Overall, a flat performance last night. However, Ivey and Duren both showed what they can bring to the team. If Duren is hitting the boards like that, he won’t be spending any time in the G-League.
Otherwise, Cade wasn’t very involved, Bey struggled with his shot, Stew & Bagley were invisible, Bojan showed his quick-release from 3, and Killian was more aggressive. Hami, Burks (apparently, he has a fractured foot), Noel, and Knox didn’t dress.
The team mostly looked out of sync on offense and turned the ball over a ton. The Knicks played quite well and Brunson looked like he may actually be worth his contract. It’s preseason, though, so you can’t put a ton of stock into any of this.
By the way, the Over/Under contest I run will be released next week. I think I’m going to be on Woodward Pistons’ Table-talk next Thursday night to go through the categories.
I was impressed with the Knicks defensive intensity. Their coach always seems to get teams to play hard. Probably the last team you want your offense to face in your first game. Miles McBride was a hawk on defense.
The livestream will start at 5:30pm on Thursday. I’m still putting together the categories but it should be another fun contest, with some good prizes for the winner.
Pistons dead last to final DARKO preseason projections:
Looks like a lot of the big differences in teams that DARKO prefers vs Vegas have big tanking concerns. And the teams that Vegas prefers to DARKO tend to have high profile stars.
Also they’re “final” for the very interesting reason that DARKO considers preseason data and has compelling reason to do so:
I think organization prerogatives of the Pistons and the other bad teams (like “are we ok with winning some games?”) virtually guarantee they will not be last.
I came away from preseason oddly optimistic about the long-term future. They played a lineup with Cade, Ivey, Bey, Stewart and Duren (mostly because of injuries) and although that lineup didn’t have a good +/-, Stewart and Duren looked good on the court together.
On defense, they dominated the glass and provided great rim protection. Stewart blocked Ja Morant twice at the rim. Stewart was also the team’s best perimeter defender (which doesn’t say good things about where the rest of the team is at.) Offense will take more time but Stewart is shooting well and they were both gobbling up offensive rebounds.
Yeah Kostya said in the thread he tried developing some kind of Tank Probability variable to add to the projections that (presumably) would update projected minutes in a, er, particular direction. But whatever he tried to come up w didn’t work. So, it’s on the to do list. Until then, it’s prob fine to just take the model and fudge however many wins you think Tank Willingness is worth.
