Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 239: A Deep Dive into Week One

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

This episode goes in-depth on the first week of the Pistons' 2025-2026 campaign.

Welcome back, everybody. You are listening to Drive into the Baskets. My name is Mike, and I hope you're all doing great. First week of the season is in the books, and I think we got a fair amount to talk about already. So let's just launch right into it. So two-and-two start to the season, and hasn't really been too pretty so far. Now, I should preface everything that's going to come after this with the fact that it is four games. This is a very long season, and things may take some time to work. work out. Let's talk about a few factors just to keep in mind, you know, aside from the one that I already just went over. So two, I suppose. The first one just being, this is very early in the season, there will be some wrinkles to smooth out with the roster. Kate Cunningham's a slow starter and so on and so forth. I mentioned this, and I think whenever it, you know, expanded upon it quite a bit in the last episode. And honestly, I've probably repeated myself more times than you you would like to hear, but I'll go over it again. This team is going to have some foibles because this team was not built to win as many games as possible. This team was built to provide a

development environment and to give the youth a lot of minutes. And that means it may be even a tad bit less functional than last season's team because, I mean, Asara's going to have a lot more minutes. He missed the first section of last year. It took a while for him to ramp up. And I'm talking chiefly offensively here. I should stipulate that. So you had more veterans, you know, more veterans who could shoot just guys who were more functional on offense playing those minutes instead. Ron Hallam was not playing any minutes. Excuse me, not playing many minutes. It was clearly playing some minutes. Sorry, I should probably stop doing these episodes after like Pats Sleepless Nights, but, you know, we're here doing it. So let's stick with it. So Ron Hallam was not playing

nearly as many minutes. He's going to be playing quite a bit of minutes this year. And basically, you know, so on and so forth. Like just this, this was not a roster built to win as many games as he could. So the roster is going to have some rough edges. You just hope that they get smoothed out over the course of the season. Went into this one, not expecting that the Pistons were going to take a big leap in the wind-wallis column because that wasn't really the point. I mean, if the front office wanted to build a better team, they could have gone out and done that by way of trade, for example, but the entire point, you know, the primary point of the season, as the front office, specifically Trajan-Langin put in Word as well as, deed, must to see where.

the youth stand. It wasn't really going to make a ton of sense with, you know, the youth who are by far the most important variable in whether or not this rebuild will succeed. You know, to go into the season and make decisions, you know, whether that's trading them or not or just making decisions based on what they know right now, which is not necessarily a lot about most of them, you know, just long-term decisions. Can't really do that. It doesn't really make much sense, in my opinion. where you have these players who are the most important variable, and you're plotting strategy and or moving some of them at low value conceivably. Yeah, this was just how this season was going to go.

So, yeah, I'm not saying that the struggles we've seen so far are going to continue, just that this is not a matter of a team where it's like, man, we did our best to put together a winning roster and things have started out kind of disjointed. And this is a roster that's just inherently a little bit disjointed because of the players who are on it. It's the priority being put on them. So just something to keep in mind. I know there was a lot of excitement around the Pistons, getting back to the playoffs, you know, winning 44 games. And understandable that people want to, you know, that, well, I'll put it this way, it would be understandable if one would want to see more of that and to see the Pistons take an additional step for my part.

I think it was the right thing to do for the front office to focus on building sustainably rather than just taking an all-out dash toward winning, which I think is a good way to put a ceiling on your team. And I know that the idea with this organization, by all indications, is to build a contender. And that takes time. And I know we've been waiting a long time, but at the same time, I mean, do we want to be waiting that amount of time

just for the organization to decide to go for win now when that's not the right thing to do in terms of maximizing the chances of actually winning a championship. And if your answer to that is yes, I just want to see the team win more, then more power to you. I just disagree. There's no wrong way to be a fan. We all have our priorities for what we'd like to watch. And I'd blame nobody for being impatient.

I'd just like to see that personally like to see the team shoot for, you know, higher aspirations. So in any case, I think that somewhat we're seeing so far as things are just a bit disjointed because the roster is a bit disjointed. But there's more to it than that. If you look, you know, like another major, major, major aspect of why things have looked a little bit weird in these first four games is that we've had like 19 minutes of Carouselvert, something like that, about 20 minutes of Carouselvert. And aside from that, Cade is the only functional handler who's been in the rotation.

So no Ivy, obviously. Levert has missed the last three games. and there's really nobody else on the team who can handle the ball at an NBA level, you know, who can really initiate offense and just, you know, we the offense set up teammates, just handle the ball even on significant volume and do good things with it. So I'm quite certain that the plan was to have two of Cade, Ivy, and Levert on the floor at all times. So you have a couple guys at all times who are actually able to handle the ball.

and that didn't happen, obviously. Losing Ivy just before the season was shame. Leverts is somewhat injury prone and unfortunately that's reared its head early. So this is where you look and say, like I said last episode, I mean, it took a bit of a risk letting Schroeder go because even Levert and Ivy are kind of like three-quarters handlers in terms of, you know, their ability to lead in offense. But you're without both of them. that sucks. It's going to have an impact on the offense. That's a lot of creation gone, a lot of

handling gone, and you're left with situations in which you've got a Sara Thompson leading the offense. He's made quite a bit of progress, it seems, in some areas. I'll talk about that, but not a guy you want leading your offense at this stage of his career. And for all, I think I talked up aiming a bit last episode, or did I? It's not going too well for him either. So let's get rolling. So let's talk the issues that have arisen so far. And again, extremely young season. You know, that's just starts are weird.

You have the Bulls who haven't lost a game yet, for example, and it's not a very good team, in my opinion at least. You have weird stuff happens at the beginning of the season before teams. Like the first month of the season is often quite wonky. And it takes teams some time to get back into things and to really settle down. and to just sort of gel into their final form, which doesn't take too long, but the first month of the season can very often be wacky. So I caution anybody against taking too much from that period of time.

Some teams hit the ground running and just dash right out the gate, but generally you've got a little bit of weird stuff. Like the weak stats, and I mean part of it is the sample size, but often you look at league stats, like player stats, for example, over the first month, and they're completely wacky. in any case. So early in the season, issues so far. Disjointness on offense.

So I'd weigh this at the feet of a few things. Number one is what I just said. Just getting kind of back into the swing of things with a different roster. Not, you know, not identical to what last seasons was. Some guys gone. Like you've got, you know, I didn't think too highly of Tim Hardaway, Jr., but he's gone. Beasley's gone. Ivy is out.

and Schroeder's gone. Fontecchio really wasn't a big feature on the team last season, but Trude was Shruder, excuse me, for the last two plus months. You've got some new guys on the roster, and it just can take time in that respect. Disjointed, because, again, this isn't the most functional roster at the moment on offense, particularly, you know, for those two reasons of personnel.

Just you've got younger players, a couple of whom can't really, shoot very well, though Holland's trending in the right direction, playing more minutes, and also you're missing your two handlers. You know, excuse me, you're second and third handlers, and there is no number four. So that's going to happen. These factors are all going to contribute to the team looking disjoint. An additional factor, if we'd want to compare it to last season, it took Bickerstaff a while last season to really get the offense together and to really nail down his scheme and get all the players into it. Now, hopefully it doesn't take. him until like the end of December this year, which is about how long it took last year.

But he was certainly a slow starter, and we'll see if that happens. So maybe that's another factor on top of that. Shooting, yeah, I think I've been over that a bit. Even if Beasley had stayed, or if we posit a situation that assumes Duncan Robinson would have replaced him exactly. And for all the Beasley, I'll just say this about Beasley, I feel like last season is kind of taken on mythic proportions in a couple of ways. Number one, I've seen what he actually did exaggerated quite a bit in accounts of it. Nobody in particular, but what really distinguished Beasley last season was that he was able to consist and we hit very difficult catch-and-shoot-threat

threes, including through pretty close coverage. And that was something he really hadn't been able to do earlier in his career. It wasn't that he was a guy who was taking the ball and scoring a lot because he wasn't. He was just hitting a lot of difficult threes and doing it on high volume. A second one is that even It's unlikely When you have a guy in his ninth season Who goes nuclear

Then it was really a seventh rotation season But who just goes absolutely nuclear And suddenly has one of the best Shooting Seas Catch and Shoot shooting seasons of all time Unm likely to be repeated I mean guys rarely just find that unbelievably elite year

Later in their career So even if we had Beasley We'd probably get more In the area of the Beasley Who had existed before And the Beasley who had existed before And the Beasley who signed with the pistons for $6 million, because even though he'd shot 40% from three on

substantial law in the year before, the bucks, and didn't really want him, and nobody else really wanted him either, not very much anyway. It was not offered. It was just a somewhat undersized shooting specialist who plays bad defense. So in any case, would things be tremendously better on the court with Beasley? I mean, say what you will about his energy and presence of the locker and whatever that is. You know, who knows Duncan Robinson has struggled a little bit out the gates. It's worth noting that they are very, very, very comparable players.

Robinson actually, though he's benefited from playing in the heat system, under the best coach in the league, in my opinion. He's been one of the best coaches, excuse me, one of the best shooters since he came in the league. Like an elite shooting specialist. So how much are we feeling the loss of Beasley? I don't know. Robinson started slow.

It's four games. So just back going back to what I was saying, even if Beasley had stayed, or if we had Ted Robinson replaced, what he did last season one to one. Just the shooting was going to take a hit with Ron and Asar seeing a lot more minutes. Robinson has been a little bit. Here's an issue that is coming up with Robinson. In my opinion, I think it's fairly clear.

He's having a little bit of difficulty adapting. He was used in a very expert way by Spalstra, who was the best by far at getting the most out of all of his players, especially role players. I mean, this is a guy who took a team. I mean, he'd also have just a fantastic. development apparatus, but also just Spolstra is the role player whisperer. This is a team that reached the finals with three former two-way contract players, playing substantial roles in its rotation.

It would be Vincent, Struz, and Robinson. And so with Robinson, Spolster always used him in a very expert way, just constantly running him, having him set screens and, you know, in Fade, having him constantly running around screens, just exerting maximum gravity. and focusing on getting him open. And if he's not getting open, he's at least disrupting the defense. Unfortunately, all right, let me put it this way about Biggerstaff. You've all heard how I feel about him.

I think he's a very, very, very, very blah offensive coach, and that that's just ossified and it's not going to change. And I can say, thankfully, for my part, I've just accepted that. I don't get pissed off about it anymore. It just kind of is what it is. So Bigger Steph, and this is no insult to him, otherwise it be an insult to ever, but he is not Spolster. Spolster is the best there is.

in the NBA right now. And nobody's going to do as well as him. At most things, nobody is going to ever do as well as him, period. No coach in the league right now. At taking his role players and getting every last little ounce he can out of them. So there was going to be a downgrade in terms of Duncan Robinson's effectiveness, overall effectiveness. And I think you can see that he's struggling. So it's his utilization is one thing. But I think you can see also that it's, he's struggling a little bit to adapt to a new system versus the heat system he has been in for literally his entire career. The game he played against the Bulls, the season opener, was the first game he has ever played under a coach not named Eric Spolster. So it's going to take Duncan a little bit of time to adjust,

though I hope that Bickerstaff put some more thought into utilizing him in the way that he was utilized in Miami, not just for his own comfort, but because it worked. What else is happening? you know, Cade getting trapped and doubled and given a ton of attention. I mean, the Rockets did a really good job of this and just enforcing turnovers. Part of this is just having no other handlers, and it's incredibly predictable that Cade is going to be the one who's going to be leading the offense and doing the vast majority of the initiating. And, you know, teams are going to react to that, understandably. I mean, he's also the big dog in the team, so to speak.

He's getting the most defensive attention no matter what. He's an incredibly skilled player. But also knowing that he's the only guy who can create offense because the other two guys who can do it effectively in the lineup. You know, sort of can, but for the most part, nobody else can. Or both out of the lineup. And this is something that will be a theme going forward in the postseason. If they don't find Cade kind of an on-ball co-star,

which you have to have in today's league if you want to succeed in the postseason, you've got to have at least two guys who can create at a pretty good level, you know, who can create offense and just also handle at a pretty good level. You just, that's pretty much a necessity. It was a big help last season against the Knicks, just because he could do some secondary handling, which allowed for more dynamic offense than there would have been otherwise and just less predictable. Really, all Schroeder was was just a secondary handler who could do some attacking off the dribble, and that helped things quite a bit.

Versus what we saw with Schroeder not on the floor, which was Cade just getting trapped in the pick and roll constantly. And he did a decent job nonetheless, but that caused significant problems for the offense. It also, for example, made Jalen Duren completely useless. It was just cut out of the offense for long stretches because that's what happens to traditional centers if nobody's able to feed them. So Baker stuff, however, is, well, I'll leave that for the next category, actually. And the last one, just some initial growing pains.

I think I've been over that already. That happens, you know, especially with young rosters. So let's go over what I like so far. Isaiah Stewart shooting the ball. So this has been great. Stewart getting back to shooting. I spoke quite a bit in the last episode, I'm pretty sure, about the importance of Isaiah Stewart shooting the ball, not only because it brings benefits, but because it's necessary for him to be a non-minus on offense.

And he's not only shooting it, but he's shooting it very assertively. At this point, he's at like 55%, which obviously is not going to last. He's also on relatively low volume or very low volume. But it's absolutely necessary for him, you know, even exclusive of all the benefits of whether it's having him on there to space the floor with the are or just to run a five out offense, which isn't really super possible for this roster right now, but whenever it is possible. So that's been good to see. He's not hesitating at all. He's shooting non-wide open threes. I mean, just with defenders, just a few feet away from him. He's not being shy at all, which is also a great sign because that had been an issue up to this point

with Stewart really hesitating. Stroke looks good. You know, it's, balls go in the right place with the right spin, not clanking. You love to see it. Ron Holland's just is a very noticeable improvement. I think we saw it most of all against the Bulls. One thing, he's clearly quite a bit physically stronger, which is going to be useful for any player, but especially for a guy like Ron who likes to throw his body around, initiate contact, fears nobody goes hard on the rim.

And I think you could see it. Sorry about the sniffles. I hope you can't hear that. So, yeah, you can, we could really see it. Goodness gracious, I lost my train. thought. All right, back to the beginning. Yeah, you can really see how just being stronger is, is helping him. Like, he goes to the rim. He's able to maintain contact better. He's able to get up, you know, at the rim better. Just on defense, he is much less easily moved. The guy is just

quite a bit stronger. I think he's up about 15 pounds over last season. And, you know, that shows. That's a big deal. The shooting looks better. He's only at about 31% right now. That's quite a bit better than he was last season. His misses are. not bad. Like, he's missing a lot of shots just barely. I mean, the form on the shot and the spin on the shot is solid. And, you know, I think he is well on his way to becoming a, you know, a somewhat solid at the very least, a totally decent three-point shooter, maybe as soon as this season. And show has been showing at the rim some of the same touch that he only displayed previously in transition. You'd seen some improvement there, basically. I saw a player who was both

physically and in a skill sense pretty raw last season looking much closer not there yet obviously and who knows what ron's ceiling is i kind of go back and forth as to whether and i think you know he or ivy has the higher um you know just the higher offensive ceiling of all the prospects on the team uh but you see him him having in my opinion having made a significant step in the direction of being a good on ball you know excuse me a you know a real honest to goodness NBA contributor that's been good to see. Asar Thompson quite a bit better. I mean, his touch at the rim has improved a great deal. Again, only four games, but Asar on OTE was crappy at the rim, even against really bad competition. In his first two seasons, he was still not great at the rim at all. And you, so I had my doubts as to how much his touch was ever going to improve.

It's improved quite a bit at this point, in my opinion. His ability also to get himself in a position to score. So that's a very encouraging development. I've seen him do some interior creation, whether it's that spin-around jump-around low volume, or more often just kind of bursting from, you know, kind of starting off in the interior and just bursting past somebody and using that incredible athleticism of his to just get good position before anybody can stop him, which helps a little bit to mitigate the fact that people sag off of him. It's just an important development. Isn't it to be enough outside of a system that caters?

to him with spacing around him, for this sort of thing to work against good teams, especially in the postseason. Again, I think the shooting continues to be mandatory, you know, unless you feel like Asar is a good enough player that you're building rotations around him. But in any case, I mean, progress is progress, and that's a big deal. I think he's one out of three from three. I was joking with somebody that, you know, after that was against Houston, I believe, I was like, oh man, you know, Assar is 100% from three this season.

Unfortunately, got down to only 50% in that game, and then he missed one in Boston. I'd like to see him continue shooting. I think that's important for him. I give a shout out to Paul Reed, who came in and has given the Pistons some good minutes already, particularly against Houston, which you can make the case that he might have been the MVP of the game for the Pistons. I think just, you know, absolutely one of the best third-string centers in the league. It might not sound like much, but it's helpful, especially when you have, well, Duren got himself ejected in that game,

but when you have two centers in Stewart and Duren, who are both pretty foul prone, that's a helpful thing to have. He's done a little bit of three-point shooting, too, and if you could do that, yay, is another guy like Stewart who, in order to be really a non-negative offensively, is really going to need to shoot the ball. Of course, he's a third string again. Hope you not have to rely on him too much,

but he will be playing some minutes because Stewart and Duran are going to both play 82 games. But, you know, bravo to Paul Reed, super hard worker, had a great game against Houston. Also shout out to Giovante Green, who's come in and given the piston some solid minutes. You know, not bad for, like, you know, the last signee who's on a non-guaranteed contract. He's, you know, he's made some shots. He works hard on defense. You know, he's really greasy around the rim.

And he, you know, does a surprisingly good job guarding guys who are bigger than him. You can see why he's actually played a significant number of minutes at power for. despite being only 6'4. So, yeah, definitely a very helpful presence and pretty critical on the win against Houston. The overall hard-nosed mentality of the team, that's not surprising. I mean, Trajan Langdon, well, and Troy Weaver before him, you can say this about Weaver as well. They're both very focused on character and finding players who are going to, well, I don't know if Troy Weaver actually really succeeded in this always, given that you have Killian Hayes,

who definitely didn't work hard, and so far as constantly shying away from physicality. and Duren, who had a share of issues as well. But certainly, Assar Thompson and Kate Cunningham have no difficulty working hard to say the least, and nor does Ivy. But you add, oh, and Stewart, who can forget him. Sadiq Bay, of course, was another miss on Weaver's part, but Stewart certainly wasn't. It was 100% just 100%ile compete level, excuse me, and Ron Holland the same way. So, yeah, this is just as a team that works very hard, plays very physically. And that's what I like to call any situations, just the force multiplier.

It makes you better if you're working that, you know, if you're working that hard, you take your skill, you know, what you're possible, you know, what you are capable of contributing and you raise that a little bit by having that high compete level. So that's just fun to watch and useful to have, of course. And finally, the, you know, the minutes we've seen from Isaiah Stewart, Assar, Thompson, Ron Holland Minutes, excuse me, which are not. I mean, the spacing with the Sarnat really shooting,

and Holland's kind of shooting a little bit below where he needs to be is not awesome, but they've done pretty well. And defensively, it's really something to behold. There's a nasty defensive lineups. Of course, the offense has to be there. But, you know, Fron can shoot a little bit better. Stu can continue shooting where we know he can, which is at least in the mid-to-high 30s.

And you have Cade and, I don't know, whoever else's shooting, then cool. I mean, it's just a lineup that as long as you can find some way to be functional on offense, I think we'll continue to be pretty strong. But it's also just very fun to watch. As for what I don't like so far, this jointed offense, extremely predictable sets, and just an offense that's working pretty poorly. A lot has been done on putbacks and, you know, and other garbage points,

and that just can't be counted upon. Bigger staff has not done well so far. Like I said, last season was very similar, or it just took him some time to put together an offense that was not kind of a rote mess of, hey, take the ball, Cade, and score. Or we're just going to run, M was variations of, you know, a very small number of plays. Like I've said, I think Pickerstaff is basically an upgraded version of Casey in terms of his ability to adapt and his ability to run an offense. Casey was very bad at both. So there will be wrinkles. I just hope you can smooth them out because the way he's running the offense right now is not great.

That includes, for example, allowing Cade to get ridden up and down, you know, up the court, whenever from the moment he inbounds the ball and get trapped when he passes the half court line. This is not an inevitability that part of it just because there's no underhandler on the floor. What he often did last season was have a Sarr bring up the ball and then pass it off to Cade. You know, I don't think you're going to see guys trying to trap a Sarr. also, you know, he can take the ball and speed up the court. You can set picks in, you know, before Cade even gets into, you know, even passes half court and just have him in better position to deploy from there.

Instead, Bickerstow for some reason is just saying, K, take the ball and, well, if that happens, sorry, you're just going to have to find a way to deal with it. This has the look of a sink or swim sort of thing. It doesn't really make much sense to me. like you this is not something you typically ask of a player in the NBA. I like to just take the ball and be the only real creation and handling option on the court. This is not going to be a long-term thing. It's a lot to ask, especially when you're going up against a team like Houston,

which is just full of long, above-average defenders. It's why, why would you do that? I mean, you look at these teams in the finals, for example. It's like you look back at OKC, which, of course, you got Williams and you got SGA. You got playoff riser Nemhard and Halliburton. You have, even Luca had his Kyrie. You have, you know, in L.A. is going to have Austin Reeves. The defense is, of course, a different matter because they both suck at it, but I digress.

The Celtics had four guys who can handle the ball, like a totally unfair starting lineup. This is not a situation that Cade is going to be facing in the long term. And, you know, at the NBA level, it's not like, well, you have to be able to overcome everything, because the skill level is just too high. And it's utterly pointless against a team like the Rockets who are going to have no shortage of long, strong, tall wing defenders to throw at you. What's the point? So I don't know what he's doing.

Yeah, I mean, once you get into the half court, sure, it's going to be predictable when you're the only guy who can handle. But there's no reason to let him get just ridden up the floor and have it be not only that, not only because that's tiring. and makes him prone to turnovers once he gets swarm when he passes half court, but also just makes it much harder to set the offense. So really don't like that. I don't like Isaiah Stewart not shooting enough.

Bickerstaff has a really strong preference toward using his bigs in the interior, even when it would be better to not do so. Like you see even Mowbly in Cleveland, it's like the guy clearly had shooting upside. He didn't, he barely took a virtually inconsequential a number of three-pointers per game until season three. promptly skyrocketed in season four under Atkinson, who is pretty objectively just a significantly better offensive coach than bigger stuff. So Isaiah, even in situations where it's like, okay,

you're going in and just clogging the paint. I mean, you're not a guy who's going to vertically space the floor. So that's no danger. So it's not like you're going into the pain for any reason other than I hope I get the ball and can try to put up a shot from below the rim. Isaiah, if he has to put up shots over guys who are taller than him, he's not going to do well at it. and in some cases he's just kind of there hoping to collect the rebounds or on the dunker spot when it's really not appropriate for him to be there. There's just situations where it's like you have Kate and you're setting a pick for him and you could just fade out to the perimeter like regularly and then he has an open shooter.

But let's just have him run to the dunker spot or roll to the rim even though it's just going to make life harder on Cade. It's a very unfortunate way of Bickerstaff doing things. I mean, I was talking about Mobley. Mowley was playing power forward, and Bickerstaff was still really, really stressing him in the interior, even with Jared Allen on the floor. So it's just, it's bad business.

This is mathematically a bad thing to do. It happens anyway. Stewart is also just not a great score in the interior. I mean, you have him potentially being quite a bit more efficient on top of just the overall benefits of the offense of just having him be shooting a lot more. So you'd like to see that. I hate to put it this way, but Jalen Duren, you know, like I said, may sound from all the bad things I've had to say about him that I just like him. That's not the case. I don't particularly like him. Not one of my favorite players on the team because of how he conducted himself for almost half his career so far of just not trying. So I'm not trying very hard. But, you know, I hope he gets it together mentally. I hope he gets it together in terms of his skills as well. I felt the same way about Drummond because it's like that would be great for the team if that happened. You'd always got to be worried about. But you know, I'd always got to be worried about.

about if it's going to last. His work ethic is going to last new second contract. So what we've seen differently about Duren, he looks a little bit more mobile on defense, the point where he's not like an outright switch liability. I mean, he's still not great at it by any means. And he remains, as he has been since a rookie when he was more mobile, even if he, you know, when he had better lateral mobility,

his ability to travel laterally and challenge shots was still not great because he just wasn't very good at positioning himself. He's still not good at positioning himself. you know, three years later. So what I'm feeling a little bit poor about is just that it doesn't appear like he's made much, if any, progress on the defensive processing side, on the just providing miscellaneous defensive value by swallowing up space, cutting off lanes, et cetera, and just in terms of stuff like contesting shots just still doesn't really know how to do it in a good way.

You see it in stark contrast to Stewart, who is excellent at all three of those things. So basically a guy who continues to provide negative defensive value, was I expecting a leap in the offseason? I knew it was unlikely, but it's kind of sucked to see him come in and not much looks like it's changed. I'm also put off by his excessive focus on offense. Like the guy plainly wants to be a score. And sure, you can understand that in the NBA. At the same time, you look at traditional bigs, like today's traditional bigs, the good ones, these guys are all, like, you know, Alan, Claxton, Gobert, Hartnstein, really, and any of these

athletic, excuse me, any of these traditional bigs, it's kind of overlaps with athletic bigs, but not all of them are super athletic, like Hartnstein, for example. I'm sorry, Hartnstein now is the pronunciation he's asking for, so clearly people were. There have been cases of players just putting up with the long-term mispronunciations of their names. Like, Tima Solani would actually, his name is pronounced Selani. but he was called Solani for his entire career and just kind of went with it. And, you know, it'd be the difference for those you remember, Val Philpola for the Red Wings,

it'd be the equivalent of calling him Philpula. So, you know, Zach Parisi, go out himself, we called Parizet for all those years. Or maybe he just decided he wanted to change his pronunciation, whatever. This is completely unimportant to the point at hand. These guys all understand that their primary, job on offense is to be the finisher. You know, all these guys, when you get into the NBA, want to be the best. The vast majority of them will be role players,

and you've got to be, you've got to know your role here. Duren, unless he takes, like, a spectacular leap, is never really going to be a good offensive center. Good for a traditional big is different from good overall, but the guy has been forcing offense already. And it's like you do not need to be attacking into double coverage. when you attack into double coverage and get a rebound and suddenly you're covered triple, you should be passing the ball out.

There are shades of Drummond here. Just a traditional center who doesn't understand his limitations. Granted, Duren is far better than Drummond was at the traditional center things on offense. Part of it is that he's willing to be physical, whereas Drummond was a wuss and just settled for his short floaters and not carving out position around the basket. And these are things that Duren has no issue with. And he has significantly better touch at the same time, this kind of. guy is not, again, these guys are traditional bigs. They've got to be aware that their job is to

execute high efficiency offense and to leave the ability, you know, the, to leave the creation to guys who are better suited to do it and who are going to better be able to take advantage of it in the flow of the offense. So the fact that he's so focused on offense is not ideal. Because again, these, the traditional bigs in the league know that they're the finishers. that where they're going to be finding their value on offense is, so I'd say four things are very important for traditional centers. You've got to be good at all four of these things in today's league. That's a traditional big because you're giving up stuff. You're giving up stuff on offense because you can't create and you can't shoot and you've got to have the table set for you.

So you've got to be a high efficiency paint score. You've got to be a strong rebounder. You have to be a good defender, at least a plus defender, but pretty much a good defender. unless you're like by a significant margin, the fifth best starter in the starting lineup. And you've got to be a really hard worker. And it's just you've got to be a force multiplier. You basically have to compensate for being a traditional big on offense. Because again, it comes with a cost now. It did not come with a cost 10 years ago.

Now it is actively costly on offense to feel the traditional center. But he just wants to focus on his offense. It seems to have been really his focus. And it's all about the defense, man. And on offense, you can't be forcing it. It's not your job. and if you get to be good at it, awesome, but it's just off-putting.

I've talked about this for like five minutes already. I'm sorry. Yeah, so, like, he crushed the Celtics because they are incredibly weak up the middle, and it's like, great. He can do that against teams that are fielding really weak guys at center, like physically weak or just not tall,

when he just score over them or rebound constantly over them, or, you know, they just can't defend the vertical spacing. But mostly, it's just right now, what he was last season, which is a guy who's above average for a traditional big, but that doesn't really mean much, and a guy who provides minus value on defense. And if he hasn't made that leap by the deadline, you've got to wonder what the Pistons do. And also obligatory 30 million plus salary demand. This remains comical. And finally, Cade being a slow starter, that just kind of is what

it is. And he hasn't been great so far by any means. And the Pistons need him to be very good, and he can be very good. And this is a key. case of a guy's going to progress back to his mean. This is virtually inevitable. All right. So finally, let's end with some game reviews. So the Bulls game. This was an example of a lot of things going wrong for the pistons and a lot of things going right for their opponent at the same time. Just missing constantly, like shooting 25% from three in the first half and the ball is shooting 50% from three. Just kind of, you know, a lot of foul trouble up the middle. That's it's a especially for Duren.

And, you know, well, I think actually Duran being in foul trouble was the worst thing in the world because Isaiah Stewart came in and was actually very good. But this was the case of the Pistons or the better team. A lot of things went wrong. They found themselves down 23. I think very predictably they caught their way back into the game. I don't really have any doubts about that. And they ended up barely losing.

I don't think the Bulls are good at all. They're 3 in 0 right now, which means nothing. They're a team with no elite offensive talent. and they're really a minus on the defensive side when you take Vuccivic, who is unequivocally a bad defender. Giddy is not a plus defender. Kobe White, who wasn't playing, is a minus defender. Buzellis maybe slightly plus, but yeah, I mean, you just hurt her, of course, is quite a minus defender. The Pistons were the better team, just a lot went wrong.

Up against the Houston power forwards. For all that Raphael Stone has been given. given as, you know, plot it's his GM. Like, the roster construction was always a little bit flimsy, given that Fred Van Fleet was the only guy in the team, who was like a quick initiator off the dribble, who could both handle and shoot. Now they have, like, there's their primary handler,

Damon Thompson, who can shoot but, they handle but not shoot, rather. And they got guys who can shoot but not handle. Like Jabari Smith Jr. is hopeless. at handling the ball. Tari Isan's not going to do it. I mean, Shangoon can sort of do it, but it really operates from the interior. And they got a dearth of shooting as a result of this, you know, outside of Durant and Sort of Yason and Jambari Smith Jr., who I think will ultimately be a good shooter. I mean, they're running this starting lineup of A. Men and Shangoon, Jambari Smith, Kevin Durant, and Stephen Adams, and it's like, this is two non-shooters, a bad shooter, you know,

decent shooter and, of course, one of the greatest shooters of all time, but your spacing is terrible, and you're not going to be able to get by on size alone. They do not have an initiator in the lineup, and that's going to hurt them probably quite a bit, continue to hurt them going forward. Maybe they'll go out and trade for one, but if you want to trade for a good one, you've got to trade somebody or an asset. Maybe trade a first round pick and some salary. But what salary do you trade in order to get somebody who's making a significant amount of money, and so on and so forth? Whatever the case, they cause some trouble for the pistons in two areas. Number one, the fouls. My goodness, the fouls. I don't understand why the leak front office thinks that anybody wants to watch that crap of a constant parade of the three-point line and guys being afraid to play defense. This is not enjoyable to watch. I feel like, I mean, maybe the players enjoy this. I doubt it. Maybe the superstars enjoy the preferential whistle, but it's by no means just the superstars. We saw what the Celtics do, who got the short end of the whistle against the pistons. It was just constant fouls, and it just makes for disjointed and frustrating and kind of just not.

not as enjoyable sort of game. And it's like every year the NBA has the chance, the front office has a chance to pull its head out of its ass, and it never does. Like Adam Silver paid lip service back when Dumars was head of the competition committee before the Pelicans very befuddlingly hired him to be GM. He's like, oh, yeah, Dumars is going to look at it. And Dumars is like, oh, yeah, we're examining if offense is going too far. And they looked at it and did absolutely nothing.

So, yeah, short under the whistle. And then Cade was getting constantly trapped, like I said before, by the rockets, and that just caused trouble for the offense. Where the Pistons ultimately won the game was in drastically outshooting the rockets from the perimeter, predictable, like I said, based on the lineups that are being run. They'd almost be Golden State with size because Golden State was a team of shrimps. Their tallest player in the starting lineup was Jimmy Butler at 6-6. and I think maybe he's listed at 6-7 now.

Whatever, the guy at the age of 22, 21 or 22 with the draft combine, was 6-6-6-on-the-dot. I doubt he has grown. A tip is very rare for a player that age to grow, so probably actually 6-6. You know, maybe you're 6-6 and 1-20th in teams round up. But that strategy is not going to work against everybody. And the Pistons just destroyed them from the perimeter.

And that's how they won that game. Paul Reed had an awesome game, and, you know, Asar did well, nearly outplayed his brother. Stewart had a good game, no, he ended up following out. Duncan Robinson, you know, after a tough game against the Bulls, had a very efficient 17 points and three blocks. So, you know, good game for the Pistons. Things remained a little bit rougher on the edges up against the Celtics. The Celtics are, I mean, they took a big hit, necessarily. I mean, they lost a lot of guys for the sake of reducing salary.

The new ownership did not really want to be paying $500 million in payroll. Also, presumably wants to continue to edge toward being out of the tax altogether so that they will reset the clock a little bit on the repeater tax. Repeater tax if you're in the tax for three out of the past four seasons, your penalties, you know, in terms of how much tax you're paying per dollar, that you're above the luxury tax, go up a great deal. Teams like to avoid this unless they have a shitload of, excuse me, a lot of money, like the Warriors who didn't care, and the Warriors are one of the reasons the second apron exists.

So, yeah, so the Celtics lost a lot. Pistons, again, were probably the better team from a talent perspective. And the Celtics also really struggled up the middle. And again, Jalen Duren, who can do well against teams like that, certainly on office. offense was, I mean, the pistons are really able to take advantage with that. And sorry, Tom, and just on the offensive boards, because the Celtics are so weak with their bigs and the pistons have, you know, some good offensive rebounders are really able to punish them. They won that game down the stretch because they were, they just repeatedly got offensive

rebounds and putbacks. So, Pistons more talented, more athletic and, you know, bigger. So, you know, it was a solid win. Uh, again, a situation in which, and those two wins, I mean, wins are wins. You'd like to see a little bit cleaner play. But again, very early in the season, missing some guys, et cetera. So always fun to see wins. Though the Celtics game was so frustrating in terms of, for two reasons. Like, this is just me.

One is the fouls. The other was that Joe Missoula's Celtics, what they call Missoula ball, is like the brutally boring apotheosis of basketball analytics. Just, oh, let's take a three. Let's take another three. Let's take another three. And how about another three? And it's like, for the most part, mathematically, it makes sense.

However, it's also one of the reasons they lost in the playoffs last season because it just didn't work and he refused to adjust. I still think he's top 10 coach, but he'd had to do better than that. I mean, of course, Tatum popping his Achilles and didn't help, but those surrendered leads from the Celtics, it's like these threes aren't working, but whatever, you know, I'll just count on it starting to work eventually. And it did not, but yeah, I mean, I'm all for analytics, but after a certain point, it just gets boring.

Even the Mori Ball Rockets were not like this because James Harden was, whatever you want to say about foul baiting, was an incredible score one-on-one score. And it was not just based around everybody's shooting threes. It was based, which can't be done in the Celtics now because they just don't have the same number of shooters. But Missoula tries anyway. But, yeah, so it wasn't that. You still had Hardin doing his thing and being one of the, having some of the best scoring seasons ever. and it was based around that. It's that you have him scoring or he's passing out to shooters.

So back then, that was like, oh, this is the ultimate analytical scheme, and maybe it takes it a little bit too far. Missoula just takes it further than that. It's awful to watch. I hate it. Maybe it's just me. Moving on to the Cavaliers, this was a really crappy game, and honestly, I think it'd just be said that every team has horrible games.

These things happen. You look back at that Celtics team, for example. Got up 3-0 in the finals and then lost by what was, I think, nearly the worst margin of defeat in NBA finals history. 30-something, I think they were down an obscene amount in game for. You know, this is the NBA. I mean, the Cavaliers, of course, are a team that's significantly further along than the Pistons at this point.

So they, at this point, just have more talent in the now. And also, they had a good game, the Pistons had a really bad game. And when that happens, you're going to get blown out. You can even get blown out by a team that's much worse than you when that happens. even the worst teams in the NBA have a lot of talent. And if they're firing on all cylinders at the same time as you're having a really tough night, you can get crushed by a really crappy team if you're a very good team.

Pistons more of a team in the middle, played against a good team. Yes, they were missing Garland. Still have some pretty darn good players there, two all-MBA players. Mitchell, who's one of the best scores in the league. It should be said about Donovan Mitchell. Also, because I think the guy gets underrated. He's one of the great playoff scores of this generation. I mean, really something else.

It's a very good regular season player, but in the playoffs, he takes it up, you know, another notch. And he's just a completely beyond elite offensive creator. You got him, you got Mowgli, you got Allen, who is certainly a good center. Again, traditional big, but does very well to traditional big things. DeAndre Hunter, you know, half-decent supporting guest, blah, blah, blah. It just comes down to, excuse my language, shit happens, as, you know, Forrest Gump would put it. It just sometimes happens. So, yeah, that's the review of the first week.

Again, I think we can expect things to smooth out. I wouldn't blame anybody for feeling a little bit distressed in terms of, oh, the last season ended on such a high note. And now we're coming in, and the team looks kind of crappy. What's going on, you know, is this team going to backslide and so on and so forth. But, you know, early season foible is missing some guys, you know, needing to settle him with a somewhat different roster and things maybe being a little bit less functional, you know, certainly from a shooting perspective, though hopefully that will recover and also just Cade

having a rough early start of the season, but he's just two talents if for this to last. So in any case, as always, folks, want to thank you for listening. Hope you enjoy the episode. I hope you're all doing great. And I will catch you in the next one.