Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 233: Draft Recap + More

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

This episode recaps the Pistons' quiet participation in the draft, discusses transactions around the league, laughs at Troy Weaver, and more.

Welcome back, everybody. You are listening to another episode of Drive Into the Basket. I'm Mike, and I hope this episode finds you very, very well. I believe this would be my first Saturday episode in a while, assuming I actually edited it and get it out on time. I'm recording this on Friday night. So about 24 hours after the Pistons, obviously, most boring draft in quite some time, since 2018, which is the last time the Pistons had only second round picks. That was when they drafted Kyrie Thomas. and Bruce Brown. So I got to say, I mean, I definitely wouldn't trade a playoff experience for getting to watch the Pistons have an interesting draft. Of course, it was a shame that Troy Weaver, who, man, went on to have an absolutely hilarious draft, traded away the Pistons pick. But, you know, that is what it is. Obviously, I'm not going to complain about having Isaiah Stewart, my favorite player

on the team, you know, really without reservation as much as I like Cade, which is quite a bit. of course if you've been listening to the show for a while you know i have a very high opinion of kate but yeah isaiah stewart's got to be my favorite in any case i digress so obviously nothing in the first round trade of mind and said that the cost of trading into the first was going to be prohibitive and that is what it is uh opted not to trade up in the second round and ultimately took chas lanier at number 37 so just talked very briefly about chas lanier honestly i mean i did virtually no draft research this season. And if I had, I would not have gotten this deep into the second round. So what I know about Lanier is from some brief video and draft analysis that I have read. Well, I put it this way. If I'm

doing draft research, I will, what I've done in the past, I will research guys who are going to be in the Pistons range. Never get into the second round. I just rely on San Bacini for that. So honestly, you're best off, probably just reading his stuff. He's, in my opinion, you know, the best draft analyst out there. He writes for the athletic. Also co-hosts game theory with Motor City Hoops, Bryce Simon. In any case, yeah, so your brief summary there, based largely on somebody else's research. Obviously, a very good shooter, a very good shooter, including off of motion three's pretty solid on pull-ups as well in the NCAA. And, you know, a decent athlete. Not great, but decent. The trouble, you know, in a second round pick. I'm not poo-pooing this. In the second round,

going to get a flawed player, a vast majority of the time, unless it's an exceptionally deep draft. So, yeah, the question is everywhere else. Like I like to harp upon, the skill floor in the NBA is higher every year. It's astronomically high. It's immensely higher than it was 10 years ago. And so it's not just about if you're good enough. It's also, you know, what's the opportunity cost? Does it make sense to give minutes to a certain player versus,

giving those minutes to somebody else. It is very, very difficult to stick in the NBA as kind of like a low to mid-level role player because there are like hundreds of people trying to steal your job. And of course, the environment is ruthless. If you drop below the necessary threshold, I mean, you're going to be replaced. I mean, that's how it is. These are organizations that are out there to win. And if you're not measuring up, you know, to that incredibly high skill floor, then you're gone. So all this is to say that you need to be able to do better than simply shooting these days. And like at a minimum, you need to, you know, as a shooting specialist, be able to attack closeouts,

make the right pass off of closeouts. I mean, of those, you know, attacking closeouts, excuse me, make the right pass off of those drives and ideally be able to get to the rim off of those drives. So, you know, you have to have the proper athleticism, the proper touch. the proper vision and passing ability. And then, of course, the defense, you know, unless you're just, you know, the better you are as a shooter, of course, the less good your defense has to be.

But as a shooting specialist, you generally want to be at least decent size, of course, is always a very important factor as well. So when it comes to Lanier, yeah, he's only about 6'4. It has a 6'9 wing span, which is a little bit less impressive than it sounds like Marcus Sasser or a 6'7. But it means he can play at least a little bit bigger. like he's not short-armed. Kind of standard decent athletes was decent enough on defense in the NCAA,

which means that decent in the NBA in the NCAA means you're going to be a little bit worse than that in the NBA, particularly if you're a 24-year-old player, which he is. He played five years in the NCAA. So the passing is kind of a question mark. He's not really likely to ever beat anybody off the dribble. He's likely to do the vast majority of his work on assisted offense. Maybe if you pull-up threes, you know, here and there. It's going to be harder to get those off in the NBA.

because, of course, the defenders are larger and they are better. So the questions here, can he play decent defense? Can he attack closeouts? Like, if he can't get to the rim, does he at least have a decent mid-range game? Now, that's tough. It's a middle-up, you know, is a mid-range pull-up shooter. I kind of mash those words together. So, yeah, I mean, on paper, it's like, well, if you can play sort of decent defense

and he's an elite shooter, then he'll probably make it. That's not really the reality in the NBA these days. You have to have a lot of skills. So let's see if he makes it. He's a second round pick. Never really, in my opinion, there's not really any space for disappointments if like the 37th pick doesn't work out, as the odds, of course, are against you in terms of getting a role player even at that level. So obviously hope he works out. Do I think he has necessarily any roster implications for next season? No. It seems like he'll get a standard NBA contract instead of a two-way deal. So cool. It's the second round, so the Pistons can structure it however they want, as long as it's a above the minimum salary, of course, or at or above the minimum salary. So typically in this situation, I imagine you see him get first year guaranteed and second year non-guaranteed and, you know, pretty much the rest, the salary non-guaranteed is the way you want to do with a player like this. So I think they will, there's the, well, they're going to,

if they operate above the cap, they're going to use the second round exception on him, which means they can sign him for, I think it's up to four years. I don't know if it's a mandatory four years. And, yeah, sorry, I really should have brushed up on that first. But basically, you get one of these guys on a long-term, you know, in a four-year deal that's largely non-guaranteed after the first year. There might need to be two years. I'm sorry. In any case, the idea here is that you just get guys in a cheap contract and you can part ways, you know, part-way through the contract if they're not doing well. And if they are doing well, then it's a bargain.

Now, yeah, does he have any implications? You're not going in with a guy like, you know, again, I'm not poo-pooing the guy. It's just, again, the standard of talent in the NBA is just astronomically high. So you're not going into next season thinking he's necessarily going to be a factor because he's got a lot to prove as far as, you know, is he ready for the NBA? Can he play at an NBA level? As I also like to Harvanov Schroeder and Beaselier back, you know, you've got a nine-man rotation.

You find some depth there. You're unlikely to rely on him for depth. And I think he's likely, unless he really surprises, is going to play most, if not all, of next season with the crews. So, yeah, I get that, I mean, he's really the only, you know, the only object of interest after this draft of the Pistons, being that they only had a second round pick and only one of them. So I wish him well, obviously, and we'll see what happens. But is it like, oh, we have Chas Lanier, so it has some implication for Tim Hardaway returning? No.

I mean, Tim Hardaway Jr., sorry, for Tim Hardaway Jr. returning. Tim Hardaway, Sr., obviously his career is over, but he still exists. Tim Hardaway Jr. is probably at this point, even well into decline in his mid-30s. I think you put the two of them on the court. He's definitively the better player. That said, I don't think the Pistons have any space for him in the rotation. So I expect he'll be outbound unless he feels like taking a cheap contract to be 10th man, just play depth and not get many minutes. because again, if the two primary free agents are back, you know, you look at where you are with guards and small forwards, you know, Cade, Ivy, Beasley, Schroeder, and then you've got Bron Holland.

And, I mean, you'd see either Cade or Beasley play up the small forward a little bit, you know, maybe 10 minutes a game in that situation. And then you've got, you know, you want Ron Holland and I sorry to get plenty of minutes. So there's just no space there. And I'll harp on this one last time, you know, just because of the multitude. I'll actually address, you know, I've got a whole potpourri of topics to talk about today, the notion of, let's say, Santiago, who I think's being a little bit overrated. Yeah, he is a big who, well, it's not really very operative for this team that he can play, you know, some minutes at center, not right now anyway.

He's never going to be an ideal starting center. I don't think he'll ever be an ideal starting power forward. Yeah, he can shoot and he's smart. You can attack close-outs. he does well in transition. He's also kind of like a best defender also as a shooter, though he did shoot, I believe, 38% this season. The guy was a model of inconsistency. It was actually really something. He literally alternated between good and bad with each passing month. One month would be good, some months very good, and the next month would be bad, some of them very bad. So the guy's a

very limited track record, even as a shooter. But again, if you want to keep shorter, and I think that's essential that, you know, whoever it is, if it's shorter or somebody else, that you have to have that backup handler who can lead an offense, both for injury situations and just for when K's not off the floor, so the offense doesn't take a huge dump. I'll reiterate that Ivy has never really played lead handler, and he's at his best playing off of a lead handler. So, and also you stagger him. In the same thing, you have 1.5 lead handlers, and one of them goes down, and now you have either 0.5 or just one, and we get what happened last season. I don't think you stock any team with forwards, and, you know, without having a lot of.

enough guys who can initiate an offense and break down defenses. And I don't think you go in the next season, also banking on Asar being able to do that because maybe he can, but he's got a ways to go as a handler before he's really going to be reliable there. And even then, you know, some teams are going to play him as non-shooters. And he really struggled. Granted, he wasn't doing a lot of handling, but, I mean, he really struggled overall against good defenses, something like 48 percent, effective field goal percentage defenses

that are good enough, have the personnel and the coaching. to play him to his weaknesses and not being able to shoot. It's a big weakness, but who knows, maybe he'll be able to shoot next season. Whatever, my point is that you're not banking on that. We saw what happened when Sasser was forced into that role. Ivy wasn't so great at it either. But, I mean, Ivy wasn't, J.B. was weird early in the season. His offense didn't, he didn't really come together with his offensive scheme

until, you know, right around when Ivy got injured. And he never really trusted Ivy as the lead handler. but we know that it's just not, I feel like we know at this point that it's not Ivy's role. He's not really, you know, that sort of, you know, have to be a floor general type, but, you know, lead initiator. He's mostly just a drive-and-kick guy, which may sound like enough, but, you know, being a lead playmaker is just really not an ideal role for him, given his skill set, which isn't a knock on him. Most guys are not ideal weed handlers, including plenty of shooting guards, you know, plenty of good shooting guards. So let's say you, you keep short.

He keep Beasley. Beasley seems overwhelmingly likely because, I mean, the team wants him back. He clearly wants to be back. And so guys like Beasley, like Schroeder, like El Dama, like Bobby Portis, I've heard brought up, these are guys who are accustomed to a certain size role in a certain number of minutes for all of them pretty much, you know, like 25-ish plus minutes. These guys want to play. And you're not going to, you know, if you tell them, well, we'd like to have you back or we'd like to have you on a team, but we're going to be hardcore slashing your minutes and slashing your role. That's a very bad sales pitch. They can just go someplace else and get comparable money and have a much larger role. So let's say Kate is getting 34 minutes. You want mid-20s for Schroeder. You want to sell it 30 for Ivy. You know, you want mid-20s for Beasley. You're playing one of those guys, you know, 10, 12 minutes,

whatever, it's small forward. And then, you know, you're getting Tobias. You call it 30 minutes at power forward. So you got those 96 minutes, let's say, you know, 12 plus 30, you know, 42. And then you've got, you know, another 54 minutes between small forward and power forward. And you probably want to split those minutes between Asar and Ron Holland. Yeah, is it ideal that the pistons will not really have like a, you know, big power forward sized guy? It's not ideal, no. Though, you know, I think Ron, if he balks up, will be fine. Asar, if he continues to bulk up a little bit, will be fine. The athleticism, you know, will help. And the fact that they're both very, you know,

Saar's already very strong. I think Ron will be two if he balks up a bit will help. And a lot of power forwards in today's league or 6-8, some of them even shorter. And Ron's about 6-8 against SARS about 6-7. Both of them run 7 feet wingspan. But the thing is, I mean, as Trajan Langdon underlines, and I'm not saying, you know,

yay, look, this is what I advocated. And the GM, you know, and the president of basketball operations agrees with me. You know, that's whatever. but, you know, as he came out and said, yeah, we're just really looking to, you know, develop our young players, you know, run it back with the veterans and develop our young players. I don't think the veterans, again, will include Tim Hardaway, Jr. But I digress. It's not going to be perfect.

I mean, there's still going to be a significant, you know, very significant focus upon development. I mean, there are still so many unknowns with this team in terms of what the youth can be. and you know, you see more, you say, okay, well, maybe it really makes a lot of sense to keep in home grow these guys or, you know, maybe not, maybe we consider them expendable by trade, but hopefully they've increased their trade value quite a bit. My point is, you know, if they bring back Schroeder, they bring back Beasley, they're not taking minutes away from those guys, they're not taking a significant number of minutes away from Tobias, even if they did. I mean, it's like not enough to, you know,

know, fit in another significant acquisition. Obviously, they're not taking minutes away from the youth and, you know, the centers of the centers. You know, I've said plenty about Jalen Duren. I feel fairly confident that he'll be on the roster next season, I think. The fact that the front office has been shopping around a bit for guys who can shoot is a bit telling. I mean, you've, it doesn't matter. I mean, I'll just, again, you know that I find it immensely unlikely that it'll get an extension this season, just given how disfavored traditional bigs are,

and the fact that literally everyone who's being paid is a blessed offender, and Dern has a long way to go in that respect. Anyway, all I'll say. I should probably not talk about Dern again on this podcast for the rest of the summer, because you guys have heard it all already. But, you know, I don't think you're going to steal minutes from Isaiah Stewart. I don't think you're going to run, you know, split those three ways. so you just don't have the minutes.

You're not going to take them away from the veterans who expect them. You're not going to take them away from the youth who need them to develop. And, you know, Isaiah Stewart, of course, doesn't really fall into the youth category quite as much anymore, but you want Isaiah to get his minutes, especially if he's shooting. But in general, I mean, I doubt I need to, I'm just going to say, I doubt I need to justify it. I should probably remember that not everybody feels necessarily about Stewart like I do.

But, you know, I think he's a real important player. as a tone-setter as an elite defender. And if he can shoot, which I dearly hope that J.B. has him shoot next season. We know he can do it. And if he can shoot, then he's a decent offensive player as well and even a good option in some cases. Like, I remember an example.

I think it was Bub Carrington. Cabe was attacking. And he was just able to just completely brutalize Carrington off the dribble. I mean, Carrington had no hope one-on-one. and, you know, J.B. had Stewart, like, helping the defense by being in the dunker spot. When Bailey, if you have Kate attacking one-on-one with four shooters around him, then, and I know I've said this before, whatever, I always find it whatever fitting to admit when I'm repeating myself. I don't know. Maybe people find it irritating. I wouldn't. I guess I wouldn't blame you for saying,

oh, man, Mike's talking about this again. All right, fair enough. But, yeah, just, just to very quickly reiterate. If you have Kate attacking one-on-one, and you have four shooters around him, then the rim protector needs to either let his teammate get scored on or go and help, and then you've got somebody open on the perimeter. Either that guy shoots or you're passing the ball around, and the defense is all out of sorts.

So it could be very valuable there. So, yeah, that's my long-winded way of saying that you're not going to attract somebody who is very accustomed to having significant minutes to come here to have his minutes slashed. and he can just go someplace else and get paid a comparable amount of money to have a bigger role. And, you know, that would include, of course, the likes of Portis who could just stay with Milwaukee and have his current role and or go someplace else for comparable minutes,

the money that the pistons could pay him in the case of, let's say, a sign-in trade. Yeah, or just stay with Milwaukee and hit the free agent market next summer when there will be teams with more cap space. Speaking of free agent signings, NASREED today, something that I think is important underlined, one of the free agency aspects of the new CBA, now you can begin negotiating with your free agents

the moment your season ends. It used to be that you had to, well, technically wait until free agency opened. Was that actually happening unlikely? But now you can openly do it. Now, what it means when a team, assuming it's a new contract and not an extension. You can only extend a guy until the end of the regular season, I believe anyway.

Though for rookies, it's only in the offseason. Can you extend a guy? Sorry, I'm just confusing myself here. It doesn't matter in the case of Nasreed, who is signing a new contract. So five years, $125 million. In any case, what it means when you agree to a contract is that contracts cannot be made official until the end of the free agent moratorium, which I believe is on the sixth. Then, you know, up until then you can only agree to contracts in practice.

It is extremely rare for a player to agree to a contract and then back out from it. The last time was, I'm quite sure, DeAndre Jordan in 2015, you know, which spawned the whole, you know, meme from Chris Broussard. Of course, this is untrue about Mark Cuban driving around the streets of, I remember was LA or Dallas begging through text for the address to DeAndre Jordan. his home. But yeah, DeAndre Jordan did go back on his agreement with them. And he ended up on the Mavericks later anyway, which is kind of funny, though he was completely washed by that point. So, yeah, Reed, I mean, he was never a realistic option for the Pistons anyway between their

inability to really make a competitive offer. And the timber will is really not being in any position to lose him, I imagine would have beaten any offer anyway, which they could easily do with full bird rides on him. And yeah, so it was never really realistic option unless like the Timberwolves were to horrendously lowball him. And I think it's worth noting and just highlighting that the only thing that matters of a player's salary is the amount against the cap. So what percentage of the cap it is. And with Reed, you know, if his contract is the standard ascending 8% year over year raise, he'll be between 21 and 22 million. If my, my, very brief math is correct, which is like, he'll be at like less than 14% of the cap in year one.

And because salaries can only rise 8% flat year over year and the cap is going to rise for the foreseeable future, 10% compounded year over year, his salary will actually go down as a percentage of the cap with each successive year. So 14% of the cap for like your fifth most important player and Nasreides a solid player is, you know, it's pretty good contract. in his five years, yeah, of course any player can progress, but assuming he does not. He's only going to be 31 on his contract ends. He's going to be in his physical prime the whole time. And, yeah, like athletic bigs will tend to decline by age 30, but he's not an athletic big. He doesn't depend upon his athleticism.

Well, he's not, yeah, the archetype I'm talking about athletic big. So pretty solid, I think. You know, I know that there's been some smoke about the Pistons going after Miles Turner. again, their ability, you know, it would be very impracticable for them to even really make a realistic offer. In no small part, I mean, sure, you could like trade Tobias that you're just opening a new hole by doing that. But, I mean, the Pacers have every incentive to hold on to them. Yeah, they're going to take a dip next year because of Tyrese Halliburton being out. I can't remember if I talked about that in the last episode.

I don't think I did. But, I mean, that Powell Britton will be back. I think he's going to be the kind of guy on the low end of the Achilles' tear impact spectrum, because he doesn't really rely very much in athleticism, not even on agility all that much. And he's only 25. The younger you are, the more likely you are to recover better, everyone loses something. But some lose more than others. Like, you look back at Brandon Jennings.

And, man, that was the first season I had really started watching the Pistons in earnest. And, yeah, anybody, I'm sure any of you who are watching back, then what a blow that was. Man, the guy, I mean, the pistons were on a spree. I mean, they were playing unsustainably well, and so was Jennings. So as a team and also him as an individual, he was playing, you know, well above his career baseline, and he was also very inconsistent. But still, I mean, that team was surging.

Jennings had really grown into a leader overnight and become very likable. And, yeah, man, that was just so sad to see. and that killed his career because margins are small in the NBA. You just lose some of your mobility. It can have a huge impact. He was a player who relied on agility. He lost a lot of that. And that was it.

I mean, in no small part because he also is just a generally low efficiency shooter who couldn't play defense, but the fact remains. But anyway, yeah, Turner, I mean, Halliburton will be back. Turner is well-loved in Indies, played his whole career there. They will be highly motivated to keep him. for the first time in a while. The Pacer's ownership is, they've openly said that they will pay the tax. I don't think he's going anywhere.

And I think not with, yeah, he did struggle in the finals, and yeah, he's not a good rebounder. Don't underestimate how much it adds to an offense to have five guys in the floor who can all shoot. That's a big deal. I mean, that is a very big deal offensively. And on defense, I mean, Turner is a solid defender. He is a plus defender. He's not elite, but he's certainly a plus defender.

And on offense, too, he can play the role. He's pretty athletic, at least when he gets up, you know, in the pick and roll, he's athletic, put it that way. And, yeah, he's a good player. And, you know, if you have to trade, you know, rebounding for the ability, you know, just become like a, you know, below average rebounder on a team that has a bunch of guys who can help you rebound, especially, like the rebounding by committee model, you know, generally works fine for the teams, you know, for the good teams that do it. but he's got Siakum next to him. I don't know. I haven't looked at their rebounding stats. But yeah, I mean, if you have to trade rebounding,

which often these days is not centered into one player and hasn't been in quite some time, if you have athletic bigs, you know, traditional bigs, that's, you know, yeah, sure, they're often going to do it. But there's not really a huge benefit anymore to centering your rebounding in one guy, especially because, you know, if you have a faster player who's not a center,

who's, if you're rebounding by committee, basically you might very well get out and transition better than a team that just has all of its rebounds, just really center. Most of it is defensive rebounds, at least centered into one guy. And offensive rebounding really isn't stressed anywhere near as much as it used to be. Teams are just fine. I mean, shooting a lot of threes and just fine to, you know, to get back and transition instead of crashing the boards. Of course, if you can have more offensive rebounding, great. But this is all to say that, you know, if you had to pick, between like an elite rebounder who can't shoot and like a very, very mediocre below average

rebounder who can't shoot, though I know Turner did badly in the finals, you pick the shooter in almost any situation. But it's a moot point for the Pistons because I think it's astronomically unlikely that they will end up with Turner. Just talk about Halliburton. Yeah, tragic to see that happen. It's, you know, just super likable guy. It's, you know, could have ended up on the Pistons. There's a, there's a future you look at where it's like, well, you know, obviously I think we should all be happy with Cade, but you look and say, well, if they drafted Halliburton ended up with Mobley, you know, you weigh those two things and which outcome is better, completely irrelevant. But yeah, that was definitely a Biff, you know, draft Biff.

Some other teams did the very same. But I feel like, you know, if you're going to play, I don't blame him for playing that game. You know, it's game seven of the finals. You go and you know you're taking a risk of further injury in the calf area, not necessarily an Achilles tear, which is the worst possible option. But obviously he wanted to play. No player is anywhere as likely. NBA player is likely to say, oh, I just don't feel like taking that risk in game seven of the finals.

You know, in a situation where, you know, my team could win the finals in game six where it's like, well, we're on the verge of elimination. I got to be out there. I want to win a title. I don't want to lock my teammates down. and the doctors, I feel like, sure, if it's like Blake Griffin in 2019, where it's like your knee is really bad and we're just not willing to let you out in the court, where it's a situation where there's a clear line from, well, this is what you're suffering from right now.

And if we let you out there, this specific problem could get far worse. We're just not, we're not prepared to let you do that. Versus Terry Saliburton's situation where it's like there is kind of like a nebulous risk of you possibly doing something else to your lower leg, you know, kind of may be happening. And we can't tell you how likely that is. I don't blame the doctors for letting him go out and do it. And, you know, for all that said about Blake playing injured in, well, there are a couple things with Blake. I mean, this is so far in the past. It feels amazing to me that this was six years ago now. But for all that was said about, you know, him sacrificing his body, the doctors

did not let him out there in the first two games because they didn't think it was safe. And his body was already completely busted by then, like his knees. Yeah. I mean, he did not need to go out and have another knee surgery just because of those two games. The guy had such bad knees. I mean, this was like his fourth or fifth knee surgery, if I remember correctly, and each one cost him athleticism. It got worse with more knee injuries. And after that one, he came back terrible,

had to go and get another knee surgery. And after that, I mean, his athleticism was so gone that he was no longer capable of being better than like a very complimentary role player. So that wasn't the case with Halliburton. As for the Thunder, you know, congratulations to them. Sam Bresti built a great team. He's got a ton of draft assets to work with to the point where they had to tradeaway pick number 24.

If I remember correctly, it was 24 for a one to 16 protected Spurs pick and I think 2027 because they just don't have any roster space. And if you're on a first round pick, you're on a guaranteed deal. So you can only have 15 guys by the time the regular season begins. And, you know, they just don't have space. So a bright future for that team. I will say, though, Rick Carlisle completely out-coached Mark Daniel. Daniel basically became like a glorified version of Dwayne Casey in terms of I'm going to give the ball to Shea or to Jalen Williams.

And I'm going to ask them to create offense, which is what Casey defaulted to with Lowry and DeRosen, which very rarely worked out well. So I think that if Daniel had done better, and he was a very good regular season coach who just, he just fell back into the iso ball game and just failed to make adjustments. I feel like O'KC was definitively the better team in terms of talent, and that if he had coached, you know, even reasonably well, this series probably would end it in five games. I doubt they would have struggled that much against the Nuggets either. But it didn't happen.

Carlisle is an excellent offensive coach. I think in any case, he was going to do better than Danio. He just ended up doing a lot better. So Pacer is very likely to take a dip. next season. That brings me on to my next point, and this is somewhat less relevant now that Trachael Langdon came out and said, well, we're committed to building sustainably. But like on the subject of, well, you know, Milwaukee's going to be worse, and Boston is going to be worse, and Indiana is going to be worse. Like let's just go out and make a big deal right now so we can

compete this season. Like I've been saying, yeah, and like, did Langdon put it, I can't remember if he'd put it in these words. But yeah, build sustainably. Like, sustainably build a contender. Don't just go all in because you might have this one-year window. And you're probably going to get, if you get to the finals, because enough teams are injured and you still have to make it through some decent teams. Or in Cleveland's case, you know, good, you know, quite a good team, assuming they're healthy. And who knows, maybe it could be even better next season if they trade Garland, though his injury probably makes that less likely. I didn't think so at first. But, you know, unless it's a team that's like, okay, well, we're fine with.

him not being in game shape until like December. Maybe there are teams like that out there. Then, yeah, who knows? But it's like, okay, if you manage to get through them, because then you get to play a team from the West, which is probably significantly better than you are, because you're only like a contender by the standards of the East. And you can say, sure, then you go and hope for injuries.

And it's like, I just don't consider that a viable strategy. It's just me. And also, like I said, there's so many unknowns about this team. A lot of things went well last season. And, you know, probably the cost to bring in, you know, a player who's really going to help you make the leap. And we're talking to somebody who can really create offense, not like the Markanins of the world. Markinen is a very off ball player, ideally suited as your number three option. Same thing with Trey Murphy at this point. Trey Murphy, I believe, his actual good player. without a doubt, not a great contract. But his actual kind of acuity as a player, I believe, is significantly overblown by the wider NBA world. The guy is primarily an offball player. There's more than 75% of his shots of his made field goals, excuse me, were assisted this season,

and can create some offense and did make some strides, but he's not really a guy who's going to take the ball on a consistent basis and just score with it or create an opportunity for somebody else. Also, he's got the reputation of being like a strong 3-and-D guy, and that's also not accurate. He's more of just kind of like a maybe slightly above average defender. He is not the like really strong defender. I've seen him in some quarters of not referring to anybody in particular.

Just kind of like colloquially. Yeah, he's not that strong defender at this stage of his career. Also some concerns about his health, but that's a different story. So to go out and find a guy who's really going to help you take the next step, unless you're, you know, unless you're thinking, okay, we'll go out and get somebody like that number three option, like a Markanin, you know, or if it's practicable, like a guy like Trey Murphy, though. Again, with Markan, you have to deal with not one but two Aanges now because Danny Aange's son, Austin Aange is now present of basketball operations over there. You know, who knows how much that would cost. And it's like, well, you better keep Ivy and hope that he develops into that number two guy, like a reliable creator, like Borderline Elite at least, who's going to give you.

you like 20 plus points per game. And I think there's a decent shot of that happening. Of course, you have to get that guy without them asking for Jaden Ivy. I think it's just so much better for the Pistons to build sustainably so that they can be a contender for many years to come. Again, to really be a contender, you need to have that elite talent. You also need to have a good supporting cast. Unlikely, you'll have anything anywhere near as deep of a supporting cast as the Pacers

or the Thunder. This ties back to, you know, my talk about, you know, it would be tough to, you know, have like a solid 10-man rotation in Detroit. Yeah, sure, you can point at the thunder. You can point at the Pacers and say they play deep. They play deep because they can. They can because they have a ton of drafted talent on your team, and you don't have to attract those guys to come play for you.

They're already on your team. It's not like you're having to draw them to come play for you in free agency. They're also very cheap, though the Pacers just have a lot of very affordable contracts in general. But it's very different from having that talent on your team already because you drafted them versus saying, well, you're a good player, come here and play like 10 to 15 minutes. So, yeah, it's sustainable building. Like, we don't really know what we have in so many of these young players.

So, yeah, we'll see. Moving on. Oh, and yeah, the Pistons could make a trade and some things go wrong and they get bounced in the second round, even the first round. Who knows? And then you're left with, well, we didn't, you know, make the decision to build sustainably. And now we've set ourselves back and we didn't win a championship.

and I think the Pistons, even if they make a big move, unless a lot of things go right and they didn't have to sacrifice a lot of the supporting cast, probably still not going to win a championship. So I don't think that's a chance to take, like I said. So speaking of trades, Kevin Durant trade, Katie's still a great player at his age, still arguably the best all-round shooter of all time. I mean, Steph Curry, of course, the best three-point shooter,

but Katie, you know, one of the most unguarded players in general in the history of the league. You just got to hope he has a bad night because there's really no way of defending. him. So definitely makes Houston better. The Suns got completely obliterated. The trade was bad. The trade for KD. Excuse me, obviously did not pan out to any degree. The return they got was one playoff series win against an injury butchered. I don't remember which team. What a mess that organization is. So obviously, if he can stay healthy, really makes the Rockets a better team. Dylan Brooks is not much of a law. I don't even remember who else they sent over.

But, oh, yeah, Jalen Green, he of, well, Detroit's not going to, is going to regret, not drafting me, whatever. I mean, you give guys, you know, credit for believing in themselves, you know, having that sort of swagger. You, you know, you got to think you're, you know, one of the greatest to, you got to go in there with confidence in the NBA, of course. That said, he said some unpleasant and very unnecessary things about Detroit. So it makes perfect sense to dislike him for it. Yeah, it just has not been able to get it together. My opinion, you know, back in his draft year, his swing skill, in addition to just being an efficient score,

it was going to be his ability to parlay his gravity. Just make the right reads and passes. It was going to be the difference between him being able to take advantage of his gravity and him taking a bunch of bad shots and just not really contributing anywhere near as much to the offense. Has not gotten it together as a playmaker. As a score, he's inconsistent. As a defender, he's easily.

bullied. So, I mean, sure, the Sons now are just shooting guards and centers. Whatever, the Sons are the Sons. But the Rockets got quite a bit better. I mean, they still have the wrinkle of having two non-shooters in Shangoon and A-Men in the starting lineup. You know, that will be a wrinkle in, you know, in the postseason, always, unless you've got like two superstar creators like Brooklyn did, for example. The three of them never really hardened Durant and Kyrie. That team would have been unstoppable if those three guys had played together. But they never really did, not in the postseason, or in the postseason, but rarely. So, you know, that's always going to be a consideration. Schengun's passing kind of helps to mitigate it a little bit. But whatever the case,

they became a better team. No doubt about that. Kevin Durand is one of the ultimate plug-in-play players in probably NBA history. You can put him on any team, and he's going to be a good fit. So just wanted to touch upon that, I suppose. And, yeah, I suppose I'll end this episode by pointing fun at Joe Dumars and in particular Troy Weaver. You all know how I feel about Dumars. Of course, the guy is given an enormous amount of the Pistons organization between, you know, just how important he was to the Bad Boys championship teams. He was finals MVP in one of those years. And yeah, he did build the championship team, you know, the going to work core, you know, and the team that won the 2004 championship. And that was a great team. And that core gave the Pistons

a lot, you know, Pistons fans a lot of happy times. I think it was a little weird that the Pelicans hired him because realistically with the Pistons, he had like three good off seasons, excuse me, yeah, three good off seasons, like 2000, 2001, and 2002. I'm not going to call 2003 good off season because he committed one of the greatest draft clubs of all time, you know, taking the one guy in the top five who was not only not a whole famer, but, you know, sort of a bust. You know, and kind of four good seasons, obviously in 2000.

he completed the going to work core by trading for Rashid Wallace. So you can't, I mean, you can't minimize the fact he did build that team. The trouble is that after that, I feel like he, you know, when he was asked to pivot a little bit, first to keep the team stocked with adequate depth, you know, for the rest of the, you know, the Corps time, you couldn't do that. I mean, the Pistons never had more than one guy off the bench. Well, maybe sort of in 2007, or 2008, excuse me. Stuckey was there, like McDice, other than that, was the only guy, and he was really kind of

long in the tooth by the time Stuckey came along. So he failed at that. He really let the team atrophy. You can say what you will about Ben Wallace, him letting Ben Wallace go. I think it's possible to Pistons win a championship in 2007 with Wallace instead of Weber down the middle. It's like good luck LeBron scoring however many points in the row you did with Ben Wallace down there. Of course, Wallace had just one more good season, and then he really took a dump. Ben Wallace Of course, one of the greatest defenders of all time. He relied on a trifecta of an incredible work ethic, tremendous athleticism, and just great defensive IQ.

And once that athleticism went, it all fell apart, which happens. You know, for one season, he was still a great defender, helped the Bulls become the number one defense in the league. And I think halfway through the next season, he was traded to Cleveland, who not long afterward dropped him to Phoenix and whatever. But, yeah, Dumars did not do well in those years. And then he correctly deduced that the window had closed for, you know, for the, you know, for the remaining core, the four of them who were left. But then he made an absolutely horrendous talent call by thinking that Rodney Stuckey was ready to take over for Chauncey, who was not only the leader of the team, really.

But as he was, but was still an all-M-Ba caliber player. Stucky who never really, you know, never got it together as a score and was never a point guard, was never able to be a lead initiator. So, yeah, he'd screwed that up, traded the wrong guy, really should trade it instead, as much as you like Rip. He's, yeah, I mean, Chaunty was a lot more valuable. And then, yeah, I know that he was handcuffed by Karen Davidson's desire to, I don't know if this is actually fact or fiction. But, you know, yeah, sorry, I realize I haven't verified this, but so I've just seen

it set, actually, which is not reliable. That Karen Davidson made him compete because, you know, rather than tank, because she wanted the valuation of the team to remain higher. Whatever the case, whatever the conditions, he did a terrible job of it and ended up just keeping the pistons unintentionally in the mid to low, excuse me, in the mid to low lottery while he was trying to win. And then he capped it off with that absolute disaster of a 2013 offseason where he traded away Middleton, brought in Jennings. So again, just was not a good player at that point. And for the most part, for the business, was not a good player. And signed Josh Smith to the biggest contract.

team history to play small forward. So I feel like, like I said, Dumas did a ton for this team. I feel like it's perfectly reasonable to say, yeah, he did. He was a very important player on two championship teams. He built another championship team as GM, while also acknowledging that after that championship, he declines to pretty poor and then into absolutely terrible. So I think it's, it's perfectly reasonable to acknowledge what the guy did and what he contributed and also to point at what he did not do well. You know, that's fine. It doesn't mean that he didn't do those good things.

It just, you know, in the context of judging his tenure as a GM and also in terms of judging his fittingness to, again, lead a team, you know, like more than 20 years after his last good offseason that he had with the Pistons, he guess, again, had like three of those. And then, like, you know, four, you know, 2004 or five, six, seven, very mediocre, you know, not good off-season where he just didn't give the team what it needed. And then from there was arguably the worst GM in the league for the rest of his tenure. Yeah, it's just like what qualifies him to take over in New Orleans. And I think he justifies those questions by then his first act,

you know, one of his first acts, at least if not his first act, is to hire a completely unhinged executive who just completely flopped with the pistons. I don't give Troy Weaver much credit even for his drafting. It's like Cabe was consensus. It was either Ivy or Mathron for the most part. And the jury remains out there. I mean, Matherin, it was a mixed bag in the finals, but he definitely played a role in a team that made it to the finals

and made it to Game 7 of the finals. We'll see with Ivy. I remain bullish. And then, Assar, again, I mean, sure, maybe you take Jaris Walker. I don't think that Taylor Jenkins was really a consideration because the ceiling, I don't think with the amount of talent you had than that team. I think you still just go with the player with a higher ceiling. Pissons were planning on stupidly, but planning on playing, or Weaver was. Isaiah Stewart of power

forward. Jarris Walker was going to be a guy who was going to come in and come off the bench. She just had a host of, you know, misgiving stew. The guy was just not a good score at the NCAA level. Was, you know, like a decent rim protector and helps that defense guy, but, you know, defense is really his calling card, yet he just wasn't really going to be able to switch on to NBA guards. very well. I think Asar was really the only realistic pick once Cam Whitmore, once the news of Cam Whitmore's medical concerns came out, which coupled with just his bad team interviews, caused him to plunge into, I think out of the lottery, if I remember correctly. So it's like, I'm not crediting for that. We'll see what happens with Duren. In his first draft, his first draft

was a disaster in terms of, you know, he blew two of the picks. One of them is, whatever, we know who that first pick was. We got some bits, you know, interesting or kind of funny to look back and say, well, James Wiseman was first in his draft board, and, you know, once he clearly wasn't going to have access to Wiseman, there was talk that he was trying to trade up so he could take Patrick Williams, who's been a complete bust, and then he went on to draft an actual bust and did so over a bunch of good players, and he missed out on some of these good players, either two or three times. as much as I love Isaiah Stewart, escaping the draft, you know, with three first-round picks

and some pretty darn good talent in there with nothing but a backup big, as much as I love Isaiah, again, is not good. I mean, looking back, that was pretty painful for the Pistons. And yeah, he ended up with Cade, but, yeah, he got the Pistons a 14% chance. If the Pistons had dropped to sixth from second, things probably be looking quite a bit different right now. So all this is, and then of course his team building strategy was comically broken. Like, oh, we drafted Cade. Well, time to absolutely not give him, you know, the roster he needs to even have like

anything approaching a functional offense. We're just going to actually trade away guys who are going to help doing that. We're not going to give him like the athletic big he needs. And we're just, we're just going to invest a lot in raw talent. We're going to get, you know, roster spots. And I'm also going to, you know, significant rotation roles. And I'm also going to have a zero percent. hit right on those. So again, all this goes back to, if you're Joe Dumars, why in the world

does this guy strike you as the right option to be your GM? And like, yeah, sure, some of this could be Dumars, what he did in the draft. It doesn't, if so, then it's just Dumars, who is behaving incompetently rather than Weaver. This looks an awful lot like Weaver. So his first draft pick fears is kind of like, well, we'll see. kind of probably got picked a little bit early. And sorry, I cannot remember the name of the guy he drafted at 13. But that, oh yeah, it was a center, of course. But they traded away, I mean, they traded it down with,

traded up with the Hawks. And they traded away a 2026 unprotected first round pick that is not only unprotected in a very deep draft, but, you know, a very strong draft, but is also the most favorable of two teams. One is the Pelicans who are playing in an extremely strong conference and don't have a good team by any means. And even doing anything in the realm of significance

is going to depend upon Zion Williamson, one of the least healthy players in the league being healthy. And even if they are better, you know, than we expect the other team in this most favorable equation is Milwaukee, who are going to be quite a bit worse without Damien Willard. I think that's a foregone conclusion. And let's say Janus misses time, or let's say, you know, who knows, maybe Portis and Lopez leave. You know, who knows?

But Milwaukee, I think, can be countered upon, especially with their coach who sucks, Doc Rivers, to be significantly worse next season because Dame was a big part of that equation. And so let's say Janus misses some time. Milwaukee could easily be a bad team too. So all it takes is one of those teams being bad for this trade to completely and utterly blow up in their face. and I'd say the likelihood is very high. This was a comically stupid trade, especially because it's not like you're trading up

to take a guy who's, who's, is a high likelihood of being a difference maker. So it just didn't make any sense. Like nothing they did in the draft made sense. So whatever. I mean, that was just my commentary on Dumars and Weaver. Yeah, I guess. I don't really have anything more to say about that.

In any case, so with that, that'll be the end of this episode. So as always, want to thank you all for listening. Hope you doing really great, and I'll catch you in the next episode.