Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 74: Pain.

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

This episode features an exasperated discussion about the manner in which the team has been coached thus far in the season, talks Jerami Grant's future with the team, and praises Cade Cunningham. 

Welcome back, everybody, to Driving to the Basket, part of the Basketball Podcast Network. I am Mike, joined as always by Dante and Tommy. We're recording this just after the loss against the thunder, all feeling a bit frustrated. But first, Dante seems, tells me as a special message for everybody. Yeah, this is my, sorry, I was just bleaching my eyes from that atrocity of a game we just watched, and I was watching this. I don't know if anybody recognizes this call. Anybody remember that? Did you guys watch the game?

Yeah, it happened like yesterday, didn't it? Yeah, I've only watched this exact clip. I would say 35 times. It was a good moment. It reminds me, for any of you who are familiar with The Simpsons of Old, so The Simpsons back in the 90s, which I felt back then was just a fantastic show and really just kind of went down the tubes in the 2000s onward.

But there's this episode widely considered, I think, to be the best episode of the Simpsons ever called Kate Fear. And Homer is, the family's going into the witness protection program. And Homer wants to be John Elway. So in his fantasy, he gets the ball as the quarterback. And he jumps over the line and scores and he's celebrating. And the announcer says, and that'll be it for this Super Bowl. The score, San Francisco 54, Denver 10.

So that's really what that clip reminds me. It's like, it's awesome that they won. But it's like, there are no buts. It is awesome that they won. It just reminds me that for some reason. I mean, one, 10, and one, but we were there for the one on the far left side. So there you go. That's, listen, and between that and Michigan, what an amazing sports weekend capped off by

the Pistons won tonight, right? Yeah, something like that. So we can watch straight toward this game, I suppose, which was really a low point in a season that hasn't gone to plan. Last year, it was a rebuilding season, the Pistons were going to lose a lot, but they kept the competitive. This year, I really wouldn't call what they've done dignified. No.

I mean, the players are trying their best. No, I like that. Yeah, last season was kind of a dignified tank. I mean, up until like the last few weeks when they were just trying to lose as many games as possible, right? Whiteway, so. But it was dignified, and they always put up a fight. They've gotten blown out so many times and blown so many weeds that it's just hard to see, hard to watch. And I don't think it's good for anybody

At all players or anybody else Yeah Dante I know you got plenty to say Just go into it man I have not seen this many consecutive Collapses since the last season of Game of Thrones Honestly Never happened season never happened You know we all just kind of forgot about season eight

And season seven Yeah it's a user reference Yeah, that one is, yeah, we sort of like to maybe preserve the legacy of Game of Thrones, but as far as the Pistons are concerned, I don't, listen, these games have become so predictable, but in the worst way possible, like the Pistons will manage to look semi-competent for a large portion of the game, only to fumble it away late in just, you can only really describe it as a comedy of errors. You know, I made this point after the, son's game and I believe the sun scored on their last 10 straight possessions. And I understand the

sons are a talented team, but when something like that occurs, there's no choice but to look to coaching because there has got to be somewhere between the first field goal and the 10th consecutive field goal where you can do something to slow the other team down. And for the people who want to say, well, you know, the sons are just uber talented and there's nothing the Pistons could really do, well, did you watch tonight? Because 14 field goals in a row. happened in the fourth quarter. And this time it was against a team that just lost by 73 points. I, you know, there's a term that I learned in law school. It's called Recipsa Loquiter. And it's called the thing speaks for itself. And it's when something is so blatantly obvious that you don't actually

have to argue its merits in court. So I would say that Casey's coaching skills at this point would fall under that legal doctrine. Yeah, I would say, about Casey. A long time listeners this podcast, even people maybe who haven't listened to it for a very long time, know how I feel about Dwayne Casey, which is, I think he has some strong suits. You know, he's, for the most part, a pretty competent defensive coach. His players always like him a lot. He seems to do well with young players. But that's where his talent ends. There's stuff, there are negative aspects of his coaching that have been there from day one of his NBA head coaching career that have not gone away. he's a bad offensive coach. I mean, I know if, Sands or Butts about that. Like, he's a bad offensive coach to the point that in 2018, which 2018, 2019 was his coach of the year campaign, Masai Ujuri, GM of the Raptors actually took the offense away from him. It's like, we're going to a new offense, and Nick Nurse is going to plan it.

Nick Nurse is just assistant coach at that time. And the Raptors had their best season ever. Of course, it fell apart in the playoffs because Casey can't coach in the playoffs. And the reason in case he can't coach in the playoffs is not just because he's pretty simple-minded on offense and not innovative and doesn't really know how to coach it. And offense is really where it's at in the NBA, or at the very least you have to be competent at it. But he cannot adapt. And that's really what comes into play during these fourth quarter collapses. He cannot adapt on the fly.

No. He is incapable of doing that on an in-game basis. He can barely even shift his rotations. You saw it tonight. Trey Lyle stayed out there and got obliterated. And I'd have to. to look at exactly at Casey's rotations, but I'm pretty sure it happens because, you know what, Isaiah Stewart comes back in the game at this point. And that's that. I remember two seasons ago,

her 2018, 2019, once Luke Canard had gotten himself back in the rotation, it's like, okay, the starting lineup goes out there. They desperately need some shooting in an offensive infusion, but that's too bad because Luke Conard is coming in at seven and a half minutes into the first quarter, no matter what. And yeah, I'll toss it over to Tommy because he hasn't gotten to talk much, I could really go on and on about this. Yeah, well, I got to preface everything I'm about to say with. I agree with you that Casey is a horrible offensive coach. He doesn't make adjustments, and we know that about him.

And I feel like, I don't know, maybe we, I guess I've just kind of accepted that. I know why he's here and in that greater context that hasn't changed for me. I see a lot of the complaints about Trey Liles, and you just brought it up, like the rotations where he gets obliterated for a long time. I feel like you have to throw some of the blame on just the roster construction at this point. They didn't have Corey Joseph tonight because of injury, so saving league got pretty heavy minutes in usage. And then Trey Liles is the backup five right now.

On no NBA team, should he be a backup five. He is a power forward. He's undersized. He is slow. I don't know how many minutes he played tonight, but it was too many. And it's just we don't have any other options. We had so much momentum in the first quarter when, and then Luca Garza came in. and we blew this lead.

We didn't blow it all the way, but like, we almost doubled them, like, midway through the first. And Luca Garza comes in, and we just don't have talent. You know, Isaiah Stewart is probably a backup on a good team, and he's our starting center. That's true. That's kind of, that's part of it, you know? Which is what you can do?

Not exactly, there's not much you can do, but you can do in court. But Trey Wiles, you coach a shot selection. Dwayne Casey does not coach the shot selection of his veterans. Tray Liles takes all sorts of shots he should not take. He should not be... Yeah, he does take so many mid-range pull-ups. I do agree. It's not mid-range pull-ups alone.

I mean, he'll attack a close-out. He's not fast enough to attack a close-out, but nine out of ten times he's going to go for a shot of the basket anyway, and he's not going to pass it. Shouldn't be attempting mid-range pull-ups. Shouldn't be attempting mid-range shots at all. Really, this is a guy who should not be doing much on offense, but this is a Dwayne Casey characteristic.

He does not coach the shot selection of his veterans. and when it comes to his young players, if anything, he might keep them on a wish that's a little bit too short. But you see Jeremy Grant's mid-range pull-ups, for example. I mean, he looked back, De Rosen did the same thing. DeRosen got to do whatever he wanted. Kyle Lowry did better at doing whatever he wanted, but he got to do whatever he wanted. This is a characteristic of Dwayne Casey. Yeah, yeah.

And I'll say this, too. Asking Dwayne Casey to deviate in any way, shape, or form from his entrenched rotations is like asking him to split. the atom like it you it is baffling how little the flow of the game and the the context of the situation and what's actually going on in the court um affects Casey's lineups it's it's almost as if and I know this isn't actually the case but I kind of maybe feel like it it might actually be where he writes out his rotations beforehand he divides things up to the minute you know the minutes and the sets are broken down very specifically and he does not deviate from that no matter what. And they're, listen, I'm not asking for Cade and Jeremy and for everybody to play

every minute of every game that obviously isn't feasible, but I can't help but feel like there's certain points in certain games where the situation calls for a deviation of your, you're pre-planning. You know, Tommy brought up a great point during the game, and we were talking in our group chat about what was going on. And Isaiah Stewart sat for far too long in the second half. The pistons were getting destroyed from okayc's length and size. And Isaiah, you know, he's not a perfect rim protector, but he certainly would have made a difference. But, you know, that wasn't a part of the premeditated breakdown of the minutes.

And so by the time Stewart came in, it was far too late. And I can make this thing, oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Mike. Yeah, I wouldn't say it's premeditated. So Garza only ended up playing four minutes, but it was such a rough stretch. I was surprised to see it was just four. Trey Liles played 14 minutes. Feels like a lot longer because it's rough watching him out there because he's playing

out of position. Isaiah Stewart played 29. He had three field goals. And this is one of the weird things that I had noticed because Oklahoma City's center rotation tonight was Mike Muscala and Alexei Pocoszewski. I don't know how, like, yeah, it was awful. And we had legitimate interior presence on the boards tonight. And, but again, I mean, part of this is just Isaiah is not a great offensive player

other than the low post. But he should have gotten more. Like, there's just weird adjustments that, probably should have been made because Isaiah didn't come in until I think the 351 mark in the fourth quarter. No, he became weird to me. Did he? I can't remember.

I thought he came back at six and a half minutes, but I could be wrong. Was it six and a half? I thought it was 351. Like, Lyles was out there late. He was out there late. I thought it was late in the quarter. I could be wrong. But, I mean, here's why coaching, you know, you can focus on the players.

Sure, the players aren't good. On paper, this team should have more talent than it did last season. but here's where coaching is one of the things that upsets me to most. And it upsets me when I'm watching teams that aren't even the pistons. Like, not if I want the team to lose, but for example, I thought Dwayne Casey should have been fired by the Raptors in 2015 after that debacle against the Wizards. The Raptors went in third-seated, I believe, and got swept.

It was not close. And I'm sure, looking back, Masayuji also wishes he had fired Gasey at that point because, you know, Casey's team's invariably underperforming the playoffs for the for the above stated reasons. But you cannot control how your players perform. Sometimes you can get them the best shots. You can do everything right. And they just don't convert.

And that's too bad. And it is what it is. You can absolutely control your coaching. You can absolutely control the manner in which you give your team its best shot at winning. This is a 100% controllable factor in every situation. Of course, it boils down to the talent level of the coach. but Casey doesn't do that and he never has

and I feel like as the game is evolved and especially certainly as as it's evolved into the efficiency era but also as it's gotten more athletic and faster I mean he's fallen more further and further behind now I'm going to say a name that nobody likes to hear which is Stan Van Gundy Stan Van Gundy

has a lot or had a lot of the same flaws as Casey only magnified he was even more rigid. He was even less innovative and more simple. He was even more attached to just the way that he wanted to do things. And he was terrible at giving the Pistons, their best shot at winning. Terrible. Like absolutely terrible. He made Casey look flexible by comparison, made him look like a good offensive coach by comparison. But at this point, I'm just tired. I'm really tired of the Pistons having coaches who underperform and whose teams are always less than the sum of their parts, but just in all are not giving their teams the best

shot at winning. And often it's very obvious mistakes. And it's just like it's fatigue at this point. I mean, this is what like season eight between Van Gundy and Casey? And I would argue in the first place Casey got this job because Tom Gorez just wanted to make the playoffs. And he said, oh, what coach of the year? I mean, his flaws are known. Yeah. He definitely got the job for the wrong reasons. But now that he's here, I feel like just because this is such a young team, it would be really easy for things to get just really rough in the locker room. And that's what I, I don't know, maybe I'm just, maybe I'm just trying to cope. I don't know. But I just keep telling myself, okay, Casey is, he's a good quote. Guys seem to like him and respect him. You don't hear about

like bad things going on in the locker room. The quotes that you get from guys aren't like, you don't get a ton of frustration other than that little homadoo incident. That's what I keep telling myself and I think I'd probably be a lot more worried if Weaver hadn't given him that given him that one year extension I think there was something there there was a vote of confidence in that but yes otherwise I completely agree like Casey is he the shot selection is probably the biggest issue that I have because I you just see so much mid range midrange pullups guys not passing and there are a couple key suspects and it's it's Jeremy Grant who's passing a little more nowadays and then Sadiq Bay who

who is just he does not pass. He does not move the ball. He's doing things he's bad at, consistently doing things he's bad at. I mean, this, like, I wrote a very long analysis of Sadiq Bay. I posted on the Detroit Bist and subredits. And I mean,

the gist of things is that, number one, I mean, amongst guys who aren't just kind of like there, like Blake Griffin, who's, you know, out of the net's rotation now and is just, was a very low usage player and didn't do all that much. Amongst players, yeah, amongst players who are actually,

shooting the ball. Sidic Bay has almost in arguably been the worst starter in the NBA. And that's because he's doing, he's being used in a way that really caters to all his weaknesses. He's been doing a terrible job on offense,

been basically, and I don't know how much of this boils down to Casey, but it's like, it seems like Bay has basically been told, okay, we're going to give you the ball and we want you to create offense. That's like the hardest thing to do at the NBA level,

to just take the ball and create something out of nothing. And what it boils down to, and I know I'm talking a lot in this episode and I feel I'll just I'll just get this like kind of mini monologue out of the way and and then try not to do it again. But Sidic Bay isn't a player who's kind of like, oh, okay, he's trying to come into his own. He's trying to get better at this stuff. Sadiq Bay when he's trying to create offense as a guy who takes a gigantic volume of bad shots. Like maybe I'm saying gigantic volume, but not gigantic. I'll put it this way.

Virtually all the shots he takes off the dribble or bad shots. almost every single one. These are not shots he should be attempting. And tonight he started off, well, he started off with trying to create offense and flooding that. And then he had three threes in a row and went right back to trying to create offense. On the night, he took five twos that he created himself. All five of them were bad.

He made one of them. That makes a difference. So, yeah, he's being used in a way that's not good either. Yeah. And I would argue that this is not a good way to develop him at all. And that comes down to the coaching staff as well. Yeah, I mean, listen, the Pistons are already fighting against the lack of talent on their roster night in and night out. They can't afford to be fighting against their own coach too.

And I don't mean fighting in the interpersonal sense. I mean fighting as in they have to play these games to the best of their abilities in spite of their coach. And Mike, I appreciate your perspective on coaching because I happen to share it one for one. It's something that I've been saying ever since I've, I've, had a vested interest in professional sports. And it's that, you know, these players are all at the top of their craft. They're playing at the highest level. They need a leader to guide them and to put them in the best position to succeed.

You know, at this level, a coach's role should be to not only not stand in the way of his team's success, but to maximize their opportunity to be successful. And I can't help but feel like Casey has invariably failed at the, goals at every conceivable junction. And I can't say that it's been any more apparent than it's been in these past, I don't know, these past 20 games or so, it's, it's, look no further than what happens out of timeouts. You know, how many times do we come out of a timeout on, on offense and just end up chucking

up a bad shot? It's terrible. You can't do it. No, you can't do it. And then how about on defense tonight? You know, the game was already pretty well out of hand. But, you know, maybe if you got to stop, you could have still been in the game at this point. I think there was maybe a minute and a half left. And we come out of the time out and the

thunder get an uncontested. Like it's like who at one point the camera pan to all the players around Casey as he was drawing something on the on his clipboard. And I was thinking like what are you playing Pictionary? Like you there's no way you're writing something useful on that clipboard. Like I just it is I'm getting very aggravated because it's it's like you said, Mike, it's it's tiring. It's so tiring. And honestly, as much as I love this team, I'll be, I've said this to you guys and I'll be honest, if it wasn't for Cade Cunningham and for this podcast, I would not be watching this team. This is not a good product at all.

You could essentially write the script on how every late game situation goes. And it's not, I love the word you use, Mike, dignified. This is not a dignified tank. This is collapse after collapse, after collapse. And be it as it may that the team is not talented, the foremost thing that you can point to at every junction is the coaching. That's just a fact. Yeah, I feel like we should take a step back here just because, well, I'll be honest. I was thinking about this earlier.

And one of the things I was thinking about is guys are playing way above what they should be reasonably asked to do or what role they would actually have on a good team. Like Jeremy Grant, one of the questions that we had about him coming into the year was, is he a second option on a good team or a third option? option. I think right now he's kind of proving that he's much better when he's taking the shots that a role player would take. And then this especially pertains to Sadiq Bay. Sadiq Bay took the same number of field goal attempts as Jeremy Grant tonight. He is our third option on offense. And on a good team, he would probably be a low usage fifth option. But do you regret the way that they're using him or the fact that they tried it? Like, that's a genuine question that I have. No, I do. I think, oh, go ahead. Exactly. I feel like there is like an actual discussion here.

Yeah, there's a discussion. I think it was, here's what you do with the, especially with a player like Sadiq. Sadiq is not well suited to create offense. You look at the qualities that will help you beat guys off the dribble, beat defenders at the rim. I mean, burst, verticality, half court foot speed in general, quickness, even to things like handle and body control. And strength is important too. So Sadiq has strength. He has none of the other five. He cannot beat guys off the dribble. He cannot elevate at the rim. He has poor body control off the drive. He has virtually no handle at all. The guy's basically just going to dribble in a straight line. He's he's got no handle in the context. I thought he had some perimeter handle just on creating drives,

but he couldn't finish him. No, what I'm talking about is off the drive. He's not going to be crossing you over or something like that. No, he doesn't have a diverse handle package. Yeah, it's as simple as it gets. Yeah. So, but with any player who's not like a phenom, you work them into this incrementally. You say we want you to work on this. We want you to work on that here, or maybe the moves who want you to use. I remember how the jazz worked Donovan Mitchell into it. And they were very specific about it. Instead, Sadiq's basically who doesn't have these qualities,

which will give them an advantage as a creator, is basically just being given the ball and saying, go for it. Try to create offense. Go score. Go score. And the result is just a ton of bad shots. Yeah. And it seems to have really nuked his confidence.

That's not helpful. It's accomplishing nothing. Yep. And so no. In the first place, I would say, it was gone about stupidly. It was gone about in kind of what feels like a Casey-like manner. I wonder where Bayline isn't on this, but Casey has the final decision. It was just like incredibly clunky.

It's like this is not the way to try to develop a player in creating offense, particularly one who is at a disadvantage in the first place. So the games I've seen this season where Bay looks better is when he's really reverting back to that three-indy role, which is comfortable at and in which he can succeed. And I would say if you want to develop him, work him on exploiting mismatches, using his strength to attack to the outside, stuff like that. Right. He's being set up to fill.

Yeah, Dante, you were very pro-Sadik Bay expanding his role to start the season. He looked good at the beginning of the season. Like, what is your take? Like, I'm not trying to be like a contrarian. I'm worried that I'm starting to sound like it. But what I'm trying to do as I watch these games is see the bigger picture or like the long-term. And one of the things that we all wanted was, you know, if we're going to suck, like people do it with Sabin right now.

They want Corey Joseph to be benched in favor. of Saving because it's like, well, we're going to suck. We're going to lose anyway. Why not just see what it is. But saving aside, Dante, you wanted Sadiq Bay to get an expanded role. What do you think of the way that they've gone about it? Well, I think Mike is spot on. And like this is, yeah, a long time listeners of the show know that I am the, I'm the president of the Sadiq Bay fan club.

You know, I was just ear to ear smiling after every historic shooting night that he had last season. And I was, you know, I am on record saying that I thought he could be a Chris Middleton. type. I thought he had the shooting touch. I thought he had the size. I thought he had the basketball IQ. And maybe even if it wasn't a one for one perfect comparison, I thought that there was a world where he could get up to 18, 19, 20 points per game in that Middleton-esque role. And I obviously, I don't blame the pistons for trying to diversify his skill set and see what they have in him. But it's like Mike said, it was implemented in a clunky fashion. And I would even go further and say that this experiment

has been continued in a clunky fashion. And it's now reached the point of negligence because it's like, okay, I literally said last episode when I was talking about guided development, wouldn't it be helpful like Mike said to give Sadiq the ball and say, okay, here's what you're going to do. You're going to try to break your man down, put your shoulder down, use your strength, bully your way to the basket, and then finish like this or finish like that.

Like give them one thing. Or pass the ball if you get stuck. If you get held up. But even if you don't want to pass the ball, even if you're hell bent on finishing, why don't you cater to your strengths, which is ironically his strength, right, his physical strength, cater to that and find a way to your way to the basket and score. But that's not what's happening.

What's happening is here, Sadiq, take the ball, spin around with your handle that's not very good, post up at weird times, take weird side step threes and just figure it out. And he hasn't been able to do it. And the problem is now that it's been so bad for so long, His confidence is starting to get affected. Not starting to get affected. His confidence has been affected. So at that point, it's irresponsible to not rein it back in.

It's irresponsible to not sit, Sadiq down and tell him, okay, this is not working. Maybe we can revisit training some of these aspects of your game during the offseason. But for right now, we need to win games. And the best chance for us to win games is for you to take on the role that you took on last year. And then you go from there. But what's going on right now is just, Mike couldn't have said it better, but I would take it a step further and say it's nothing short of negligent, quite honestly.

That's my take. It's been bad, and I'll just break in with a stat here. The team, of course, has been massively worse with Sadiq on the floor. I mean, like, I believe it's on off prior to tonight that to tonight was like negative 14 or something like that, which is really bad, like really, really bad after 20 games. There's also the fact that all of the other starters, all four of them, are plus players without him on the floor and significantly negative players with him without, with him on the floor, excuse me.

So when the team has those players, Killian, Killian's the only one who tests kind of a smaller sample size. He's only played about, if I remember correctly, about 60 minutes without Bay. The other three have considerably more time without Bay. When they have those players on the floor without Bay, they have a positive point differential. I mean, it's not just that he has been struggling.

He has been a disaster for the team whenever he's on the floor. So, I mean, it has done bad things all around. And I kind of hoped that they would be winding it down, but tonight we saw that. That's not the case. His first shot attempt was trying to self-create. He tried five times, five bad shots. Yeah.

Did you see at the very end of the game there? He passed up a wide open three to sidestep into a contested fadeaway three. That's not the Sadiq Bay of last year. That's a Sadiq Bay who's out of his element and he's just, he's floundering. He's floundering right now. On defense too. On defense too. And the coaches need to step in and figure it out.

But I have, I don't even want to say I have zero. confidence in this coaching staff because I actually have negative confidence in the coaching staff in that I feel like they might make players worse. You know, we have evidence for that. And as much as it hurts to say, that unfortunately is the case. And, uh, just pain, pain. Tommy, what, I mean, what do you think? I mean, you've asked this question.

What are your thoughts on it? I think they expanded his role too quickly. And that's something that I was wary of with Cade this summer. And it ended up being kind of an unnecessary fear that, uh, they did end up saying Casey just recently said like for the first 20 games we wanted to I forget exactly how he phrased it but the gist of it was but we didn't want to give him too much of a role too quickly they took that precaution with Cade I don't think they did it with Bay or maybe they were just so encouraged by how it looked pretty good early on you know but I think

the defense adjusted and yeah right was it and then there was a little bit of in summer league we knew it was something that they were working on but he's he's he's he was he's playing like a third option and he really just he just isn't one um so i think that's kind of the problem they really haven't i'm not going to say this no i'm not going to say that because kisi there are quotes from kisi about like you should be looking to pass i was trying to find the quote on twitter just now and i saw one from october 6th where kasy was praising sadik bay's passing ability that has not manifested late in games i don't know if it's just because there's like a lot more defensive pressure he's maybe not able to keep up with it right now maybe that's just going to

time. But right now, Sadieq Bay is, he's a ball stopper and he does not pass the ball and it's negatively affecting the offense so much. Like, it is brutal out there when Sadieke Bay isolates, takes it into the mid or into the paint and he gets mobbed and he still tries to take a shot. He just, he doesn't have the awareness to look for the open man and keep the ball moving. And Kate is really good at that. Killian is really good at that. Isaiah Stewart had a couple instances of that tonight. even Jeremy Grant, who I think I even said earlier, like not even 10 minutes ago, was one of those prime suspects, but even Grant is looking to pass it a bit more. Like he was, I thought he was pulling up for one of his classic isolations or, you know,

dribble, take your man one-on-one, and he passed it away. Like, that's good. That's actually generating a little bit of ball movement and offense. But Sadiq-Ba does not do that. Yeah, it's, there's one thing when you have a project that is just kind of like not necessarily going to will, but you want to stick with it to see where it's going to go. This has been just a disaster. It has been a disaster for Bay.

It's been a disaster for the team when he's on the floor. And they basically just threw him in a deep end and said, okay, try to swim, even though you're at a disadvantage. And it hasn't worked out. It's just meant bad things. It's been bad for his confidence. I don't think it's done any favors for his development. His performance is down across the board. He even looks fostered on defense.

And, you know, yeah. Yeah, it's, I mean, I've said all I need to say about it. But the way I see it, I mean, if you're a team that's rebuilding, you can go one of two ways. You can be as bad as you possibly can be or just be, have such a bad roster that you're basically guaranteed that you're going to lose a ton of games. That's what the Thunder have done. Or you can go with the route like the pistons where, you know, what they did,

they had a couple drafts and then you come back this season and see how it's going to go. In that situation, I mean, if you really want to capitalize on that, you want things to go somewhat well for these players to at least be playing in ways that cater to their developments and within a functioning offense and have your performance be somewhat respectable. And the Pistons are trying to do that. The Thunder lost by 73 points. That's humiliating, but this is a team that is not fielding anything, even remotely resembling a competitive roster. The Pistons went out and paid Kelly Olinick $13 million a year or something like that.

Yeah. And I mean, just from what Troy, we were. said. I mean, they're going out there and trying to put forth a decent product, but instead, it's been terrible and you can't control the player's shoot. Like I said, you can control how you coach and the coaching has been a gigantic negative toward that end. Yeah. It's at the end of fielding a decent product in which the players are probably not just completely enraged from all this losing. Well, I mean, I don't know if you just saw. So there were some quotes coming through from Cade right now where he's, I'm trying to find the exact one right now, but he said,

something along the lines of I'm not going to let a couple losses stop me from hating losing. So I mean, I guess he's saying the right things, but it's going to get old. Really fast, Cade, like welcome to Detroit. Like, this is going to get old quick. And I'm not sitting here suggesting that all. We're on the brink of losing the locker room. But things can compound, you know, things can go from bad to worst in the blink of an eye. I think another thing to you, and listen, we do want to touch on maybe some positives tonight.

It's about 31 minutes and 52 seconds right now of all negatives, but there are a few more points that need to be made. One thing that's stuck out to me, I know you guys remember, Killian Hayes with a clutch steel, and then he rifles it at Cade Cunningham's face for a turnover when we absolutely needed to secure that possession. And that, to me, just dictates a player who is so lacking in composure, you know, so lacking in being calm, cool, and collected when the time calls for it. And I know people are going to say, well, how are you going to relate this back to Casey? I think that the players take on the attitude of their coach. You know, I don't think Casey's composed in late game situations at all. He routinely lets the game slip through his fingers. And so the players are going to emulate that vibe.

And there's no, they are, they're drowning out there. And this coaching staff just refuses to throw them a life fest. So I don't know. I thought that that Hayes turnover was just the encapsulation of or an amalgamation of the garbage we've seen go on this season. I wouldn't necessarily agree with that just because I feel like, well, I don't want this to sound like an excuse, especially since it was the same case with Oklahoma City tonight. But they're a young team. You know, it's three sophomores, a rookie point guard. And Jeremy Grant, this is his first real season of, oh, no.

Yeah, no. Well, he's playing a role that he's not really accustomed to. And he's probably in over his head with. But, yeah, they just lack poised. they're making like especially in the fourth quarter there they got really sloppy with their passes like that's when it really started to fall apart call a time out call a time out get the situation and figure it's a nice thought but i don't know what like a time out is like a good time to like reset and everything and kind of recompose but it's a time to adjust it's a time to adjust

to make the necessary adjustments it's just like i feel like we've forgotten that because the pistons haven't actually had a good coach in more than a decade yep yep you ever notice how other teams coaches use their timeouts. It's like as soon as the pistons start to get hot, you know, as soon as the pistons start to cut into a lead or pull away, it's like, you know, there goes the whistle, here comes the timeout. And it's like, oh, man, I wish they kept playing. The pistons don't do that.

You know, it almost feels like Casey is constantly calling timeouts either a play too early or a play too late or even sometimes four or five plays too late. Well, I would say that what Casey, like, like first of all, just to go back what you said about Killian, I don't necessarily agree that that's a reflection on Casey. it was just Killian making a bad, you know, a rookie for all intents and purposes. I was just played, I think, in total a little bit over half a season. Just making kind of a bad decision.

And, you know, that happens. And whatever the case, we haven't, like timeouts, yeah. I mean, we've been through, like, I came back to the Pistons during the Van Gundy era. You know, we've been, we've been through Stan Van Gundy who could do nothing to adjust also, of timeouts. He would generally just say, okay, go out there and as far as I could tell the team, would go out there and do the same thing, even if it was even flagrantly more, more flawed than what Casey is doing, because Casey is a more competent coach. But he'd come out, he'd throw out some often abomination of an out of timeout play. I remember once the jazz went on a run, this was probably

four seasons ago. The jazz went on a run, and Van Gundy's out of timeout play was to post up Andre Drummond, the worst post player in the league, against Rudy Gobert, the best defensive center in the league, and the result was predictable. But in any case, yeah, what you do with timeouts, you make those necessary adjustments. And ideally, you come back out with a play that kills the opponent's momentum and gets you back on the train instead. Casey just seems to send the players out there and they don't actually do a play. How many times have we seen Jeremy Grant fade away twos out of a timeout? So, yeah, the man doesn't know how to do. to how to adjust in game.

That's one reason why his team's so horrendously underperformed in the playoffs every single season. Now, you can say, okay, well, who cares? The Pistons are losing. Yeah, sure, okay. The Pistons are best off getting another high pick, but you want to develop these players in a system that maximizes what they can offer, and a system that helps them succeed to a degree, and also a system in which the team isn't a complete joke that's getting destroyed,

and that's happened way too many times. here. And often the margin between victory and defeat is, I think, often the coaching. That's how it was in the Van Gundy era too when the Pissons would lose close games. And it's like, you know what, if you had a coach who is like two possessions more efficient, though with Van Gundy, he was far worse than that, then you win this game. So it's just across the board bad, in my opinion. And now a quick word from our sponsor. Another week of the NFL season means another shot to win big at Draft King's sportsbook. New customers can bet just $1

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call 1-800 gambler. There's another one that I've noticed that we haven't really gotten to talk about. I don't know if people have noticed it, but it's something that I've noticed, and this is kind of changing gears here, but the defensive end, there's a little bit of a problem that I see out there, and it's Cade Cunningham. Ordinarily, he's a pretty good defender, but right now I see a lot of defensive breakdowns happening because Cade will help off ball, or he'll try to be like a secondary defender and help on the weak side, and he leaves his man wide open,

and a good NBA offensive player is going to recognize that they're getting doubled, look for the open man, and oftentimes Cade can't collapse back and adjust, and that leads to a defensive breakdown, and that's something that they just need to cut out. A couple other things that I've noticed, Killian Hayes and Corey Joseph, horrible at navigating screens. There are just issues on this team. They still just lack talent.

It's very frustrating for sure. Yeah, on defense. Certainly. I mean, as far as Corey Joseph, I think it merits mentioned tonight's that though I know there's a sentiment to a degree amongst amongst some Pistons fans that why is Corey Joseph in the lineup just throw Sabin in and, you know, why not? Saban, I think tonight was an example of just how he's just a little bit too raw for the NBA right now. Passed up too many threes and those were redundant of wasted possessions. Still can't penetrate. He doesn't really have too much to offer in that situation. I think you let a player develop a much more consequence for an easy environment instead of just throwing him into a situation for which he's on ready.

That's not necessarily the best way to develop. But it's like tonight they really could have used the composure of Corey Joseph in the second unit, since at least you can count on him to make the right decision most of the time. Even if he's not necessarily a good player, he's an average backup point guard. And that would have been real valuable to have tonight. but yeah on the defensive end the pistons not being athletic at all is a problem because if they make a mistake if a guy finds himself in the raw position it's going to have a real hard time compensating like we saw diallo who plays some pretty good defense he can stay with guys and he can also

rotate well and if he finds himself a few feet away from where he's supposed to be he can get there now the pistons are fielding four below average athletes in the starting lineup and that's going to hurt. And Tommy, you mentioned Killian. I think Killian's defense is a little bit overrated. It's kind of like Avery Bradley, for example, in his last season with the Pistons. A really good isolation guard, kind of one-on-one guard defender for the most part. Killian really got torched by Westbrook and doesn't really do well against explosive point guards. But when it comes to any other form of offense, he really struggles. If he has to navigate his screen, he's probably going to get beaten. A guy gets him on his back or he gets stuck beyond the defender. He's going to get

beaten. If he's forced to, you know, goodness forbid, forced to navigate a screen behind a quick shooter who can shoot right from around that screen, he's screwed. The guy's going to get an open shot. There's nothing done about it. So yeah, this team right now doesn't really have the defensive pieces, I think is as much as it's made of it's, you know, you're fielding five good defenders. I don't, I think the, the hole is less than some of the parts. Yeah, they get a lot of steals, but ultimately just on offense in the NBA, they're just, they're not a very tax. talented team. And I don't know if it's a defense mechanism for me, but I just kind of try to see the big picture of it and kind of recognize, yeah, we weren't supposed to be good. A rebuild

is supposed to be painful. This is what it's supposed to look like. I think we were a bit spoiled last year just by how kind of fairy tale, all those close games, where we all, all those clutch losses, as we like to call them, this is what an ugly part of a rebuild looks like. And I know it's weird to take a step back after you get a number one pick like Cade Cunningham. but yeah the magic is kind of worn off and all those lucky losses i guess you could call them from last year we're not really seeing them we're seeing what a bad young team looks like and we don't really see the the improvements or the shot selection tailoring or the improvements from the coaching that we want to see so it would be a lot maybe it would be easier to stomach if we had a coach

like steve cur or like somebody who was coaching a modern offense but we don't and that's that That does compound the issue. But I guess what I would just say is try to be patient. I know it's hard to be patient, but I think it'll be worth it one day. So here's the thing. I mean, sure, if it were just tailored for that sort of rebuild, like, okay, we're just going to put out this team of young guys and, you know, whatever. But the Pistons were meant to be better this season than they were last season.

On paper, they should be a better team. And instead, they're getting, they're repeatedly blowing leads. They've gotten slaughtered in a whole bunch of games. It's not supposed to be an ugly rebuild like this. This is happening incidentally. It was not intentional. Like the Pistons at the end of the 2019-2020 season, okay, lose games. Who cares?

We get a higher draft pick. The end of last season, okay, who cares? Lose games. We get a higher draft pick. This season was about trotting out of squad and seeing how it went and they're getting slaughtered. It wasn't meant to be a terrible roster. No. And I would say, again, I mean, wins aren't the greatest thing in the situation.

but I think the team would be a lot more competitive, would not be getting annihilated in the third and fourth quarters, would just be looking a lot better if you had a coach who was not so, did not have so many incredible flaws. And I feel like this is the worst I've seen Dwayne Casey ever coach on offense. I mean, his failure to adjust is just there. That's their period. Always has been, I'd say at this point after a decade always will be.

And that's bad, but it is what it is. Well, I have really had to not. Try not to think about it too much during games because it will actually make me very angry. I'm not going to lie. So I, it's just when it comes to offense, this is the worst I've ever seen him, coach. And I wonder at how the turnover and assistance may have affected him. So, yeah, it's how much he might have been getting propped up a little bit by the last set of assistants. No, I would echo all that.

I've been, I've been staying quiet for the last few minutes because I, I couldn't have said it better than the two of you said it. And I think we've got some user submitted questions. So I don't know if we wanted to move along to those. Sure. Yeah, it seems like a good time. So we can start with the first one. Of course, we have plenty of questions about Dwayne Casey. What opinions did you each hold throughout the first 10 games of the season

that you no longer hold now? Yeah, I could start with this one if you guys want. I remember saying on the show, actually, I said that there was like absolutely no chance that Cade was going to win. rookie of the year. I think it's now a tight race and I sort of expect him to, I don't know if I want to say expect him to, but I think it's conceivable that he could be buying for that top spot and eventually overtake that top spot by, I don't know, the halfway point, the three-quarter mark of the season. He's just, he's so good. He's so good. And we didn't really have a chance to get

into Cade tonight because we've been talking about, you know, the negatives, the negatives, the negatives, which is understandable. But Cade was, aside from the turnovers, pretty spectacular. again tonight and I think that as he gets more comfortable and as his role sort of expands here, you're going to see that the truly special player that he was drafted to be much earlier than I think a lot of people anticipated. So yeah, between the first 10 games and now, Cade Rookie of the Year completely changed my mind on it. Yeah, one thing. People are talking about how Cade gets blocked a lot. It's because he shoots the ball from like his hip and then his release is at his chin. That's part of it.

even at 6-8, you're going to get blocked sometimes if you start your release that low. But back to the question, what opinions you hold over the first 10 games that you no longer hold? Isaiah Stewart, I don't think he's a starting center for a good team anymore. I think he would be best as a high minute six-man, as a low-post score where he would dominate with his size. And clearly right now he is not part of a pick-and-roll tandem. We talked about this, at least in the past few episodes. and that really became apparent this season. As you see guys like Killian and Kade who are both willing to throw lobs,

they just don't have a target, and our starting center is straight up incapable of it. He had one completion on a lob tonight, and that was against the Thunder's center rotation. You're not going to see that on a regular basis. It was his second one this season, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, for me, Stewart was definitely one.

I remember, and just to clarify, I'm pretty sure Tommy by size meant strength. like really bulky obviously his actual size is a problem is height but uh i'm right about that correct oh yeah and then back of bird of course yeah exactly so yeah that's what i thought rather so uh yeah stewart was one of them i mean i really felt like last season that you know he's just a player who makes everybody around him better you know great intangible as people play better when he's on the floor absolutely and uh you know strong interior defender and rim protector i feel like playing backup center really hit a lot of his deficiencies. And yeah, unless he can become like an elite shooter and just play next to a power forward

who is great in the pick and roll and the law up threat and whatnot, then, yeah, I think he's, he's a high-energy backup center in the NBA. Well, to be an elite shooter, you've got to shoot. Yeah, exactly. And that brings me to my next point, which is that I was confident that the sort of, A systematic approach to development last season would extend into this one. And it has been anything but systematic. We talked about Bay.

Yep. And when it comes to Stewart, yeah, he is being utilized by Dwayne Casey as a traditional center on offense. And that is setting him up to be very ineffective because he can't jump. You know, he cannot play above the rim, which means he's a relatively weak pick and role player. You know, Kent not catching lobs means that you're just removing an option on offense. And you're playing him to his weaknesses. so he's not being operated according to his strengths.

I don't feel like we're only just seeing Cade really being played toward his strengths. He had that stretch in the Sun's game in which he did very well because he was able to do, he was allowed to dictate the flow of the offense. And then that just went away in the fourth quarter for whatever reason. So yeah, those would be the two things for me. And also, going to preseason, I expected we'd see more from Diallo, but he still couldn't shoot. So that illusion went away before the season began.

Not illusion, that hope. Yep. Yep. So number two, how much longer are we stuck with the Dwayne Casey experience? Same thing. We have another question. Why is Casey still our head coach after tonight's game? When is Troy, we were giving a call to Kenny Atkinson, maybe this is all season?

So why Dwayne Casey is still the coach, number one, he was going to be given patience in this rebuild. And last episode, I know an answer to question and said, maybe it was the episode before that I don't think it makes sense to fire doing Casey. And I've kind of changed my tune a little bit around that because one aspect of it is just me as a fan and just that his coaching makes it so much less pleasant for me to watch these games. The second is if the team continues just collapsing

and also just getting blown out, at that point, you might have Weaver and Tom Gores also starting to think, okay, well, this is bad and this is a bad product, and this is pretty shameful, especially Tom Gores, who's all about that winning culture. So, I mean, if the Pistons are still getting wrecked on a regular basis with like the number one overall pick on a team, 40 games into the season, you might see a coaching replacement. You might even see Casey just be done with coaching and move straight into a front office role. So as for Kenny Atkinson, think he's a good coach.

I think he got a raw deal in Brooklyn, by many accounts, thanks to Carrey Irving. And he did well with some of the young players there. So, yeah, that would be nice. Yeah, I think, I'll go ahead, Dante. No, I was basically going to echo what Mike said. I mean, I think that the calls for Casey's head earlier in the season were a bit premature. But, I mean, yeah, it's exactly what Mike said. If you're still getting just pumped night after night,

an embarrassing fashion, like what happened just a few hours ago. Like, I don't, I don't really see how that's a recipe for sustained success. I really don't. You might be, you know, start hearing some rumors that Casey is looking to move into that front office role. Because we've said before on the show, it's not going to be, at least we don't think it's going to be, you know, Dwayne Casey's been fired, Dwayne Casey's been let go, whatever. It's going to be one of those mutual parting step down or in the,

case maybe step up into the front office sort of situations. But yeah, if we keep getting embarrassed, maybe this season you start to hear some buzz, but I don't know. I'm open to Tommy, I'm curious to know what you think about this. Like, I'm open to letting them go after the season, really. Like, I don't, I don't really see the benefit in doing it in the middle of the season. I think the young players could do with some cohesiveness and some consistency from night to night, maybe not shake things up too much in the middle of the year, but after the season, like, what is the harm with maybe rolling with someone new? The benefit of, no, let me put it this way. Good organizations don't fire their coaches mid-season. If you're exhibiting that kind of, or that lack of patience,

I don't think it ever really works out really nicely. Occasionally, you'll see like a nice little stretch afterwards where, like, things are different. They're playing with the new energy, but usually bad teams go back to their bad habits. And Casey, the one thing that I will give him is that the locker room is all, it always seems to be pretty strong. Guys aren't like frustrated afterwards. But if this continues like this, like we're on an eight game losing streak, nine actually, I think.

I think the Sons was the eighth game. So I think we're playing the Wizards next. We could be in a double-digit losing streak, you know, by midweek. And that is really rough for any team. and especially a young team where they're like they're really going to be like beating themselves up after this one. If you lose the locker room, then Casey's utility is gone. At that point, yeah, you could move on from him and nobody would blame you. I would still like to see him just move into the front office because it would come off as more stable.

I think Casey is good at just, I think he shares some of the same sentiments as Weaver is like bringing guys who are very coachable who work very hard. and Casey definitely has some role in scouting and who gets picked. I remember he was one of the, he was very pro Seiku in the 2019 draft. Stuff like that. I think that would be his role. For better or worse. Yeah, I still think about what could have been if we had gotten Nikiel. But anyway, I think if Casey is still well liked, I would like him within the organization.

But if he loses the locker room, if guys are like really frustrated with Casey, yeah, there's no reason to keep him around. you're not keeping him around for the good things that he does with the offense or the good things that he does in terms of creativity. You know, that's not there. His only utility is like the players like him. That's it. If they stop like him, there's no reason to keep him around. Some of them don't like him. Amadu doesn't like him. Oh, yeah. Well, I don't blame Hamadu. I mean, you have a team struggling and, okay, finally Casey brings you out there. And your role is to stand in the corner and not to do anything, even though you're actually probably the best pure driver on the team. Hamidu's a very good attack in the basket, but give him a pick.

No, why do that? You know, I'd still be a little upset if I were in, whatever the case. This is the thing about Dwayne Casey that I think should be reiterated. He was hired to win. His shortcomings were known, were very well known, and he was hired anyway. So, I mean, I love this aspect of that offseason, just that Ed Stefanski was brought in order to help as a consultant to help hire a coach and a general manager. Went with Dwayne Casey.

It was almost certainly just what Tom Gores wanted anyway. And then got himself hired as president of basketball operations. It's like, it's still blows my mind. Still blow my mind. That was funny. You know, for the record, I think I'm saying this without really any hard evidence. I still think Stefanski was very important in turning Gores around to, to, to, to rebuilding. He certainly was the guy who seemed to be the impetus behind, for example,

trading Reggie Bullock in 2019 rather than, you know, because they said, okay, we can't really reasonably pay him. Though ultimately didn't get paid that much. That's completely irrelevant. That was a new thing for the business. But yeah, Casey, his flaws were known before he was hired. I wasn't, I was upset that he was hired. It was just, it was the classic pisses. move of going with the safe choice, just a classic piss in under Gores, rather, going with a safe choice in order to achieve a very mediocre goal, which they did, 41 and 41 with not very good roster, but Casey's offense basically boiled down to Blake, please take the ball and score, and we'll run maybe Ellington around some screens, and Reggie will run a pig and roll.

And then they went to the playoffs and it was some of the worst coaching I've ever seen, but I digress. I agree with you, Dominique. If he loses the locker room, it should be done, pure. period because right now certainly he doesn't have any on court coaching. He's done an exceptionally poor job. All right. So what trade offers would you field for grants? Alternatively, how would you extend grants?

If so, how much? So trade offers, I've gone through the list of teams. The number of teams which have the, which would have the inclination, the juice as far as just having stuff the pistons want, draft picks young players. and the ability to reasonably match salaries, which can possibly be gotten around and making a three-team trade, but that's just, you know,

it's not possible to go through and say, okay, we could do this three-team deal. I mean, that's just way too complicated. So if we're looking at one-on-one deals, which the vast majority of trades are, or who knows, maybe that's changed in recent years, but whatever, we're looking at two-team deals. The only teams I can see,

which would have all three of those, are the Timberwolves and the Grizzlies. Timberwolves do not have any young players really to offer, good young players whom they would offer. And they're not that close to competing, though they're improving this year. I don't think they would build a trigger on that, especially because Edwards and towns and Brussels when he's around that he's having a bad season, as far as I remember it. I could be wrong about that, whatever.

Those guys are taking up so much of the usage. So I don't think so. The Grizzlies may see some benefit in fielding grant at Small Forward. that could be good. I mean, then you have John Morantz, you have Sharon Jackson Jr. And you have Jeremy Grants. You've got a decent one, two, three scoring punch.

And as far as who they would trade, I don't think they're going to trade Desmond Bain, though. Bain would be a good guy to put next decade, in my opinion. But they've got three picks in the upcoming draft. There is, I think one that belongs to Lakers, and I can't remember the third one. So that's a trade I would make a couple of firsts in Desmond Bain, or just maybe those three first round picks and just some salary filler, I think Kyle Anderson.

So, but would they do that? Anybody's guess? As far as an extension, really hinges on if Grant gets it together and can become what would be a reliable number two or number three option I contender. Yeah. He hasn't had a season of it. Last season, he started hot and then he just gradually crashed. Yeah.

So I'm really bad at evaluating trade value because I always try to like fleece the other team because I can't stand actually giving up fair value or fair assets. I'm not even going to try. I would just say that yeah. Yeah, I don't even play 2K. It's just I'm still really, really bad at it, but I don't want to trade grant. There's that wrinkle of like he came here for a reason. And that's kind of dulled down a little bit for me because I feel like we've already done him right. There's legitimate interest in him from a lot of teams because now everybody knows he actually is capable of doing more than just being a 3-D player. To what degree. is kind of the question.

But I still feel like Grant is just being misused horribly right now. He's being allowed to do things that he shouldn't be allowed to do. I think if he is a dynamic third option, he's fantastic value at $20 million a year. I don't know if he's going to get a max offer in the off season or whenever it is that he comes off our books. But if you can keep him on a decent contract, I would absolutely try to keep him. A decent coach would use him differently. use him as a guy who's attacking closeouts, taking threes that are passed to him. He's so good on the catch.

Him and Cade, like, when they connect, they actually, like, play very well together. But right now he's been, he's being treated like Kevin Durant, and he doesn't have Kevin Durant skill. He is, like, a legitimate first option on offense right now, and he's not capable of that. But if he was, like, a third option where he's just taking decent volume, catch-and-shoot threes, attacking the basket with his athleticism, he'd be a great player. I think he'd be worth keeping. And he's not too old.

So I'd rather just keep him around. I like what Jeremy Grant brings to the team. I just think he's being used incorrectly. Yeah. Yeah, no, I would agree with the two of you. And I think that to really get an idea of where things stand with Jeremy, it's like, okay, well, would I ship him off for two, three first? Maybe.

Maybe that would be a good deal. But I also like what you said too, Tommy, and that he has the potential to be very, very useful to this squad. But in sort of taking that approach, I would pull from what Mike said. And in that it's basically Jeremy's got to figure it out. You know, the grant of last year or rather what grant was permitted to be last year is just not going to be able to exist as Cade continues to come into his own here. I mean, it's so weird. Like these games are so disjointed on offense because you're seeing Cade initiate the offense more and more now.

And it's pretty clear that he's the most talented player on the floor and he's supposed to be the guy. but then you've got Jeremy playing like he's yeah like exactly like he's playing like Kevin Durant and you know if Cade if this is Cade's team in the future we can't have Jeremy taking long pull-up twos you know he should be attacking closeouts he should be hitting his open threes and he should be playing good defense that's really the extent of what I think he needs to do to find his place on this team and we know that he can do it effectively because that's what he did with the nuggets so I'd like to keep him around if he can adjust his role, but I don't know if I'm fully confident in this coaching staff to get the most out of him. And I don't know if I'm fully confident in Jeremy to accept that

role because like you said, Tommy, yeah, he came here for a reason. But the inverse of that is, you know, one of those reasons was to be the guy. So it's like, why would he settle for the same amount of money to play eventually the exact same role that he played in Denver? But now he's second fiddle to Kate Cunningham instead of Nicola Yokic. Yeah, I think he split the difference. I don't think he's going to be ever going to go back to like pure 3 and D or whatever it is, like that reduced role that he was playing in Denver. But I think there's something greater than that, but less than what he's playing right now where he's a very useful.

I mean, I hope you're right because I like him. And I want him to stick around. But Mike makes a great point. He's got to figure it out. He does. His role in Denver, he wasn't number two or number three. Realistically, in terms of creating offense, he was more like number five behind Yokic and Murray in the starting lineup.

and Porter Jr. and Monta Morris when he was playing with the bench, those are the four creators in that team. So bench, excuse me, Grant was pretty much purely a three and D and cut player. Now, when I was talking about trade offers, I wasn't meaning. I would definitely accept those. I was just listing the teams that could realistically trade for him. Now, if Memphis offered the Pistons, Desmond Bain, a couple of firsts and salary filler, I'd be like you have to make that deal. I mean, I don't think you can reasonably say no to that because Bain is a player who would be great next decade.

You know, he's pretty athletic. He's very good at shooting at shooting threes, emotion three is included. He can do some creation of his own, like sweet. And then you have the draft picks on top of that. If Grant wanted to go, I don't think you can chip off Grant right now without him saying, I'd like to go to a contender because I think that would just be bad for him. And he do have to think about those things. But I agree, Tommy. He has to be willing to play smart.

And who knows, I would like to think that under a coaching staff that actually coaches a shot selection, he would do that. I don't think he's ever going to go back to the role he held in Denver. He's proven that he is more than that now. And I think he could be a very useful player if he's taking the right shots. But right now, this is Casey does this. Casey does this with his favorite go-to veteran options. This is just what he does. So Grant is being allowed to do whatever he wants, even stuff that he is not good at.

Now, if he can consistently hit those pull-up threes, then go for it. That's a good shot to have. But on the season, he's well below 40%. Like, well below 40%. So, yeah, I think in the long term, if he can get it together and be like a 20 points per game player on good efficiency, you take smart shots and play a season defense, then, yeah, reasonably you keep that player around. Like, what would the cost be hard to say? you don't want a max player like that unless it just doesn't matter unless the cap space is

already gone anyway and you're signing him with bird rides though his cap hold in 20204 or 2023 it will be very large yeah i just had a thought i just i don't know you call this a silver lining maybe it's just a byproduct of a much bigger problem but at least we know what guys are this season you know the the only guy who everybody's clamoring to get more minutes because you want to see what he can do is Saban Lee. We know what Sadieke Bay is now. We know what Isaiah Stewart is now. We know what Jeremy Grant is now. And yeah, maybe with a better coach, they would be playing a lot better than this, but we know a lot more about these guys. And they get these heavy, heavy roles because there's nobody else to take minutes from them.

You're going to get what you get from them. And it's kind of, there's nobody really behind them threatening their jobs right now. So we know what they are. And hopefully you can pick and choose the best parts of them, tailor their roles a bit, and turn them into useful players. I think there are, like, little things that we've seen from Sadiq that actually are usable. I think he actually can post up guys and get all the way to the hoop. But otherwise, like, most of what he does right now that he's doing this, I almost said this semester this year is pretty useless. It is exam season.

It is exam season, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I know we've said this. I don't think, my opinion, just based on what's going to be the lineup to maximize Kade and just what your, what your, uh, your just urgent needs are in the NBA. I don't think that you're going to see more than one of Bay, Stewart and Hayes remaining in the starting lineup. And if Bay can just become that solid three and D shooter, especially if you can shoot motion threes and can attack mismatches, then I think he's the most likely to stick. I mean, we didn't end up getting into the fit between Kate and Killian on this episode. I still don't think it's good

at all. Like you had one possession a night where you really saw. Killing handle the ball. He wasn't good at it, and it completely pushed Kate out of the play. And he's just not very useful off the ball besides the odd, you know, the on low volume, a spot-up three. So, yeah, I don't, I just don't think you have it there. And as much as, like I said, you have those, on paper, you're putting out five good defenders. In reality, the starting lineup is so unathletic that the defense isn't functioning very well. And yeah, now one thing I would like to see them to do, differently, absolutely, as far as guys, you know what they are. Again, give Diallo a chance. Like, who knows, maybe you can get a shot together over the course of the season, but the guy has

some strengths that are being completely underutilized by a team that is in desperate need of athleticism and penetration, desperate need of penetration, guys. And even if it's, you know, even if the penetration is just breaking down the defense so you can pass it and then kick it around and around like Tommy, I know you love Spolster's offense, but, you know, and that's a good model. But Casey, you know, maybe this sounds really condescending, but I think that the last decade has proven that Casey just cannot run a complex offense. Can't do it. So you're not going to see players used in a high movement offense with all five of them being utilized to their, you know, to their maximum extent and, you know, maximizing the assets that each of them have.

Yeah, this has been, what, an hour and seven minutes of doom and gloom. So sorry to the listeners for that, but I mean, look, we had a lot of thoughts that we wanted to get out. But I'm looking at this statistic right now so maybe we can have a bit of a pallet cleanser to end the episode. So in his last three games, Cade Cunningham is averaging 24.3 points, seven rebounds, and six assists while shooting 61% from three. That's good. Is that good? I think that's good. God, I love Cade.

I love him so much. Oh, my God. I mean, if you had actually a coach who is good at utilizing off-ball movement and guys who are good at moving off the ball playing next decade, I think the turnovers would be less of an issue. He's basically having to navigate multiple defenders each time. Nobody is moving. And he needs to work on the passes that just aren't going to work in the NBA,

but he's not an ideal situation right now either. But yes, I'm very impressed. Putting up those numbers. He's such a smart. He's such a smart. smart player too. He's highly respected by the defenses also. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that respect manifests itself in just constant double teams. You know, we talked about this last episode off the pick and roll. Nobody follows the role guy. They all follow. Okay. And so he's putting up these numbers while constantly

double teamed. And it should be noted, not getting to the line really at all. So, you know, if you add three, four trips to the line, that's maybe five, six extra points per game, that's, he's putting up some pretty ridiculous numbers right now. And this is still the first third. of his rookie season, even less if you consider the fact that he was out for the first little while. So I just, man, in a very, very dark evening, it was nice to watch Cade. I wanted that 30 bomb pretty bad to complete the Lions, Wolverines, Pistons, Trifacta over the Saturday to Monday spread there. But, you know, we'll save the 30-point burger for a win, hopefully.

Hopefully. Yeah. All right. Well, I think we're going to call it on that episode here. So as ever, folks, thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next time.