Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 215: Thoughts on the Season Opener

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

This episode discusses the good and the bad from a relatively enjoyable start to the season. 

Welcome back, everybody. You are listening to another episode of Drive into the Baskets. I'm Mike, and I hope you're all doing super well today. So opening night is in the books, and we are off on the Detroit Pistons' 2024-2020 season. They close loss to the Indiana Pacers. I'm pretty much just going to spend this whole episode talking about what I liked, what I didn't like from the season opener. There really aren't many takeaways to be drawn from just one game, particularly the season opener. We got 81 games. games ahead of us in this season. And, you know, maybe if things go really, really well, you know, another game or two on top of that. And maybe in a very, very, very unlikely scenario, would have, you know, a few more games after that. Like I said, in my season preview, the East does have some bad teams this year. You know, the Wizards, of course, were in total rebuild mode, the Nuts who were in total rebuild mode. The Raptors, whom I'm sure would not really mind losing this season. The Hornets who are always well, not a good organization.

I mean, I understand I'm saying this is a Pistons fan, but the Hornets are pretty much a perennial mess. And then, of course, the Bulls, who are rebuilding because they were more or less forced to. Bulls ownership really does not like rebuilding or selling or anything of the sort. So, yeah, I'm not looking ahead that far by any means. I just said that it's one game.

We got a long season ahead of us. It's just fun to think about the fact that the bottom of the east is pretty heavy right now. So in any event, real quick, I mean, I guess before I get started here, it has been a long, long, long time since I had any guests on this show. Honestly, it's probably, I mean, it's a little bit more effort in a way to get everything arranged with guests and editing takes, you know, a bit two or three times as long when you get as obsessive about editing as I do and getting all the volume, you know, perfectly equalized

and whatnot. And I think I kind of fell off that particular. wagon of having guests last season when, you know, I don't need to explain to any of you, but it was like last season, it was pretty exhausting. And so, I don't know, I don't want to say I wasn't willing to put any extra work, but it was an immoralizing season. I'll put it that way. So in retrospect, I would imagine that's why this fell to being a one-man show, like the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of the time. I don't even remember the last time I had a guest in the show. I'm going to make much more of an effort this season to change things up a bit.

and have more people on the show. So I can't promise that I'll be as consistent as I would like because getting started with these things, I always think really big, like, oh, man, I'm just going to have a different guest every week. And ultimately the logistics can turn out to be a little bit difficult to where I have a super busy week. And it's like, oh, man, I just didn't have enough time to find a guest

or I didn't know when I was going to record. But I'm going to be making the effort. I appreciate those of you who give me the feedback that I do manage to a pretty good solo show. I'm very glad to hear it. That said, I think it might be a little bit more entertaining for you all for the listeners. You know, if things were switched up a bit. I've been doing this as a solo podcast now as a sole co-host since, man, I think it was May thereabouts. Yeah, May of 2022, so about two and a half years now.

Man, time flies. In any event, let's head into talking about the season opener in which the Pistons very narrowly took the game against the Indiana Pacers, who made it to the conference finals last season. Granted, I don't think, you know, these Pacers may have gotten knocked out by the bucks in the first round if the bucks hadn't been so unhealthy. But nonetheless, still a good team last season had, if I remember correctly, the best NBA offense of all time. Of course, you have to contextualize that the time in which we live, you know, the time of runaway scoring. In any case, let's start with a good.

So, you all know what I'm going to say here. The first good was the fact that this was honest to goodness, functional, functionally coached. NBA basketball, which certainly wasn't something we saw at any point last season. And it's not really quite so much under Dwayne Casey either, you know, both because he was coaching the vast majority of his time during a re-abovement. Man, I can barely put a sentence together right now, apparently. Coached the vast majority of his time with the Pistons in a rebuild. And Dwayne Casey, if I remember correctly, is like number three of all time, a number of games

coached for the Pistons, I think number three or number four. Anyway, even before that, though, even when he had Blake Griffin, I mean, that was an abomination of a roster, and he's just not a great offensive coach. This roster isn't so hot, of course. I mean, this is still very much a development roster. I digress. As I've said, J.B. Bakerstaff, if he's just an average NBA coach, it'll be the best coach. The Pistons have had in a very, very, very long time. So he did an okay job. So the Pistons basically at the floor with a functional roster, they can run a functional offense. And, you know, play half to have to have to have a very, decent defense and was coached by the pretty average coach. And that was a gigantic breath of fresh air, particularly after last season, which I still cannot believe actually happened, mostly from the coaching standpoint. I mean, the roster, of course, was a complete abomination too. So, you know, kudos to Rachel Langdon, the very first at least for putting an effort in to allow this organization to feel the roster that at the very least has the bare minimums to, again, run a functioning offense, for example.

And bringing in a coach who, even though if he wasn't exactly the coach I wanted, because, again, and I'll talk about this a bit, bigger stuff is a pretty indifferent offensive mind, at least as a genuine NBA coach who actually wants the job. So just from a functional basketball standpoint, for me last night was very enjoyable to watch, even though the pistons lost, even though it got pretty rough in the second half, it was, I mean, the bar has been set pretty low, put it that way by last season. but, you know, by the way last season went. But, yeah, for me, it was just an enjoyable game.

You know, just in the piston playing functional and non-functional basketball that was not horribly coached. So, again, low bar, and it may sound like I'm being prestigious, but I'm not actually really enjoyed watching that game. All right, so moving on to other positives, and I'm going to do these in no particular order. I'll start with Kate Cunningham. he's the first one who comes to mind.

So he was pretty poor in post-season, excuse me in preseason. And it kind of had me thinking, and as did like the first quarter, close to a quarter of this game, like, oh my goodness, are we going to see another slow start from Kate Cunningham? Granted, he started slow in his rookie season because, you know, he had an injury and he came in cold, and that can't have helped. Then he started slow again in his third season. He didn't, the Cade in the games that he played as a sophomore, he didn't, he didn't. do well in the early season of his sophomore campaign before his injury shut him down.

And maybe his injury was part of it there. But this time around it's like, okay, let's just hope the guy is not a slow season starter. Like, for example, the guy who comes to mind is a slow starter. It was Reggie Bullock for the Pistons. The guy would come in and look absolutely and utterly horrible, like missing the rim horrible, like 10, 15% from three horrible for the first few weeks of the season and then would really find his way. and be a solid rotation player. They didn't really get much space in there.

He didn't really get to play much rather in his first season with the Pistons. But in his second season provided more value in his third season, provided more value. I can't remember if he started quite as slow in his fourth season with the Pistons, which was when he got traded. That was the Blake Gryffineer, when Ed Stefanski, against all odds, managed to convince Tom Gores to sell a player they wouldn't be able to keep. But anyway, back to Cade, started off looking awful at the beginning of the beginning of this game and it was kind of like, you know, is this going to happen again? Is this just how Kate is?

And then he really picked it up. And there was some impressive in particular creation off the dribble. I mean, creation from the post, which I think he created three buckets out of the post. He had some pretty impressive dribble moves to get himself to the rim on a couple sequences. I think he had a couple of pull-up threes. And would end the night with eight assists, three turnovers, a couple of them, which probably would have been avoided, probably could have been avoided, rather. but in my opinion it was an impressive game i mean i think 26 points at the end of things he did disappear a bit in the fourth but it was very encouraging to see him create off the dribble in some ways that he hadn't in the past again the handle looked better uh the emphasis on attacking

smaller players in the post that was good i really liked one sequence when he backed a guy down and then spun for a fadeaway mid-range or really short mid-range jumper in the paint. Because Cade can't hit those mid-range shots. And it's tough to make that kind of thing efficient. But it's still, you know, maybe Cade can do that. It's just like this is going to be really a bell-weather season for Cade. It's really his third season. And for the first time he's playing in a system that has adequate spacing

and under a coach who is not bad at coaching an offense. And I just thought it was a good start of the season. I thought notably as well, his defense was non-bad. He made some mistakes, but, you know, another kind of, oh, my goodness, here we go again thing, was in preseason when he was making mistakes left him right. But that's a bit of an exaggeration, but he was bad on defense in preseason. And in this game made a couple of errors. He'd like it to be zero, but for the most part, he was in the realm pretty much of acceptable,

which is nice. I'd love to see him get back to where he was as a rookie, where it was just solidly average guy who could guard three positions reasonably well, that would be pretty big. This was encouraging in that capacity. But, yeah, just the diversity in terms of the ways he created off the dribble was the real positive takeaway for me in this game. Jaden Ivy's usage was a positive to, well, I guess it was a little bit of a mixed bag.

But again, this is kind of like a low bar sort of thing. But seeing Jade and Ivy come in, and my goodness, have we all been conditioned to not expect very good things from business basketball, or at least I have at this point. or actually I guess my expectations aren't lower. It just feels good when things that should be run, you know, run of the mill actually do happen. So seeing Jaden Avi run on, you know, offball sets, for example, that actually emphasize his athleticism, which is like in terms of his acceleration in top speed, he's elite elite, was nice. This is something that should have been happening all along under both of his previous coaches, but did not.

So that was nice to see. It was nice to see him get to the line and didn't do too well. Actually, I don't think he'd hit any threes. But at least his shot for him is still there. He's still playing with confidence. And the rotation in terms of staggering Kate and Ivy was what we expected. It's from some early foul trouble. Ivy pretty much was on the floor.

Kate or Ivy were on the floor at all times. And I think the offense, I think he did a decent job. keeping the offense going with Kate off the court. And Ivy, too, you know, but for the way that I would put it largely invisible on defense, you don't want to be invisible on offense. You do want to be invisible on defense. If you're not a good defender, if you're not a good defender, then being invisible means that you aren't making obvious mistakes.

And I thought that Ivy did a pretty fair job of that. Seeing Tim Hardaway Jr. come out and actually provide value was nice. He was non-bad on defense, which is a little bit surprised. more importantly, came out and hit some tough threes for Tim Hardaway Jr. to provide anything in the realm of starter caliber value even for this team. He's got to come out and hit those tough threes, particularly in motion threes around screens. And, yeah, he did a decent job of that, admittedly a very minor positive. And moving on, team defense. So this, I thought, was actually a pretty major positive, at least in the first half in particular. Just the team, the rotations and the cohesion. And pretty much everything about team defense, again, especially in the first half, but even into the second, to a degree, if less so, for reasons that I'll talk about a little bit later. I was very impressed with. Like, you look, for example, at the very first defensive possession. When the rotations were really flawless, everybody was working hard. And, like, the starting lineup at this point has literally zero good defenders in it. like it's not ideal when Tobias Harris is the best defender in your starting lineup,

even though he's considerably better than he used to be. He's still very average. But by working as a unit, the Pistons were actually able to play reasonably. That starting lineup was actually able to play fairly good team defense. You know, so credit to J.B. Bickerstaff, who, you know, despite being a pretty indifferent offensive coach, is, you know, has a reputation, perhaps well earned as, a solid defensive mind. So, yeah, altogether, I mean, this may sound like a small collection. Oh, and we can talk about the offense as well. There were some positives on offense. I mean, the offense was certainly more complex and focused more upon utilizing individual talents

than it has in a long time. Again, we're talking a string of bad coaches. So, again, if J.B. Bakerstaff can just manage to be pretty average or even a little bit below average as an offensive coach, there's going to be a massive improvement on anything over the last 15 plus years. It's crazy to me that the last time the Pistons, though again, I wasn't watching religiously back then. At least I know by reputation in terms of we're talking Flipp Sonders, the last time the Pistons had a really capable coach. Well, much to say that anybody who was born on the day that Flipp Sonders was fired

has been able to legally drive an automobile for quite some time. Well, not quite some time, about four months past 16 years. You know, well, rather they've been able to drive for about for about four months, assuming they got their license on time. It's been a long time, long time since the business had anything, even in the realm of capable coaching. So from there, and again, these are not backhanded compliments. This is, I mean, sure, you would have hoped that the pistons could have done a lot better

a lot earlier, but they didn't. And at this point, just to have competent coaching would be such a big deal. And moving on to the not so good. So I hate to have to start with this, but this was what stuck out. me the most. And that was Jalen Duren's defense. And again, this is just one game. This was just very disappointing to me because coming into this season, I mean, really Jalen Duren, who's made so much progress on offense, you know, especially as a score, also as a pass, or particularly as a score. And like, the only question for him right now is how is his defensive acumen? Like,

you know, there was every possibility, even probability, I would say that he was going to, well, hopefully at least work harder on defense. And he did do that last night. I'm recording this on Thursday night. But like the real question there, because, well, not every player ends up working harder, but most do. And that's, it's always a change, you know, it's a factor that can change. You know, the player has full control over it. The player doesn't have full control over it, for example, well, not for example. Like in this instance, like, how smart are you on defense? and I would bring up James Wiseman as an example, but man, poor guy. I tore his Achilles last night, and that's probably a career killer for him.

As I'm fond of saying, I mean, just the level of competition and the margins, and this is just so sky high in the NBA, and the margins are so razor thin that, I mean, losing, it's tough as a big, if you tear your Achilles to not, especially as an athletic big, to not lose quite a bit in the way of athleticism. It's tough for any player or not lose quite a bit in the way of athleticism if you tear your Achilles. Like the ACL is not like a death sentence to your career like it used to be, but Achilles,

that's still a really tough injury. And James Wiseman, you know, who may not have made it anyway and just has such issues on the IQ side of things. I mean, really a huge part of what made him effective was his body, you know, his combination of size and athleticism. And, you know, exceedingly likely to lose some of that to an Achilles tear. And he was already fighting for his place in the league. This is probably it for him. You never want to see that. I mean, yes, I've ripped on the guy quite a bit with the pistons.

I've found him a frustrating player. Whatever. You never want to see this to happen to an NBA player, to a professional athlete, period. I cannot even imagine how the guy is feeling, you know, just to know that, well, I don't know if he is aware that it's going to be a real uphill battle for him to stick in the NBA. But, yeah, just imagine working your whole life or something like this. And, yeah, in any case, wish the guy the best. And, yeah, it's just, it was awful to.

to hear that that had happened. But back to what I was talking about, you can't have a player just say, you know, I'm, you know, I've decided I'm going to be a lot smarter on the court. I mean, in some cases you can learn, in some cases you just don't have it. And, you know, you all know that I do like Isaiah Stewart, but hearing him, for example, say, well, I want to model my offensive game after El Horford. It's like El Horford is extremely smart. Like Isaiah is by no means that a like on offense on defense he's very smart player on offense like he's i'd say like i don't know maybe a little bit below average in terms of his processing ability i'm not calling him dumb but it's it's kind of like me saying well i mean i decided i really want to be like albert einstein

in terms of my knowledge of physics like you just you can't wake up one day and say well i just wants to, I want my brain to work much better in this area. So again, just one game. But it was disappointing to see Duren come in and really stink it up on the defensive processing side of things. His issue was not effort. He actually worked pretty hard. Could he have worked a little bit harder? I mean, I think we still weren't seeing him play on defense at his rookie level. His rookie, I mean, rookie Jalen Duren was really the spark plug. I mean, the guy, was just flying all over the place, and I'd really like to see him get back to that. That's something that makes, for example, like Bam, out of bio special, out of bio, in addition,

you know, to being very athletic and having great defensive acumen as a maniac. I mean, the guy has, by all accounts, a ridiculous work ethic off the courts, and he certainly has one on the court, too, and that's really a force multiplier, and we see it with other guys in the team, like Isaiah Stewart, for example. And, you know, coupling elite athleticism, which, you know, which Darn has for his position with a crazy work ethic on the court. I mean, that's a big deal. But in any case, his level of effort was solid.

And it was just that he was persistently running like half a second to a second behind in terms of his processing of plays. And in the NBA, which is a game literally of inches in many cases, like you look at how much space these guys have. For example, these guards, when they weigh the ball off the backboard, like literally inches into a window of inches, whatever. I mean, kind of illustrating. the point, whatever the case, half a second to a second in the NBA with how good these players are

and how fast the game moves. It's often going to create a window for the opponent to score at the very least get a good scoring opportunity. So Duren's night started off decent enough. Again, the team defense helped with that. Started to climb a bit in the second quarter and then he turned into a walking disaster on defense in the second half. In particular, got completely just taken into pieces by Miles Turner, whom largely through faults of his own left persistently opened at the three-point line. He kind of reverted to plays in the interior in which he could have done something to impact them, but either did not, either because he chose not to. And it's like, dude, if somebody's curling along the baseline and has beaten his man, you know, you don't need to stand

there and keep Miles Turner from crashing the net. I mean, the guy's going to score. You have to go in and stop him. And if my, you know, if, if, uh, if, if, uh, if Miles Turner comes in and gets the offensive rebound, so be it. But, but, but Durham would just stand there. You know, or situations like, you know, you know, not being aware of what's going on around you and giving up, you know, an open, uh, cut to the basket and a dunk to, to Benedict Matherin when you, you just, you know, have your, if you're tracking the play well enough, you might see that coming and be able to challenge. Or like, like, for example, you've got, like, Pascal Seacum switched on to, Tim Hardaway Jr.

And Tobias Harris is kind of cheating in his direction because Hardaway stands absolutely no chance against Seacum. And so you decide to basically forcibly switch Miles Turner onto Tobias while his back has turned. And Miles Turner just gets away and gets to the basket for an open shot. So it's stuff like that. I mean, it was particularly egregious against Miles Turner, where it's like as Jaywin-Duron, yeah, you have your interior defense duties. You also just need to be able to make the right decisions.

These weren't situations in which it was going to be impossible for him to cover Turner at the perimeter. And yes, playing against an opposing stretch big does complicate things significantly, but you can do it. These weren't situations in which it's like, well, you just, you know, whatever, he had no chance. These were plenty of situations in which he did have a chance, but just made the wrong decision. and, you know, whether it was on Miles Turner or otherwise, it just kind of happened again and again and again and again. In the fourth, excuse me, in the second half, started in the second quarter and into the second half. And ultimately, in the fourth quarter down the stretch, first Duren would just completely lose track of Pascal Seacum and give up an open basket with a game four point, you know, just it was a four point game with about two minutes left. And he just wasn't paying attention.

And he got beat up, you got beaten up the quarter as a result. And then he followed Benedict Matherin on a three-point opportunity. There was a pretty darn big swing in like the final two-ish minutes. So just one game. But it was just disappointing to come in and watch him work hard and still really struggle. He's got to be a great deal better than that for the Pistons. Again, if you cannot stretch the floor as a center and you cannot play defense, you know, basically if you're traditional big who can't defend,

it's going to be extremely difficult for you to provide value in the NBA. and I mean, again, Duren's defense last season was genuinely horrifically bad. This season, like in the first game, it was, I'd say, significantly improved, but it's just the center is going to have a huge impact on defense. It's always going to have the greatest impact upon defense. We'll put it that way. That's why it's almost invariably big to win defensive player the year, you know, until the voters eventually get bored one year and vote in Marcus Smart,

who's, of course, never heard from again in the conversation. because he was definitely not the best defender that year. It was one of the bigs, whether it would be Draymond or Gobert or whatever. Yeah, it's boring to vote in a big every year, but the fact is that they do, just by the nature of the position, have the most impact upon defense, and that can be bad as well as good. So, yep, stories, you know, books not closed, but it was just very, very disappointing for me, you know, to watch that.

And hopefully he can pick it up. And, yeah, Duren is still very young. He's just on the border of 21. Yeah, this is his third season. Yeah, he played last season under a horrifically bad coach. And though Duren has gone on, you know, went out of his way to note that he really did like that coach. You know, in your third year, you know, it's the time to show that you can really improve. That, you know, great work ethic of his as a rookie kind of allowed him to be more just a poor defender than outright bad.

Again, it all comes down to the acumen. So he was the, the big, you know, the big. downside of the game for me. And the Pistons just really need him to be a lot better if they're going to win games this season, and they will be trying to win games this season. Bickerstaff noted before the season began that it's not necessarily Duren's job by default. I hope he has to fight for it, basically. Isaiah Stewart is not ideal as a starting center for reasons I've gone over many times.

But if, like you look at last night, so Isaiah, a lot of the stuff he does on defense is not going to show up on the score sheet. You know, it's not necessarily going to manifest itself in blocks or steals or whatever else, not even going to manifest itself in him. Well, it will manifest itself this way more often than with blocks and steals. But it's going to go beyond just him effectively challenging shots at the rim. He just knows out of position himself extremely well to cut off opportunities for the opposition and to disrupt offensive play sets in the interior in particular, but also out in the perimeter when they try to switch him onto somebody. So a lot of what he does on defense isn't necessarily like super prominent, but it is there. And the defense during

preseason and even last night was just a great deal better with him on the floor. The offense, he has a lot less to offer than J.1 Duren does there. And Duren last night did have four assists and an extremely efficient 13 points and that's great. It was just the defense was so costly. Moving on to what another thing that I really didn't like is that not enough emphasis was put on keeping Tobias Harrison rhythm. This is a downside of Tobias. that has existed since at least his first stint with the Pistons, which began in 2016. I'm not sure if it existed before that in the four, well, three and a half years, I believe that he'd played before then. But it's definitely existed, you know, for a long time at this point.

Basically, you have to keep Tobias Harris engaged. You have to keep him in rhythm. You have to keep him engaged, you know, you just have to keep him involved in the offense. Or he falls off the face of the earth. And that's what happened in the second half. basically, you know, for whatever reason, you could argue that this is on him, but it's also just a known shortcoming of his that you have to account for, you know. When you sign him, you know that this is the case. J.B. Bickerstaff needs to know that this is the case. There's a reality of Tobias Harris that, yeah, he'll just disappear.

And when you do get him involved again, he's going to be out of rhythm, and he's probably not going to do all that well, and that's what happened last night. You know, you just have to keep him engaged in the offense. And when you do that, I think he can do pretty well. But the second he starts to disappear, You're in for trouble. And he had a pretty rough second half, included in which was him missing some pretty key shots down the stretch. So just a matter of coaching.

And again, yeah, Buck, you know, ultimately stops at Tobias, but this is just something you have to keep in mind, I believe, as an NBA coach, if you want Tobias Harris to provide good value. So we can't see that happen again. The best times he's had in the NBA been those in which he's been properly featured. and yeah, that was just a shame to see because it was bound to go poorly, and it was very avoidable. Ron Holland, so I hate to put this in the minus category. At this point, I mean, the Pistons could be playing like an eight-man rotation.

Bigger staff at this point, I'm not sure if he's being told to play Ron Holland. I mean, I think if a SAR were around, I think we can very safely determine. I think we can very safely conclude, rather. I guess those are the same thing. That it would be a SAR playing instead of Holland. Ron Holland is fun to watch on defense. Don't get me wrong. I know I'm basically repeating when I said in the last episode that he's a super hard worker. He's extremely gritty. You know, he plays very hard-nosed on-ball defense and so on and so forth. It's just on all offense. He's terrible.

And the half court, he's very bad. He says the same struggles he had in the G League at attacking the rim. His shot is still pretty busted. It's not a Sart Thompson level busted, at least from last season. And, but it is still pretty busted, you know, comes off his form is pretty poor. The, you know, just the touch, the way that it hits the rim. You know what I mean? It's just, it's ugly. It was ugly yesterday. It doesn't really have too much to him as a passer. The guy's still very raw. And it wasn't just that he was missing shots. There were certainly instances, one in particular in which you just could have taken a shot and he didn't. Pacers were very content to leave him open. There was the instance of,

him getting the pistons of technical by running out onto the court when there was still time remaining in the third quarter. That was pretty funny. I was watching him. I was like, what in the world is a guy with a doing out on the floor with a towel? It turned out that Ron Holland just really hadn't been paying much attention at the time. Anyway, I'm calling this more a negative because I hope he just doesn't have to see too many more minutes in the NBA. The guy's not ready. I don't believe in terms of guys like Holland and, you know, that it's necessarily the best from the learn on the job, particularly because they're pretty damaging. to their teams in the process.

He's more than just kind of like somewhat unready. Like, Asar Thompson was ready enough, even though he was going to be a problem in the half court, he was ready enough if he wanted to give him minutes. I don't believe that's the case with Ron. So at this point, like at his current level of development on offense, I mean, sometimes guys make significant progress during the season. It's pretty rare for a guy to significantly improve a shot during the season. It's pretty rare for a guy who was this raw on the drive to significantly improve in that

capacity over the course of a season as a rookie. so I'm just hoping we don't I mean maybe things will change but I think he's this is just a player who be best off just either playing spot minutes or spending some time in the G league so as fun as he was to watch last night he I thought it was pretty ugly and I'm not playing this at Ron Holland's feet because he's very raw he's a project and I just don't think he should be seeing many NBA minutes at this point I don't think he would be seeing NBA minutes if the Sarr Thompson were available speaking of a Sars still in the No news. You know, the way I see it, no news is no news, rather than that no news is bad news

or no news is good news. We genuinely don't know anything. And then just a couple of minor, additional minor negatives. Fon Tecchio still hasn't found his rhythm. I'm not too concerned about that. I mean, he's struggled throughout preseason and he had a really not at all good, you know, bad offensive game against the Pacers. The guy who says too much of a track record as a shooter for that to continue. I'd be surprised if he continues at kind of like the torrid pace. He shot the ball at with the Pistons last season, but I think this is a guy who's going to consistently be in the realm of 40%. So not too worried about that. And I hope he eventually finds his way into the starting lineup. I think he just has quite a bit more to offer in the overall value sense than Tim Hardley Jr.

And finally, just not a huge fan, and it wasn't a huge fan in the preseason of J.B. Bigger Staff's use of Isaiah Stewart last night, particularly on the pick and roll. It's like you really have to leverage the guy's ability to shoot the ball as a center in order for him to provide even value on offense, like non-negative value. And Baker's staff continues to use him more primarily as a traditional guy in the pick and roll, where you run into the double problem of Isaiah being a very below-the-rim non-athletic player who's just not very well suited to it, though he is very good at cleaning, excuse me, at clearing out lanes and space in the interior. And problem number two, he's just not good at catching difficult passes.

and we saw that a couple times, you know, a couple times last night. So a little bit puzzled at this usage of Isaiah, who's basically being used to his weaknesses on offense at this point. Hopefully that'll change. And then, you know, Bobby Clintonman, who just continues to be completely invisible out there. He was invisible through preseason. He was invisible last night.

I'm just kidding, the guys hurt. I don't think he'd be getting minutes over even Ron Holland at this point. And, yeah, I'd say that's about it. It may have sounded like there were more negatives than positives. I actually felt like in the main the game was had more positives than negatives. Maybe it just kind of felt that way as I was saying it because I spent quite some time talking about J. Win Dern. But I thought that Ivy looked much more in control.

They needed it last season and he carried over his much more put together shot for him from the, you know, from the preseason, even if he didn't hit his jump shots. I thought Cade looked improved. I thought just the overall roster looked to. quite a bit better. The coaching was quite a bit better. I enjoy the game, more positives than negatives, and I'm happy to say that we have 81 games ahead of us. Is it going to be a successful season in terms of wins, like the Pistons, you know, winning 35 games and maybe making the play in? I'd say probably not. Is it going to be a season in which the Pistons play functional,

respectable basketball, and aren't a complete mess? I feel, you know, and I felt like this since preseason, pretty comfortable that that answer is yes, the Pistons will play respectable basketball, will be in more games, and will just be a more respectable and enjoyable to watch team than they have been in a while now, and certainly much more so than last season. So I believe that's kind of all I have to say about the season opener. Now, as far as the schedule is concerned, let's just put it this way, the NBA did the Pistons and no favors in terms of the team's early season schedule. They're up next against the Cavaliers, potential top four team in the east.

After that, against the buzzsaw Boston Celtics, the heat who simply by dint of having Jimmy Butler, Bam out of bio, and the best coach in the league are always going to be a team that's going to be able to make some noise. The 76ers, you know, whether or not Joel Ambide plays and, you know, Paul George, who knows. But, you know, on paper they're a good team. the Knicks, who, of course, are the Knicks, so I have a strong roster this season.

The Pistons don't play a middling or bad team, unless you count the heat. Again, you never know with those guys until they play the Nets in game number seven, and then they're against the Lakers the next night. And then things get quite a bit easier, but it'll be a pretty difficult first eight games of the season. So we'll see what the Pistons are made of against difficult opposition. and, you know, I feel confident that this team, again, maybe I'll leave my words, but I feel like this is an NBA caliber team that is going to be able to take games off of good teams every now and then. So in any case, that'll be it for this episode.

As always, folks, thank you all for listening. Hope you're doing great. We'll catch you in next week's episode.