to say, sorry, you're just going to have to let one of the assistants point up the offense instead because what you're doing isn't working. So moving on, the next question concerns the Piston salary cap situation this season. as for an explanation of the collective bargaining act with respect to exceptions, the luxury tax, the salary cap, and so on and so forth. So I wrote an article about this about nine months ago. I'll post that link in the topic in which I post this subreddit, just in case anybody would like a visual aid.

Now, there are three terms, I think, will be most important in understanding where the Pistons are and just understanding the CBA in general, at least how it pertains to the Pistons this summer. First of these is the salary cap. Now, the NBA has what's called a soft salary cap, which means you are allowed to use exceptions to exceed the salary cap. This is in contrast to the NHL's hard cap, which you simply cannot exceed, except under very specific circumstances. In the NBA, most teams will be over the cap through use of these exceptions. There was only one team, Sacramento Kings, which was under the cap this season. All the other 29 were above the cap.

So that's one concept. The second is the luxury tax. So there is a luxury tax line for every dollar in salary. Any team pays past that luxury tax line. They have to pay a matching dollar amount in tax to the NBA. This can vary based on how much above the tax they are. So the luxury tax is intended to enforce parity by penalizing teams that spend a ton of money because not all teams are financially created equal.

There is a further penalty called the repeater tax. that triggers for any team that had been in the luxury tax for three of the previous four seasons, and that just multiplies the penalties. So a lot of teams will just avoid the luxury tax to any degree for that reason, just to avoid starting the clock on the repeater, because you don't want to do that unless you feel like you've got a contender right away, because you really want to put off the repeater tax as long as you can. And that's one reason why the pistons avoided the luxury tax this last season.

Though in general, it's just not something, you don't want to pay another little luxury tax. unless you think that you're at least, you know, a sure contender for maybe the second round or something like that. Some teams will do it just to make the playoffs. And the third term, though this pertains less to the Pistons, is the luxury tax apron. That is $6 million above the luxury tax threshold. And exceeding the apron basically just limits your access to exceptions, makes for harsher salary matching and trades. And in some cases, certain actions will hard cap your team at the luxury tax apron, but the pistons are very unlikely to get there. So when it comes to the exceptions themselves, there are several of them. The first is

the rookie exception. You're always allowed to exceed the cap in order to sign your draft picks. The second is the mid-level exception. Mid-level exception is available to teams every year. It's basically meant to enable teams to add a depth piece when they're over the cap already. The MLE will be near 9 million, I believe, in this coming season. There are actually two forms of the mid-level exception, one for teams that are below the apron and one for teams that are above or for which using the full MLE would send them above the apron. So the Pistons will have access to the full mid-level exception.

You can use this to sign one player or you can spread it across several players. It's not a very big exception, but it can be used to acquire a solid depth piece. Another is the biannual exception. You get this every other year. I believe it's in the area of $3 million next season. The Pistons used it two seasons ago on Anthony Tulliver, so they'll have access to that, again, this upcoming season. Another is the veteran minimum exception.

So basically, this allows you to sign players at a veteran minimum salary. In terms of actual salary, the veteran minimum increases for every player based on how much much experience they have. But for the sake of encouraging teams to sign veterans rather than moving toward younger players because still, you know, they're paid less by the minimum, the actual cap hits an actual salary of any veteran is equal to that of a veteran with two years of experience. So for example, the Pistons, or excuse me, Jose called around in Zaza-Pichulia, who have been around a long time, are actually getting paid, I think, in the area of $2.5 million this season. But the NBA picked up everything above the 1.5.5.

million dollar second year veteran salary in terms of the salary itself and the cap hit. And the last and most commonly used is the what's called the Bird exception named after Larry Bird, often referred to as Bird rights. Now Bird rights allow you to exceed the cap to resign the players that are on your roster. Bird rights are earned by spending three years in the league without changing teams in free agency and without clearing waivers. Bird rights can be traded. For example, Avery Bradley, the Pistons would have been able to resign. They kept him and decided to resign him because they had his bird rights

because he hadn't met either of those conditions. You know, he hadn't changed teams in free agency. He hadn't passed their waivers. Those are full bird rights, which allow you to resign a player or whatever contract you want. There's another form called early bird rights, which require only two years, but you can only give them a restricted contract, which is based on the salary they don't even earning.

it's irrelevant to the pistons because they have nobody on the roster, none of the, you know, who has early bird in any event. Now, on the numbers themselves, the salary cap for next season is tentatively set at $109 million. That looks likely just based on circumstances to remain the case. It's changed in the past occasionally after the playoffs. If the playoffs are longer than expected, which means more revenue occasionally, it'll be higher or shorter than expected, means a little bit lower because less revenue from the playoffs. But we'll just go at $109 million.

because that seems likely to remain. And the luxury tax is set at $132 million. So the Pistons will very likely choose not to guarantee the second season on Glenn Robinson's contract because he has been very disappointing. So assuming that comes to pass, after they sign their draft picks, they will be at around $116 million in obligations. That leaves them $16 million under the luxury tax line.

The biannual exception, assuming they use it fully and the middle-level exception, again, assuming they use it fully, will total to about $12 million, that leaves you $4 million under the luxury tax line. That's enough to sign a couple of veteran minimum contracts, and that should round out the roster. This assumes, of course, that the Pistons don't apt to re-sign any of the players whose contracts are aspiring, and I will get to that next. So that next question is, who do we re-sign, and potential players who can replace them?

So as far as the latter goes, it's unfortunately at this stage extremely difficult to tell what the market will be. You've got a bit of an unusual situation this summer. A couple of things. Number one, some of the absurd contracts that were signed in 2016 are expiring, which means that a good number of teams will have cap space. Second, there are quite a few maximum, a potential maximum contract free agents coming out of the market, and a lot of teams have hoarded cap space against that, hoping to sign some of them. So a couple of things could happen. First off, some teams are going to strike out on those free agents. And really, they'll be the ones to determine the market. They'll have two options. Do they want to spend an exorbitant

amount of money giving contracts that are way overpriced to mid-level and upper-mid-level players? If they do, then the market gets set on those players and it's very high to get priced out of the Pistons range. If, however, they decide, or enough of them decide, well, instead of overpaying these players, we're just going to wait until next season and see what happens, then the market on those players maybe set lower. And so some of the guys basically would mean that more players would be attainable for the Pistons and the middle level exception, which would be pretty great. However, there's no way to know for right now what's going to happen. So it's tough to tell who will be in Detroit's price range. Now, as far as who is currently on the roster, who's going to be a free agent, who should Detroit keep,

who should Detroit let go? I'm going to start with Ish Smith. This is probably the most prominent free agents. I think very highly of Ish. I really like him for his. I really like him for his. character for who he is as a person. By all accounts, he's a great teammate. And he's been pretty good in Detroit. That said, I think it's important that the Pistons let Isch Smith go for a variety of reasons. First, it'll give them more flexibility to address other needs elsewhere, and this team does have other needs. Second, however, he just doesn't fit this team anymore. Ish is an adequate backup and often a good backup when he's on the floor with guys who can play off ball. Ish, unfortunately, cannot play off ball at all. He is just simply a very bad shooter,

and that really limits his fit. So he once had Tobias, KCP was an OK shooter from time to time, Tolliver, Kinnard, Bullock, Bradley, even Bradley, yes, he was until the end a pretty good catch-and-shoe, three-point shooter for the Pistons. Now the team's got significantly less shooting. At the same time, the team has more ball-dominant players. Jackson's a ball-dominant player, Griffin's a heavily ball-dominant player, and it's tough for Hish to play with those guys because possession is a zero-sum game.

If Iish has the ball, those guys don't. they are more important to the team than he is. They are more effective with the ball than he is. And that makes him a difficult fit because you essentially have to march to his beat rather than having the flexibility you would like. And third, and this is also a matter of fit, but I think it's important enough to merit its own category, is Luke Kennard. Now, I consider Luke Kennard extremely important to the future of this team. I think it's very important that the pistons maximize what he has to offer. He's shown himself perfectly capable of helming an offense. He is an excellent shooter. He can shoot from anywhere. He's got to be closely guarded.

That often means that guys are going to be open. He's a good passer with good court vision. He also thrives on having a large role in the offense when he's able to handle the ball, when he's able to shoot the ball on high volume is when he's best. And this makes him pretty incompatible with Ish Smith, if you're going to want to give Luke that. Ish, as I mentioned, is extremely ball dominant, is not good off the ball. So if you want to get good use out of him, you have to give in the ball, and that means Luke can't have it. So I think for the sake of giving Luke maximum opportunity, you really have to let Ishko, which will have additional benefits as well.

It'll free up the shooting guard glutt a bit by moving Luke to point guard, thus freeing up more minutes for Kyrie Thomas, who may figure to be an important part of the rotation going forward. More minutes conceivably for Svi-McCalliuk, who is a shooting guard as his native position, he'll play some small forward as well. And it'll also allow you to use the full mid-level and biannual exceptions in order to address other team needs, which very much do exist. And finally, even irrespective of everything else, do you really want to be giving a multi-year contract to a non-shooting point guard who's already over the age of 30 when you've got a lot of contracts coming off the books in 2020,

and you really want to have maximum flexibility at that point to remake the roster? So, moving on to Wayne Ellington, this one is a little bit more conditional. I know people have been very high on Ellington because a shooter of his ilk who can come off screens and shoot quick three's with a decent degree of accuracy is very valuable. Now, there are a few things to consider. Number one, the guy's been punching a little bit above his weights. He started a regress lately. He's a guy you can count on for 37, maybe 38%, which is good, but not world beating. You also want to consider that there is a glut of shooting guards on this roster, and most of them are young guys the Pistons would really like to give opportunity to. You've got Bruce Brown,

who's already getting more opportunities should, but nonetheless, you've got Kyrie Thomas, You've got McCulliuk, who again will probably see some minutes at shooting guard. You've got Knaard of the Pistons opt to keep H. Smith. So do you really want to be signing another shooting guard who might take minutes away from those guys, especially because you've already got a significant amount of money committed to it, especially with Galloway. And finally, as with Smith, though again, that was a more minor consideration for the argument for not keeping him. Do you want to give a multi-year deal, which is probably what he'll ask for?

to a guy who's well over 30, again, especially because come next summer, you're going to want to have maximum flexibility. So I think unless you manage to move Galloway, you better let Ellington go. Even then, you don't want to sign him for more than two years, and ideally he'll be a guy playing off the bench. And the last two free agents taking out of the equation, Glenn Robbins and the third, whom, again, I think the pistons will not guarantee the second year contract of, are Jose Calderon and Zaza-Pichulia. Calderon demonstrated, beyond any shadow of a doubt that his MBA career is pretty much over. And that's fine. He's had a long and relatively good career. He was a disaster for the Pistons this

year. By all accounts, he was valuable in the locker room, but you want to have a guy you can actually put on the court. So you let him go. Zaza, who knows, he is adequate as a third-string center. He is no longer good as a backup center. He, too, is a valuable locker room presence by all accounts. So if you can sign him to a minimum deal as your third-string center, maybe you keep and maybe you don't. That depends on how much you value him behind the scenes. Moving on, the next question asks about team needs this offseason and who would be ideal to fill those. As far as the latter part of the question, as I said earlier in the show, I think that's really tough to peg right now. We just don't know what the market's going to be as far as market price goes for any particular level of player.

Also, we don't entirely know who is going to be available yet. And finally, it'll depend on whom the piston select in the draft. So now as far as team needs go, I think your number one needs. has to be small forward. It's a very important position, and the Pistons have had a solid small forward for one season out of the past eight since Tashon started to go into significant decline. That was Marcus Morris in his first season with Detroit, because he severely regressed in his next season. And that's a big void to have. It's very important to have a good small forward. So that's got to be Detroit's first priority over the summer. I think you try to find one in

the draft, and it's entirely possible that a decent three-nd-d-s small-forward. be available when the Pistons pick. If not, I guess you try to go look for one with the mid-level exception, but I think it's much better if you can find a guy in the draft, even if it's a guy who you really have to take a chance on, because that's just such an important position for the pistons going forward. And who knows, maybe you swing on a guy who's down in his luck with the MLA, and he ends up being really good, but that's just not something you can bank on. His second need, assuming that you get that small forward, assuming that he can play in the starting lineup, is a starting shooting guard. Now the Pistons have a lot.

of guys in the system. And who knows? Kyrie Thomas was pegged as a potential three-indee starting shooting guard coming out of college. A lot of people are surprised he didn't go in the first round of the draft. Maybe he's got that in him. Apparently, Dwayne Casey likes him quite a bit, and so does the front office. Maybe Bruce Brown can improve, in which case he can slot in a shooting guard. As I said, I think Kennard's off the bench, but maybe one of those two guys can do it. Now, if the organization has the fate that they can, as another story. And maybe you keep Wellington and start him for a season. But again, I don't think that would be the ideal scenario. So you're looking at a starting shooting guard. Beyond that, you need a backup big. Now, here's

where the issue of Thon Maker's fit comes in. That's why I say a backup big rather than a backup center or power forward. Maker doesn't really fit at either power forward or a center. Now, at center, it lets him defend in the paint, which he's good at, but he's an awful interior scorer and he doesn't really compete well against the many guys at the position who are just tremendously bulkier than he is. Now you can play him with power forward, but he's not a good perimeter shooter and he's not a good perimeter defender. And that brings him out of the paints and the paint is where he is good at defending. So he's just a tough fit. I think if the pistons decide he is the backup, you know, if he is a backup going forward, you have to

play him at center because that's the better fit. You just got to hope he improves as an interior your score. And also, he finally bulks up a bit. He has a decent fit with Griffin on the floor. If he can improve that perimeter shot, in that case, great, you're playing at center because Griffin does best with a floor spacer who can defend the rim. And maybe Thon will be able to fit that bill someday. So in that case, you need a backup power forward. And maybe this is a bit predictable, but I say you bring back Anthony Tolover, who could probably be had on the biannual exception again. He had a pretty good season in Minnesota. Ultimately, he large, dropped out of the rotation just because after the trade for where they got Darius Sarich and

Robert Covington between Sarich and Taj Gibson, there just wasn't Space Petaliver anymore. He's on the older side, so he's not going to demand a high salary. I'd imagine he would love to come back to Detroit, and he would be very valuable here. Still a solid defender, still a good three-point shooter, still a very valuable veteran leader. And moving on, the final question pertains to if a backup center will be a position of need for the Pistons this summer and whether or not it would be wise for the Pistons to spend a first-round pick on a center in the upcoming draft. I think whether or not backup center is a position of need depends on the organization's stance on Thonmaker. If they believe that he is a part of the team's

future, if they have faith in him as a major part of the rotation and if they're willing to invest in him, then I would say no, backup center is not a position of need because, as I said before, I think that's the only viable place you can play him. As far as whether or not they do have that faith in him. I would guess that the answer is yes based on the fact that they traded him and that Dwayne Casey seems to like him quite a bit. You never know, but there's also the fact that the Pistons don't have a lot of cab space to work with this summer, so it would be really be great for them if Thonmaker would work out as the backup center. As far as taking the center in the draft, again, I would say no for a few reasons. First off, the team just has much greater needs elsewhere

in the rotation, particularly at small forward. As I said, is just a position of dire need for the pistons right now. I think they desperately need their starting small forward of the future. You can also look a bit further into the organization's motivations. This is less what I think and more of what I think is likely. This is an organization that, for better or worse, is looking to compete every year and is certainly looking to compete right now. So I don't see them spending a draft pick at a position that really isn't as much of a concern at the moment. Whether or not you think that Thon Maker, whether or not the organization or other thinks that Don Maker is ready to be the backup center. You do have Andre Drummond, whom you were paying a

max contract to, and he eats up the vast majority of the minutes at center. He plays a ton of minutes. Second reason is if you're really going to take a chance on a guy, and let's face it, the Pistons probably will, to a certain degree, be taking a chance on a guy at the 15th or 16th pick, which is where they'll be selecting based on their ultimate position and playoff seating. you want to be taking a chance on a guy at a position with a higher ceiling with more to contribute. Center is the position you can afford to shirk most in today's NBA. If you're strong at every other position, then you can just throw a modest amount of money at a guy who rebounds fairly well, defends the rim fairly well, and can play garbage man to some decent degree,

and still have a pretty strong roster. So if you're taking a chance on a guy, be a guy who can shoot, guy who can create offense, you're inherently going to be looking at probably a much greater potential gain if you draft at another position. And third, and finally, there just aren't really too many good centers in this season's draft. The only one you can say is good enough that he would legitimately fall if they were still available. Where the pistons are picking is Jackson Hayes. He's very unlikely to be available. Ball ball might be.

He's not a guy I would take a chance on. He's already a tremendous injury risk, and there's really no use. in drafting a guy who might not be able to stay on the floor. Also, he's likely some years away. And once again, this is an organization that's really aiming to compete right now. But, you know, all told with the draft, I would just say that small forward and shooters are just a way bigger need for the pissons right now than on the center. And so, that'll be it for today's show. I'd like to thank you all for listening. As I said earlier, feedback is always helpful.

What you enjoyed, what you think I can improve on, and what you'd like to hear about in future episodes. Let's hope you'll tune in again next week and go Pistons.