Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 210: 2023-2024 Season Awards & Cade Cunningham Season Review

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

This episode belatedly distributes player awards for the 2023-2024 season, then reviews Cade Cunningham's 2023-2024 season.

Welcome back, everybody. You are listening to another episode of Drive into the Basket. I'm Mike, and I hope you're all doing super well today. So less than three weeks until NBA preseason begins and applause. Hooray. Awesome, and I'm not being facetious at all. I'm actually extremely excited for basketball to come back. Just looking forward to Washington NBA action and where the Pistons are concerned,

though I know I've said this a zillion times in the podcast already. I'm looking forward to what I'm quite confident will be significantly more functional basketball. Probably the first time the Pistons have played actual, honest, to goodness, functional basketball since, I don't know, the big Blake Griffin season. Again, do I think the Pistons are going to be a good team? No, do I think they're going to be significantly better and significantly easier to watch than whatever the average of the last four and a half seasons has been, absolutely. Again, it's been bad because the management has been very poor and the coaching has been very poor and also a lot of losing from the rebuild, et cetera, et cetera.

You don't need to listen to me to talk about this yet again. So today I'm going to end a player. series with Kate Cunningham. But first, let's go over some season awards. I probably should have done this after, you know, not long after the season ended, but it was a little bit burnt out at the time. And the thought just didn't come to me until very recently, that being a couple days ago. So let's roll right into it, most valuable player for the Pistons. I think this one has to pretty unquestionably go to Kate Cunningham, whose season, of course, I'll talk about more in depth later in this episode. But Decade was really the only actually good offense of player who played the entire season for the Pistons.

You can make the case for Blyon, and you can make the case for Fon Tecchio. Of course, neither of them played very many games. Boyon due to injury and being traded Fon Tecchio due to joining the Pistons relatively late in the season. He just carried an enormous load was the primary handler, extremely very high usage. and handled himself pretty well in a very, very, very difficult situation. In an offense, coached by a complete, yeah, you know who I'm talking about. So in an extremely poorly coached offense, you know, without enough spacing. And with, you know, for the most part, not really enough help.

Managed to average 23 points per game on solid efficiency, especially if you look at things. outside of his very, very difficult first 14 games of the season, which may have just been a slow start. It's probably the lineups he was being played into at the time, particularly the starting lineup didn't help. But outside of that, yeah, a lot of points. I'm pretty good efficiency, despite the aforementioned challenges, seven and a half assists per game, which would have been significantly higher if his teammates could hit more shots, did have, you know, the occasional issues with turnovers, you know,

assist the turnover rates of just over two. No, that's not necessarily hugely unusual for a player who took on, you know, who takes on the handling load that Kay did. So, yeah, very much the engine for the offense. And you kind of saw what he might be able to do and really what was his sophomore season. But anyway, again, talk about him more later. He did have his struggles on defense. That was a little bit inexplicable to me because he did not have them as a rookie.

and he's an extremely smart player. Maybe not quite as smart on defense as he is on offense, but he's a very smart player. But he made some uncharacteristic mistakes. He had some issues with defense, particularly at the end of close games, when he was plainly exhausted, his conditioning maybe wasn't the greatest. But overall, I don't think that there's really a case to be made for any other player. So, yeah, MVP of the season for the Pistons, excuse me, goes to Kate Cunningham.

I'm trying to provide a runner-up for most of these, but I cannot think of anybody else who really deserves or any player in the business who deserves the runner-up. All of them had issues in one way or another, whether that was due to the coaching or just due to their own shortcomings. So second place goes to nobody. Defensive player of the year. This has got to be Assar Thompson.

So Asar came in and was immediately a very high caliber NBA defender. The guy is super smart on defense. pretty smart on offense too. He works super hard. He's got a great NBA body. He's just pretty, he can stick with pretty much anybody. He is great at getting around screens. He's just a very harassing defender who knows where to be, does not get beaten easily by any means. You know, it's pretty much, it's actually pretty good at being a help side defender. They come out of nowhere and block shots. It's just good at blocking shots head on. He's good at, as a rookie, it just, just being a very strong defender without taking many fouls, which is pretty uncommon.

Well, I mean, he did average about three fouls per game, so it wasn't all funning games, but yeah, he just was a very good defender, probably the best defender to play for the Pistons since, I don't know, maybe Corey Joseph, I'm just kidding. Man, who was the last defender on the team who was as good as Asar Thompson? I don't know, I'm probably forgetting somebody, and Isaiah Stewart. is there. I guess you can make the case for Isaiah Stewart when he was playing center in his sophomore season where he was a very good defender. But Isaiah Stewart does have some weak spots as a defender, and Assar Thompson really doesn't. His two kind of tour-to-force performances were against

me called Bridges late in the season when he just basically rode the guy the entire game, and Bridges ended up having a pretty poor game. Asar isn't just good at on-ball defense. He is also very good a ball denial. And also, when he's on the ball, not just good at preventing shots, or excuse me, defending against shots, defending against drives. And it's good at putting himself in position to stop players from even bothering to try. Also, it should be mentioned, of course, he's a strong defensive rebounder as well, which isn't quite as much about defense, but is certainly useful in preventing further possessions. And also, ASAR can grab the ball and get out in transition, whether it's him running the floor or him making it, you know, pretty usual.

a pretty good pass to a teammate. Just overall, very responsible, very hardworking, and very smart defender with, again, fantastic athleticism. So had to go to him. And it's just a testament to how good he could be as a, you know, as a defender in the NBA, that he did this as a rookie. He was 21 when he came in, which is a little bit older than some rookies, to be sure. But, yeah, as a 21-year-old, playing suddenly at the highest level and to come in and be as strong as he was from day one as a defender is very impressive. Runner-up has to go to Isaiah Stewart, who, as I've said, a real disservice was done to him by playing him a power forward.

In my opinion, this was just a stupid decision by a stupid front office. Because Isaiah Stewart at Power Forward is just, it plays to his weaknesses. His weakness really is mobility, overall athleticism. So when you force him to go out and defend on the perimeter in particular, like in terms of switch defense, fine. He's going to do great at that because he's an awesome switch defender. But there's more, of course, to that playing defense in the perimeter, like chasing guys through the interior, chasing guys around the perimeter, going over screens, which Isaiah just can't do. So you get him switched onto a shooter and, or excuse me, just even an off ball screen

where he's forced to, you know, go over a screen to defend against the shooter. It's just not going to happen. So center, meanwhile, just allows him to really minimize the impact of his pretty below average mobility. He'll still need to reposition from place to place. And if he's forced to do that too much, especially if he's forced to go on the run, if it's just lateral mobility, which, you know, for him is a strength, then he's going to get there on time. But if he's forced to run from place to place to put out fires, then there are more issues. But as long as his perimeter defenders are not absolutely terrible, that's, it's not an issue. So, yeah, at Center, I'll reiterate this.

And yeah, I talk about it a lot in part maybe because I feel like Stu kind of gets short shrift in terms of his values of defender. The guy is a strong rim protector. You know, when he has played center, I mean, he has been a consistently very good rim protector. Despite, well, aside from the start to his third season in which, again, his perimeter defenders were, an injured Cade, a rookie Ivy, Boyan Bogdanovich, and Sadiq Bay, who had decided that season he didn't really care about playing defense anymore, which was just that front court was also horribly undersized and unathletic, possibly the greatest combination of undersized and unathletic,

any starting lineup that played any significant number of games together, and that I could, I have ever remembered. So, but, yeah, on the whole, a very strong room protector, a very strong paint protector. You're definitely not going to push him around on the drive. And he's just super smart in terms of, you know, in both of those areas. And just overall in terms of just his positioning, how he positions his body, how he positions his arms. And of course, an excellent switch defender as well.

So even a power forward, I mean, really the value he provided a power forward. You see he was like a decent perimeter defender that where he really provided value was covering up for the mistakes of J. Duren and James Wiseman, both of whom were just bad defenders, Wiseman, because he's got the defensive IQ of Iraq, and Stewart, excuse me, and Duren, because, you know, he's, he's got work to do on his decision-making, but, I mean, his primary issue last season was really just that he didn't care. So, Stewart was definitely running around and putting out fires there, and though he contested less shots at the rim than he has in the past as a center, excuse me, as a center, he was still by percentage. And if you look at the, uh, the number of the,

number of play. If you look at all the players who contested, I believe was four shots per game at the rim. He was in the top five and in field goal percentage of the rim, if I remember correctly. So Stu's always going to make a very positive impact on the defense, or a quite positive impact on the defense. He actually had, you know, for what it's worth the best on off on the team. Though again, I think that's in part because you took him out of the equation. You just had bad defense at center, you know, bad defense in the interior. And Stu was at least able to work there. So he was able to make a significantly positive defensive impact. It would have made a significantly more positive defensive impact, I think, at center.

Again, his perimeter defenders are pretty poor, but not as bad as they were in that at the start of his third season. So it has to go to him. Of course, also extremely hardworking. And Blake Assar just loves to play defense. Rookie of the year, only really two candidates for this, obviously. So that was the SAR or Sasser. Sasser had kind of like a mixed bag season. He was extremely inconsistent.

His utilization also really wasn't so great until late in the season. The guy realistically should have been just backup point guard right off the bounce from the beginning of the season over Killian, who should never have been on the roster in the first place. I mean, Monti Morris, of course, would have been that most likely if he had not been injured. But I don't need to belabor Sasser's weaknesses, which are, I'll just list them briefly, he can't reach the rim and depends heavily upon a very, very difficult shot diet, particularly from the interior. He had some good games and some not so good games, and it really just needs to show

in the NBA that he can be a legitimate handler, which might be difficult for him, because again, he just needs to hit those very difficult mid-range pull-up jumpers, which are not easy, or his entire game falls apart. If he can't do that, he's an undersized shooting specialist, and that is a very, that is a a role of very limited value, especially because Sasser due to his size, just has shortcomings on defense that are very exploitable and cannot be overcome. So Asar was an issue on offense, of course, the worst parameter shooter in the league amongst I think anybody who attempted at least one per game. Very, very few players in recent NBA history have been that bad. And of course, as I've said, his potential, the ways in which he could have potentially impacted the offense positively.

These would not have compensated for his bad shooting. They still would have been, you know, better to have these than not have these. We're largely wiped out by horrendous utilization. So that much I can't blame him for. His defense, of course, was very good. His transition play was very good on offense at times. If he was used properly, he could be much less of a negative. That didn't happen very often, but we saw it, you know, when it did happen.

but I just have to give him the nod over Sasser in terms of overall positive impact. Because Sasser was highly inconsistent and because I saw it at the very least, like when he was being used to his strengths on offense, you know, even the rare times, for example, when he was being used as a role man in a lineup with four shooters, which, as I've said, as a Band-Aid, he has to learn to shoot. Was not like horribly negative. It was just, you know, pretty negative on a very bad team. his defense was always top-notch and sasser didn't really do particularly well on that end.

Again, basically almost ever, but he was headless on defense on the team. But Sasser, again, is just exploitable. His size, his combination of size and pretty, you know, average to below-average athleticism in a non-super beefy frame like McMarcus Smart, for example, has it roughly the same size. And non-freakishly long wingspan. He just doesn't have anything to compensate for that poor size. smart, hardworking, but these days in the NBA, if you're six foot two, which is really six foot one and a quarter, you're a shrimp, and you better be finding a lot of your value on

offense because you got a guy who's six foot six who's coming at you on the drive, you're probably screwed. Or goodness, if they post you up, again, you're probably screwed. So, yeah, rookie to Eir to a SAR. I think it could be unquestionably said that due to his offense, though but some of this was due to coaching. He was always going to have a negative impact of some sort because he couldn't shoot. Did probably have a minus impact overall. Notwithstanding his excellent defense is just the reality of the NBA in which these guys live. Most improved.

So this will be the last of the actual NBA awards, the analogs of the actual NBA awards. I'm sorry to say it, but the answer is pretty much nobody. So Kate improved on offense but got worse on defense. like Ivy we all know what happened with Ivy I'd say he improved a bit on on defense but he looked he wasn't good he looked his headless is basically everybody on the team not named Sarat Thompson or Isaiah Stewart and yes I wouldn't again the coaching was in there

maybe he would have been significantly better in a better situation Jaywin but who knows Jaylen Duren improved quite a bit on offense and got a lot worse on defense Stewart you know his he showed that he can shoot but it wouldn't say he improved a great deal. I'd say Stu is probably very, very close to his ceiling, if not there already. And we look at the other guys who were on the roster last season, James Wiseman, obviously did not improve.

Killian Hayes obviously did not improve. Isaiah Liver's got a whole lot worse. I'll be curious to see if he can actually stay in the NBA at this point. I think it's very possible that he's just lost the step for good due to all the lower body injuries, and Isaiah Liver's cannot afford to lose a step. And then you have the veterans, Alec Berks and Blyon, who got quite a bit worse on defense. And Berks, maybe a little bit worse on offense. Boyon, still a good score, but these guys basically were what they were.

And then Bagley, before he was traded, was injured for much of the season and a healthy scratch for a lot of the rest. And that's literally everybody. I mean, Kevin Knox was technically on the roster both seasons. Definitely didn't improve. Not really have necessarily qualified anyway. So, again, that was just the reality of this past season. So let's move on to some random awards. Hardest working has to go to Isaiah Stewart by default, and I think that's going to be the case for forever on this team. Stuart is a hundred percentile hard

worker. It's an intangible that I think gets sold short to a degree. Alongside his defense, Stewart takes no place off. He will give 100 percent off effort in every situation. He is very physical. He will do everything he can to benefit his team, and there is not a shred of me in him. It's always all about the team. So I just don't see any situation in which anybody but Isaiah Stewart can get this award in really any season. Maybe somebody will equal him at some point. But I don't think it's possible to beat Stewart's work ethic. Again, maybe somebody will reach his level. But I just don't, I don't think it's possible to work harder than Isaiah Stewart does. So yeah, though he was not in the greatest of situations. And like comically, when he was allowed to play center,

He was used in a horrible switch everything scheme that the team did not have the personnel to pull off, which was, I think, pretty much apparent to everybody. You know, he went out and did his absolute best at the role he was given to execute the role he was given in every situation. Runner up, of course, has to be a Sart Thompson, who is a very, very hard worker by any definition. You saw him maybe slow down a little bit when he was basically exiled to the bench and forgotten about. but, you know, I think that's a rookie thing. I don't think it was a matter of work ethic. I think it was a matter of confidence. Nonetheless, I'll put him a little bit below Stewart in that capacity, you know,

in terms of work ethic. But I think Asar is another player who, you know, I think probably for his entire career is, well, maybe that's making, yeah, that's making an assumption. But right now, extremely hardworking, very, very team-focused. You know, we'll do whatever is, take whatever is asked of him and do his best to execute on it to the maximum extent possible with just with an eye toward doing what's best for his team, never, you know, never doing, never trying to get his, so to speak. Most surprising, this had to be Fonteco, who only played 16 games for the Pistons,

but came in after being like a, you know, decent but relatively obscure role player in Utah and was suddenly very good for the Pistons. And again, small sample size, I doubt he'll do quite this well next season, because that would just be surprising. But it came in of those 16 games, 15 and a half points per game. which is, you know, solid starter numbers on well upwards of 42% from three. He was consistent from there. He was an okay rebounder for the position at which he was being played.

Well, when he was at small forward anyway, he's just really not a lot of athletic. And for a power forward, he doesn't really have great size. But super hard working, not like a standout defender, but certainly solid. It would be solid to a little bit above average. You know, smart, really aggressive offball mover. Of course, can hit his threes at a high percentage. and good at getting open, good at attack and close outs, like sneaky good at attack and close outs. And really, of course, strong in transition.

Did a little bit of creating. Not much, but did a decent job of it. And always stayed in his lane and did what was asked of him and did well at it. So if he can maintain 90% of that performance, then I think he'll be on this team for quite a while. Though he's already 28, will be 29 soon. No real runner up here either. You know, there was nobody really new to the team who is in position to surprise. You had, I mean, if you want to say Malachi Flynn for scoring 50 points,

which is arguably the most obscure, I'd say almost unquestionably, the most obscure 50-point game in the history of the league. I think that's the only, you know, biggest surprise you really could have said. I mean, Assar Thompson, I think was surprising and a positive surprise in terms of just how good he was on defense at the NBA level from day one. was even worse of a shooter in the NBA than he was in OTE. Assar Thompson was coming into the league as legitimately good at no aspect of half-court offense, even at the OTE level.

Unlike his, excuse me, unlike his brother, who is a genuinely strong finisher and has a good handle and could be an amazing player if he learns to shoot, but is even well behind even Asar in that capacity, his form is horrendous. Asar had issues scoring at the rim in the half court, even in OTE, is less than 50% on half court layups. He had nothing in the way of an in-between game, and he was not a good three-point shooter by any means. But I think he was surprisingly bad as a perimeter shooter,

even by that definition. Even though, I mean, he was very inconsistent from three. He still ended up at about 30% in OTE, and he came into the NBA and shot. less than 19% and that was, you know, after a bit of a surge by his standards in February and in very early March before he went down. I think he did fairly well in his final few games in March. So, yeah, he was surprisingly bad in that capacity. Some of his misses were, I mean, a miss is a miss, but some of his misses must have been a little bit hard. It would be hard for

any player to look at and say, yikes, you know, I'm an awful shooter, probably not great for his confidence that you have to, of course, in sports, be able to just forget the mistakes and move on. So, yeah, nobody else in the most surprising category. Now we get to the downside. Most disappointing, I'd have to give this to Jalen Duren, who was a super hard worker as a rookie. And again, it was a mixed bag. He came in and was very surprising in terms of how his offense improved. But, yeah, so, I mean, technically you could call him most surprising, you know, a runner-up

to Fontecoe, because I always do. thought that Jayland Duren's issues would be found on offense that he just didn't. He had a pretty poor touch as a rookie. Didn't really have much polish at all. It's like, is this guy going to, you know, is he going to end up out of the league because he's just a traditional center who's a bad finisher on anything but dunks and shoots poorly from the free throw line? But nope, he dramatically expanded and improved his offensive skill set. And that included at the free throw line where he shot 79% was able to attack other bigs off the dribble, had drastically improved touch of the basket, you know, flashed some of that connected playmaking he showed in college and, you know,

and some primary, you know, some straight playmaking as well. So I guess you could put him the most surprising, you know, in a positive way. As the runner up, it's just, he was most disappointed to me because he just stopped trying on defense. And that's unacceptable. And you have a guy who, his bailing actually coming into the NBA was that this guy could be a very good defender. And again, I think at this point, well, again, because I've said this before, I think that at this point, you know, there is reason to question if his acumen may just not be as good as we hoped, but he was a really hardworking defender as a rookie. And as a sophomore, he just decided to stop trying. And that was extremely disappointing. You can't do that.

Obviously, as an NBA player, period, and as a traditional big, and Duren did on offense sometimes just decide to go rogue and just try to get his. in situations in which he shouldn't. Of course, he was also dealing with a coach who did not hold him accountable for anything. It would not have happened under the average coach. This coach was about as far from average as he could have been. Okay, I'm going to stop talking about him. So, yeah, on defense, he was just insanely irresponsible. Yeah, as an NBA player, you can't do that.

And as a traditional big, no care how good you are on offense. You have to be a good defender in order to provide good value, especially as a starter. So it was just for me extremely disappointed to see Duren's work out that go from very strong. to pretty darn poor. They'd always try hard on offense, but on defense, you know, as the season wore on in particular, he just didn't really care. And he said that himself. He said it wasn't his ankles.

It wasn't anything but him just not bringing it. You know, and just paraphrased that a little bit. He was pretty open about it. And that makes him also least hard working. I don't think I really need to explain that. His runner-ups, the runner's up, excuse me. I'd like to give this award to Killian, though Killian was gone. mid-season, but hey, we give an award to Fonteco. Killion, within the bounds of what he was willing to do

was a hard worker. You know, like sure, work hard on offense and he'll run fast. Excuse me, work hard on defense, he'll run fast on offense, but even the mere notion of having to come into physical contact with somebody on the ball, he just wasn't willing to countenance. He would, you know, I mean, the most egregious case of this came in his third year when, and he was in transition, and only George Hill, six-foot-one George Hill, was between him and the basket. Maybe it was six-two, who knows, George Hill is not a, I mean, Killian outsizes George Hill by quite a bit. Literally turned around to the side because he wasn't willing to attack the rim with anybody,

you know, even an undersized player between him and the rim, but we're talking this past season. Yeah, any even mere possibility of him coming into physical contact with somebody would almost invariably either turn away and literally dribble away, get rid of the ball, or just take a bad shot. So that's unacceptable. And I guess he thought he was a very special snowflake because this was, you know, outside of who knows what he would have done. And I mean, he didn't really get to do very much in those first games before his injury. Because his role was basically bring the ball up the court, give it to Blake Griffin, and then get out of the way and largely just be ignored for the rest of the play. But for the rest of his time in the NBA, he just avoided contact. No, I don't

think this is a result of his injury. You've seen players. And if it was, the next that's still his fault. You've seen players who did, who sustained far worse contact injuries than he did, not let that stop them. You know, look at Sean Livingston, for example, who mangled his leg so badly that the medical professionals thought they might have to amputate it. And that really completely drilled his athleticism, but he came back and was able to still be a good NBA player and never avoided contact. So even if that had something to do with it, that was his choice. Everybody else in the NBA does it, unless you're a lanzo ball, who had, you know, who nerfed his own playmaking by refusing to do it.

Pretty much everybody else, you know, this is a standard thing that NBA players do, and I guess Killian thought he was too special, that he just shouldn't be required to do it. So if we're looking at Marvin Beck, you know, excuse me, if we're looking at guys who played the entire season, I was about to say Marvin Bagley, but that wouldn't be true. He barely played. So James Wiseman, whom we found out later in the season, like after Taj Gibson joined the team, you know, started.

playing not only smarter, but a lot harder. And it's like, what in the world are you thinking? It's like, you're on the fringes of the NBA. You're going to go out here and not work hard for the rest of the season. So I would say that anything less than full effort, I consider. I don't expect everybody to be as maniacally hardworking as the likes of Isaiah Stewart. But I think these guys are professionals and any level of effort that's less than 100% is not acceptable. But you kind of magnified that a little bit. Maybe this is poor logic. But in case of James Wiseman, who was, you know, kind of fighting for his NBA life, it was sort of what are you thinking. So, but I wouldn't say that he was a notably lazy player, whereas I would say that Killian just refused to do something

that was absolutely necessary. A least valuable player, is it going to be the same too? You know what I'm going to say. Killian Hayes. Isaiah Lever just didn't play enough games. You only played 23 games. He was arguably the worst rotation player in the NBA. and okay, I'm not going to get into the coaching. But just suffice it to say he was absolutely and utterly comically bad. It would have been comical if he weren't playing for the Pistons. So I'm not sure exactly what happened to him that, again, I think, well, I mean, he may have just lost his step in this injury, possibly permanently.

I don't know what happened to his head because a smart player became very stupid. And it seems like just given the environment last season probably, due to that most likely, or that was most likely the cause of this. a lot of players just got a lot less smart on the court last season, but Isaiah Libber's man, was he just, his decision-making was extremely poor, even by that standard. But anyway, I played 23 games, largely because of injury and was ultimately traded. Killian, on the other hand, played 42 games.

He started 31 of those. He somehow managed in all of his seasons to start the majority of the games for which he was healthy. So the majority of the games in which he played. And just as was the case in the previous three seasons, he was one of the worst players in the NBA to get minutes across the course of his contract. If you look at those full four seasons, even if you just look at his final three seasons, he was the worst player in the NBA to consistently get significant minutes, let alone certainly to be consistently starting. He started well over half of his games in the course of his career with the Pistons. So, yep, he was awful. I got to say this, I don't like to just brag on players necessarily who are already off the team,

but for whatever reason, the Killian Hayes Camp released a workout video, which was just a series of clips of him doing extremely unimpressive things. It was kind of weird. We also got the yearly Ben Simmons workout tape. You know, it's sad that injuries seem to have really killed his game. I guess at once upon a time he at least was very good at attacking the rim and was a fantastic. defender. But the guy is also kind of the worst of the worst, one of the worst of the worst in terms of, you know, attitude from a professional athlete. Like, well, you know, my team desperately

needs me to shoot. And even like my all-world teammate at center has started, you know, has really changed his game to a degree to accommodate the fact that I can't shoot when we really want him on the interior more. But I don't feel like it. Sorry, I'm not even willing to shoot, you know, even, and even not even willing to go out there and shoot it if I'm, you know, my coaches would be perfectly fine if I just go out there and try to shoot, but I'm not even going to try. And, oh, I'm now a liability in the fourth quarter, particularly in the postseason. Well, that's too bad. I'm also going to avoid contact at some points because I'm afraid to go to the free throw line. And, oh, somebody finally criticizes me after four years, oh, was it? Yeah, four years

of being coddled. Well, I want off the team, you know, and I'm going to hold out until you do that. wait, I don't get paid for holding out. Well, I guess I'm just going to have to, you know, come up with some medical reasons, even though I'm not, you know, for him it was mental health reasons. And I'm saying this is somebody who's had his share of mental health issues. I don't think that Ben Simmons was being on the level about those. It's also pretty remarkable that he refused to let the team, you know, the team doctors actually evaluate him in that respect. I just really dislike Ben Simmons, put it that way. I think that he's incredibly unprofessional and a baby and guy who just rather complain than get better for the sake of his team.

Anyway, so the runner-up, of course, would be James Wiseman, who had a stretch of maybe like five games in which he played at the level of sort of like an average to below-average backup and stretches of the season in which he looked like he might be a legit third-string center in the NBA, for the most part, which is very bad. Like, it's pretty striking with James Wiseman that, I mean, in his best season, his team was still dramatically worse with him on the floor. Like a bad team was dramatically worse with him on the floor. And sure, those numbers were made worse,

but the fact that he was on the floor a fair amount with all bench lineups, which were, of course, a complete catastrophe. But he was just bad, too. I mean, he has made his teams dramatically worse throughout the course of his career. So the guy has a great NBA body. You know, he's athletic. He's long. He's tall.

He's strong. And, you know, he's... a pretty decent finisher, as long as he's trying not to get too funny with things. But he's just got so many flaws. Chief amongst those is just his basketball IQ, which is incredibly bad, though his rebounding is pretty darn poor, too. Some of that is just him not really putting in the work to establish position, but instead, particularly on offense, just jumping up and flailing his arms around,

which, you know, just like with, you know, many other things from last season, Isaiah Livers, for example, would have been funny if it weren't happening to the Pistons, but was frustrating for the fact that it did happen to the Pistons. But this is decision-making makes his game so much worse. That's something that doesn't really show up on the score sheet, but it very much has an impact on the game when he's on the floor. So let's move on finally to Cade Cunningham, his 2023, 2024 season with the Pistons. So as I mentioned, 23 points per game, 7.5 assists, 4 rebounds.

He had a tough first 14 games to the season. came online in mid-December, after which still had about 23 points per game and it's seven and a half-assiz, but significantly better efficiency, 46% from the field, 37% from 3, and upwards of 87% from the free-throw line, though, of course, free-throw shooting isn't his issue. And he got to the line four and a half times, which is fairly good. Not great, but pretty decent. And it helped when, again, this started kind of in mid-November. he began going up the middle quite a bit more,

and Cade got stronger between his sophomore season and last season, which was basically his second season, because he only played 12 games, all of them injured in his second season. So, yeah, just started getting more free throws when he began playing more physically, which kind of follows. So here were the issues with Cade's season. I mean, he was unquestionably, like I said, the offensive engine. And like the Pistons were,

on offense, just pretty helpless without him. Again, part of that was the coaching, but part of that was just that he's a good offensive player, and the Pistons were pretty short on good offensive players last season. So, I mean, he had his share of very good games, and you can really see the three-level score potential there. He was inconsistent from three again. I mean, his percentage was kind of bloated from, you know,

how well he did after the All-Star break. He was just pretty inconsistent. He also, I mean, he had a stretch in December, in which he was very strong at attacking the rim, but had his issues with that, you know, pretty much elsewhere in the season, or sometimes he would be good, but sometimes he would just be really bad.

And he never, he didn't put together a stretch in which he was good from both. He was consistently pretty good for mid-range, and that's a major aspect of his game. And it's like, it's the analytics era, sure, and hardly anybody's going to be highly efficient from mid-range, but the ability to get that shot and to make it at baseline half-class,

court efficiency, which is about one point per possession, is very useful. I mean, that's not as efficient, for example, as getting out to a guy who's going to shoot it at 40% from three, but you are creating that shot. And, you know, if you can just get it out of nowhere, that's, that's very useful. And one point per possession is still a perfectly acceptable half court outcome. Also, mid-range game means that they need to guard you in the mid-range, which, you know, which opens up other stuff. So, yeah, he was consistently pretty good at that throughout the season. It's just that he wasn't able to put together stretches in which he was good at both, you know, at both other levels. But again, you saw the three-level scoring potential there from a very capable playmaker,

who was just very, very smart overall. And Kate had a reasonably pretty good. Of course, I would say not just reasonably like a good offensive season, even though he struggled to to really be consistent from three and at the rim and was playing in very disadvantageous circumstances. So if he gets that together, you know, that is able to score well at all three levels and is playing under more competent coaching next season. Of course, he will be playing under much more competent coaching next season.

It just is a question of, I mean, that's going to be the case by default. That J.B. Baker staff is going to be a great deal better. You know, Kay is just going to be playing under enormously better coaching by default. just how good is J.B. Bickerstaff going to be as an offensive coach in the grander scheme of the NBA. But yeah, if he gets things together from all three levels, then he's a very dangerous player. I could easily see him score in, you know, in the high 20s on good efficiency while being an excellent playmaker. And of course, that's an all-star caliber player. I continue to think that

Kate has superstar potential, you know, like might easily find himself in the top 10 in the NBA in some seasons, at least, you know, an overall impact. Of course, his defense needs to improve. Like I said, his defense was pretty darn spotty. Kate is no fool on defense. Like, we saw it as a rookie. Like, he wasn't a standout, but he was very competent. You know, he was a solid, if not certainly not standout, but a solid defender. And, you know, on paper, he should be able to, you know, to defend, you know, three positions, maybe, you know, again, competently, not at an elite level. But, I mean, he's got the size and the strength that he should be able to defend it. We have three positions, if not four, against some of the less beefy and less tall

power forwards in the league. His issue wasn't, well, at some points, it was effort. Like, at the end of some close games, you could tell he was completely gassed, like the Celtics game, for example, in late December. Like, by halfway through the fourth quarter, he was completely exhausted. I mean, he scored a ton of points in the first half and the second half. He was already a little bit tired, and the Celtics really focused on him. And he was, of course, nothing was getting done on offense without him. So, yeah, at that point, I mean, he just, you could see, barely even had the energy to play defense. And that's a conditioning issue, and that needs to change.

And he didn't mention that he needed to work in his conditioning. But also, he just made a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes, like getting caught ball watching and having his assignment just be open to score at the rim. Or just failing to make a rotation or just making mistakes. And that's bizarre to me because he did not have that issue as a rookie. He did not have that issue in his truncated second season. And he's very smart. And again, basically, you know, everybody on the team, almost everybody got dumber than they were in the season before. It was just a very headless team.

So that might account for some of it. But there's the thing with Cade that's some consolation is that we know he can do better. Like, we know he can do significantly better. And hopefully he gets back to that next season. However, again, I think you could have made the case maybe for Cade for most improved. Just on the basis of his offense because he did. dramatically improve his efficiency, particularly, like, his effective field goal percentage, for example, like his rookie was 47 percent, last season was 50 percent.

And, I mean, you can only really compare this to his rookie season because he played just 12 games, all of them, again, all of them injured as a sophomore. It's over his rookie season, increased the scoring average by five points, increased his assist per game, no, just by two, but cut down on turnovers a little bit. And, yeah, was just much more efficient overall in terms of, over the course of the entire season. But the defense has to be there. Kate can't just, I mean, he gave back a lot of the points he scored on offense or

created for teammates. He gave back on defense. So on offense, I've got to give the guy, you know, again, he had his issues with inconsistency. I got to give a guy an A minus nonetheless because he was still quite good. And, you know, despite carrying a very heavy load and playing, again, in very disadvantageous circumstances, on defense, I've got to give the guy like a D. plus. He was just pretty darned poor on defense. Better at times, so I guess you could argue for him

maybe in the C minus range. But if we're saying that C, well, I don't know if I've really ever established C as the average. C has kind of gotten a bad rep because in academics, it's pretty poor. It really should technically mean average. But whatever the case, he had a bad season on defense. So I'd give the guy overall, I don't know, a B to a B minus. We'll call it a B. Just because again on offense he was he was the engine and did pretty well despite just the environment in which he was playing the circumstances in which he was playing being very bad so looking forward to big things for kate next season he could be a very good player just got to get back to the defense he was playing as a rookie and the defense he played in college again he's smart and he's got a good

frame and he's strong he's not super athletic but he can keep up with guys we've seen it and just develop that consistency on offense from three and from the rim, preferably do it at the same time. So we could see a very, very big season for Cade in year four, which is really year three. And, you know, he could next season really establish himself as really the next big thing amongst, you know, amongst, you know, in the Pistons fear, so to speak. Pistons haven't had, like, a genuinely very good player since that one season of Blake Griffin.

and before that, I mean, Chauncey during his, you know, one of his all-N-B-A years. So it's been a while. In any case, that'll be up for today's episode. I'm going to get started on season previews, the next two episodes. I guess going to have to mash a lot of players together there because if only going to have time, I believe, to record two more episodes before preseason begins. In any event, as always, I want to thank you all so much for listening. Hope you're all doing great.

I'll catch you in next week's episode. You know,