Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 242: Waiting for Data!

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

This episode primarily focuses upon contextualizing the season so far, as well as what's coming next.

Welcome back, everybody. You are listening to Drab into the Baskets. I'm Mike, and I hope you're all doing great. According to this episode for Monday morning, so I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, and let's launch right into it. So it struck me that probably make a little bit more sense for me to talk context before everything else. rather than after what I've been doing with the good and the bad in the context, third. So Pistons, as of the win tonight, against the Milwaukee Bucks, have extended the win streak to 12. And to be honest, I'm feeling a little ambivalent, which might start, excuse me,

might sound funny. So let me explain that. It's certainly happy for the wins. And that's great, of course. Always fun to see the Pistons win. And certainly on the plus side, the Pistons are building up a, comfortable cushion for what should barring a complete and utter disaster in the second half of the season be a comfortable, you know, very comfortable acquisition of a top four

playoff seed. The downside is that because of the incredible ease of the schedule, like incredible ease of the schedule, and, you know, I'll put the collection of injury games up into another category because I was barely even the lineup playing there. We're learning very little about what this lineup will look like against respectable competition. Also, for my part, I just don't really enjoy watching my sports teams beat the crap out of really bad opposition again and again. I like to watch them really be challenged. I mean, to each their own, I'm not putting out anybody who's excited about this.

But, yeah, we're winning very little. You could argue that we're wondering that this team can take care of business against bad teams. and you could say that that's true, but even then if you look, you know, if we zoom outward a little bit and look at the NBA as a whole, that's true virtually across the board for the top half of the NBA right now. The NBA is currently so polarized that the top 15 teams as of tonight have won almost 92% of their games against teams that are below 500. That is, I've got to think, virtually unheard of. The NBA at this stage of the season is an incredible. mess in the bottom half. I mean, things have gone badly for so many teams. So, yeah, it's great

that the Pistons are beating bad teams, but so is everybody else. So again, I mean, more power to you if you're enjoying this. Like, seriously, I'm not saying that anybody should not be enjoying watching the Pistons win. As just all of you who have listened to me before and know that I'm a total data nerd. I want to get a better look into what this team actually is. And that's really, according to the front office again and word and deed is really the biggest point of this season. The front office did not go into this season trying to win as many games as it could. It went in to give the youth maximum opportunity with a good veteran core around them and see what it has. That's why when you think about, for example, like Zach Lowe talking about like a Lorry market and trade,

you, it doesn't make any sense in the context of this organization's priorities right now. because we just don't know very much what is the sara thompson what is jaden ivy what is ron holland even what is jilland durran and if you don't have that information why do you make a trade right now you know it's just you don't know what you have so why go and break it up or why go and make that decision well before it's time you know well before you have to on the basis of inadequate information about what you currently have in you know some players who certainly could have further upside. So again, really just me. The schedule is going to start getting a little bit more difficult the rest of the year. It's not really going to kick off until the Pistons meet the Lakers right around the new year. And after that, there will still be a mix

of good and bad teams, but the Pistons, excuse me, there will still be a smattering of bad teams in there, but the Pistons are going to be playing much more difficult opposition. And so it's going to be a little bit until we really see what they're made of against the teams that they're going to, well, number one, just against teams that are going to put up more of a fight. Because at this point, they've really only played against two of those, the Cavaliers and the Rockets, not to pooh-poo anything, but the Rockets for the first few games were a little bit shaky. The magic were a bit of a mess in the early season, but are seven and three since. I don't remember if they played, I didn't check if they played tonight, but as of

earlier today. So, you know, the Cavaliers were even without Garland. And that game didn't go well for anybody, but every team has stinkers. So I'm not poo-pooing anything. It's great that they're winning. But for my part, I just really want to see more of what this team is made of. And that's something that both we and, of course, the decision makers, who I'm sure are conscious of this as well, and probably somewhat ambivalent themselves, though they know that more is coming.

But for a season where really the idea is to see what you got, you're not going to see what you got until 2026. Well, and in 20206, and it's funny for the trade deadline. They will have about five weeks of good data, a little bit more than five weeks of good data, you know, against a difficult schedule to really see where they stand, which is probably far less than ideal for them if they are going to make any moves at the deadline. And again, it could go either way. I would be inclined to say that it's less likely than not that they would do anything significant

and less like just a really, really good opportunity where to come along. And again, there's just no rush. But it's going to be a bit. So, yeah, the winning's fun. I would just like to see more games against difficult teams, or at least respectable teams. There will be a moderately more difficult stretch coming up. The Pistons play against the Pacers, which, of course, that's on the day this episode has released. That should be pretty easy.

They got Mathrim back, but it's still a bad, bad team. And then you're going up against the Celtics, who are kind of in the middle, but have improved a bit. The magic, who, again, are doing better, and, hey, I mean, I love to, you know, to just rip on Paulo, who I think is just incredibly overrated. They're doing better with him out of the lineup. He's been injured than they've been winning. I dislike, and this is partially because of how it relates to Cade. It's like Paulo getting all this hype just because, you know, he's a really big dude

who scores a lot, but realistically has literally made his team worse in the on-off sense in every season he has played to this point, whereas Franz Wagner has been massively positive. So I just think he's overrated Excuse the language I think he's also a bit of a douchebag And I think that he got all this hype he didn't deserve While Cabe was basically being forgotten So maybe it's a little bit of shot in fraud But yeah, they're doing better

You'll see the heats Who are certainly a worse team than they were with Butler But you can never count an Eric's bolster coach team out I mean they'll say it forever That this guy is the best coach in the NBA And you know can take some pretty mediocre lemons and make some pretty great lemonade out of it. The Hawks, who knows, maybe Trey will be back, maybe Porzingis will be back.

They played against the Pistons with two of their three best players out. I mean, I don't know if you can make the case at this point that Jalen Johnson is more valuable than Trey, but I think we're getting there. But Trey would still be the second best player on that team, and then Risa Shea was out as well. Again, the Pistons have had injuries throughout the stretch as well. but again you just got to look at the level of the competition so and then you see the bucks maybe with yannis back a bucks a respectable team with yannis in the roster without them by net rating they are worse than the nets his supporting gas has just been gradually destroyed and after that you get a game

against the trailblazers and they're at least a western team then the bucks again uh and then it gets pretty darned easy until they see the lakers in the 30th you know mavericks hornets blazers again who are all right kings jazz the clippers who are a mess and oh they're picked okay see i think it's slightly protected and so that's when things get uh start to go a little bit difficult you're going to kick off a string after that where you see the lakers heat cavaliers and the nix and then a couple games later it goes the sons who are all right you can see the celtics soon after that the rockets the nuggets the sons the warriors the nuggets again you know the nicks the raptors you know with some bottom feeders mixed in there but we're going to really see what

this team is made of from the very end of December into what remains really very early March. And then down the stretch, yeah, I mean, it's not quite as difficult, but it remains pretty difficult. So it's great that the pistons are building up this cushion right now. The windstreak, win streaks are fun, win streaks are good. This is the easiest stretch the Pistons have played in terms of schedule in a long time. I'm not going to, you know, be a bit of a jerk and call it a fraudulent win streak because that's just pejorative for no reason. Pistons are winning games and good for them. It's just, you know, it's a win streak where it's like, are you, you know, you're not facing like an average quality

of competition. So whatever. It is what it is. And, you know, if you're going to have this sort of strength of schedule, you want to win a lot of the games, that's the idea. So when, you know, when you get up to your more difficult strength of schedule, you're going to, you're going to, you know, have your buffer. So, by all means, stay care of business. And I'll belabor the point a little bit. This is just how I am. I mean, my, still my favorite start to a piston season since I got back into the pistons about 10 years ago, actually 11 years ago, was the start of the 2017-2018 season where the piston started 16 and, excuse me, 14 and 6 against a very difficult strength of schedule, beat the two best teams in the league and so on and so forth.

what were the two best teams in the league at the time. And then the next year with Blake Griffin started 13 and 7 and basically just beat really crappy teams, and that was not enjoyable at all for me. Of course, I'm not necessarily saying that is a good thing. More power to those of you who were watching back then and did enjoy the games. We were both watching the same games and you enjoyed them and I did not. In any case, I digress. A couple of things on numbers before we go any further.

Should mention I was wrong about the magic, they aren't seven and three since they beat the Pistons, they're 10 and 3. And another stats about the polarization of the NBA currently, thus far in the current season, along the lines of the one I named earlier, about the top 15 teams in the league, having won 93% of their games, or 92.67% of their games against teams that were below 500. The bottom 10, excuse me, teams in the NBA have lost a combined 85% of their games. They are 37 and 215. I mean, the NBA so far in this season has been a bloodbath. I have never seen this sort of polarization between top and bottom. It is truly insane. Granted, my in-depth basketball knowledge only goes back 11 years, but my goodness, it's been

crazy. Maybe we'll see it even out, probably. I mean, typically early season extremes of any sort will kind of gravitate more back toward the mean as teams settle in and play. or settle in and insane hot streaks or insane cold streaks end. But in this capacity, I'm not sure how much it's going to settle back in. We'll see. In any event, let's move on. So this is typically the place at which I would talk about what I liked to what I didn't like from last week in the context of the games the Pistons played.

I don't have a ton to talk about from those games. As I said, like, yeah, one of the reasons, certainly I have been kind of ambivalent about the schedule and the really poor competition is that, well, this goes along with the whole very, very little good data side of things, which is that I don't really have a ton to talk about, I feel like, on here, because I can say, well, this won well and that one well, but the competition has been really bad. So in any case, I mean, I'm not talking in terms of this whole schedule issue about, well, all is lost in the pistons are going to get clotheslined once things get difficult.

The hope is that they continue performing the same way. Is that realistic just in terms of winning at the same rate? I'd say for any team, the answer is no. But hopefully they can still keep up a good pace. I mean, we'll see. Just the schedule is getting more difficult and isn't inherently tied to the Pistons are going to do a lot less well. So we'll see.

I'm just looking forward to some better data and some more meaningful competition. But the Pistons certainly built themselves a great buffer to start out of the season. And, you know, like I said, if your games are going to be against such easy opponents, you want to make sure that you're winning, make sure that you're winning those games. So I'm just going to talk about a few storylines in lieu of talking about this past week's games. So number one is Cade Cunningham's three-point shooting. And Cade, I've always felt and continue to feel, is going to be a good three-point shooter. And he's had a bit of a winding road in that capacity in the NBA so far.

As a rookie, you know, he did, like, all right, on catching shoots outside of that really disastrous first quarter of the season. As a sophomore, he barely played, so that was kind of a wash. In his third year, he got quite a bit better on catch and shoots, like 30, high 37%, thereabouts, was not quite as good on pull-ups. Like low 30s, last season got better on pull-ups and better on catch-and-shoots. and, you know, it's a solid season from the perimeter. And then in this season, he's shooting the same percentage right now exactly that he shot, excuse me, the same percentage on pull-ups this season that he shot on threes overall last season.

And, of course, pull-ups, you're going to have a lower percentage because those are much more difficult shots, and K does take a lot of difficult shots off the dribble. You're almost invariably going to shoot better on catch-and-shoots because they're just a lot easier. They're set shots, excuse me, spot-ups. Kate doesn't really, some catch and shoots are motion threes. I'm not talking about those here.

But so when it comes to talking about catch and shoots for K, those are spot-up threes. So spot-ups are going to be a lot simpler because they're set shots and they're generally open rather than being shots off the dribble with relatively close coverage. So Kade is shooting mid-35% on pull-ups, which is a solid percentage on pull-ups. Again, I want to remind people that the points per percent, excuse me, points per possession average in the league tends to gravitate. around a little bit below one.

So if you're shooting like 34% on pull-ups, I mean, those are efficient possessions. You want guys to shoot higher on catch-and-shoots because that's a much of higher efficiency shot. And the goal in the NBA is not just to meet the overall threshold, it's to make sure that you're keeping up with everybody else. And if you're shooting 34% on catch-and-shoots, that's below par. That's significantly below league average on wide-open threes.

Just like you could look at free throws, for example, say, oh, well, this guy went to the line. He shoots 50%. He's still, you know, basically breaking even on the half-court efficiency threshold. And that's technically true, except these are free throws and everybody else is hitting them a much higher percentage. You know, we're not really including those in the equation per se. That actually when you, well, I was about to get into formulaic stuff. So forget it. But, you know, if, if Cade shot the rest of his career at a consistent 35 and a half percent on a high volume of pull-ups, I mean, that wouldn't be great, but it would be perfectly fine.

Now, where he's getting dragged down this season is being well below 20%. I can't remember exactly what it is. Okay, I actually looked it up. 14.8% on catch and shoots on very low volume. I believe it's something like 26, 25 attempts, thereabouts. And he's shooting 15% on those. And he's shooting accordingly because, you know, the vast majority of those wide open catch and shoot, excuse me, vast majority of those catch and shoots,

are going to be wide open. He is shooting 14% on wide open threes versus like 37% on open threes, a lot of which are pull-ups. The NBA defines wide open as no defender within six feet. And, or excuse me, closest defender is more than six feet away. Open is closest defender, four to six feet, tight two to four feet. And very tight, zero to two. Basically, what we have right now is Cage shooting well on the more difficult part of its parameter shot diet and shooting poorly on the easy ones. And I think realistically you can expect

that his efficiency on the easiest threes is going to get quite a bit better. So while yeah, his overall perimeter percentage right now at 29% is pretty poor, if he just starts hitting the really easy threes, again, that's going to go up significantly. And I think we can expect that. From there, you just hope that his percentage on pull-up threes remains relatively consistent. Where Kade kind of needs a little bit more help is, not help, excuse me. Well, it needs to help himself a little bit more is in the interior, like around the rim. I guess percentage on, in the restricted area, 58% is by no means bad. It's solid.

But, you know, just in the area, the restricted area and the area around it, it's kind of an aggregate. He's just still scores it a real. to be what percentage. And that's just something that he's kind of struggled with always. And it's an area in which, yeah, he does still need to improve. And he has been getting a kinder whistle this season, which is nice for his efficiency. But on the season, just as a whole, and again, the threes don't help with this. He's hovering at about 53.5.

True shooting percentage, which is significantly below what you would like. Not catastrophic by any means. but it's just, yeah, he just hasn't had the most efficient season so far. In any case, I'm never really worried about Kate Cunningham. I've felt since he came into the league that he was going to be a top 15 player. Last season, certainly a top 25 player. Yeah, he made all NBA, but a lot of guys bowed out due to injuries. Not a, you know, not poop-pooing Cade there.

Being a top 20, top 25 players is a pretty darn big deal. You know, I think that once he reaches his peak, he will be comfortably with in the top 15 period. Will that be this year? Will that be next year? Who knows? But, you know, I've always had a great deal of confidence. Cady Cunningham.

Maybe I won an MVP at some point in his career as well. We'll see. Plenty of time left. Guys functionally in season number four right now, given that his sophomore season was pretty much entirely a wash. Only played 12 games on a bad, you know, on one bad lower leg. Jaden Ivy. Good, of course, to see Jaden get back on the court last night.

And probably take a month. a little bit of time to ramp up, even though the guy really hasn't played real NBA minutes in about 11.5 months, excuse me, 10 and a half months, sorry. In any case, that's still a pretty darn long time. So here's what I think should be and probably will be done with Ivy. I think he'll come off the bench for a little while he ramps up, and then they're going to put him in the starting lineup probably almost certainly in place of Duncan Robinson for at least a little while. Again, This season is really, really, really, really, really about seeing what the team has in its youth. I know I'm harping on that, but I think it's a really important concept.

And again, one that Trajan Langdon has made clear verbally. So the Pistons are going to want to give Ivy a lot of run, and they're also going to want to give Ivy a significant amount of run with Cade because you want to see what you have there. What do you have in Ivy? You know, how do he and Cade play together? Is he potentially, you know, does he have the potential to be that kind of on-ball co-star that Cade needs? If the answer is no, does he still have the potential to offer the Pistons, you know, meaningful creation off the bench,

even if it's not as a star that's, you know, also useful. So I think, yeah, he's going to get significant run. This season is not about the front office saying, you know, how long can we make this win streak? I mean, the pistons, again, unless something goes catastrophically wrong, are going to slot pretty comfortably into a top four seed. And, yeah, you're just going to want to see what you have out of your youth. I mean, the coaching staff could optimize this team for winning if it's so desired, but that would probably not be the greatest thing where developments in team building

and future decision-making is concerned. Next up, Bicker staffs talk about a 12-man rotation. Now, 12 men was a little bit kind, given that he included four and a half minutes of Paul Reed. Number 11 and 12, when he's referring to, are Dennis Jenkins and Giovante Green. And basically, there are a few things that go into this. Number one, everyone's healthy right now, which is great, yeah, that's what you want. Unlikely to be the case for any team. I mean, injuries in this season of the NBA have been especially bad.

But, you know, you can count on, I mean, it's been really bad. Again, you just hate to see it. But you can count on at least one or two guys in your rotation, not being in, you know, not being in the game, you know, in any given situation. If that's not the case, then great. But, yeah, having everybody healthy, that'll do it. You have the presence of a couple of guys who are overperforming, or not overperforming, excuse me, performing well.

in the case of Giovante Green, maybe you could say overperforming. But a couple of guys in the fringes of the rotation who are performing well in Jenkins and Green. And also finally, though I hate to bring up the schedule again, you're playing a really easy strength of schedule, which makes it easy to, well, just a lot easier to win, and a lot easier to win while not kind of much more ruthlessly plotting out your minutes just to those, you know,

players are going to give you the best shot of winning, and I know I'm contradicting myself a little bit to what I said just a minute ago is about giving minutes to young players and that's going to continue to happen. This team is never going to be, you know, prior to the postseason or unless they're really fighting, have to fight for the postseason,

whether for seating or just to make it, which again, I think is very unlikely. You're not going to see the coaching staff just do it purely like, you know, who cares about Ron Howland, for example, who is really struggling. We're just going to give his minutes to, I don't know, Kerosilvert, or Javante Green is playing better.

Well, too bad for you, Ron. I mean, Ron's going to get his minutes. Asar, barely largely no matter how well he does, unless he's doing very poorly, he's going to get a lot of minutes. And again, Ivy's probably going to get a lot of minutes and so on and so forth. But this is just a very easy thing to do when you can just play all the guys you want to and you're going to win anyway. So, again, might be one of the changes we see when the schedule gets more difficult.

We might see Giovante kind of regress back to his mean. Devante is not a young player. it's easy to I didn't know about this I thought the guy was in his kind of like late 20s Giovante's 32 he's been around for a while

he's not really a guy who's a breakout candidate so to speak he's overperforming a bit and I hope it less even if it doesn't I mean I'd say he's been an unqualified success

his 14th man and Dennis Jenkins who knows here's the case with Jenkins so if he's going basically the guy if Ivy's in the lineup and if everybody else is healthy.

The guy that Jenkins is going to need to bump out to really get significant minutes in the long term is Karis Levert. That's going to take some time, probably, because ultimately it's Leverts spot to lose as the more proven veteran and the guy whom also the Pistons just kind of sold on joining the team in the offseason. It's not like they handed him a huge contract. It was just two years, the mid-level exception. I would guess he had other suitors.

in any case just kind of bad for him to have a guy come in and you know give up on him a quarter of the way through the season especially he's been dealing with nagging injuries which probably haven't haven't helped things but he's also just got an enormously longer mpa track record and he was to say than jenkins not a knock on jenkins per se it's just louvert's been around for a while and he's he's been a pretty solid you know solid bench caliber player so yeah in this case it's really levert's position to lose in the front office would want quite a bit more data again hate to you know just continue bringing it up but against a more challenging strength of schedule a lot of everything is just about seeing what's going on against a more challenging strength more regular strength of schedule and more to the point against the teams the pistons will play you know will need to beat the caliber of team the pistons will need to beat in the postseason that's really the only important data and finally let's close out what's

going to be a pretty short episode, partially because I feel like there's just not a great deal to talk about, but partially because I'm still not feeling particularly well. With a listener submitted question about Troy Weaver, do we at this point say, oh, well, Troy Weaver may not have done such a poor job after all. So, you know, beyond, in my opinion, the kind of premature nature of the question, I would say Troy Weaver was not at all good at his job. So I think a little bit maybe of the kudos that Weaver gets just because unlike any Pistons general manager in a long time,

he was actually allowed to tank. Like Dumas, after he traded away Chauncey, I mean, he was just not in a position with Karen Davidson to tank at that point. His directive was to continue competing. And that persisted when Tom, Gore has bought the team in 2011 because Tom Goraz, unfortunately, for the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of his tenure has coupled, has coupled a really destructive amateurism with a very destructive tendency to medal. And his belief was, hey, all we have to do is make the playoffs, establish that quote-unquote winning culture. And then once we make the playoffs, the culture will get even

stronger and we'll continue winning. You know, just the notion that you needed really elite talent to do that, rather than just the power of positive thinking or whatever, just didn't really come into the equation for him. So Dumars, I mean, that was his directive there. He was told in 2012, just more of the same. Like, if you don't make the playoffs this season, you're fired. So Dumars, who was already incompetent, I mean, he'd already been the worst GM in the league

arguably over the previous five years went out and did even more stupid things. Like, you know, trading away their first round pick to dump Ben Gordon so he could use that cap space to sign Josh Smith for the biggest contract in league history to play out a position at small forward alongside two other non-shooters. And trading for Brandon Jennings, whom I'll always say it, I'm grateful for the guy, excuse me, grateful to the guy for that. It was like 15 games after Josh Smith was waived, but he was brought in. He was a no defense chucker, and that was what he was for pretty much the remainder of his tenure for the Pistons.

Pretty much outside of that 15-game stretch, the best good he did for the organization was being expiring salary in the Tobias Harris trade in 2016. And, of course, Chris Middleton went out in that deal, less than ideal. But I digress. In any case, Stan Van Gundy was brought in, and it was the same directive. You're not allowed to tank. You can rebuild on the fly, but that's the best we're going to give you. even when the Pistons really had lost the season after Jennings' Achilles' injury in early February. It was early mid-February.

Sorry, the dates are evading me of 2015. I think it would have been early February, yeah. And, I mean, they ultimately brought Roger Jackson. And, I mean, they still, when Stan Van Gundy was still not making an effort to actually lose games. I don't know if that was just him or if it was because Tom Gores wouldn't allow him to do it even at that point in a completely lost season. And so the Pistons ended up actually doing pretty well in the late stages of the season, which is not ideal. But anyway, I mean, this persisted like when it came to the Blake Griffin trade in a season in which the Pistons really had no business doing anything but tanking, especially ahead of a draft that looked pretty good.

And this turned out to be extremely strong in a 2018 draft. Van Gundy, and I'm not defending Stan Van Gundy, but yeah, he was under the same pressures as Dumas. Basically, you've got to win this season or you're done. And by all accounts, both he and Gores and everybody else were on board for the Blake Griffin trade. It was basically, you know, a long shot to save his job, though I don't doubt that Gores thought that having a superstar on the team was going to solve all of his problems. And then the next season, of course, with Blake, it was, you know, Dwayne Casey's coach. Yep, we're competing again. And it was only after the following season. And they brought in at

Stefanski at that point of Gores did. I think it's one of the whole, one of the really funny chapters of Tom Gora's ownership of this team is that. that he brought in Ed Stefanski as a consultant to help him find a new GM and coach. And they heard Duane Casey, which I'm pretty sure Tom Correz was going to do anyway because he saw, oh, my goodness, coach of the year, you know, great, we're going to, you know, we're going to do awesome and really exactly look at the context of Casey being coach of the year because his GM had, president of basketball operations, had forced him to institute the offense of his assistant coach. But anyway, Ed Stefanski, as far as,

GM went, uh, he managed to convince Gores to not hire a GM at all and instead to put him at Stefanski in a position above where that GM would be in control of player personnel. I think with Ed Stefanski is that the guy was just incredibly mediocre in every way, like about as mediocre as you're going to find for an executive. Not bad and certainly not good either. Now, I do think he was the one who finally got through to Gores because when, when Griffin got injured again and, you know, and Gores maybe kind of understood that just having a superstar on the team wasn't going to solve all of his problems. And I think he finally, finally, and Stefansky had this, like, true professional basketball executive, which Van Gondi was not, obviously. I also like to remind everybody at this point that Van Gondi would have been the coach of the Warriors if Tom Gores had not unwisely offered him personnel control.

And the last 10 years in the NBA would have been probably dramatically different. Yeah, so he definitely was not a professional basketball executive, like a true pro, neither was Dumares. Ed Stefanski was, and I think he was the one who was finally able to get through to Goras that this is not working. This is just absolutely not working. Griffin's injury, I don't doubt help with that as well because, you know, the Pistons had gotten destroyed by the Bucks in the playoffs the previous season, but Griffin had had a

great season, and I don't doubt that Gores was, you know, very big on hopefully building on that success the next season. But, you know, when they traded for him, he'd been made available because of his injury, history, partially to fit as well, like with DeAndre Jordan, and just kind of, at that point, Griffin still really wasn't shooting threes, and it was a, you know, question, you know, if he could fit as, you know, as a power forward. And just, you know, basically he answered a bunch of questions the next season about the modernity of his game. But the injury issues, you know, the injury concerns were a big deal. So you trade for him, and you get really miraculously healthy season by

Blake Griffin's standards. But then the next season, he's out. you know, and suddenly you suck. You know, you're not just mediocre. You actually suck. So I think Stefanski finally got through to Gores. So when it came to Troy Weaver being hired, I think that Gores was for the first time really willing to butt out to a degree and willing to accept that, okay, we're going to need to drop the hole, just build a winning culture and compete every year thing and do what a lot of teams have to do, which is just be bad and get good draft odds. So Troy Weaver was allowed to do that. And we all got very, very lucky that's in a strong draft with Cade Cunningham at the top.

And the 2021 draft has turned out to be very strong. The Pistons, you know, you got 14% odds there getting number one. And the Pistons got number one, whatever you can say about their draft odds later on in his tenure. And into the first offseason of the Trajan-Wangdon era, the Pistons got very lucky at a very, very good time. they could have gotten number one the next season and ended up with, I don't know, chat would have been a good get. You know, that's certainly whom I would have taken number one.

But, you know, elite lead creators are really the ultimate currency in the NBA. And Kate is one of those. So, you know, or move on to the next season. Obviously, Wemby would be great. But anyway, they got number one in a very good year. And let's say the Pistons had drawn number six that season. The Troy Weaver era could have looked very, very, very different. Let's also not forget that he completely botched the draft in 2020.

Yeah, it ultimately led to Cade, but it's not like he botched that draft on purpose. He went in with pick number seven and traded away Luke Kennard, who is the team's primary trade asset, and for a second round picks and a future first, for two additional picks that's turned into Isaiah Stewart and Sadiq Bay, and then blew some cap space on a cap dump to bring on the pick that became safe. Damon Lee and et cetera, et cetera. You know, Bade went to mentally boom at some point. Hayes was an absolutely brutal bust. Yeah, number seven is not a huge deal.

It's more just, it's not ideal, put it that way. Number seven isn't like you're expecting you to star, but you got one of the worst players who played significant minutes in the NBA over the last five years, and we all had to watch him play for more than 200 games. In any event, basically, he went into that draft and it expended a lot of assets in a draft that ultimately had quite a bit of good talent

and came out with nothing but, you know, a bench big as much as I love Isaiah Stewart and just a whole crap with a missed opportunity. Then you go into the 2022 draft and it's like your options there are really, you know, at number five are really Ivy, Matherin or Sharp, you know how much data. It's down to Ivy or Matherin. And, you know, we'll see which one of them ends up being good. But, you know, sure. I mean, if Jalen Duren keeps up what he's doing against better teams, then certainly you're

giving Weaver a lot of credit for that on the margins move. However, that would be the one and only on the margins move he made throughout his entire time of the Pistons. And in 2023, I think Assar Thompson, if you're not, if you're shooting for upside at that point, was really the only realistic pick. I don't think Jarris Walker was really ever a major consideration for that front office, especially with their plan of using Isaiah Stewart's power forward. But meanwhile, he basically, you know, on the margins in terms of second round picks and, you know, the one weight first he had and he traded up for in 2023, he blew all of those.

Sasser was a dumb pick. And believe it or not, like draft outcomes from 25 to 30 in the last decade have actually been remarkably good. And instead, he took a player who because of his size was really going to need to have some on-ball juice in order to be a deviable NBA rotation player. yet at the age of 22, with a lot of his potential upside, realistically gone, was not able to do so as a fourth-year player against NCAA opposition and was vanishingly unlikely to, you know, to make that leap against the dramatically more difficult opposition in the NBA,

like monumentally more difficult. He did a terrible job of creating like a solid development environment for his players. Like his just his priority was bringing in as much raw talent as he possibly could. When you get your first overall pick, like who's supposed to be your franchise savior, generally you want to put a reasonably functional roster around him, not one that's necessarily going to win,

particularly if you want to continue tanking, but one that has like the basic accoutrements. Instead, he started breaking that down, literally the day of that, you know, the day of Cade's draft when he traded Mason Plumley. And from there, I mean, he put together just the shambling mess of a roster for Cade's rookie season that didn't have enough shooting,

just didn't have enough in the way of reliable role players that didn't have a single athletic big for a rookie lead handler who lives in the pick and roll and that went on to the next season all of his reclamation projects busted he had this characteristic obsession with centers brought him both Bagley

who ultimately cost four second round picks to acquire and dump and Wiseman who just didn't make any sense in the first place he was actually trying to win in 2023, 2024 certainly the coach who was brought on by the aforementioned meddling owner, that was not Weaver's fault,

made things enormously worse, but the roster he put out there just did not have the necessities. So when it came to actually needing to build a decent roster, he pretty much fell flat in his face there, too. Wasted $20 million on absorbing Joe Harris's cap hit for the sake of getting two second-round draft picks. Like, granted, I mean, some things just did not go altogether well. I mean, his other acquisition was Monti Morris, who got injured, and he may have known that Morris was injured. I mean, the price of acquiring one of the better backup point cards in the league was very low. Whatever. I think that Weaver was a decent talent evaluator, but overall, but not, you know, nothing special.

You know, nothing, he was not particularly talented at it. Like, he was not a standout by any means. And in the greater sense, the guy was seriously a man. scientist just in his way of doing things and we're seeing it in New Orleans now it's just kind of like yeah you know if you're going to by all means innovate you know you don't always need to abide by conventional wisdom but there are certain things that you don't do because there's really good reasons to not do them and he just he wanted to go his own way and if it had worked then cool maybe we should be looking at him and saying man this guy's a mad genius but it didn't

and there was you know there was plenty of logical basis for his failure so i'll say that he did some things well but on the whole was a pretty poor general manager so more or less just yeah sure credit for some of the things he did well some of that was sheer luck you know getting number one in 2021 really if if that hadn't happened in the pistons ended up with jalen green for example then i think his tenure could have ultimately ended as a total disaster rather than just the kind of sort of stepping stone to where we find ourselves right now. So my answer to that question would be of was Troy Weaver based on how this season has gone so far, actually not as bad as we might have thought.

My answer to that would be no. I just have a little opinion of the guy. And how he's done so far as general manager of the Pelican certainly hasn't done anything to change my mind. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that'll be it for this week's episode. Once again, hope you're all doing great and had a wonderful weekend. I will catch you in next week's episode.