Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 229: Run it Back or Take a Swing?

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

This episode follows a listener-submitted episode suggestion regarding whether the Pistons should run back the current roster for next season or explore other options.

Welcome back, everybody. You are listening to another episode of Drive Into the Basket. I'm Mike, and I hope you've all been doing great. So, my goodness, how long has it been since the Pistons season ended? I think about a week and a half at this point. I'm recording this on Saturday, probably posted on Monday. And it's definitely, for me, an interesting time because typically at this point of the season, I mean, the Pistons haven't been playing for a little while. well, typically talking about between the years of 2020 and 2024. Yeah, the Pistons have been just playing for draft position. It's been a race to the bottom, which I've been watching avidly and just hoping, okay, can the Pistons lose this game? Can they lose that game?

So they'll get the best possible draft position so that hopefully we can get a good draft pick and obviously hasn't happened in the last two years. It didn't quite go well for the Pistons, who became the first team ever to drop from 1 to 5 and then had it happen again the next season. you know, 2023 and 24. And typically for me, this time would just be a lot of draft research. I would have been actually generally pretty familiar with the players in the draft range, the business to be picking in before the lottery,

and would really just kind of, I guess, kick it up a little bit more after the draft lottery. Well, yeah, to a degree when I started really doing really in-depth draft research for podcast episodes because typically that was the format, you know, would do some draft pods, before the lottery, and then after we knew where the Pistons were going to pick, now sometimes it would change, and sometimes it wouldn't. In any case, I was happy to not have to participate in that cycle, not that I didn't enjoy the draft research, because that was always fun. But like I've said, I think the last couple of years, I was just really looking forward to a time when I wouldn't have to worry about a race to the bottom. And that was really nice

this year, obviously. It was more thinking about whom the Pistons going to match up against in the playoffs, and then kind of just hoping that it would be the Nicks and not the Bucks or the Pacer's, and of course that ultimately happened. And so the draft lottery is coming up on Monday, and I don't really care all that much what happens. I'll probably just watch it because it's interesting, but I'll be watching it with a complete and utter lack of anxiety, which is in stark contrast to how it was for me the last five years between 2021, excuse me, between 2020 and 2024. A 2021 draft lottery was probably the most anxious I felt in the last decade about anything,

as funny as that sounds. I mean, I was just, yeah, I don't know why exactly, but that was, I mean, obviously it turned out to be an awesome experience. I was on Pistons Discord with a bunch of other people on voice, watching the draft lottery on live stream. And we were all watching it together on live stream. And yeah, it was obviously a very joyous event. That was a good time.

But once we got, I mean, the whole thing, like from 14 onward, from the start, it was like, who's going to jump? You know, is a team going to jump here? And that ended up when we were. being Toronto, I believe. So you get to number six, and Pistons legend, Nazir Mohammed, is on the screen for the Thunder. Excuse me, it ends up being on the screen for the Thunder.

It's the Thunder pick at number six, and the Pistons were in number two in terms of, excuse me, 29th that season, so they could have picked sixth at the worst. And things would possibly be very different for the Pistons at the, you know, at this point if that had happened. And then number five rolls around. And that's Weldman for the, the magic, not looking very happy. And then you come back from commercial, and it's, it's the final

four of the pistons, the rockets, the Raptors, and the Cavaliers. I think, well, actually, I don't think, I remember this, actually perfectly, because it was Fred Van Fleet, was the representative for the Raptors. In 2021, they were still doing the draft lottery like they had in 2020, remotely because of COVID. So I think Welman was sitting in a hotel room. I remember that. And, And, you know, Ben Wallace was at the Pistons practice facility. Fred Van Fleet was clearly at home. I think Altman and Hakeem Olajuwon for the Rockets. I don't remember who they were.

Altman, the GM for the Cavaliers. But, of course, this is all history. I just like recounting it. You know, Toronto comes off the screen. And then, you know, they pull the card for the Cavaliers at number three. And, you know, that, I mean, once the Pistons got to the top three, it's like you're getting Mobley, Green or Cade. Obviously, obviously green hasn't turned out quite as well, as people expected.

remember that 2021 was considered to be, I mean, an extremely strong draft. And it flagged for a couple of years there and now was known to be an extremely strong draft. But Green, Mowbly, and K were all considered guys who could have gone number one in any given draft. But anyway, Cleveland's card comes up. So it's like, okay, the business has a top two pick. And then they pulled out Houston's car for number two. And we all on Discord just went berserk. I mean, that was just an incredible moment.

So in any event, this season, obviously, to worry about the lottery at all, which is fantastic. And the draft, I don't really know how much I'll talk about the draft because sure, the Pistons have a lot of second round draft stock and they could trade into the late first, but maybe not, because there's so much youth on this team already. And even if they do, there's just no knowing who's going to be available at the end of the first. It's just so unpredictable. And also, yeah, I mean, you could talk about how NAL, name, image, and likeness in the NCAA might be keeping guys who would be coming out in the late first in college instead. I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know really anything

about the data around that. But is that going to, you know, in the long term, dilute the end of the first and then also the second round even more. Who knows? But there's just, in the end, there's just no knowing who's going to be available wherever the Pistons could possibly pick. Yeah, I remember back in 2021, I had two co-hosts back then, and the three of us were planning out an episode. And we're like, okay, well, why don't we talk about, you know, our favorite, you know, potential second round picks. I think the Pistons were at 37 at the time before they traded. It might have been 34. I think 37 before they traded down 10 spots to dump Mason Plumley.

And at the end of things, not the end of things, but I all think. ultimately said, you know, guys, we really just have no idea who's going to be available early in the second round. And we decided not to the episode, and that was not to do that in the episode, that segment. And that was a good idea because ultimately none of these guys were, the guys we talked about beforehand were long gone. I think one of them was Tray Murphy. By the time the Pistons picked, even if they would have picked at 37. Again, I think it was 37. it was in the low 30s, or by the reckoning of the NBA draft, the low 30s, which, in numerical terms, the, whatever, the back half of the 30s, put it that way. Or maybe I'm wrong, and it was 34, whatever. In the end, the Pistons ended up picking Isaiah livers at 40, whatever.

Here's a story I actually wants to go over, and I know I've rambled on for a while now about recent Pistons history, but I think it's a fun topic. Austin Reeves catches a certain amount of flack from Pistons fans for this notion that he just didn't want to play in Detroit. That is only technically accurate. What Austin Reeves didn't want was to be drafted and to play in a second, excuse me, on a two-way contract. So there are standard NBA contracts and then there are two-way contracts. Standard NBA contracts come with a certain amount of guaranteed money, at least in one year. you know, sometimes you could argue that pick 31 is more valuable than pick 30, unless there's somebody you would have wanted at pick 30 is no longer available because first round picks have

a guaranteed contract structure. You have two guaranteed years and then two years of team options, which you have to pick up a year in advance. And the salary structure is set based on which pick you are. You get paid more, you know, the most if you're the overall pick and the least if you're the 30th pick. Whereas second round contracts, you can. can pretty much structure however you want. So it gives more financial flexibility to teams that way. But in any case, ever since the two-way contract was introduced in the late 2010s, I mean, it became more and more. I'm not sure if it's, I think it kind of reached eventually a plateau, but you saw more and more players in the second half of the second round getting a two-way

contracts instead of guaranteed contracts. Now, Austin Reeves didn't want. want to be drafted and get a two-way contract. And so if teams were going to, but he would have preferred instead is to just not be drafted and choose the team he was going to sign a two-way contract with. And in that particular situation, as a result, he said, if you're going to sign me to a two-way deal, I don't want to be drafted by you. And that was a wise move for him because he ended up being able to find a team that was going to give him more of a chance, a team like the Lakers.

I mean, this might sound paradoxical, but the more of a contender a team is, the less likely it has a significant amount of depth. Just that's how it works with contenders. You're much, much, much more top-heavy and less deep for the most part. So a team like the Pistons on a two-way contract team like the Pistons that already had a ton of youth that was going to get him a lot less opportunity than he could get on the Lakers who needed meaningful depth. And he ended up finding a role. and now that this is less impressive than it sounds in today's NBA, he's a fairly versatile 20 point per game score.

So the Pistons just didn't offer him a guaranteed standard NBA contract, which would have come with at least one guaranteed year. So Troy Weaver decided to do that, and then he turned instead to Isaiah Livers and said, oh, but we'll give you a standard NBA contract. So thus did the Pistons miss out on Austin Reeves. He's not like a game changer, but he's a pretty solid NBA player.

So just the upshot of all that is that it wasn't that he didn't want to play in Detroit. It was that he didn't want to play anywhere in the draft if they were not going to offer him a standard NBA deal and wouldn't insist on signing him to a two-way deal instead. And that proved to be a very smart move for him. Like who knows, maybe he would have caught on with one of the teams that drafted him. But I think it was a savvy move on his part. So anyway, enough about the 2021 draft. The upshot of everything I've just talked about is that this is just a very, very different time for me in terms of material at this time of year.

Because it used to all be about the draft, and at this point there would be just a ton of anticipation for the draft lottery, which is on Monday. But now there's none of that. And though part of me, I guess, is going to miss a little bit the excitement about seeing whom the Pistons are going to draft. that came along with the Pistons being quite bad and the persistent race to the bottom. And so, you know, you take the good but the bad here. And I will a little bit just miss the draft research because that was always fun too. And I can still do it, but it has no applicability to the Pistons. So I'm going to go today instead with a topic suggested by a listener on Pistons Discord.

And just want to reiterate this, I really, really appreciate ideas for material. and really they're going to be particularly appreciated this summer because, you know, there's about a month worth of material here that and all this stuff I was just talking about, the draft research, excuse me, the draft pods and stuff like that. Even summer league's probably not going to be particularly interesting because the Pistons, unless they really surprise us and, you know, draft somebody, you know, trade meaningfully into the first round to get somebody who's really excited. Summer League's probably going to be somewhat boring this year.

I don't think they're going to send anybody aside from, I don't know, Clintman and goodness, who else? It'll probably be pretty boring, put it that way, in terms of who's going to be attending for the Pistons. And again, you could argue that's a good problem to have because it means that you get a team that is, you know, less bad, generally your best teams at Summer League are those who have a lot of youth who have been recently drafted, you know, on the higher end of the first round. And of course, those teams are the teams who have not been very good. So in any event, though, yeah, I'm going to have to get creative this summer in terms of this funny material for every episode. So even at normal times, please reach out if you have ideas about material. I love to hear it.

I really appreciate it. And it's especially true this summer. So in any case, topic from a listener, you know, is Luca Garza potentially the future center for the Pistons? I'm just kidding. you're listening to this. This is an old joke between, you know, between he and I. So that's obviously not the question.

So should the Pistons make a move or keep the team together, you know, because some teams, you know, such as the Grizzlies, kept it together and didn't get anywhere. Also just plain devil's advocate, but if the entire core take a step no matter how large forward. And, yeah, this is a subject that, of course, I would say probably dominates discourse about the Pistons at the moment. you know, do you play it slow and steady? Or do you make a move right now? You know, just say what's capitalized on where the pistons are right now and just try to take that big step, you know, immediately.

And there's not really a ton of middle ground there. You know, it's basically, do you largely just bring back the veterans and wait for another year of growth from the youth? Or do you just take that big swing, whatever it might be? And of course, that depends upon such a swing. even being available. You never know who's going to be available and of what price in the NBA. So my feeling very strongly falls on the side of option number one, you know, run it back. So I say that primarily because we don't exactly know what's to be found with the youth on the

business right now. You know, Asar is only a couple years in. I'm going no particular order here. Asar is only a couple years in and didn't really have an off season. Of course, an off-season. season after his rookie year because of the blood clots. And of course, the biggest thing with him is can he shoot? And we'll see that. If he can't, it's going to be a little bit difficult to be a good postseason player that'll limit his value to the Pistons and on the trade market. And this is another thing. It's not just, there are two aspects of this. See what the Pistons have in terms of their ability to home grow talent, you know, because that's the most ideal route because then, you know, if you're ever at home grow a superstar or just an all-star, then you don't have to trade draft assets for one.

and you can save that for whatever. But also, if these players, you know, if you see that these players develop, I mean, they increase their own value on the trade market, too. So it's two benefits there. And I guess that sums up my overall point of, yeah, you just want to see where these youth stand. I mean, because, yeah, if you have, you know, even just one of them who develops into like a viable star caliber number two next decade, that you didn't have to trade for that guy. And if you have some of them who just develop into maybe less than you need them to be, but still significantly past what they are right now,

I mean, their value in the trade market when you want to go out and trade for a guy like that is going to be significantly higher. So I think, you know, making a deal that includes any of the youth at this point is, I think it's not the right time. And what do you really lose by waiting for a year versus what you potentially gain? I'd say the only thing on the side of go out and make a move right now, is if you're a fan. Again, there's no right or wrong way of being a fan. So let me put that a little differently. The only benefit right now is you get to see the pistons be better in the short term,

but of course the idea is to build a contender, and the pistons are still significantly away from that. So I don't mean to be a downer in saying this. I want to always qualify this by saying that this last season was an unqualified success. I mean, this was a massive improvement. Guys made big leaps, and it was great. But there's still, quite a bit of work to be done for this 44 win team to become a contender. I mean, that's a significant leap. You see all sorts of teams who make the playoffs, but really are never realistically going to make it past possibly if they get very lucky

the conference finals. And often just know better than that. So, yeah, there's a lot more work to be done, and a lot of that just rests on development for the same reasons that I just laid out. Again, I want to see what you have and see how much of this talent. You can see how much of what you need to build a contender. You can home grow. And number two, you want to hopefully give some time for these young players

if they're not going to be that to increase their trade value. And growth is just nothing is guaranteed, of course. And the Pistons did include, excuse me, they did enjoy very, very good health this season outside of Jaden Ivy. I mean, in terms of the number of players missed by their, you know, the rest of their core was very small. Thankfully, especially to Kate Cunningham, without whom. the bottom would have completely fallen out of the team.

And they also enjoyed spectacularly good luck in terms of health, the opposition, just constantly playing against teams that were missing key players. Again, I'm not complaining. It's got them out of the plan range. It's got them into the playoffs outright. They didn't have to play Boston and then have to play Cleveland. So really, yeah, it was a good thing. It's just overall, I think it's important to keep in mind that the team right now

is not a good team. And that's not a, I'm not saying this to disparage the roster. It's just, but right now, as of this season, it's more of just kind of like a decent team, a team for which a lot went right and which has a lot of promise, but really needs to, you know, to take a significant step to get toward, you know, get into range of those championship aspirations. And fortunately, the Pistons are positions to see hopefully quite a bit of growth. A lot of that depends on development. let's say you take a big swing and you send away some of the youth for, I don't know, Ken, you never know who's available. You never know what the price will be.

Devin Booker, I don't think he's going anywhere. That would be very, very nice, but I don't think he's going anywhere because Matt Ishbia has just come a long way from, you know, when I was a lot younger watching him step onto the floor in garbage time in the Brezlin Center. Yeah, he played. for the two on well technically played on the 2000 championship roster for Michigan State and he would only make it on the floor when the game is in hand and the crowd would go crazy like they just loved this guy and now he's a billionaire

and basically I don't know Mark Cuban on speed you know combination of all the worst traits of Tom Goraz and Mark Cuban and put it that way and he's done a horrible job with the sons just saying it's kind of like just an I know best and we're going to do this and just make a big swing and everything of course has gone very very badly for the suns at the same time the sons are now a team that is almost completely depleted of first round draft stock for the next seven years so no it's for the next six years at this point and so isbia can't really tank right now there is i mean you can trade away guys like milwaukee is in the same position so yeah you can trade away

your guys for like first round picks, but you're getting first round picks that are likely going to be at the, you know, in the bottom 10 of the first round, where if you get like a good role player, then you've about matched the odds and you're unlikely to get anybody who's particularly good. You know, again, just speaking in terms of the odds, it happens, but the odds aren't great. So let's say you sell all your players, then what are you really accomplishing here? You know, you're just hoping for a bunch of, you know, for a bunch of swings in the first round. you don't actually own your picks because other teams do by way of owning them outright

or owning pick swaps. So you're losing for no reason. You're losing a crap with a money for no reason. You're really undermining your fan base for no reason. You lose some of them anyway because you'll probably become, well, who knows? You know, who knows? Basically, it's a lot easier to keep a fan base

if you're just a middling team rather than a bad team. So tanking for a team with no draft assets is really just not an option. So they might trade Durant. He'll probably want out. He's only got the one year left anyway. And beyond that, it's just basically Booker and Bradley Beal of all players. You know, and Tyos Jones and a bunch of role players. It's a disaster of a situation for them. But, yeah, so maybe you trade Durant and you get some draft stock and some roster players in return. You become a worst team. You trade Booker on top of that.

I think Durant is very likely outbound, but you never know with Ishfio, excuse me. But you trade Booker on top of that. I mean, yeah, you're just becoming a worst team for no real reason unless you get some really high-sealing youth in the bargain. Can the Pistons provide that? Possibly, could they provide that right now? No, because you just, the development hasn't been enough between Jade and Ivy. You had, you know, a solid rookie season. Unfortunately, we saw, we all know what happened in his sophomore season with that coach.

none of us ever want to talk about again. And then missing the majority of this season, Ivy has a very modest track record at this point, a very short and just, it's a track record that's inadequate to give him substantial trade value at this point. So, and then the other use, I mean, Nassar needs to be able to shoot. Holland's still very raw.

And Duren is a traditional center with major problems on defense. So the Pistons couldn't really even realistic. give the sons what they want in that situation again i mean you'd need to have some high ceiling youth going the other way so yeah it comes down to who's available in the first place but i just think that there's there's every reason to wait and see what the pistons can get out of their youth and see how they can you know improve their value and there's really no rush at this point pistons are not on a timeline i mean the the biggest timeline they are currently on in terms of a player on the roster and is like okay Tobias Harris is going to be 33. That's like the biggest timeline they're on and that's obviously not a timeline.

I mean, Harris was brought on as a stopgap measure. I was very happy to have him here and I hope he will continue to be on the team in a lesser role after his current contract concludes at the end of next season. But my point is, I mean, he's obviously, the team is not on the Tobias Harris timeline. Team is not on a player's timeline here. So I think that there's, again, a lot to potentially gain and probably very very, very good. little to actually lose in giving it another season. Now, what would I do in that scenario? In terms of the veterans and in free agency, so here's the pissing situation. They've got about $25 million in cap space at the moment. Kate Cunningham, if he gets all NBA, which at this point between how well he played this season and a pretty significant plethora of absences for players

who became ineligible because they didn't reach 65 games, I'd say it's virtually certain. I mean, I would be shocked if he did not make all NBA this season. That increases the value of his contract by about $45 million, including about $8 million that will come out of the Pistons cap space next season, lowering it to about $16.5 million. So $16.5 million, even if it's wide open, is not going to get you very much in free agency these days. And that's a free agency that's very weak. And in a free agent class, in which I think only the jazz and the nets are actually going

to have, you know, outright open cap space. So, but also just the class is incredibly weak. Like anybody looking for some sort of upgraded forward is, it's like your best forward on the market is Dorian Finney Smith, whom this almost certainly is just going to stay with the Lakers. But $16 million, I think that would be, yeah, I think that would be not even a pay raise for him on a contract he signed four years ago. So, you know, in a league in which the cap has increased significantly, but also you can

stay with the Lakers and have a major role in a contender versus come to the Pistons and be basically forward number four. So even if the Pistons were able to use all that cap space, they wouldn't really be able to do all too much. That said, using all that cap space would require them doing a couple of things. So as I've said many times before, the NBA collective bargaining agreement, which governs the salary cap is very complicated. Cap mechanics are very complicated. and so I won't get too deep into it. But my goodness, where do I begin? So I'll start with one thing, a concept of cap holds.

So the cap hold is basically a placeholder that is levied against a salary cap. For players, you know, in this situation we'll just talk about free agent cap holds. So for a free agent to be. And how much that cap hold is just depends upon, you know, this player coming off a rookie contract, this player coming off a non-brokey contract and so on and so forth. And so those count against the cap until you either sign the player, the player signs elsewhere, or you renounce the player.

Renouncing the player means renouncing the player means renouncing what are called bird rights. Bird rights allow you to exceed the cap, you know, when it's full bird rights up to the maximum, when it's early bird rights, less than that. There's also something called non-bird rights, which is just, you can give a player, you know, it's, I think, like, 120% of his previous year's salary. I can't remember exactly. But if you renounce a player, he renounce his bird rights. And that becomes relevant in the case of Dennis Schroeder,

not so much in the case of Malik Beasley. But basically, there are two scenarios. And, like, scenario number one of the pistons. All right. Let me start with scenario number. Okay, cool. We'll call this scenario number. one, which is that the Pistons decide to operate as a cap space team and just, you know, clear all that

cap space and try to go in with like $16 million and do something. I mean, sure, you manage to dump Fontechio onto somebody, like his old team or the Nets. You pay to do that. It's going to cost you probably second round draft stock there. Then sure, you got $24 million and again in a very weak free agent class. What you have to do in that situation, number one, you're saying goodbye to Malik Beasley unless he's willing to take the what's called the room mid-level exception, which is about $8.6 million for up to three years. You know, contract starts, excuse me, around $8.7 million for a contract of up to three years. So, I don't know, around $26 million, $27 million.

I can't do the math in my head in total. But a lot of you will know about the mid-level exception overall. The mid-level exception, so exceptions outside, of the, and my goodness, this is going to become just kind of like, I'm not going to get too much further into this because otherwise it's just going to become very complex. I'm a visual learner. If I were listening to this, I would not be able to keep track. Keep, excuse me, it would not be able to keep track of it.

So the mid-level exception, like the full middle-level exception, which is about $14 million, and the bi-annual exception, which hardly anybody ever uses anymore, and trade exceptions, these all levy cap holds. So if you want to operate as a caps-based team, you have to renounce the full mid-level, which is about $14 million in season number one for up, you know, and you can sign a contract for up to four years for the room mid-level exception, which is significantly less. So you can't just spend all your cap space and then give somebody to full mid-level. So it's not like, oh, well, we'll spend the $16 million and then just give $14 million to Beasley.

Can't do that. So you renounce all that cap space, excuse me, you renounce Beasley, you renounce Schroeder, you renounce your other unrestricted free agents who are not really relevant to this conversation. then you got yourself about $16.5 million in cap space plus the $8.6, $8.7 million room at a level. And so that's possibility number one. I think it's very unlikely possibility. Possibility number two, you have possibility number two and possibility number three, which are not really altogether that different. So number one is that you just sign Malik Beasley with Capspace. I don't know. I think you demand a contract around the mid-term.

around the full mid-level. So if you're doing it with cab space, sure, about $14 million in that situation. And even, let's say, it's 12, then you have, like, you know, less than $5 million in cab space remaining, and that's good for pretty much nothing in today's league. And then you have to hope to sign Dennis Schroeder, Dennis Schrooter, with the room mid-level, which is maybe too little money for him. There's not really much of an upside. to that scenario. It gets you a little bit of cap space, which you would get, you know, which you could get by just using the, the bi-annual exception instead, which I believe is around $4.5 million. I can't remember. Hardly anybody ever uses it anymore. And then scenario

number three, which I think is the likeliest, which is that you re-sign Dennis Schroeder, and, I don't know, you can use some combination of Tim Hardaway and June, excuse me, Tim Hardaway Jr. your Paul Reed and in Lindy Waters to just one year deals over their cap holds and resigning a player over their cap holds just allows you to basically operate as you know you reach the cap you can operate as what's called and above the cap team in which case you get access to the full mid-level exception and that's going to be your best way to resign Schroeder and resign Beasley and you know if you have to use to you know if you have to resign Tim Hardaway Jr. and or Waters and or read to one-year deals.

Also, to get there, I guess, you know, who knows, maybe you don't want to give, well, actually, you could probably do it. Let's say you give Schroeder, like, 12 million a year. You know, then you, you know, you say to Tim Hardaway Jr., okay, well, you want to stay and be 10th man, you know, take $4.5 million, which is more than anybody else is going to pay you. But you're probably going to be out of the rotation. If you won't do it, you do it with Reader.

I think Wendy Waters would be a have a large enough cap hold for that, but I can't remember. Maybe not. Probably not. In any case, Yeah, so in that situation, that that's your best route to keeping the two of them. And that one-year deal you sign, sure, then, you know, it's just an extra salary to, you know, potentially match later on in a trade, or it's gone the next year when the Pistons will not have

cap space anyway. So all of this is to say that the Pistons have, like, two real options after all of that. And I'm sorry if that was overly complicated. You know, you can either bring back Beasley and Schrooter, well, just call it Schroeder like everybody else does, or you can probably get rid of them both and go looking for something in free agency with the small amount of money that's not going to equal what the two of them could offer you. It's also worth remembering a couple of things here. Well, I already went over one of them, which is that, well, two out, let's say two out of the three. number one, free agency is weak.

Number two, even 16 million is not really going to get you very far. You know, 16 million plus that, you know, around 8.5 million, you know, around mid-level. And number three, well, four, I guess. Number three, there has to be rotation space. And that moves in the number four, which is that players actually have to come and want to play for you. And they will expect significant players will expect significant minutes. And the persons at least up front are, you know, you've got, for the forward spots, even, you know, even without Beasley on the roster. I mean, you still got three guys for 96 forward minutes.

You've got Asar and Ron Holland and Tobias Harris. And center is pretty much set at this point. You know, Duren or as possible replacement plus Isaiah Stewart. So you're going to bring in somebody, I don't know, I've seen Bobby Portis brought in, for example. I mean, whose minutes is he going to take here? I mean, I guess, sure, you can just, you know, push Ron or Assar down the, you know, down the lineup. Of course, you lose Beasley, you know, along with, you know, along with, probably. Probably losing Tim Hardley, Jr., who lost a tremendous amount of shooting, not too concerned about THJ. Ivy is just going to take his minutes. But even losing Beasley means losing a ton of play action. Like a ton of play action. I mean, he was just the second most important player for the pistons on offense. The fact, he has elite shooting, which he may or may not be able to replicate. Bear in mind that he was an elite shooter the year before with the bucks, if not quite this good and on lower usage.

Just adds another dimension of the offense, just in terms of what opponent. have to track what your options are. He has a huge amount of gravity. You can hit tough shots off the move. Very high percentage play finisher from the perimeter. And also some definite punch off the bench, a guy who's not going to demand a start, for example. So that'd be a significant loss.

I think Malik Beasley, who was also excellent in the locker room and is clearly a huge fan of playing in Detroit. And then Dennis Schroeder, who came in and, you know, it was sort of a mixed bag in the regular season because his efficiency wasn't all that good, but still the pistons were a lot better with him on the floor. And also he gave the pistons a backup handler, which they desperately needed. I'm quite firmly believed that Jaden Ivy is not a guy you want as a primary handler,

more of a secondary handler. I think that's where he's best. So, but also, I mean, you just, you want to not have only two pandlers, you know, on your team in any case. So I think you want to bring back Schroeder. I think he's better than, like, sure, again, you could renounce him and Beasley and hope you can sign Tyos Jones, for example, assuming he's willing to play backup point card.

And yeah, he's younger. Is he better than Schroeder? In some ways, sure. He's incredibly safe with the ball. You know, he's a reliable perimeter shooter. He's got a pretty nasty floater. But, again, you'd probably lose out more in that situation. That's assuming you can sign him at all.

So the other guys who would be available in free agency or DeAngelo Russell, whom that would be very disinterested in because he's about his, you know, NBA smart. as a rock and the corpse of Chris Ball. You might say, oh, you know, have him come in and, you know, teach his ways to the youth, but he's just not very good anymore. So I think you keep Dennis Schroeder, who, yeah, and the regular season was solid enough for the Pistons,

and the playoffs was, you know, I think you could pretty definitively say the second best player on the team behind Kade. And just provides more kind of steady veteran leadership and performance. So I think you bring back, I think you operate as an above the cap team. You bring back Schroeder. You bring back Beasley. I mean, you say just sign, again, sign Schroeder and, you know, some one-year deals over cap holds to get to the piss.

To get the Pistons, the ability to operate as an above the cap team and just sign Beasley using the full mid-level exception. Probably, yeah, again, I don't imagine he would get around 14 million starting per year. That'd be the full MLE. And then you just run it back from there. You add what to do on top of that. well, if you look at that group of guys, I should mention, I think I mentioned this last episode, you know, Price and I both mentioned this, that 10-man rotation of the NBA is pretty rare. It's generally just teams don't go that deep.

It happened this year because the business wanted to get minutes for all the youth, including Ron Holland. But I think it's a lot likely you see nine next season, which is in Bakerstaff with the Cavaliers, and the really favorite eight outside of, you know, just situational. scenarios, so to speak, or foul trouble. So, I mean, you've got Cade and presumably Schroeder at backup point guard. Excuse me, you got, Kate, obviously, starting a point guard and Schroeder backing up, but you got point guard secured there. You got Ivy who's going to be starting at shooting guard.

And then you have Beasley who will, you know, play backup shooting guard minutes and then move out for some minutes at Small Forward. And so you've got the minutes at 4. forward shared between he, Ron Holland, Assar Thompson, and Tobias Harris. And then, of course, you've got starting center. It would probably be Jalen Duren. And then Isaiah Stewart backing him up. I mean, that's nine guys taking up all your minutes.

And it's past that. You've got, you know, your depth of Fontecio and Sasser, though, I think the person should go out and find another, you know, just a halfway qualified third string point guard because Sasser is just not one. It's not a point. you know, he's an undersized shooting specialist, basically an undersized shooting guard, so to speak. And you sign up third string center, and that basically rounds things out for you. So at that point, can you really even do much in free agency? I've seen questions about trading away Fontechio for an upgrade. Fontecchio is negative salary at this point.

So you're unlikely to be able to get a meaningful upgrade. You know, if you attach a few second-round draft picks, like, sure, maybe. but at that point I mean that guy's not going to play a lot except in case of injuries I've seen a lot of questions about backup power forward it's like again in what I consider the highly likely event that Beasley is back and Schroeder is back where those minutes coming from it's like yeah you don't have any you know particular backup you know or power forward sized players elsewhere in the in the forward core that would be a SAR and Ron Holland both of whom are you know by NBA parlance you know

not in shoes and round up. You know, Assar's 6-6 and Ron Holland's 6-7. Asar hopefully can, you know, put on some more. They get a little bit, to continue to get beef year during the summer, and Ron Holland certainly needs to. They'll still be kind of sub-power-forward-sized players, but power-forwards don't necessarily need to be big in today's league. It's nice if they are.

But, you know, especially if a player is athletic and pretty strong, you can get away with having a guy play who's somewhat undersized, play power-forward minutes, I think you could see that with Holland and with Thompson. Again, it's like a matter of this is not like 2K. These players actually want to play minutes, and the Pistons are going to want to get minutes to ASAR and minutes to Holland.

And of course, Tobias will, you know, barring the unlikely event that he's traded, you know, in a larger deal. So just in this scenario, he's going to get significant minutes. You're not going to really have a good player, or really a solid rotation player, who's going to say, okay, well, I'll just play if nobody's interested. Jordan. Other than that, maybe I'll play like eight, nine, ten minutes a game. Nobody wants to do that. So this just all comes back to it. I think you will see very much a run-it-back sort of situation.

You all know how I feel about Jalen Duren. And I'd like to just stipulate here. I do not dislike Jalen Duren anymore. I really disliked him last season and during the early stages of this season when the guy just wasn't trying. Now, I think that's inexcusable. And, you know, for a professional athlete who is either who is doing one of these two things, or certainly both of not working hard or not playing a team for his game, I'm going to have a certain amount of contempt for him. I'm sure this really bothers these players, you know, that joking, of course, that I feel that way, but that's how I feel. And Jalen Duren, I guess you can say in doing number one, he was also doing number two. He wasn't playing like a super selfish game for the most part, but the guy was just phoning it in

on defense, and he admitted to that. He admitted to it last offseason. He admitted to it in the middle of this season that he just had not been trying hard. But he changed that. He started actually putting in a lot of effort. You know, he put in, you know, nobody really works as hard as Isaiah Stewart, but I'd say Jalen Duren basically played with full effort on defense from like, I don't know, around one third of the season, the way through the season into, you know, through the end of the playoffs. So I don't dislike him anymore. It's like a player goes out and does his best and plays a team first game. It's like, all right, you know, cool, you're doing what you can.

A lot of times players just still won't be good enough, but that's just a matter of talent. You know, two guys can go out and put in the same amount of effort, you know, go out and put in full effort, and the guy who has more talent or who maybe also is just a better fit is going to perform better. But, you know, two guys, you know, in a vacuum with the same, you know, with the same work ethic. And one of them has more talent than this is what it is. in the NBA is a place with an incredibly high standard of talent, like punishingly high standard of talent. So don't dislike Duren.

I'm just very, very low on the possibility of him, you know, improving, taking the huge step he would need to take on defense at this point. And yeah, so if he's traded for an upgrade, cool. Like I said, if you can just trade him in modest draft stock, which is never going to happen because Danny Aange is, you know, keeps very high prices and never, never budgets. then, you know, for Walker Kessler, then I would do that. Yeah.

But, you know, barring that, I think Duren's likely to be back next season on, you know, on its current contract. I say current contract, because I suppose just a good way to end up the episode would be to talk about the possibility of extensions this summer. Extensions for Jaden Ivy and J.1 Duren. How the Rookie extension window works. It opens, I call rookie extension, because that's what the thing. they call it, you know, extensions for guys who are currently on the rookie deals.

So the window opens at the end of the NBA free agent moratorium on July 6th. The moratorium lasts from 6 p.m. Eastern on June 30th until I think it's noon eastern on the 6th of July. And that's basically a period where teams and players agree to free agent deals. But they're not officially signed until the moratorium ends. So if we remember, and my goodness, it's crazy to me, this was 10 years ago, DeAndre Jordan agreeing to a deal during the moratorium with the Mavericks in 2015, and then going back on it and resigning with the clippers instead. And that's where the meme came, you know, came from, you know, Mark Cuban driving around. I don't remember if it was Dallas or L.A. or whatever, you know, begging through text the, you know, the address to DeAndre Jordan's home or something. which of course was complete BS.

But that's where the meme comes from. So anyway, that's the moratorium. So the extension window begins at the end of the moratorium and ends at the end of the first day, excuse me, the last day before the first day of the regular season. So that's the time during which players can be extended. And I like to make the distinction between an extension and resigning. Extending means that you extended a player's contract

before he became a free agent. resigning means that the player hit free agency. And if Ivy and Duren do not extend this summer, then they will be restricted free agents next summer. Restricted means that, you know, provided that the Pistons extend what's called their qualifying offer, which whatever, I'll get, I've already gone over enough CBA stuff in this episode.

I feel like they become restricted free agents, and the Pistons will be able to match any offer sheet they sign with another team. So extensions this summer. We have two situations here in which I believe it will be a no. of my would spring for the other I would not. Probably pretty obvious to you, which is which. So Ivy, like I said, does not have a very extensive track record. It's actually a pretty minimal track record. He was really just starting to turn it on in this past season before he get injured. But the season before, you know, we all know what happened then. And so you take

that season plus his like 40% of this season that he played before his injury. And that's just really not enough to, he's not the kind of guy where it's like, man, this guy is just clearly going to put it together and let's just max him anyway. So I think if, if Ivy were to take an extension of the Pistonsport to offer one, excuse me, if the Pistons were going to offer an extension to Ivy, I think it would be modest by today's standards. Like, let's look back and remember that 13 years ago, Josh Smith's four-year, $64 million contract was the richest in the history of the Pistons. And, today that's, you know, he'd be making about 10% of the cap, what's going to be about $155 million cap. So just a reminder that it's always important to look at contracts in terms of

percentage of the salary cap versus flat amount of money, because percentage of the salary cap is the only thing, is the only relevant measure. So if I were the Pistons, I'd offer Ivy, like, if you want to offer him like four years, $100 million, that's a contract where it's like, if he performs at this past season's level, then he's somewhat over. overpaid, but not terribly so. And if he improves significantly, I mean, that could be an absolute value contract, you know, even by like year two. Remember, year two would be in, that would be three seasons from now, still get one year left. So it could provide some complications in terms of extending him at the end of that, you know, the end of that contract, if like if he does super

well and he merits a max extension, because you can only give, like, it can only first year of goodness, is where, again, the CBA gets so complicated. You know, on an extension, you can only give a player in this first year of his new contract, 140% of his salary from the final year of his deal. That's why, for example, the Grizzlies are clearing space this summer, or have cleared cap space so they can do what's called to renegotiate and extend, which is that they're just going to increase the salary for Jaron Jackson. They're going to increase his salary by using a renegotiate for the final year using

cap space and then they will be able to extend him at a significantly higher rate than they would otherwise because jaron jackson junior is on a very very good contract right now but where the grisley's are concerned but that became a complication but anyway i would not be considered i would not be thinking about that with ivy i would just you know if you can lock him into a good deal then do that uh my guess is he would choose to bet on himself because while of course a hundred million dollars you know minus whatever taxes there are is and you know that's generational wealth obviously you know, from the perspective, an NBA player, I mean, you can make significantly more. So, yeah, it just comes down to whether or not Ivy would want to bet on himself.

I feel pretty certain that Langdon and Company would offer him at least, like, again, this is all speculation, but speculation based on just the financial environment in the NBA right now and where Ivy currently stands. You know, offer him like three years and, you know, three years at a total of $75 million. Because, you know, again, $155 million cap this season. It's virtually guaranteed to go up the maximum 10% year over year because the new TV deal. So $25 million per year for like a good rotation, you know, even for like just the solid starter is not like a tremendous amount of money these days by NBA terms. In any case, we'll just depend on how much Ivy wants to better himself. But right now, like his value for an extension, it can't really demand, you know, it's not like a player who can say, well, I want to be extended at a high amount of money because he just doesn't have the track record. I mean, there are, you know, and I'll say this for both Ivy and Duren.

Yeah, there are situations where it's like, where players will get offended in a connection with the relationship where it's like, well, you won't offer me a max extension. These will not be two of those because it's like two players, Ivy and Duren, who can't really look at their track records. You know, they could still do it, but it seems unlikely. And say, well, I deserve a max extension and it's going to, you know, it's going to hurt our relationship if you don't give it to me or I want big money and it's going to hurt our relationship you can't give it if you won't give it to me. If either of them do that, then it's kind of a problem

because neither of them have done anything to merit it. When you come to Duren, yeah, a guy who is like Ivy, a solid rookie, if at a less important position, given that he's a traditional big, who made a lot of progress in the year or two on offense and, you know, made a certain amount of progress there this season as well, though he remains, again, a traditional big, so with an inherently fairly low offensive ceiling. But also, completely phoned in on defense in year two. Fonded in on defense in the first quarter or so of this season, quarter to one-third. And just defense remains very, so that's just to say that he doesn't really have a positive NBA track record at this point. It's also just because defense,

which is like two-thirds of his job as a traditional center, it's an area in which he remains very, very weak. And though I would take the chance on Ivy, because it's like, I made a ton of progress with the shooting, still and insanely athletic guard, who I think will be very good at attacking the rim. And it's made quite a bit of progress on defense. He was more just this season kind of like in the realm of average defender, which was huge progress for him. His potential to contribute is significantly higher than Duren's is in general. You know, again, traditional bigs. But, you know, that's a more extended discussion.

it's just that so much of Duren's value is inevitably, unless he makes a spectacular, like, never seen before a sort of offensive leap. I mean, he's going to remain a traditional big, and so much of his values found in defense, and it's just very rare at this, you know, after three seasons for a player who is this painfully, whatever, I won't get into, I wouldn't even call that histrionics, but who was just this very, very bad in terms of reading, making all the splits

all the splits second reads and reactions that a primary interior defender needs to make in order to play decent defense and like it's he's far far away from that

in the leap that he would need and again the Pistons don't need him to become decent of defense they need to become at the very least solid on defense because again that's where a traditional big needs to find a ton of his value I know that Duren is super athletic I know that he's really a lot of threat

I know he's a strong finisher he is nonetheless very, very limited on, he's substantially limited on offense, but the fact that he's traditional big versus bigs who can actually shoot and create offense for themselves. Traditional bigs have really gotten, I thought that they were going to go extinct in the late 2010s because the trim was just so much towards shooting centers and just having a center who can shoot is really, really nice. You know, center who can shoot, center who can create is very, very helpful. Traditional bigs didn't go extinct, but they got squeezed down to a group of guys who, are pretty much all good defenders aside from guys who play for bad teams.

Or if you want to say, you know, Clint Capella, for example, it was just solid, you know, not good, just solid and played for a playing team. So it's just, it's essential that Duren be at the very least a solid defender and he would need to make significant progress even further past where he has already is on offense in order for just solid to be okay for him to be the starting center on a, not a potential contender. And the switch defense, which was okay as a rookie, is now lateral mobility is just gone. And that alone might be enough to dead end his value to, excuse me, dead end his road to NBA value because he can't switch as a center. Coach has always got to protect you and drop and you lose a lot of potential defensive contribution that way.

It was acceptable 10 years ago, maybe even like six or seven years ago. It is not acceptable anymore. You can't just protect guys and drop. You'll lose a lot. You saw what happened in the postseason with Stewart and with Reed on the floor. The pistons were suddenly able to defend Brunson and switch in the pick and roll or even blitz him, as Paul Reed's very good at that. And with Duren, hardcore drop gave Brunson a lot more flexibility. It gives a lot more flexibility in the pick and roll to anybody. So I don't believe in Duren enough to give him an extension this summer. And you can say, oh, well, it's only $20 million. But $20 million for a player who provides far less value than he needs. do is still a bad contract in today's league. And you can say, oh, well, you can just, you know, dump it to somebody. The existence of the second apron has made, you know, it's just created more implications for having higher salaries. You know, even the, what I believe, sorry, I'm kind of spacing right now where the, you know, the strengthening of the restrictions, even in the first apron, it's basically that teams are more hesitant than ever to, it's more damaging than ever to have

bad salary, teams are more hesitant than ever to accept bad salary. And these days it's going to, you know, if you're trying to trade a player, who's a bad $20 million contract, $20 million contract, you're going to need to add a fair amount more on top to compensate for that. And so would I just say, oh, Duren just take sure $80 million over four years and we'll just deal with that? It's like, no, because if he doesn't make, at the very least a very significant amount of progress, then he's on defense, then he's a substantial negative. So, But, yeah, so basically what it comes down to, yeah, Ivy on an, and I have a team-friendly contract, sure. Duren waiting until next season, I wouldn't be surprised if Trajan really entertained any possibilities of, you know,

really looked over the possibilities, putting that in the same way, of replacing Duren, because at this point, that degree of improvement that he would need to make in terms of his defensive processing would be just unprecedented. And then, again, the switch defense. If nothing presents itself, I think that they just hope against hope going to next season and take it from there. So, won't be surprised if he's on the team next season would be floored if he got a significant extension, however, because he's just not there. You know, you take Jalen Duren today. Absolutely cannot start for a contender.

It was bad in the postseason on defense and was bad throughout the, even after his level of effort, you know, reached pretty good levels, was still bad against good teams on defense. decent enough against bad teams, but you can't have your starting center if you want to win in the playoffs, be a guy who just goes out there and stomps bad teams, struggles against decent teams, and as bad against good teams, can't do that. That said, I'm going to make an effort to talk a lot less about Jayland during this summer because I'm kind of tired of talking about him. Excuse me tired of talking about him.

And I wouldn't blame me if you're tired of listening to me talk about him. So I imagine that will be one of my final words on him for now. I'll hope he improves if he's on the team next season. and there's not really much more to, you know, think about there outside of just talking about potential roster building scenarios, trades, et cetera. Though I rarely talk about trades too because you just never know who's going to be available and for what price. That does remind me, I have seen a certain amount of talk about, oh, she's the piss and straight for Janus, she's a piss and trade for Zion. I was planning on addressing that in this episode, but I'm at about an hour already. So I'm not going to leave that for another time.

In any case, as always, folks, thank you for listening. Hope you're all doing great. I'll catch you in next week's episode.