Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 209: The (Potential) Benefits of Competent Coach & Ausar Thompson Season Review

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

This episode discusses how competent coaching from JB Bickerstaff could improve the performance of each returning player from last season, then reviews Ausar Thompson's 2023-2024 season.

Welcome back, everybody, you are listening to another episode of Draven to the Basket. I'm Mike. Hope you're all doing great. So, as I record this episode on Friday, we are just over three weeks away from the first preseason game. Just kind of snuck up on me. Maybe I just haven't been going fast enough with these player reviews, even though I really haven't been all that many of them to do. Because I was planning on doing a season preview series as well, I guess I'll just mash a lot of players together into just a few episodes before preseason starts.

He's got three more episodes to go before that. So in any events, I know season is being treated with kind of a degree of ambivalence amongst the fan base, which I don't blame anybody for how miserable things have been. And for whatever reason, I feel like this is just a point that's prevalent to me, at least. just that always worth considering that things can be different under new people in charge. Unfortunately, Tom Gores and before him, oh goodness, I don't remember what her name was Davidson's, Bill Davidson's widow, who ultimately just wanted to sell the team after he passed away, did not make the greatest decisions, of course, for the future of the Pistons.

but that is history. I don't know quite as well. I would want to research before I actually stated an opinion about it. But Tom Gores, unfortunately, is not employed good people, at least to this point. He maintains Joe Dumars, who by that point, you know, even irrespecting, again, of what directives he was being given by, you know, by the Davidson family at that point. just even before he traded away Chonty. I mean, things that atrophied completely, like badly atrophied, but going to work Pistons.

You had a 2004 team that was actually pretty darn deep on the bench between Corliss Williamson, in no particular order. You know, Williamson, Eldon Campbell, you know, Mike James and Lindsay Hunter and Memo O'Cour, and there were salary cap realities. They caused the Pistons to lose some of those guys. But basically, by the time they'd faced tough, against the heat the next season. The only really rotation caliber bench player, postseason, excuse me, caliber rotation player coming off the bench was Antonio McDice.

And like Rodney Stuckey showed up and kind of fit that description in the 2007-2008 season, so Chauncey's last. But for the most part, just Dumars did an exceptionally poor job of keeping the team stocked with decent talent, whether through trades or draft or free agency. So I'm kind of, this is just all to say that Joe Dumas, after the championship, I mean, he did build that team, but after that he did very poorly. And Tom Gores, unfortunately, kept him on when he probably shouldn't have and then pushed him up against a wall. Heading into the 2013-2014 season of, we better do better or you're gone. And then came Josh Smith and Chris Middleton being traded away for Brandon Jennings and so on and so forth. And then, of course, he was replaced by Stan Van Gogh.

Gandhi, who, to be fair, was a sought-after coach, and a guy had done well in Orlando as the coach. Unfortunately, it turned out he was a bit of a dinosaur, but in order to get him to come to Detroit over Golden State, where he would have been coaching otherwise, Tom Gore said, okay, you can be one of these dual general manager coaches who were still around in the league at the time, and that worked out very poorly, basically in every situation, unless you want to count Greg Popovich and I'm not 100% familiar with how involved in management he was, but he hasn't been in quite some time. But anyway, yeah, I've always thought this was a very, very funny historical what-if for the NBA.

I would say an extremely important historical what-if. You know, what-if Stan Van Gundy and ended up coaching those warriors. It's like, oh, hey, Steph, I'm going to have you running pick-and-rolls with Andrew Bogot. You know, pick-and-rolls, pick-and-rolls, pick-and-rolls. Whereas instead you had Steve Kerr, who was highly dynamic and was the perfect. perfect, perfect choice to maximize Steph Curry. And that Golden State team did more than any other to bring the NBA into its current era of spacing and efficiency. It was the combination in particular of Kerr and Curry with Thompson and Green also being significant contributors, but really

Curry and Kerr. And if it was Van Gundy and Kerr instead, the NBA probably would have advanced into this in the direction it's in right now in a direction of, excuse me, toward what the NBA is today, but those warriors were really the catalyst, in my opinion. In any event, Gores made the not-so-great decision to give Stan Van Gundy the keys to everything, and Van Gundy, of course, did a pretty darn bad job as general manager after some early successes and turned out to be an absolute dinosaur as a coach. and the fact that he had a chance to trade Josh Smith and in his first offseason and said, no, I can make this three big rotation work,

and I'm going to make Josh Smith the center of my offense should have been an early sign that the guy was a complete dinosaur. He could have gotten rid of Smith, who was a walker room cancer and had one of the worst contracts in the league for a much smaller salary load at the hands of another terrible owner, Vivek ran a dive of the Sacramento Kings. Anyway, so another unsuccessful period for Pistons fans, and then Troy Weaver came in

and unfortunately there's a bit of a mad scientist and things really didn't work out. And Dwayne Casey, very good leader, pretty poor on-court coach, even from the moment he got to Detroit. And then, of course, last season's coach who can just, yeah, we can just ultimately forget that he ever happened. So my point of that long meandering thing is that yes. Oh, and then Tom Gores himself, who horribly meddled throughout like the first eight or nine years. of his tenure as owner. You can't rebuild. We just need to build a winning culture,

and then we'll keep winning. It's like, Tom, you need talent, but he didn't want to accept that. And then, of course, meddled in the coaching search last season and gave a ton of money to a guy who, number one, did not deserve that amount of money, but who cares, you know, it's not going up against the cap. But number two, did not want the job,

and we saw all that turned out. So all of this is to say that, yes, we have a lot of, like, at this point, 16 seasons worth of what is this organization doing? What is, you know, what is the person who is involved in handling personnel, you know, and building the roster doing? What is the coach doing? This all sucks. Nobody is good at their job. The owner is bad. Yes, we have all of that in the past, certainly. And I think it's worth keeping in mind that this is an unprecedented run of failure for the most part.

very, very few teams have had this sort of stretch of protracted failure, especially often at times failure to a comical degree. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be that way, again. Like we had two seasons ago, I've already gone over this, like two seasons ago where things, I mean, the roster had issues and Kate got injured and you just had a mess of a team coached by a pretty poor coach in them last season, which was a nightmare the likes of which very, very few sports fans ever endure. But you've got a new general manager who, you know, hopefully is not quite as insane as Troy Weaver can do a better job. This again, Troy Weaver really, really, really went off the beaten path in ways that were not wise. And again, before him, the Pistons had Van Gundy, who was bad

at his job, and then Joe Dumars, who, you know, for the last five years of his tenure, was arguably the worst general manager in the league. It was not good for the, you know, like four seasons before that either. you got a new general manager who hopefully do a better job. You got a new coach who's virtually guaranteed to do a better job in the last coach and probably the coach before him. And you've got an owner who seems to learn very, very, very, very slowly, but seems to be learning.

So things can be different. I wouldn't judge what's going to happen next season on the basis of what has happened in recent seasons. So, but, you know, the proof will be in what actually happens. But speaking of coaching, I just wanted to talk today about, about ways in which I think better coaching, which we will hopefully see from Baker staff. And I'll reiterate that I don't think he was not the sort of coach that I wanted in the sense that he's not really very dynamic offensive minds.

He's not bad at it. But he's not very good at it either. I'd say he's pretty average, you know, just not Dwayne Casey level. Dwayne Casey was just highly unimaginative and did his best to his credit. though this was forced on him in Toronto, but he could have just gone back to his old ways when he got to Detroit. And he did, and he did his best to pursue an efficient shot profile, even though he was never really good enough on offense to tailor anything to the particular strengths of his players to make the proper adjustments. He loved to let veterans, in this case, Jeremy Grant, just take whatever shots they wanted. And, yeah. So Bigger Staff is certainly better than that. You know, he ran to.

a decent offense in Cleveland. It just is not really very imaginative, and he did have issues adjusting. It could get very stale at times, and he wasn't able to make those adjustments. Again, not to the level of Dwayne Casey, whom I would joke back then was like a robot who could only make changes when they updated his software in between games. On defense, he's well regarded, and he clearly actually wanted the job and is invested in very few coaches, or like ethically bankrupt scumbags like last season's coach who took the job and then okay no need to talk about that you've all heard how I feel about that and imagine a lot of you probably feel very similarly. So I do think it will do a better job if he is merely average.

This is how bad the coaching for the business has been since depending on whom you ask. And again, I wasn't watching enough less, excuse me, back then to really give an informed opinion. So I'm just going to go with depending on whom you'd ask. Flip Saunders, who was fired in 2008, or Larry Brown, who unceremoniously, and in a very, very unprofessional way, left the organization in 2005. So it has been a very long time. Therefore, if J.B. Baker staff is simply competence and simply average, like the 15th best coach in the league, then he'll be the best coach the Pistons have had in quite some time. But I'm just going to talk about how better coaching, which we will hopefully get from Bakerstaff,

will be useful to each player on the roster next season. I'm largely going to focus on the young players, because the veterans, of course, have been around and we're talking about how they can improve on what we've seen from the last however many seasons. So we'll start with Kate Cunningham. Obviously, I'd say pretty unquestionably, the most important player on the roster is still a guy

whom I feel has superstar and franchise player potential. I've talked a lot about Cade for a long time. I'm not sure how much I really talked last season about my opinion of them because, no, last season was last season, but I continue to think that Cade's ceiling is efficient, three-level score with very high basketball IQ and certainly excellent leadership potential. I think it's always worth considering the value of having the best player on your team also be a leader. And Cade has always been a leader going back to certainly his days at Oklahoma State. And, you know, a guy who both really wants to lead a team and is going to play in the way that best befits his team.

And it didn't set quite the example last season on defense that I would have liked. I don't know what happened to Cade last season on defense, but he's certainly proven that he can make the whole mid-range thing work. Mid-range pull-up is a very good asset to have. He's got certainly a track record as a shooter, which he's got to improve. But he's definitely showed in the NBA, he's got potential. potential as a pull-up three-point shooter as well. And there have definitely been times in the NBA when he has done well getting into the basket. And of course, he's very, very smart. Like, Kate is a genuine floor general. So you tie those things together, like a guy who can score efficiently

at three levels, which I think he's going to be able to do, and also create for his teammates and just make the right decision in the vast majority of situations. And, you know, that's a player who can do big things in the NBA. It's also worth mentioning that Kate has never, aside from some short periods, just at the end of his rookie season. And then for a short span last season, when he was playing alongside Ivy, Fontechio, and Stuart, then Dern, of course, had anything even remotely approaching good spacing. For the most part, he's just been attacking into bad spacing under, well, one coach who was poor at coaching offenses and another who was an all-around disaster and ever.

capacity. I can only imagine what it would have been, you know, what it would have been like, but it must, sorry, what it must have been like for Cade. I just tripped over like 10 words in a row. Last season to see the opening night starting lineup. It's like, oh, well, have fun, Cade. We're going to run you on predictable pick and roll sets into some of the worst spacing the NBA has seen in a very long time. Like in a starting lineup, no, hey, Isaiah Stewart should be able to shoot. Aside from that, Well, we've got a rookie whose main weaknesses is a shot. You know, you're starting next to a guard who has been like the least efficient score of the last three seasons. And your center can't shoot.

Have fun. So, and again, yeah, under poor offensive coaching. Well, last season, horrible offensive coaching. So we really, I think, haven't gotten to see the full extent of what Kate can do. Of course, last season he had his struggles with consistency from three in a time. in getting to the basket. But there's just so much about the young players in this team, aside from like Ron Holland and Quintman,

guys who have actually been on the floor, that we haven't gotten a C in full because the coaching has just been very poor. And, or many cases, and the situation has been exceptionally poor. So how can Cade benefit from better coaching? And again, I mean, I'm the same dupist who told you last summer that the Pistons were getting a good coach.

In my defense, nobody, I think, could have seen this coming. but I do look back and kind of cringe. It's like, oh, yeah, business are getting a genuinely good coach, a genuinely good regular season coach. And it's like, okay, that may have turned out to be a little untrue. Again, I don't think Baker's staff is great, but I'm hoping he'll be competent. So with the assumption that he's going to be competent.

So how better coaching can benefit Kate Cunningham? Well, under Duane Casey, it was just a lot of simplistic stuff into poor spacing. Under the next guy, it was even more simplistic stuff into horrible spacing. So just a coach who is actually able to run a more dynamic offense have guys, number one, run lineups that have adequate spacing. And Trajan Langdon's efforts this past off season have imbued the pistons with the ability to run more functional lineups. And I really, really hope that on day one of the season, we are not seeing Cade starting next to Assar Thompson and J.B. Bigger's staff deciding that he is going to sacrifice the ability to run a functional offense for the sake of more defense. So the pistons have the ability now to, yes, run a functional offense if you start, whether it's Ivy or Beasley, I hope it's Ivy. So you have a second handler on the floor.

And just because I think the two of them can work well together. You have Tobias, who can do some secondary creation, can space the floor. You have Fontecchio, who can space the floor. Duran obviously can't, but you should be able to run lineups that have a good degree of athleticism and a good, you know, so what I would call kind of like horizontals or athletic spacing, excuse me, guys who can get a little. open off the ball, anything you can do to wrong foot defenses. And also enough shooting to space the floor in the standard way. And also with Jayland-Duron, you'll have vertical spacing as well, which is helpful. So, yeah, run a more dynamic offense. Like, don't make it super predictable that you're just going to run cater around to pick and have basically everybody else standing still at the

same time. Have guys moving off the ball in unpredictable ways. Have guys actually legitimately setting off ball screens to get people open. Run a scheme that is, going to actually provide Cade with options of guys who are getting open of their own accord, getting open with the help of those off ball screens, getting open because the defense doesn't know exactly what they're going to do, which is something that Cades had to deal with for his entire career. And yeah, just coach the offense better into better lineups that have him adequate spacing and can really let him bring all of his skills to play in a proper way. like the idea here is to give the to give defenses nothing but bad options get c'd better lanes to the

basket get get c'd more teammates to actually you know in open positions to get you know to get balls to take shots and don't just have him rushing in and being forced to many situations to rely on mid-range pull-ups because that's the only option so you know this is your your lead handler this is your franchise player you know run the right lineups run the right system pistons have not in a long time had a coach who ran the right lineups and ran the right system. So I know that this one is a little bit just a matter of be competent. But don't run stupid lineups and don't run incredibly predictable offenses. Have your guys moving off the ball.

And it's like, you know, run sets that are not incredibly predictable. Like my hope this season is that we're just going to see more functional basketball. The last time the Pistons even had a full season, but the starting lineup capable of providing half-decent spacing was, right to Jackson's first full season with the Pistons. 2015, 2016, almost a decade. It's been a tough, tough time. So whether or not the Pistons win a lot of games this season, I mean, 30 games would be good,

whether or not the Pistons through some combination of other teams getting worse and the Pistons getting better or on the edge of the playing race. Again, just more functional basketball and less suffering. So moving on to Jaden Ivy, and this is a funny one. We all know what happened with Jaden Ivy last season. So, and this overlaps into K to Bates. it as well. And I'm hoping that they will start halves together and that it'll just be, you know, a system by which they play like the first five minutes of each half together and they close games

together. And otherwise they're staggered. And I just think you kind of have to see that by default because there's no other really qualified handler on the team. Ivy has his warts, but there's no really other qualified handler on the team. Marcus Sasser is, even if he can hit those mid-range pull-ups, is you just kind of have to operate differently around him because you can't break down the fences by, you know, by getting into the basket. So with Jay and Ivy, I think we just kind of have to ignore what happened last season with a coach who had it in for him from day one. So look at Dwayne Casey the season before.

And Dwayne Casey over time after Cade's injury and Avi's rookie season, let Jaden handle the ball more. And, you know, by the way at stage of the season, he was pretty much the primary handler. It took longer than I would have liked, especially because the other guy was Killian Hayes. But even at that point with Dwayne Casey, unfortunately, again, very simplistic. And typically with Ivy, it was, okay, Jaden, I'm going to have your center set a pick for you.

And then you're just going to try to do something and score or, you know, create a shot for somebody while your teammates all just stand still. So whether he's on the ball or off the ball, I mean, if he's on the ball, if he's the primary handler, again, just see the Cade Cunningham section. and find, you know, run the right lineups, run a decent system. And in the case of Ivy, and I should say this with every player, it's like it's going to be great at bigger staff is actually able to coach in a way that gets the most out of the respective assets of each of his players with Ivy. And one of his most, but really is characterizing, excuse me, his most characterizing characteristic, I suppose you could put it that way.

It's his athleticism. Not a great vertical athlete, but as a horizontal athlete, he's fantastic, incredible acceleration, tremendous top speed, and can really provide issues for defenses in that capacity. So when you're playing with Kate Cunningham, play the two of them off each other. I know he mentioned, for example, the very, very, very, very simple thing of getting Ivy to ball

when he's already in flight. If you get Ivy with the ball when he's already moving, it's going to cause problems for defenses because if he's moving, he's generally moving very, very fast, and it's going to be tough for defenses to get there in time to stop him from scoring, and if they do, then he can dish the ball to somebody else. So when you're using him, when he's not on the ball, have him moving.

He is a very active and willing and able off ball mover. He is very difficult to keep up with. And, you know, if your guy can't keep up with Ivy, whether it's just in standard movement around the perimeter, around an off ball screen, I mean, somebody else has to come and help. And that means unhinging defenses and unhinging defenses means probably getting yourself much better opportunities to score. So when Ivy is off the ball, don't have him standing still at the perimeter.

complete and utter waste. Whether or not he becomes a reliable shooter, have the guy move. You know, have him just dashing around the perimeter. Have him moving around all ball screens. You know, having him cut, you know, have him cut, you know, whenever he can. Have him getting the ball in flight. You know, when he's on the, you know, when he's on the floor with Cade,

play them off each other, you know. Don't make it predictable. Like, oh, Cade's the handler, you know, have both of them working together. you know, on plays, whether it's just, you know, passing it back and forth. These guys are, you know, Kate is a very methodical and kind of maybe slightly below average athlete. Ivy operates primarily by going very fast. But yeah, when Ivy is off the ball, have him moving and, you know, and get him the ball on the move. And when he's on the ball, you know, just find basic creative uses for the fact that he is extremely fast and is good at breaking

down defenses in that way. And as with Cade, just have the other guys actually doing things off the ball, don't be Dwayne Casey, and just say, okay, well, Jaden, take it and please just create something out of it. Like, it's very, very important to coach to the particular strengths of each of these players. So I'm hoping we'll see that. Ivy has not been utilized correctly by either of his coaches. Of course, he has to become a reliable shooter. That's pretty much a must. But when you have a guy with his degree of elite athleticism, just having him standing still at the perimeter is not the decision in any situation. Again, defenses have to track guys. Defenses know that if you give Jaden Avi a small lane in any situation where he can get the ball and blitz through, he's going to get

to the rim before anybody can get there to stop him. So, you know, make use of that ability, make use of that ability, even if it's just kind of like the basketball equivalent of like a force in being that they have to be keeping track of it, even if he's, you know, not going to be receiving the ball. So, yeah, just a lot of this boils down to just be competent in your coaching and be coaching to the strengths of each of your players. Moving on down the list, Assar Thompson, whose seasonal review, you know, such as it was at the end of this episode. So this, of course, will boil down to where he is as a shooter. Like, I don't need to talk anymore, one over this at length last episode of what Assar Thompson can be if he does learn to shoot. Of course, that is a big, big if.

you know, the most important skill, really period for any perimeter player in the NBA. And one you can't really do without outside of very, very niche situations that are very rare and even then require you to kind of compensate for them. Like Janus, for example, who is, you know, an inevitable Hall of Famer. And one of the greatest defenders, like, in my opinion, like, it's arguably the greatest roving help defender of all time. And even with him, even though he's incredible, at attacking the rim.

I mean, in the playoffs, you have to have, and even in the regular season, this is important. You just have to have four shooters around him. In the postseason, that's where the Bucks have died. When Yannis has been healthy and, you know, have four shooters, you can just swarm the guy.

So, you know, even with a guy like Yannis, you have to build the right team around the fact that he can't shoot. If that guy could shoot, like, my goodness, he would be probably retire as a top 10 player of all time. Imagine Yonis being able to shoot pull-up threes. It's like, okay, well, number one, he's going to be able to shoot. just over a lot of guys, but it's like you now have to play him closely at the three-point line,

and your task of keeping him from attacking the rim has now become impossible, but he can't. This is just all to say, as I've said, a bazillion times, yeah, Asaar is going to have to be able to shoot, and we're not talking, you know, 33%, because that's still leaving him open territory. You want him to become a genuinely reliable shooter, and would 30% be good, you know, with the next season? Would it be a success? Would he be, you know, able to just be, play a standard role of a standard perimeter player if he shoots 30%. No, that's still leaving him open territory. Still teams wanting him to shoot it because outside of just a few nights in which he gets hot,

that's still a good mathematical outcome if he's hitting just at 30%. I mean, it's a lot better than what he did last season. But in any event, Assar's best usage, and I feel very confident a SAR will get a lot of minutes. I just hope it's not in the starting lineup, and most of them are with Isaiah Stewart, so that he's got four shooters around him, which again is not. a solution. It's a band-aid, but the band-aid's much better than having a non-shooter on the perimeter who isn't surrounded by other shooters. So it'll hinge on how he can shoot. Like, there's a miracle outcome and like a SAR comes in and he's like a can consistently hit like, I don't

know, 36, 37% of his wide open threes. Okay, well, your usage of a Saar Thompson and that situation becomes very different. Though, of course, even in that situation, you're just kind of lumping his ability to shoot on top of what he can already do. I think it's probably safe to conclude that he's not going to come in as a reliable shooter. And it's kind of like the slate in terms of what can be done better with the SAR is basically, you know, there's, like, as I've said, and I'll talk about this briefly when I review his season, how he was used last season was utterly outrageous, basically like telling somebody, okay, well, you're the worst in the league at this one thing, so that's what

we're going to have you do. So let's not even compare it to last season. So what does as Sars Thompson offer on offense beyond the shooting that he doesn't have right now, you know, as of last season. It's worth noting that his handle right now is not great. His ability to finish right now through contact is not great. And those are things. Hopefully he can improve those for things that were an issue for him in the OTE. The guy shot, I think, 48% on half-court layups in the OTE, which is a shockingly poor for, you know,

for a guy picked as high as he was and just shockingly poor in general for a guy heading into the NBA. My goodness, I've been talking for 30 minutes already. So, yeah, I just paused the recording to clear my throat and saw that, wow, I'm all right. Yeah, anyway, this is not an interesting point. So what can Asar do? Well, he's extremely athletic, and he's a very hard worker. And unfortunately, at this point, you know, unlike Ivy, who still needs to be treated at least as a threat as a shooter. I mean, if a SAR hasn't improved significantly, then guys are just going to sag off him.

They're not really going to care all that much if he's moving around the brink. perimeter. But, you know, in no particular order, you can have the guy, well, number one, not stand in the corner. I hope that'll never happen. You know, there's no excuse for that period. Like, so much it would happen last season was completely insane. So have him set off ball screens, for example. Have him cutting into the interior when applicable. That's more difficult if his, if his man is sagged off of him. Have him, for example, like we saw this last season, attack defenders who are wrong-footed. Like, you're not going to have to defend him at the perimeter,

but even if you have to be rotating around the interior and he catches the ball and he immediately attacks through an open lane, he is most likely and he gets to the basket and score before anybody can stop him. And the Saar is extremely athletic. Have him serve as, you know, a connective passer of sorts. Just like once you get the defense really scrambling, you know, having a SAR moving around, whether to just catch the ball in flight or even just catch the ball at the perimeter

and attack from there is, you know, a very viable thing to do, particularly because he is a very smart player. And, you know, if you get him attacking an open lane, it's likely he's going to make the right pass. I mean, Asar's IQ is a very understated aspect of his game that will become, you know, more apparent, hopefully when he's able to shoot because that's when you're going to really, really see the benefits of it, whereas his entire offensive game at this point is going to be weighed down, assuming non-massive improvement, by the fact that he can't shoot. it's just so, so hard to be a non-negative player on offense in that situation.

But Asar is a very smart, connected passer. He's a player you can count on to make the right decision in the majority of situations, and is very much a team player. But yeah, the IQ is there, and that's a very understated aspect of his game. So, yeah, just to have the guy be dashing around like a maniac, and, you know, just find situations, again, just like with any player that allow him to maximize what he actually is able to. offer. Just his ability to get to the basket off the catch or off cuts or it's a vertically spaced

the floor. It's nice to have a secondary vertical spacing option. You know, have a guy, you know, fly in to catch a lob. Not necessarily a ton of guys at his position are going to be able to do that, but a sir definitely can. So make use of his smarts, make use of his athleticism, make use of his work ethic off the ball. On the ball, he is capable of attacking mismatches. So if you get him switched on to a poor switch defender, he is, Assar will be able to get past the guy, and then he's going to be able to make the right pass. So it's a case of a player who is at a disadvantage, which makes it particularly important to be innovative in how he use him. When he's on the floor with Isaiah Stewart, he's most likely going to be a role man. It's put him at a bit of a disadvantage if the opposing

coach is competent and actually, you know, just puts the center on a SAR. But yeah, I mean, when he's on the floor with Stewart, use him in that capacity. So with ASAR, as long as he can't shoot. It's a matter of minimizing damage versus necessarily finding positive value, but that's very important. You know, if you're coaching right, with some players, you know it's going to be a massive uphill battle, but the idea is to get the most value out of them that you can. And bad is much better than worse. Isaiah Stewart. So number one, don't play him a power forward. Like it must have a very good reason to do so. Like you're having him go up against Janus and Isaiah is one of the best in the league at defending Janus is remarkably good at it. Aside from that,

no, number one, play him at center. Fortunately, I think that's basically a foregone conclusion. And the only reason he ended up to power forward because Troy Weaver was adult. So, there's what I'd like to see out of Isaiah Stewart next season. The guy can shoot. That's a valuable thing at center. The number of guys in the NBA and Isaiah, probably because he's been played at power forward as long as he's been able to shoot, number of guys in the NBA who can actually protect the rim and shoot threes is very short like less than 10 guys so isaiah is going to be one of those players he does have his limitations on offense particularly as a role man and those again when you have a player with limitations it is particularly important to

use him in a way that minimizes those limitations to where you can and maximizes the value that he can provide so Isaiah I think has proven that he has it as a shooter he of course needs to be more willing to let it fly but it's like make use of that a center who can space the floor provided he's on the floor with other shooters. Again, you lose some of this if he's on the floor with the Sart Thompson because then you're not benefiting from what are very, very, very real benefits of having five shooters in the floor at the same time, which makes things much, much harder on defenses.

Like, you know, it's okay to have four, but it means that they know that your center of its Jalen Durham, for example, is not going to be able to shoot the ball. They can know that he's going to only be operating from the interior. So, yeah, particularly in situations when Isaiah is on the floor with four other shooters. You know, see what Isaiah can do on the pick and pop, for example. That is something that, a way in which he was just not utilized

over the last two seasons for obvious reasons. But, yeah, use him as a floor spacing center in pick and pop sets. You know, awesome. Always be leveraging, like in every situation, be leveraging to the maximum possible extent, the fact that he is a center who can shoot. That is the number one thing I would say for J.B. Baker's staff for his use of Isaiah Stewart next season.

take advantage of the fact that he can shoot to, oh, and I forgot to note this about Jaden Ivey. You know, so I'm going to get into isolations. Use Jaden Ivy as a mismatch hunter. I can't believe I forgot about this. Jaden Ivy is very, very good at attacking mismatches on the perimeter, part because he is a mismatch nightmare because he's just got incredible acceleration in top speed. So, yeah, in a few situations in which he was actually allowed to do that last season, he did well.

He just wasn't utilized that way. So, yeah, he used the offense. to hunt mismatches, get I'd get Ivy switched on to a guy who can't possibly hope to defend him and then let him break down defenses that way. So, but when it comes to Stewart, you have him on the floor with, with Ivy or with Cade, I don't think is ever going to be quite as good as an isolation threat. You know, if you have the ability to run a five-out offense, yeah, use Stewart in that capacity. And then defenses have the choice to either move their center back into the paint to defense,

let's say, Jaden Ivy on a mismatch or even on the center, and therefore leave Isaiah Stewart open or have to cover Stewart on the perimeter, and therefore it's just one-on-one and there's no rim protection, you know, beyond what help defense can arrive and therefore, you know, inevitably open up a teammate on the perimeter. So, yeah, just leverage Isaiah Stewart's shooting. I mean, that's going to be one of his primary assets, possibly his primary asset as a score at center because, again,

his scores from below the rim. His touch isn't great. He's pretty poor on the role. What else he's good at on offense, though? I mean, he's a super hard worker who clears out space very effectively. And he actually has shown a little bit in a way of, a little bit in the way of mid-range chops from the standstill. It's not a great shot, but if you can hit it at like 50% or over, you make it something that the defense at least needs to track. this is something that Dwayne Casey really never really made use of like with Isaiah at least like you let him take those shots if you could hit them regularly then it's just another option that the defense needs to keep track of and that means that they can't give Isaiah Stewart space inside the perimeter either like let's say you just have him operating a little bit inside you know in some situations just stopping and passing from inside the perimeter and then if he gets the ball and nobody's covering him if you can just take one of those stands to

mid-range shots on which he has good touch and make that, then it's another thing. Like, now defenses can't leave Isaiah Stewart just open to take shots from within the perimeter either. So, you know, just leverage the shooting ability altogether and do it also in a way that, you know, that helps to minimize the weakness that he does have as a role man. And he, if only Isaiah Stewart were actually a good athlete, then, you know, the guy could be like a perennial all-defenseive candidate and, you know, in a decent, even, even even if he still had poor touch.

I mean, a guy who can at least just score above the room and shoot. I mean, that's a very, very good center. Of course, it's also a center who would have gone well before he did in the draft. And, yeah, on defense, which I haven't really talked about as much with these other guys. I mean, for Bricade and for Ivy, it's just a matter of being better. That much is not as much about coaching. With Asar, the Sars basically at this point, on an inevitable track toward, assuming he can shoot well enough to really stay in the league in a significant role

and basically an inevitable track to being one of the best perimeter defenders in the week. But Stewart, on defense, it's like, well, don't put him on the floor with a bunch of sieves, which actually may be a slight issue this season. But as long as he's in the floor with at least one, you know, reasonably good defender, he should be fine. It's just if it's in a situation where he has to be dashing from place to place to put out fires. He's a little bit too slow often to get back to challenge a shot and jump at the same time. It can just be scored over.

Next up, J. Winduron. on offense. No, I mean, he showed quite a bit more or less season. Like, use him. Well, he was also allowed to do whatever he wanted, which often kind of had mixed results. But, you know, use him to attack slower centers. He's showing that he can do that.

Use him as a connected passing hub. He's shown that he can do that. You can have more guys ideally moving off the ball for him to take advantage of that. Use him as, you know, more dedicated vertical spacer. I think Dwayne Casey never really liked Wobbs, all that, much. And the guy last season, again, wasn't really coaching all that much. You know, make maximum use of Jalen Duren's athleticism, which is, you know, genuinely excellent. Have him attack

smaller players and mismatches, like not from the perimeter, but, you know, when he is up against the center who is just going to have a difficult, well, yeah, also, I mean, you can run, you can run actions in the interior to him switched under smaller players, and he's proven that he can attack those guys, using both his strength and what was remarkably improved. touch and football last season. Don't let him do whatever he wants, because that can result in some bad things, like him taking stupid mid-range pull-ups. And for goodness sake, hold him accountable on defense.

Duran himself, even though anybody could have seen this, regardless of what he said, really phoned it on defense last season. Sorry for the slight volume boost there. I got really into the really. So, yeah, hold him accountable. The guy did not try on defense last season. That is unacceptable. if he's not willing to put in the work on defense, then you might need to spend some games in the bench and have Stuart and Paul Reed play his minutes instead.

That is both a terrible habit to allow him to build, which he was not held accountable even in the slightest bit for it last season, despite being consistently awful in part because his level of effort was terrible. But it's also just unacceptable for any NBA player. Pistons had another guy in the past who was rarely held accountable to. just not okay, not the right way to go about things, period. And if the guy isn't putting the work, then, you know, make sure that he faces consequences for it. And if the guy is putting in the work but is making mistakes, you know, see that he faces consequences for that in a different way. But, you know, these guys need to know that they're being held accountable.

And, you know, they need to, I mean, some players will hold themselves accountable, but not all players do. And, you know, for those who don't, well, hopefully. they can learn to hold themselves accountable. But until then, but these young players, sometimes you've got to take a hard line with them. So, yeah, as with anybody, use him to his strengths on offense,

but just that the guy needs to be made clear to him that though his offense, of course, is important. As a traditional big, in particular, his defense is absolutely key, and that's indeed just that needs to be his priority, almost. Like we've seen what additional stuff he can do on offense, but just the center's impact on defense,

is very outsized. You know, the reason that defensive player of the year goes to Biggs almost every season, except when the voters get bored, is because they are the ones with by far the most ability to make an impact, the largest impact overall. So, yeah, just absolutely needs to be a priority.

Marcus Sasser. So Sasser, a couple of things. Like, I've been over this many times that Sasser just kind of needs to hit his mid-range pull-ups because he can't attack the rim. He can barely even attack closeouts because he's just too slowed, well, a combination of poor size and just not really being explosive at all generally just results in him taking a floater when he attacks closeups or a pull-up to.

So things unlikely to work out for him as a handle, period, unless he can hit a very difficult shot profile. But make use of the fact that the guy is, you know, he's quick enough to lose his man around a screen and he can shoot with very little space on the perimeter. So when he's not handling the ball, use it more effectively as a shooting specialist, both in the threat, that he provides and that defenses will need to keep track of him and we'll need to keep track of him also as a movement shooter and in what he actually can do. I mean, guys who can run around screens and take threes off the move, it's not only that they can hit the shot, it's also that opponents know that they can hit the shot and therefore

have to keep track of them. And again, anything like that is just the step that you can use to wrong foot a defense to some degree. So, you know, use him as a shoot. shooter and use him as a threat. Do not have him standing still where you're just not utilizing every single bit of what he can provide. On defense, I don't know, do your best to keep him away from bigger guards. This is the issue with a guy who is, you know, six foot two when he round up. Like, it just has to be protected in some matchups, and there's some matchups he's not going to be

able to play against. Like, for goodness sake, don't have him on the floor defending Josh Giddy, for example. We saw how that went last season. Josh Giddy is not a fist. attack around the weight of the rim. He doesn't have to be against Marcus Sasser. You just score over him. Giddy's pretty jumbo-sized for a handler, but yeah, there are just some situations in which Marcus Sasser is going to be screwed if you have him on the floor against certain opposition. So extract whatever you can from him on offense in those situations, especially because defense is likely to be a struggle. And then finally, Simone Fontechio, who I thought was pretty darn good for the Pistons last season and is quite,

quite a plug-in-play guy in that he's a very aggressive off-ball mover. He's a good three-point shooter. He attacks close-outs reasonably well. And he's a very easy guy, you know, if he's playing like he did for the distance to really fit in anything. So I don't really have a ton to say about Fonteco. Just keep him moving off the ball. That's a theme with a lot of these guys. Because he's not the fastest, but he is very energetic. And he can catch the ball and get a good shot off pretty quickly. and if he gets closed out on, he's surprisingly capable, despite his pretty average athleticism of getting to the rim quickly. But we only had 16 games with him in a Pistons uniform last season. I would be surprised if we saw quite the same level of production from him. And I believe that's it.

Again, you know what you're getting out of Malik Beasley. You know what you're getting out of Tobias Harris, out of Tim Hardaway, Jr. Let's just use these guys to the strengths that you know they have. it's uh it's pretty basic of course that's been a not at all basic thing for a pistons coach for a very long time that that's what it just comes down to you know just be be competent in your schemes and use your players to their not only their respective strengths but also to minimize their weaknesses all right and we'll finish this off with a very brief because it's kind of hard to you know based just based on our last season went uh just like with ivy with the sar it's a little it was an unusual

season. So, Sarr played 63 games before blood clots ended this season. I think it was a singular blood clot. Start at 38 of those, average 25 minutes, about nine points, six and a half rebounds, two assists, 18, bringing out 18 and a half percent from three, only 60 percent from the line. So, there are a few factors to play here, of course. Number one, Asar was not ready to play offense in the NBA. It was genuinely a zero-level score in the half court. in OT. And I know, I continue to think it's like, they're just, the options in, in 2023 were not particularly good in the draft.

I think upside, but still something that needed to be looked at and trade down opportunities were apparently very spare. If I saw it doesn't learn to shoot and Taylor Hendrix turns into a pretty good three-and-deep player, which I think is still a possibility. And it'll have much more opportunity to this season than that's going to hurt. That I felt was kind of like the alternative, was just going with Hendricks. saying, okay, the upside probably isn't there, but this is a player who will play an important rule. So, like, the floor was much higher. So he was put into a situation in which, you know,

by a general manager in a front office that was all about just the raw talent where it's like, okay, well, we just hoped you can produce. And he was, he was not ready really to produce. And also he was played under a coach who, you know, we all know it. You know, we started off kind of trying to use him to what he could provide, you know, to the strengths you could provide. for some time and then just kind of forgot about him, decided he didn't feel like coaching him anymore, and spent most of the season just genuinely taking, like a guy who was the worst shooter in the league amongst all players who attempted any significant volume of threes and said, okay, well, we're just going to put you in the corner where you won't be able to contribute and you'll be

the biggest possible spacing liability. Assar was done extremely dirty. I mean, that's, uh, must have been a tough thing for him, basically to be put into a situation. where he was the maximum liability he possibly could be, and he had the least to contribute. So not only is that bad for the encore product, but it's terrible for young players' confidence. Also, I feel like saw that his confidence was impaired,

even just a short time into the season when, or not a short time. Once he started coming off the bench and his coach just decided and really feel like doing anything with him, we saw the confidence start to wane there. Confidence is important for anybody, certainly very important for a young player, very important for a young player in the most,

competitive league in his field in the entire world. I think arguably, amongst the major sports, I would say basketball. The NBA might be the most competitive league period, just in terms of the number of players who actually get to play in the degree of individual skill manifestation. And the margins for error are just the margins in general being extremely small. So yeah, it was a season where he was brought in, and he was asked to contribute more than he was really able to do, especially in a roster that, you know, didn't really have a lot of shooting elsewhere. So the fact that he couldn't space the floor was an even bigger deal

because you have two guys who can't space the floor. It's just a compounding issue. It just makes things much worse than just twice as bad. And under a coach who, you know, you can fill in the blank at this point. So what did Assad do well? Well, when he was used properly. At all times, I mean, he was an extremely hard worker. I'll start with the offense here.

He was an extremely hard worker. He was strong in transition. He spaced the, not spaced the board. I actually started that right. He spaced the floor vertically. Well, definitely spaced the floor in the more traditional sense, exceptionally poorly. I guess he couldn't shoot. But this is what he did well.

So, yeah, space the floor vertically on the rare occasion that he was actually used as a role man with four shooters, whether that be with Stewart at Center, which is rare, or Mike Muscala or Daniela Gallinari, in the short times with the business. He served relatively ably as a role man, and he set good screens, and he rolled explosively to the basket. He did reasonably well when he was able to attack mismatches or just attack off the catch against wrong-footed defenders who weren't able to get into position to defend him. And, you know, in a typical sense from the perimeter, he was able to get to the rim. And he gets an open lane.

Then he's likely to get there before the defender can really do anything, especially because he's a fantastic lever. You know, you let him get a few steps into the interior and elevate. You know, it's just by default. It's going to be difficult to stop him. And he was a solid connected passer. He wasn't used in that role a tremendous amount, but again, very willing, good floor vision, and just a pretty solid passer overall. What he didn't do well on offense, of course, primarily, well, the shooting at which he was terrible.

Anybody who's going to come in and shoot south of 20% as a perimeter player, it's going to be a problem. The free throw shooting was very poor. Didn't get to the line a ton, which I think he could have done quite a bit more if he were used more intelligently. But even there, 60%, obviously, for a center is bad. and for a perimeter player is terrible. He'd be giving up a lot of points there. So, well, not a lot of points on a game-by-game basis, you know, strictly speaking, but again, margins in the NBA are very small and science is done.

You know, excuse me, in all offense, efficiency is paid attention to on a scientific level, and everybody has to do that. So, yeah, giving up points is a 60% free-throw shooter is just not okay. And, again, his handle is still relatively poor, just his ability to, to attack in the traditional sense. It's not that he loses the ball very easily, but he has a high handle, which really actually does make him lose the ball more easily.

It's a lot easier to swipe it away from him. He wasn't unsafe with the ball. It's not like he's just the butterfingers, but he, yeah, it's just a high dribble and just his actual, like, bevy of moves is virtually non-existent. Also, finishing through contact, he did poorly at. Like, if it's just a small amount of contact

and then he was attacking through an open lane, but when he was actually required to attack into anything like a crowded interior against good room protection, it was going to have a hard time in the first place finding it through that crowded interior, because, again, his actual ability to, like, handle the ball in terms of, you know, in a means that allows him to get past people, he is pretty poor. But also, yeah, when he had to attack through any contacts, just like an OTE, and that was rough. On defense, he was very good. I mean, there's really no equivocation to be done.

done there. He was just a very good defender from day one. He's very smart. He's very athleticism. He loves to play defense. He works extremely hard. Navigates screens very well. He's just he's an extremely smart defender when you couple that sort of defensive IQ with excellent athleticism and just a fantastic work ethic. It's generally that triangle, so to speak, that, you know, that gets you an elite defender. I'm not going to compare anybody to Ben Wallace, of course, which is one of the greatest defenders of all time. But that was how Ben Wallace did it. You know, freakish athleticism,

excellent smarts, and a tremendous work ethic. And he started to decline once the athleticism went away. The work ethic never went away. And, well, maybe it declined a little bit later into his career. And the smarts were always there, but it was the athleticism that started to go away. That was really what hurt him as a defender, and therefore as an NBA player.

So, Asar's got all the tools as a defender. if he puts on more weight, which it looks like he has already, as of Summer League, it looked like he had. It would be like a four-position defender, a guy who can defend, you know, most power forwards. And, yeah, it would just be a special defender. Again, if he manages to improve a shooting enough to stay in the league and to have a big role in the league, you're looking at a guy who's, you know, probably, you know, very, very, very likely going to make some all defensive teams. And his brother's can be a very good defender. I think that's the area in which he is better than his twin, who is,

significantly better at scoring at the rim and handling the ball. But I think Asar has the edge as very much, well, significantly, to a meaningful degree, as a defender. And funny enough, as a shooter, because Amen's, oh man, I never remember how to pronounce his name. His shooting, his form is even worse than Asars. It's like, it's an abomination. It's like a worse Stanley Johnson. It's my best way, you know, it's the best way I can put it. So, yeah, Assar just had a great season as defender. His His highlights really were against Mikal Bridges late in the season, Bridges, who was a pretty good creator for the Nets. Asar just made his life miserable in general, whether that be ball denial or shot denial or actual shot contests. And then against Luca Donchich and Asar's, this is only for like, what a bit over a quarter,

in a Sarah's final game of the season. Just made things in the same way, very unpleasant for Luca, and Luca did not. have a good time against Asar even in the least bit. And then Asar went out of the game. And, of course, the drop off from Asar to the next best defender for the pistons was pretty extreme. And Luca went off. So, kind of hard for me to give a letter grade to Asar for his defense, or excuse me, for his offense. Because, number one, he was asked to just play a role he wasn't ready for.

Number two, his coach used him in an unbelievably bad way. But, you know, if we're just taking him on his merits, then, I have to give him like a C-minus. I don't want to dip in a D territory for a guy who was really asked to do more than he was ready for. But can't shoot 60% from the line, can't shoot 18.5% from 3. And you've got to be better at any position at finishing, you know, just basic finishing through contact. So just in light of the factors that were working against him, I just throw him a C-minus as a defender.

And as, excuse me, on offense. And on defense, of course, the guy but getting A, that's pretty much unquestionable. So kind of hard to think about what great I would give him overall, not only like a C-plus in terms of his overall impact, which wasn't particularly great. Of course, no piston had a very great individual impact. The on-off numbers for last season are pretty worthless because of the all-bench lineups, which means that, you know, all-bench lineups were pretty ubiquitous, so anybody in the starting lineup first, you know, the more time you spent in the starting

lineup, the better you're on-off is going to be. But unsurprisingly, there wasn't a single piss in the last season who played significant minutes and was not in the negatives in terms of net rating, just overall plus minus. But DeSar was one of the, for what it's worth, the least negative. But this data, the least negative contributors on one of the worst performing teams in the history of the NBA. It's questionable, data of questionable use. But certainly ASAR wasn't outright bad last season.

and despite his shortcomings and despite the situation. All right, so that'll be it for this episode. As always, thank you all so much for listening. Hope you're all doing great. I'll catch you next week's episode.