But you do that by acquiring draft assets (Boston, OKC now) not just hoping your own pick hits big. OKC can keep Shai Gilgeous-Alexander - a guy that is maybe the 2nd or 3rd best player on an elite team (but still very young!) because they have a billion draft picks that aren’t tied to their own level of sucking. If the Pistons are relying only on their own picks, they’re going to have limited chances. A good way to get more would be to have an good player on a cheap contract teams would want to trade for…like Christian Wood at $13 million? The Sixers made 9 first round draft picks in 5 years starting Embiid’s year. The Celtics have made 11 first round picks in the same time frame.
I am not sure Boston is a good example. Tatum is on his way to being a star but look what they have done besides that. Giving out horrible contracts to Irving(sign and trade)/Hayward, a broken Kemba Walker. So yes the draft has yielded them an upcoming star in Tatum, a very good player in Brown and a good player in Smart.
Tatum and Brown are all-stars, Tatum a possible top-5 guy, and Smart is a very good player. I’m not defending everything that Ainge did, but he picked two all-stars with picks that were not the Celtics’ own picks (both the Tatum and Brown picks were acquired via trade). Walker, Irving, Heyward are outside the conversation.
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The problem is the Pistons don’t have those marketable assets to get more picks though. It usually takes a stupid GM on the other side to give away those assets to get a star. The only one that had over the past 12 years was arguably Griffin during the 17-18 season who was putting up elite numbers but then got hurt. He will obviously never be the same. I still think one of the best moves so far was not signing Luke Kennard. This is where teams get in trouble giving out those deals for decent players but not difference makers.
I still think the argument about the Pistons spending money and possibly being too good to get a top 2-3 pick was crazy. After all those moves I still contended the Pistons were going to be awful and they aren’t disappointing. The Pistons will be a similar team next year hopefully younger guys improve this year where they can take on more responsibility. I thought the Pistons were going to win a max of 15 games this year they aren’t disappointing in that regard. Look at their schedule they will be severe underdogs in a lot of these games. Beyond the game tomorrow against Golden State their best chance at W after that is probably game 12 against Washington and that probably won’t happen.
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Yeah, like my point about Wood is that you sign him to $14 mil a year and:
- You paid him less than Grant who will NOT be star (but is good)
- If he hits you have a 24 year old all-star level player on a good contract. That’s good to build around, it’s also a tradeable asset
Like, if “he’s too good to tank with”…it means he’s probably worth something in a trade!
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That’s a totally fair point. To your OKC example above, I think SGA is a different level player than Wood. If we had SGA, I would be arguing he is a player you have to build around. I guess I don’t see Wood’s ceiling as a “best player on a winning team” even with a few years of growth from now.
I don’t mind paying Grant over Wood because I actually think contending teams might have more of a use for Grant come deadline time. He’s a proven 3-4th option on a winning team that can play off ball and guard the LeBron/KD/Kawhis of the world. The teams that will be desperate to win now that would be willing to part with future picks that you speak of might prefer a guy like Grant over Wood. While Wood might have higher upside on a cheaper contract, I don’t know that the trade market for him would be there (for example, why didn’t teams rush to sign him at a higher price if there’s high demand for Wood?) I think most good NBA teams don’t view Wood as a winning player, maybe that will change but he’s a high usage 5 and that’s not the most in-demand position in hoops these days.
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Or not, lol.
Blame my boss for making me work on a day with 0 work to do.
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I think we are overanalyzing the Pistons roster. They’re supposed to be bad.
I have a feeling Wood isn’t valued as high by the NBA as fans value him. He puts up numbers on offense but his defense is pretty bad. Maybe it’ll develop over time. But I can see him as a player that puts up big numbers during the regular season but gets minutes cut in the playoffs due to being a poor matchup on the defensive end and faces more consistently good defenses in the playoffs. Him signing for only $13 million a year tells me the market wasn’t that high on him. I’d take him at that number FWIW though. I’m guessing he wanted to try his luck on a good team however.
I think Grant is a low key savvy move. At first I didnt’ get the point. But next year or the year after, I expect he’ll be a valuable trading chip. His 3&D play isn’t going to go away. There’s a reason why Denver was willing to pay him $20 mil to stay. He wanted to expand his role. He’s gonna get that chance for sure. If he develops other aspects of his game - which I’m pretty skeptical of - then his value just increases when we are ready to offload him. But even if he still just a 3&D wing, not a big deal.
As for Plumlee and Okafor, I’m just guessing that they’re there to play so Blake and Rose - the other trade chips - can have some baseline talent to play with before they’re hopefully traded. I like Stewart as a prospect, but that’s what he is right now. He’s going to need development but you don’t want to ruin a kid’s confidence by playing him 20mpg where he’s getting his ass kicked.
I think the offseason was weird and I don’t quite get some of it. But I also don’t think anything done this offseason detrimental to the future of the Pistons.
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To be fair, there’s not much left to ruin. I didn’t get the Grant contract. I wanted a full, unambiguous tear-down. Have been for more than a decade. Nothing Weaver did made me more excited about him, but I’m also not writing it off. Maybe there’s something good to come out of all this. Hard to know. But the Cavs have proven that you can get there with dumb luck, which is probably what we’re going to need. So that’s good.
Long-term question – for a while it did seem like under Mr. D this was a well-run franchise and it was fun to crash the NBA bluebloods party every so often with an on-court mugging of its stars. Our franchise had a bit of an identity. Was the team really making its own luck under Mr. D, or was it more lucky than good? I don’t know, but I liked being that crash-the-party franchise and I do fear that identity and capacity isn’t there now.
I wasn’t excited by much of what happened but I don’t think there’s much to be down that could get us excited. If we had been able to trade Blake - which would get people excited - we would have got nothing in return. Hopefully he can play well and stay healthy for the first month or so and then get moved for at least one or two quality assets. Not optimistic though.
I don’t think it’s really possible to build a team like we did from 2002-08. There was some luck in the sense that we didn’t have a top 15 player in the NBA for that entire stretch. No single piece you would build a franchise around, which makes it one of the most unique pro sports champion this century. Some luck involved there too. As for the Bad Boys, Zeke was arguably a top 5 player but no doubt a top 10 player. Liambeer was a 4x all star and Dumars a 6x all star. Ton of other good players too. Also had an all time great coach and executive. But a much different game and era.
I don’t know how many lessons you can take from those teams. We were in the doldrums between those two eras as well.
I think Dumars made some really good moves. He saw something in Ben Wallace, which it’s fair to say nobody else did. He saw signed Chauncey to $4 mil a year after he had basically been non-tendered 4 times in his career. He recognized Stackhouse for what he was (a horribly inefficient volume scorer) and wasn’t seduced at Stackhouse “leading” the team to a 4 seed the year prior and dealt him for a guy who “fit” better in Rip. He recognized that he had a good team and dealt future draft capital (first round picks that became Tony Allen and ironically Josh Smith) as well as some bench filler (most notably Chucky Atkins) for Rasheed Wallace to put them over the top. Later, I think his signing of McDyess shrewd, and he obviously found value in Tayshaun. He also hired 2 really good head coaches - Rick Carlisle (who he then fired) and Larry Brown (a phenomenal coach despite being a horrific person).
I think he deserves credit for all that, and I wouldn’t call it “lucky”. I’d imagine Ben Wallace exceeded even Joe’s expectations, and Chauncey did too, but that happens. What’s mind-boggling is how after spending 5 years doing basically everything right, he then commenced doing everything wrong.
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Doldrums but not for long.
I really like thinking about who Joe really was. Was he brilliant and then dumb? For how long? Inarguable that he did a great job for at least 2-3 years. After that it gets iffy. Hiring Larry Brown at that point was a no-brainer. McDyess was a no-brainer. It might have been the case that he was just a very, very lucky mediocre GM for a while before luck caught up with him.
My personal theory is that there was lightning in a bottle there. Brown took over a team that had no stars, and obviously ultimately “no stars” was that group’s identity. It was a bunch of guys that played well together and had three straight strong coaches (Flip was good too). I think ultimately the moment where things turned was when Flip got fired after a 59 win season after a third straight ECF loss. Chauncey would play 2 games the next year and get traded for AI, etc.
Obviously, that group was old, and they weren’t going to last forever. I think the big problem is that Dumars would spend the rest of his tenure hunting big free agents - Smith, Ben Gordon, Charlie Villanueva, Jose Calderon, Corey Maggette - and never returned to the nuts and bold player evaluations stuff that made them great.
Had about 10 years of mediocrity/horrible play b/w Bad Boys and Goin to Work eras. Been 12 years since we traded Billups. I never understood why he signed players like Villanueva and Gordon - neither of which were known as efficient offensive players and solid defensive pieces. Next biggest mistake - after Dumars was gone - was Gores letting SVG trade for Griffin and then firing him after that season. If firing him was on the table, why let him make a trade for an injured Star with an untradable contract? Woof.
Glad we finally have decided to actually rebuild. Gonna be a long couple of years however, as we have needed to rebuild for over a decade.
Flipping Mateen for Jon Barry after quickly realizing his mistake was a very nice move, as well as adding Uncle Cliffy and Corliss. Joe had lots of good non-drafting moves (His only home run draft picks in his first 10 years were Tay and Okur) that made for first a competitive squad and then a title-winning team.
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Yeah, that’s true - Carlisle’s roster was utter nonsense and they won like 50 games right. Part of that is that, as we’ve learned, Carlisle is a genius, but also they were able to find value in cast-offs.
Lots of the big moves - Billups and Hamilton at least - were made between Carlisle’s two years. But that first team:
A platoon of Chucky Atkins and Dana Barros
Stackhouse
Michael Curry
35 year old Cliff Robinson
and scrap-heap find Ben Wallace
And “the Alternators” - 32 year old Jon Barry playing the first relevant hoops in his career, Corliss, Damon Jones
50 wins!
other than Stackhouse literally every one of those guys was “free talent”.
I think he was underrated as a drafter. Okur, Prince, Delfino, Amir Johnson, Mariel, Afflalo, Stuckey, Jerebk, Singler, Middleton…all quality picks outside the lottery (which is where he stunk). A lot of production off the bench in those picks. Trouble was, a lot of it was not for the Pistons lol
About to say: too bad most of those guys had their good days in other uniforms