Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 207: Best/Worst Pistons Player Seasons Since 2014 & Isaiah Stewart Season Review

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

This episode goes over the best and worst Pistons seasons at each position since 2014, then reviews Isaiah Stewart's 2023-2024 season.

Welcome back, everybody, you're listening to another episode of Driving to the Basket. I'm Mike. Hope you're all doing great. Take two of this episode, actually. I recorded an episode yesterday that, despite my best efforts to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, excuse me, was so terrible that I just couldn't let it see light of day. I'm just talking about this because I find it kind of funny. I decided to do something just, I like data. You all know that already. and to take a look through the metrics and look at lineups and, you know, just fun with lineups, basically,

which is something that you can do after most seasons just to, I mean, there's always some noise in lineups, but, you know, we watch the games. So you can kind of contextualize it and it's just cool to see, you know, what the major lineups were and what they did and what did, you know, what did well and what didn't and so on and so forth. Of course, last seasons was just such a mangled mess because of who was in charge and because the roster was not really so good. but mostly because of who was in charge.

Usually even on a bad team, you can get some good stuff out of lineup data. But in this situation, it was just really a painful walk-through horrible memory lane of a team that was being led by a madman. Well, not mad, more likely just trying to get himself fired and whatever. And I would just have decided prefer to think as whittle about that, as I've said, as little about that as possible. And somehow I had managed to talk about it for like 20 minutes, which looking back is kind of funny. So anyway, I mean, that was in part just because there's not too much to talk about this stage of the season. I'm going to continue doing the player reviews that I've gotten started on. I think I've only done a couple of them so far.

But aside from that, it's pretty quiet. And I don't want to just fill this with subpar content just for the sake of filling time with content of getting content. I would like for it, of course, to be good content. So asked around today, I want to thank everybody who gave me ideas on some, interesting things to talk about. And I'm going to go ahead and do that. And afterward, do some player reviews. We're about six weeks away from preseason, give or take, six or seven, early October, early to mid October. Actually, I haven't looked at the schedule. I know, of course, as usual, the season starts in the late October, so early to mid. And with the Olympics over, man, yeah,

we are in the deadest of dead zones. And as I've said, it's going to be real refreshing when the Pistons off season is a little bit shorter or preferably a lot shorter. So hopefully that time is not terribly far in the future. So here was a fun idea. I'm going to do my all decade, well, it's going to be more like all nine seasons because I only really came back to the Pistons or only really became a big fan of the Pistons as obsessed as I am right now in wait 2014. So from the last nine seasons, my kind of all best Pistons lineup and all worst Pistons wind up. And I'll try to sneak some honorable mentions in there for the old best. So criteria here basically just has to be a full season. So it's just one season of any given player. So, you know, of course, that doesn't, you know,

that rules out rather Josh Smith, who for that 2014-2015 season, the segment of it that he played was maybe the worst big minute piston to suit, disgraceous, who knows how long, it's suited up a news, who knows how long. He was on his way to a very high usage, unbelievably inefficient season and needless to say stop caring about defense sometime before. So in any event, he's ruled out. And of course, this means like Brandon Jennings, who had that magical little, I don't know, like 15 game run in that same season wouldn't qualify. He missed much of that season with an Achilles injury.

And I wouldn't rank him amongst the best anyway. It was 15 games. And up to that point, he'd been pretty bad. Brandon Jennings has kind of passed into legend with the pistons. And as much as I will always have good memories of the guy for really growing up from a kind of inefficient, no defense chucker into a leader. for that team during that's just wonderful 12 and 3 span that lasted about four and a half weeks. And yeah, just growing into a leader and, you know, being at the front of what's still, in my opinion, you know, like a top three, top two, maybe the best span the Pistons have seen in the last 10 years, was for the most part with the Pistons not good at all.

Up until that month or so in which he was punching way above his career baseline, he'd been pretty bad for the Pistons. And after he returned from his Achilles injury and just those last couple months before he was sent out in the Tobias' trip. it was pretty bad too. The Achilles injury really killed him, you know, and that'll happen for a player who's very reliant in this quickness. So in any case, let's get rolling. So let's start a guard and I'm not necessarily going to differentiate between point guard and shooting guard here because, I mean, when I was in today's NBA, they can both be handler roles. I guess that wasn't always the case, of course, throughout this span, but not going to limit it just to guys who were kind of more traditional shooting guards. So let's start a point guard. I'm going to go

2015-2016-2016 reggie jackson now i was not a huge fan of reggie back then because i'm just kind of a puritan when it comes to guys being team players and reggie was very very very very much an egotist at that point he was a classic case of two things number one stand bang gundy just this having very very little regard for character you can see as he put together a duo formed the team around a duo of jackson and drummond so you know that was kind of one characteristic there Another one was, you know, that old adage of, you know, if they'll cheat on you, excuse me, if they'll cheat with you, they'll cheat on you. And Reggie Jackson had forced his way out of Oklahoma City an incredibly, incredibly unprofessional manner. Like, it's very rare that a player goes that far as to, like, fake hold himself out of the lineup due to injury.

And yeah, so basically that was the player whom Stan Van Gundy traded for, the guy who was going to demand to be the primary option. That was what he was demanding with the thunder. Obviously, he was never going to get it there. it out. And Van Gundy kind of sort of foolishly agreed to give that to him as part of his master plan and Van Gundy loved his plan. You know, he would not deviate from his plan if he could, you know, he just wouldn't, even if it plainly wasn't working. So he had this vision of a really pick and roll dominant offense surrounding pick and roll heavy guard and a pick and roll heavy big that, of course, was going to be Jackson and Drummond. It's interesting.

to think about what might have happened to Jennings not been injured, you know, but he was. Even Van Gundy has admitted that that really changed the trajectory of the Pistons. So who knows? It's interesting to hear him admit to that because Jennings really wasn't a great pick and roll guard. So nonetheless, Jackson came in and he was the center of the offense in that season, and he did do a pretty good job. That was really the best Piston season since 2007, 2008, 44 wins. That team gave the Cavaliers sort of a run for their money in a competitive sweep.

though Jackson himself was bad in the playoffs, and so was Drummond, and they were characteristically treated like kings anyway by Van Gundy, despite the fact that everybody else in the rotation was shooting drastically better than they were. That's not here nor there. We're talking about the regular season. So Jackson in that season, about 19 points per game, six assists, and three rebounds, shot 35% from three. And if I recall correctly, he shot quite a bit in the way of pull-ups.

I think his catch-and-shoot. I don't know if the numbers in front of me, if I remember correctly, it was about 36%, which was fine back then. So efficiency, you know, at about 53.5% wasn't great, but back then was acceptable. And it's not that he had like a great campaign. Like he was really hyped up as a borderline all-star in that season. And there were a fair number of guys in the East who were better than he was. And I mean, he was able to do what he was able to do because he had absolute control over the offense.

And was the unequivocal and unquestioned. he jealously guarded this primary option in the offense. Like a lot of possessions just came down to him dribbling the air out of the ball and then calling for a pick and going in and taking a shot, and it wasn't always a great shot. And often he would play too selfishly. He always needed to have, you know, he always needed to be the one in the limelight. You know, but in his defense, you know, he took a big workload onto his back.

And he did a decent job of it. And, you know, unquestionably that season was one of the best clutch players in the week. So his inclusion here, is partially due to him having a pretty good season, but it also just kind of contextualizes how weak the position has been for the Pistons over the last decade. Well, basically every position has been weak for the Pistons over the last decade. And come to think of it, I mean, you know, it's on the good side of this list.

You know, 2013, 2014, obviously wouldn't include anybody. It would just be people on the bad side, Josh Smith, golf, golf. But I wasn't watching back then. Again, I know he was bad. It was definitely a lot worse with the Pistons and the following kind of truncated season. Though, to be fair, I wasn't watching that either. I missed most of that time. I really came back during that span after he was waived.

That was what really brought me back to the Pistons. That was still very under the Red Wings at the time, but that's not interesting. You're not here to listen to me, talk about my sports fandom. Or maybe you are. I just don't think it's really all that interesting to listen to. So let's go back to the Pistons. So, yeah, Reggie wasn't great. He was allowed to be pretty good.

by the fact that he was just the top dog. He could get very selfish. And, yeah, I mean, that was really, on defense, that was the one season in which he did okay. I'm not sure how many of you guys know this about Reggie, but he has asthma. So playing big minutes with the heavy workload was more difficult on him than it would have been on the average player. But he still managed through sheer force of efforts to be kind of even on the defensive end, even though he's never had particularly good defensive IQ. So anyway, I would put Reggie there at shooting guard.

And again, I'm not really talking about traditional shooting guards here. And if I were, this would be a very sad wist because you would have to put KCP in here, and KCP didn't ever really have a good season for the Pistons. So I'm going to go with, and this should come as no surprise whatsoever, Kate Cunningham, and this was Kate Cunningham from this past season, who averaged 23 points per game, 7 and a half assists, about four rebounds, 45% from the field, 35.5% from 3. got to the line about four and a half times. True shooting on the season,

54.5% and that number is, you know, fair amount better after the first 14 games or so. Games in which, sure, he did start slowly, he was also being started in a starting lineup that was a crime against modern NBA basketball, had no spacing, and was being run unwrote in a highly predictable pick and roll sets into a clogged interior by his stupid coach. So his stats from games,

Game 15 onward, one up to 23 points per game about the same in assists and rebounds, but 46% from the field, 37% from three. So quite a fair amount, more efficient. In any case, I mean, this was Kate had a tough season on defense. I mean, I shouldn't mince words about that. I'm sure he knows it. It was a little bit puzzling for me because he was a pretty even defender as a rookie. And in the season, he was just making him as conditioning, certainly needed help. You could see at the end of games in which he carried a very heavy load, that there were plays in which he was just kind of taking time off on defense, but also he made a lot of really bizarre defensive errors

that were not in keeping with a player of his intelligence, his very high in basketball intelligence. So on offense, however, he barely carried a very heavy load for a pretty inadequate roster that was coached by the basketball equivalent of, you know, I don't know, insert whoever you're, religion's kind of most evil figure is in here. Whatever, we need to bring religion into this. I also don't need to get into how bad his coach was.

So he managed to post these stats and extremely, and to be a genuinely good offensive player, not just stats, a genuinely good offensive player in the midst of horrendous circumstances. I mean, it's still fresh in mind for everybody. I probably don't need to get too deep into it. He did kind of, he didn't really have a complete offensive game. at any point he had sometimes

of which he was good at shooting from three or and not so good at attacking the baskets, pretty poor at attacking the baskets or the opposite. I mean, he just wasn't shooting from three at all, but he was very strong at attacking the rim. So, but you see glimpses of what he could be. I mean, we've always seen glimpses from Cade,

but you always see, you see glimpses of the three level, you know, highly intelligent score and very adept passer and very intelligent player who, you know, who's, you know, we've been seeing since he was a rookie. So, again, I mean, not a great season because his defense really did cost a lot of the points that he generated. But our standards aren't too high here.

And, you know, he's better than anybody else in this position, I think. So at small forward. And this is going to, this one could have gone either way between 2016, 2017, Tobias Harris, and 2020, 2021 Jeremy Grant. And with all respect to Tobias. And I love Tobias, and he was my favorite player for the Pistons back then. And I think he's always been an extremely hard worker and a model sportsman. And, you know, generally a pretty solid player.

You know, great teammate, very active in the community, you know, not to stray into Tom Gores speak. Tobias is by all accounts, just, yeah, by every account, just a great dude. But I'd have to give it to Jeremy Grant, who was really a surprise. and he did primarily play power forward, but played a lot of minutes at small forward, too. But, yeah, he was a big surprise. I mean, I think a lot of us, I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, if you saw this coming, then good for you. And this is the thing that I would say that this was Troy Weaver's best move.

We'll put it that way. Was signing Jeremy Grant, who I just said was in a funny way. Promise you I'm not from the Valley. So was just signing Jeremy Grant, who was a role player, A solid role player, but nonetheless a role player and primarily just a catch-and-ch-chute guy who would really struggle to create anything with the Nuggets to a fairly hefty contract to actually have a major role in the offense. And Grant came in and delivered fairly well. You know, he proved himself able to attack off the dribble in that first season in the early stages. He was scoring at the rim well.

He was taking a beating, like a serious beating. And I don't know if he toned it back or if it was Dwayne K. or if it was Troy Weaver who told him, okay, you might want to stop attacking the basket so ferociously because you're getting bashed out of the air a few, too many times every game. You know, he was getting to the free throw line quite a bit. He was scoring at the rim a lot. Unfortunately, Dwayne Casey did allow him to, and yeah, six and a half attempts per game. I mean, that's considerable.

And, you know, Dwayne Casey, unfortunately, as he was, you know, it was typical for him. He loved having these veterans to whom he could just say take the ball and score with it. I don't care how you do it. So Jeremy got to take a few too many mid-range pull-ups, and he was always bad at those. But he shot well from three, you know, took quite a few pull-ups. As a catch-and-shoe guy, he was fairly good. He just, he created a lot of offense.

He did a good job of it, or, you know, aside from the mid-range pull-ups, he competed hard on defense. And just in the context of that team, he was a strong two-way veteran presence that was very helpful, and that was the case in the second season as well, though that was kind of truncated because he missed about 35 games due to injury. He played 54 games. in that first season, but bear in mind that that was a 72 game season, and he was kept out for a certain number of games at the end of the season for tank purposes.

Actually, he missed some games for tank purposes at the end of his second season as well, but missed a lot of time due to ligament tear in his hand, if I remember correctly. So, yeah, grant 22 points per game, not three assists, four and a half rebounds, and, you know, granted for a not particularly good team, and, yeah, about 56, 55.5% true shooting, so accept that. efficiency, especially for a guy who's creating a lot of offense. Yeah, it was really the best offensive player, granted on a bad team, but nonetheless, I'd say, and again, you have to contextualize this with how good players the Pistons have had on this team, which is just not very many

at all. Moving on to power forward, this one's easy. This is one of the best seasons in Pistons history, and, well, at his position at least, this is the best season in Pistons history. You know, other seasons, of course, Isaiah Thomas and, you know, other guys in the past. So let me go back and say maybe not one of the best seasons in Pistons history. I guess you could make that, you can make that argument. Actually, you could definitely make that argument was 2018, 2019 Blake Griffin. This was the Blake Griffin season. Absolutely the power this offense. I mean, everything depended upon Blake Griffin, the Pistons. Unfortunately, despite his heroics, finished with a 500 record in a week conference, you know, made the playoffs on like the second to last or maybe the last game of the

season. And Scott completely obliterated and a humiliating first-round loss against the Milwaukee Bucks. But nonetheless, Griffin had a great season. And you could not possibly, in my opinion, have asked more of a player than he gave in that season. The guy was a super hard worker, played very physically, never hesitated to put his body on the line. I mean, if I were Dwayne Casey, I would have been saying, Blake, don't die for loose balls. Just let him go. But he did it anyway.

He was a leader. He led by example. He was a strong score. He was the team's lead playmaker, and he tried his best on defense, even though Blake Griffin has never been a good defender. And he was strong in the boards, too, though he was playing next to Drummond, who was hoovering up a lot of the rebounds. So in that season, about 24 and a half points, seven and a half rebounds, five and a half assists. And he shot 46% from the field, 36% from three, got the free throw line about seven and a half times per game. It was a great offensive season on an abomination of a roster.

This roster had far too little shooting. This roster had virtually no strength on the wing at all. It was just Reggie Bullock, and that was it. And Reggie Bullock was gone mid-season. Now, Luke Kennard could have been helpful, but for whatever reason was persistently marginalized by Dwayne Casey. And speaking of Dwayne Casey, that was a guy in charge who was a pretty poor offensive coach.

And all you got to do with Blake Griffin in that situation, that version of Blake Griffin, let him go to work in the interior and draw multiple coverage. I think he's a lot of guys he's just going to beat one-on-one, especially if you can get him a mismatch, and run guys on the perimeter around off-ball screens for open shots, like Luke Kennard, for example. But Casey didn't really like off-ball screens. He had kind of a love-hate relationship with them. Some seasons he used them a lot, but in this season he didn't.

And also, he just wasn't big on off-ball movement. So often it was just Griffin going to work while everybody else stood still, and with drumming clogging the lane near him. So, yeah, Blake was just excellent. I mean, he started to wear down a bit three-quarters of the way through the season, and he was a bit less strong in those final, you know, 20-ish games. He played 75 games. I mean, he didn't really miss a stretch of games until the end of the season. And fortunately for the Pistons at that point,

Reggie Jackson, who had been hobbled for the first half of the season because Stan Van Gundy had rushed him back the season before from a great three-ankel sprain to try to win meaningless games in an effort to save his own job, to save his own job, obviously, to save his job, even though they were out of the playoff race anyway. and Reggie ended up needing to spend the entire season off the court rehabbing, and basically had to play his way back in a game shape. So Jackson had recovered by that point,

and the Pistons got, like in February and March, just the spring which Jackson and Kennard and Galloway were just shooting at a ludicrous percentage, and the Pistons were playing a bunch of bad teams, and that helped them stay in it. And also Drummond had arguably the best stretch of his career, like 20-game stretch of his career in which, honest to goodness for a significant stretch he was actually playing hard and playing to his strengths and being a good teammate didn't last so yeah if you weren't watching back then just go watch play griffin highlights i mean there were occasionally times the only bad thing i can say about him is there were occasionally times you got a little bit too focused on scoring but that's kind of a drop in the bucket versus what he contributed so yeah if you if you weren't watching back then uh just go watch some highlights especially that game his game against the clippers his first game back in laa the guy had had basically just three things he would do.

He would shoot a pull-up three. He would just kind of straight-line attack off the dribble with his dribble moves, and it was tough to stop him in that situation. He'd either get to the rim or he'd get fouled. Or he'd just post up. Sometimes he would actually dribble in and post up on somebody, like right outside the paint and just back them down. Or he'd take the ball, you know, actually in position in the post

and just back somebody down and score around the room. That was pretty much just as his go-to bag, just three of those moves. and it made him a very effective score. And he was good at parlaying the gravity he drew into assist for his teammates. Though, again, could have passed a little bit more himself, but more to the points, Dwayne Casey could have done a much better job of getting guys open. Like, Doc Rivers is not a good coach, but it's like Dwayne, go watch what Doc Rivers did with DeAndre Jordan.

You know, like have your center cut to the rim instead of just hanging out of the paint. I digress. So, yeah, just a really, really good offensive season from Blake Griffin. and that does not make it a good trade, it was still a terrible trade. Because this roster had no hope of doing anything. It was locked in a salary cap prison, and Griffin's health was immensely unlikely to hold up, and we saw that. And finally, it's center, and this one hurts me a little bit,

and this may be most of all, the kind of the context of the Pistons, really haven't had a very good center, a very good team in a while. As much as I would like to give this to somebody like, you know, 2021 to 2020, 2021, 2022, Isaiah Stewart. It was genuinely a very strong defender on a not very good defensive team. That wouldn't really be right.

I have to give it to 2017, 2018, Andre Drummond, which, yeah, I'm not going to opine at length about my feelings about Drummond because, well, this would be 2017, 2018, whatever, I'll give it to him 2018, 2019, so that's the Blake Griffin season as well, because Drummond did have that strong stretch. So, yeah, I'm not going to get into my feelings about German because I promised I would not do that on this show. He was, needless to say, less than his stats as usual in the first segment of the season. Like the first quarter of the season, he was pretty bad on both ends. In the second quarter of the season, his defense improved somewhat, like from poor to average and his scoring efficiency was even worse.

I mean, he had some epically bad periods as a score, especially for traditional big throughout his career with the business. instance. And like I mentioned, the third quarter of the season, he actually played up to something approaching his potential. And for me, this is a stretch. You can look back on the drumming and said, man, they say, man, if this guy just had the right mentality, he could have been like a perennial all-star as long as his athleticism held up. Because during that segment of the season, he scored on pretty good efficiency in the 60s and true shooting, which is what you want out of any traditional big. So more acceptable than good, but nonetheless, he actually parlayed his offensive rebounds into good things. You saw him actually kicking the ball out. He played unambiguously good

defense. Like, drummond back then, if he was really locked in on defense, could be pretty darn good. And, you know, this is just a stretch in which he was very unusually as good off the score sheet. You know, he was basically as good as his raw stats, which is a very rare thing for him. He worked hard. He played for his team. And then in the fourth quarter of the season, he kind of dipped back into, you know, very average territory or, you know, when we're talking average, we're talking average for starting centers, maybe worse than that, actually, which is just not really good enough for a guy you're paying a max salary. And, you know, he had his typical bevy of games he took off. And basically, not even, whatever, not good. Like, not bad, but definitely not good.

But again, we're talking about the Pistons over the last X number of years, you know, over the last not X number, last nine years. And you can look at it and say, okay, well, he did get, you know, third team all-N-B-A in 2015, 2016, and made the All-Star game, neither of which was the case. In 2018, 2019, unfortunately, I'd have to get into, yeah, the nitty-gritty negatives of Drummond, which, like I said, I'm just, uh, I've said I won't do.

And not to take myself too seriously. I just, I promise I'm not going to do something. I want to not do it. I want to not do that thing. I promised I wouldn't do. So I just have a look at that season. Like, look, uh, a little bit at, for example, his true shooting percentage.

And you'll see why the season may have been more than a tiny bit overrated. He also was not a particular, he was a pretty average defender in that season, too. I think it was just the case of raw stats getting a little bit more attention than they should have, and also the center class in that season. And also, I think voters being, the media being unfamiliar, the media who vote for all NBA being a little bit unfamiliar with his game. And also the center class being extremely weak. in the east, it was

Lopez, Whiteside, and Drummond, and wasn't forgetting somebody in the west, you had DeAndre Jordan, DeMarcus cousins, and the corpse of Dwight Howard. Guys like Yokic and Embed and Gobert and towns wouldn't really come online until the next season or two. So it was kind of an interregnum there

in terms of how strong the position was. So those would be my five. If they give an honorary mention, honorable mention, excuse me, to Tobias Ares from 2016, 27, 17. 16 points per game, five rebounds. I mean, two assists. But I mean, he was, he was just, you know, he had a pretty solid season on a disaster of a team. I don't really have any honorable mentions at point guard. We already have Cade there. And obviously, you know, Roger Jackson

was there for the vast majority of the time. He never really had another good season for the Pistons. And there's just nobody really of note. Nobody really of note at center either. nobody really of notes unless I'm forgetting somebody a power forward Tobias could slot into small forward or power forward and then I'm not going to spend nearly as much time on this but let's talk the uh goodness whatever the basketball equivalent of the raspberry awards are so at point guard we're going to go with and again I want I want these players to these are going to be players I should mention who had significant rotational roles you know you can point it really really bad role players like thonmaker for

example, but I'm not going to bother with that. I mean, the guy only, yeah, I think, no, he wasn't waived during COVID season. Whatever, the guy had a relatively minor role. So at point guard, 2016, 2017, Roger Jackson. This was a disaster. So there was a lot of hype, you know. I mean, I was really excited going into the season after they played against the Cavaliers in the playoffs. It's like really young Pistons team with a lot of potential and a lot of room for growth. And it completely he went off the rails. One of the ways in which it went off the rails was Reggie Jackson. He had had some issues with tendonitis in his college years of Boston College, and those really flared up in that offseason, and he had to get PRP treatment, and it wasn't the treatment.

It was the, it was just what happened to his knee, and he was never the same after that. At least I don't think it was the treatment as far as I know, and if any of you were more familiar with PRP treatments, then let me know. But as far as I know, it doesn't have any potentially negative side effects. So he missed the first 20 games. The Pistons actually were 11 and 10 when he came back, and they've been kind of on a roll in the span before, in a couple weeks before he came back.

So he came back in game 22, and it was just a complete disaster, and he was a disaster for the rest of the season. He was, like one thing was that Van Gundy decided, well, you know, we're going back to my vision. you know, of the pick and roll duo, and Reggie is going to be the primary option again, and I'm just going to get rid of this offense that is actually working reasonably well. And so, yeah, the Pistons kind of went to free fall at that point in those games after Reggie came back.

And this is, I mean, he was his typical self, which at that point was quite selfish and wanting to be the guy and was absolutely terrible. Not only on offense, on defense, he was a persistent catastrophe for the entire season. and Van Gundy kept him as the starting point guard anyway, even though Isch Smith, who at that point hadn't quite yet become a victim of the spacing era, and was a pretty decent backup. It was way better than Reggie. And, you know, even Van Gundy went so far as, you know, to see, well, Tobias, who had been the primary option before Jackson came back, and Jackson were not coexisting very well,

in part because Jackson just blew him, like sharing the ball, and was very covetous of his role as the primary option, and Tobias was the best score on the team. for the moment he got on there. And so if you're Van Gundy, you think, well, whom do I send to the bench, my horrifically underperforming starting point guard, who is making everybody worse, or everything worse when he's in the floor, or the only genuinely reliable score on the team. Well, the choice is clear.

You know, Tobias, you're going to the bench. So anyway, Van Gundy basically threw the season on keeping Jackson as the starting point guy. There were other things that was the primary factor. He didn't pivot until, like, game 72, and by then it was too late. So Jackson was just couldn't really get to the rim anymore. It was very inefficient. You know, I just struggled to get by anybody because he was very hobbled.

It was horrifically bad on defense. And again, on offense, is being used as the primary option. He had a good game here or there, but for the most part, he was comically bad. And the pistons were horrifically worse with him on the floor. Like, horrifically worse with him on the floor. So he was injured. He was also the architect of some of his own. I mean, he realistically shouldn't be, should have been playing.

It wasn't that he was so injured that it was dangerous for him to play. He was just plainly hobbled. At the very least, I mean, maybe, you know, I need to deactivate him, put him in a smaller minute backup role, but I don't think he would have accepted that at the time, and Van Gundy certainly was not of a mind to do it, because Van Gundy was always fixed in on what he wanted to be the case. And, I mean, it was him in that situation.

Basically, Van Gundy played his quartet of underperforming veteran flunkies between Jackson, Drummond, I'm Marcus Morris and KCP, all of whom were amongst the least efficient players in the entire league. So, yeah, he was terrible. I mean, it wasn't that he wasn't well enough to play. It was just that, you know, he was really slowed down enough that he couldn't really play his game on other end. But also, he was still extremely selfish and unwilling to really, you know, be a team player. He wanted to play the way that he wanted to play and he couldn't play the way he wanted to play.

So awful. So at Shooting Garden, you knew this guy was going to find his way in here. We'll call it 2021 to 2022 Killian Hayes. So this would be his second season. He had a truncated first season. He had a truncated fourth season. And in his third season, he atweezed had like that one month stretch in which he was playing half-deas in basketball. Though even then he'd have one really good game and then like one okay game, one below average game and one bad game.

I mean, his percentages got really inflated by that, you know, odd, genuinely good game. So he didn't even have that the season before because Troy Weaver's a moron. He decided that Killian Hay should start alongside Kate Cunningham because it's like, oh, well, our goal is always just to push together as much raw talent as we possibly can and just hope that some of it works out. There was never any prospect of he and Kate working out. It was just they were both guys who are really at their best by far on the ball. Killian, of course, couldn't, you know, he was an unknown shooter at that time, and that was part of it.

But it's also, you kick Killian off the ball, you know, even if he can shoot. His effectiveness is going to be drastically curtailed. And also, this would be like the least athletic starting back court in the entire league. Like, not ideal. So, you know, and definitely not acceptable at all, like if Sadieq Bay is going to be in the mix as well. But that's neither here nor there. So however you feel about the possibility of the two. with them working out, killing him is terrible. I mean, you would think in this situation that you would

put a guy next to your prospective franchise player who is actually going to make his life easier and make him better, like a shooting guard who moves well off the ball and can shoot the three to high percentage, but again, that was just not how Troy Weaver operated. In that season, he actually moved away from having, you know, decent role players on the team in favor of just getting as much broad talent on the team as possible and hoping it would work out. So in any case, killing him is terrible, absolutely terrible, horrible. It became very apparent early in the season. His, his, like, degree of contact diversion was extreme and not going anywhere. And couldn't shoot, couldn't do anything well, aside from his usual kind of perimeter,

passing, you know, passing that was, and his passing was always safe in the NBA. He was always low turnover. That was in part because a good passer, but it was also because he just didn't put himself into dangerous situations at all. Like, he would not dribble into contact and dribble into traffic and try to make a pass from there. And that's not a good thing. it's basically avoiding failing by not trying. You know, the need to break down defenses was there.

We don't need to talk that much about Killian Hayes. Okay, I'll stop. So he was demoted ultimately. Dwayne Casey's ability to run a half functional offense was saved by the fact that Corey Joseph became a 40% catch-and-shoe guy from the perimeter. And Killian went back to being, you know, got demoted to being a high usage and absolutely terrible backup. So we all know how bad Killian Hayes was.

No need to be able. way but the point. So this one actually gets a little bit difficult when we get to Small Forward because if we cut out anybody who was only with the team for part of a season and did have a significant role, excuse me, it was with the team for a full, yeah, if we cut out anybody who was only with the team for part of the season and did not have a significant role, it's really difficult to nail anybody down at Small Forward who was particularly horrible, again, who was here for a whole season and played a significant rotation role. can't have Isaiah Livers in there because, you know, he was in this past season, though he was

shockingly bad. He didn't actually spend an entire season with the team. He only played 23 games. And like you can't have Evan Fornier in there, like for the same reason. And like 2017, 2018-2018-2019, Stanley Johnson may have fit in there, even though he had a pretty decent start of the season, but he got traded for Thon Maker. And Thon Maker, who played way more center than he should have, excuse me, more powerful than he could have because he was even worse at power forward than he was at center. Actually, chiefly played center in 2019, 2020. But nonetheless, only averaged about 13 points per game. So this is actually a fairly difficult one. You could look at Kyle Singler, who was not great in 2014, 2015, but, you know, it was a decent

three-point shooter, but terrible from the field overall and really pretty poor on defense. 2015-2016, I mean, the vast majority of your forward minutes, your small forward minutes, went to Marcus Morris. Stanwy Johnson was a rookie, but I'm not going to look at rookie Stanley and really judge him. 2016, 2017, I guess is where we're going to have to look, unless I'm seriously forgetting something, and I don't think that I am. I mean, I could point at Bruce Brown in 2018, 2019, who, because Dwayne Casey, again, was not really all that particularly smart on offense, decided to start for the vast majority of

the season, played about 20 points per game and was bad on offense because he couldn't shoot. but Bruce much more than, you know, Reggie Jackson had been, you know, two seasons before. It was really a victim of circumstances. He's just never been there in the first place. So I'm going to hand it to 2016-2017 Marcus Morris. Marcus Morris, I know has a good reputation I've seen, so far as I've seen amongst those of the fandom who were watching back then. Morris was good in his first season with the Pistons. I mean, he was a solid, you know, he was a decent starter, put it that way.

Which, you know, by the standards of this team over the past nine years is, I mean, you know, makes him a notably pretty good player. Unfortunately, in 2016, 2017, alongside everybody with Tobias, he regressed. And here's the issue with Marcus Morris. He could be definitely an inefficient shooter, and he had a bad habit of trying to shoot himself out of slumps, and he constantly got into slumps in the season. His attitude also just wasn't particularly great. His defense dropped off a bit, but just his efficiency was absolutely comically bad.

Like one of the least efficient shooters, well, not absolutely comically bad, but for a guy was taking as many shots as he was, you know, you know, sub-51% true shooting on, you know, about 13 shots per game, which just in terms of straight field goals was third on the team. So I guess I was maybe exaggerating a bit, but the guy was horrible, like just genuinely, really, really not good at all. And in this case, it's kind of, you know, a little counterintuitive because it's sort of, like, the fact that the Pistons haven't had any, like, really notably awful small for forwards who, you know, played a whole season in a significant role. Yeah, I'd hand it to Marcus Morris.

Or you give it this honorable mention of Stanley Johnson in 2017, 2018. Now, we'll give it to Stanley a little bit that he was in that first quarter of that season. The starting small forward and did a decent job for the best opening night line of the Pistons have fielded since the going to work Pistons, the one that started 14 and 6 against the difficult strength of schedule, beat the the Durant Warriors, you know, the first year with Kevin Durantz, beat the Clippers. who had started that season undefeated, beat the Celtics, who were at that point the best team in the east. You know, that was a genuinely good team for the first quarter of the season, and Stanley was solid. He was shooting his three reasonably well. He was playing strong defense. You know, he was playing his role.

Unfortunately, fell off hardcore after that. And, you know, though he did still continue to play solid defense, which cannot be said of Marcus Morris the season before, he, I mean, 48% true shooting. Stanley always had trouble putting the ball into the basket over any sort of significant period. That said, unlike Morris, he was not shooting on really high volume, but only about eight attempts per game and about 27 minutes per game versus Morris the season before. Again, you take free throws into account. Morris had about 14 scoring opportunities per game and about five minutes more. And Stanley, unlike in his final season, would at least be somewhat of a team player.

And now we move on from there and honestly thinking about it, I might put 2017-2018-2018 Stanley Johnson in there at the other forward slot. Neither one of these guys played a ton of power forward, but again, it was that sort of situation in which, yeah, just with the criteria I stated, there weren't really many options. So we'll go with that, like at the very least, despite how horrible, well, how difficult things have been for the pistons over a long period. Yeah, at Forward, at least they haven't given major roles to guys who have been pretty darned bad.

you know, at least, again, not fulfilling those criteria. And then finally at center, this one's probably pretty predictable. I'm going to have to go, and I had two potential candidates for this, but I'm going to have to go with James Wiseman, who might say would barely make the cut from this past season. And we averaged 17 points per game, played 63 games. Horrible. Aside from like a stretch of three or four games, he was just terrible.

and definitely a guy you want to look at the score sheet and evaluate his play because Wiseman was just, I mean, his defense, it's just his IQ on both ends is comically bad. And for much of the season, I think you could see, thanks to the contrast, you know, we saw of him working a lot harder for like four or five games, which he credited Todd Gibson, but it's also like, well, your work ethic sucks because he weren't working hard the majority of this season. Also, what in the world are you thinking? Like, you're fighting for your NBA life. So, yeah, he was just terrible and should never have been playing over Marvin Bagley, who wasn't by any means good, but was a whole lot less bad, especially when the Pistons were

just desperate for wins, and you had James Wiseman playing a lot of minutes. Now, the honorable mention here, and if you think that James Wiseman didn't play enough minutes, would be 2016, 2017, Andre Drummond, who got quite a bit worse in every way versus the season before, again in which he was pretty overrated the season before, but he was genuinely a pretty bad player in 2016, 2017. He checked out halfway through the season and was just, you know, it wasn't particularly good in the first half, but in the second half, he was comically bad.

Well, I want to call it comically bad, but very bad. He and Reto Jackson across the season were one of the worst duos in the entire league. The Pistons without them on the floor were actually a half-decent team. Pistons with the two of them on the floor were a terrible team in terms of point differential, like genuinely horrible. You know, the hobbled and selfish point guard and the very incomplete and, you know, bad work ethic and bad mentality center. Drummond at that point was also still the worst free throw shooter in the history of the league. And I've always liked the stat. Like at that time, he was still getting a lot of post-ups, courtesy of Van Gundy.

This was in part because Drummond demanded those touches. At that point, despite being the worst free throw shooter in the history of the league, he was actually more efficient on free throws than he was on post-up opportunities. So anyway, again, not going to go too deep into Drummond, but it was a terrible season. Up until this past season, that was the hardest one for me to sit through. And I'll still maintain that Van Gundy absolutely coached that team out of the playoffs. So this ended up taking quite a bit longer than I'd expected and actually enjoyed this trip back through memory lane. Even though there really aren't many positive memories of the Pistons, there are some, you know, over the time when I've really been very into the team. So let's finish this.

this off then with a player review and I'm going to go with Isaiah Stewart for this one. Now this one's a little bit more, a little bit more difficult of an e-vail because Isaiah got a raw deal. He was put into a position. He should never have been playing in the first place. Basically any team aside from the Pistons would never have even tried this. He had no business being a power forward. I've gone over it a lot before. I'll just sum it up very quickly if if you haven't heard the many times. I've talked about why I believe Isaiah Stewart is absolutely unfit to be playing a power forward outside of anything but in each situation like against yannis for example i see d is very very good at defending yonis basically like number one like the

bigger issue is on offense like he is way too slow to play power forward on offense i mean power forward your power forwards these days generally are not really that much slower than your small forwards they're just larger small forwards for the most part you know it's not like a decade ago or seven or eight years ago that's certainly a decade ago when a lot of your power forwards were just smaller centers. We didn't necessarily need to shoot. Of course, three years after that, you know, come like 2017, if you're one of those centers, excuse me,

if you're one of those power forwards, you were either shooting, you were a center now or you're out of the league. And, yeah, assuming that they could, you know, make the transition up the center. But he's just incredibly slow for the position. He is unambiguously the slowest power forward, the slowest player to see significant minutes of power forward last season. He had absolutely no ability.

He has no ability whatsoever to, who beat anybody from off the ball, which means that that we can shoot, can't space the floor effectively, because the other team will leave him, and basically they know he's going to be right where they left him. You know, he's just not getting away from anybody. And can't attack closeouts, even,

which is almost a vital skill these days, because he's just too slow to do that. I think he made six driving layups last season. And I believe that's the number. It was a comically small number, whatever the case. And also just can't create anything at all. I mean, you don't have to necessarily be able to create, but that just compounds the issues, get a terrible handle.

And if he drive in just really, really bad touch, you know, just, you know, trying to get into the interior. And generally, when he drives in, he is going to either travel, lose the ball, or knock somebody over and get called for an offensive foul. And on defense, he's not bad by any means. He's just not particularly good. And it takes him away from his strengths. Like Isaiah Stewart at center is a strong defensive center. as I've said before, he has his weaknesses, like defending against vertical spacing,

or if somebody gets past him, he has a hard time recovering, and sometimes he struggles as a defensive rebounder against guys who are taller and more athletic than he is. So those are weaknesses on defense, though, for the most part. I mean, he is a remarkably low variance defender. You know, low variance, I mean, he excels in both switch schemes and drop schemes. He's a strong switch defender. He's a strong rim protector.

He's a strong pain protector, and he's very smart and very hardworking. So I'm moving to power forward, where suddenly his slow foot speed is going to become much more of an issue, because, you know, it's not just all defending guys, you know, from the perimeter on in. You have to chase guys around a parameter. You have to go over screens, which you can't do. He has to go under every screen, and that's a big problem against some players. And he has to chase guys on route to the interior, and these are just not things he's set up to do. He's got very poor foot speed.

So basically, you're putting him into position to fail on office. and he knew taking him away from his strengths on defense. It was a horrible idea that came from the mind of a GM who decided he was just going to buck the tree. He was just going to discard all basic conventional wisdom because he was just going to do things his way. And unfortunately, you know, this is my way and it's going to work. It's not anywhere near enough to overcome just bad decision making. You know, you can't just say, well, this is how it's going to be and expect it to work in complete defiance of, you know, the reality is the situation. So Stewart barely got to play any center.

and when he did, he started two games at center. And, you know, it would have made all the sense in the world from to play more center, especially given whom the Pistons had at center, which was Bagley and Wiseman, again, Bagley, pretty poor, Wiseman, much worse. Neither of them able to play defense, nor could Duren. So it would have been nice for him to do that more, unfortunately. That wasn't in the cards with the coach, who did basically everything wrong. But the two games he did start that I can remember were against the Pacers and the Sixers.

And in those games, his coach made the decision. with a very undersized lineup to switch, you know, to change to a switch everything lineup, and which required Isaiah Stewart to, you know, to persistently traverse long distances in the interior, and he just can't do that, you know. You just, you can't do that, and it went terribly. But, you know, just speaking overall, you know, in a stats, 11 points per game, shot 38% from 3, 49% from the field, 6.5 rebounds, 1.5 assists. Isaiah Stewart is not a good passer and probably never will be.

and almost as many turnovers as assists. And, you know, for efficiency of a career best, 60% true shooting. So Isaiah brought his typical brand of always try super hard and, you know, put your heart and soul, heart and soul, excuse me, into every possession and did the absolute best he could in a bad situation. He, on defense, I mean, again, was pretty average because just defending a lot of the time out in the perimeter is not his forte.

it's not something he's set up to do. Isaiah Stewart, if he had good athleticism, would probably be in the defensive player of the year. A conversation, like basically every season, I think, and would have been, who knows, maybe it would have been the Pistons pick at number seven. But in the events, I mean, his athleticism is his primary, you know, it is his primary downside,

and it sets his ceiling. So, and it does produce some weaknesses for him on offense, and defense, excuse me, as well, which I've enumerated and on all offense at center, I mean, he's a pretty poor role man, though I'm really looking forward to seeing what J.B. Baker staff can do in terms of leveraging his shooting at the position. You know, Isaiah at center, like he is, he does excellent screens. He is very active at querying out space in the interior, which he needless to say does aggressively like he does everything else. And you had a shooting to it, then, you know, there are options on offense, even though it's not ideal and it's definitely not ideal to have K'd playing next to a poor role man.

but just being able to shoot at center adds a dimension that, you know, again, not every center has. Whereas a power forward, you kind of just have to be able to shoot and he couldn't do anything else, but just shoot, standstill, spot up threes. Anyway, so average defender did provide much-needed secondary rim defense behind, again, the three really bad defenders he was playing behind, and that was of great help, and he was characteristically very good by percentage at defending the rim. So on defense, I think I have to give him a B plus, you know, which is probably his ceiling as a defender, given that he was being played to his weaknesses.

And on offense, I'm kind of a little bit torn. Again, on offense, he was poor, but there was no prospect of him being anything but poor. Like, I know that PJ Tucker was often brought up as, you know, why he can't he be PJ Tucker. And the answer is that, well, number one, even like 37-year-old. PJ Tucker on the heat was more mobile than Isaiah Stewart is ever going to be. Number two, though, is that PJ Tucker just having him stand in the corner was never preferable for anybody. It was more just acceptable on teams that had such a surfeit of superstar talents or star caliber creators that he didn't really need, or Eric Spolstra alongside Jimmy Belver,

that he didn't need to do anything else. You know, teams could, just be satisfied with him standing in the corner and, you know, hitting the occasional three when he was left open. It was never preferable. It was just acceptable. And he was to say Isaiah Stewart is, was not in that situation. But even if he had been, like he again, even like 37 year old, PJ Tucker was, was, was better kidded out. I think I've got the age right. It was better kidded out to play power forward than like a 22 year old Isaiah Stewart. So on all offense. Yeah, I got to give the guy like a C minus and just just based solely on what he provided. And again, this wasn't his fault. But really, all Isaiah provided was standstill, spot-up three is on relatively low volume. He would often hesitate when players

were closing out on him, which was not good, because that basically meant, well, Isaiah, I guess you just passed the ball. You've passed up an open three, and you pass the ball. It's later on the shock lock, and you just better hope that somebody else gets an open opportunity. You just passed up, you know, a high percentage opportunity to get rid of the ball or worse. If you didn't pass it, it means that you tried to drive in and create offense off the dribble, and that almost invariably ended up bad. That was a bad habit of his. He needs to fix either way.

But aside from those standstill spot-up threes, it was basically just his only other weapon, his really only other way to contribute, was on some offensive rebounds, sure, and the occasional cut or just finding himself, you know, positioning himself in the right place at the right time. But his only other kind of like on volume way of producing offense, and this was not high volume,

because it got found out pretty easily. Pretty quickly was with those high-low sets that we saw a lot of, in particular in the first three games, where he would post up down low against a mismatch and get the ball from Jalen Duren, who would pass it to him from the three-point line. And again, teams caught up, cut onto this being a major facet of Isaiah's personal game plan very quickly.

By the time game four rolled around, Pistons were playing against the Thunder, and Isaiah would get the ball close to the basket, you know, on one of those sets, and defenses would just swamp him, you know, or rather than not defenses. The Thunder would just immediately collapse on him. And that meant a turnover because Isaiah cannot pass out of that situation.

Very few guys are going to be able to pass out of like triple coverage on the baseline. So throughout the rest of the season, he would occasionally get those opportunities, but they were largely denied to him. So overall in the season, I'd give Isaiah, and again, not really his fault. But I'd have to give Isaiah like a really low B minus or a high C plus. And yeah, he was just, he was put into position to fail by his stupid general manager. and got to play under a terrible coach who made everything worse, including Isaiah's experience. So I remain a big fan of Isaiah.

Again, the vast majority of guys in this league are role players, and it is very rare to find a guy who does not have at least one significant weakness. Isaiah's weakness is his athleticism. It gives him a ceiling. Every player has a ceiling, and it limits Isaiah's ceiling to role player, and he does have a certain degree of fit dependence, but he still can be a solid role player under the right circumstances. He can provide quite a bit of value.

I'd say arguably he provide better value to a postseason team that asks less of him on which he might not necessarily need to be as strong in the role, but also in the postseason having a guy who's going to be strong in both switch and drop is very valuable. But for the Pistons, again, Pistons haven't had a good coach in 16-plus years. Again, I wasn't watching a ton during the going-to-work era. I was a very casual fan back then, largely just watching during the postseason. I lived in Colorado even back then.

I went from Colorado to Massachusetts back to Colorado. I grew up in Michigan. But, you know, yeah, so obviously wasn't watching regular season games. And so, you know, I can't make this judgment. I'm not qualified to make this judgment as to whether the last good coach was Larry Brown or Flip Saunders. I've found that opinions amongst people who were Big Pistons fans back then. on Plyp Saunders are pretty divided. Some think he was good and some really took issue with some of the things he did.

Whereas Larry Brown, I think, aside from his just inexcusable antics in the 2005 playoffs, seems to be very highly thought of. So, yeah, 2005 playoffs when he was basically negotiating for his next job while the Pistons were in the finals, which the players called a massive distraction, which makes sense. And that was just unbelievably unprofessional. And who knows, that was a series that had razor thin margins. and, you know, who knows, maybe the Pistons get back to backs if Larry Brown isn't screwing around. So it's been a long time since the Pistons had a coach who did not make the team worse

or did anything like putting players in the optimal position to succeed. J.B. Bickerstaff isn't really a particularly talented offensive coach. He's probably better than anybody the Pistons have had in a long time. So I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing him actually put players in a position to succeed based on their own individual strengths, including Isaiah Stewart, who, it seems, is going to be the backup center next season. I would be very surprised and very disappointed if we see him play power forward minutes out outside of very niche situations, for example, against the bucks.

Because again, Isaiah is very strong at defending Janus. I'd say last season he was one of the best in the week. Though even in that situation, I mean, if Brooke Lopez is largely just going to do his thing in the perimeter, then you can just play Stewart at center there. and just have Tobias, you know, guarding Brooke Lopez in the perimeter. Lopez, who gets slower and slower every season, though, if you try to score on the interior against Tobias, that may be a bit of an issue. So that'll take us to about an hour, and as such will be the end of this episode.

To those of you who were kind enough to provide me with topic suggestions that I didn't get to, because I only got to one subject outside of reviewing Isaiah Stewart, and actually giving my, you know, five best piston seasons, you know, one at each position and five worse took a lot longer than I thought it would. I will get to your topic suggestions in future episodes. Thank you again for taking the time and making the effort. I really appreciate it. All right. So as always, folks, want to thank you all for listening. I hope you're all doing great. I'll catch you in next week's episode.