If Whitmore is gone at #4, give me Hendricks.
The scouting report is dead on for Hendricks. I think he can play 3/4 and occasionally 5 in an unlikely event that they need to steal minutes at the 5.
I know the system is designed like this, but I donāt like that design. I can see having a lottery for the top pick, but not for four picks. Thatās too much.
Please just donāt take walker.
This is just awful. There is no guarantee we get to select Whitmore because he could easily go fourth. Iām drunk (not because of the draft lol) and I want to melt down.
Completely rigged for the spurs
I liked the Spurs, up until the Rodman fallout. I lived in Austin at that time, and I was a big Rodman fan from his Pistons days.
Iāll do a little name-dropping here, please forgive me.
I was lucky enough to have a friend who was connected to a childhood friend of Eddie Vedderās. In the summer of '95, Pearl Jam came to town and I got to go to the show and get backstage. I even hung out in a trailer with just the four of us. I said maybe a couple of words to Eddie, but I did take a picture of him and his friend for said friend. And I got his bottle of wine.
Also backstage was Rodman, and he was the one person that I was too intimidated to talk to*. I did talk with Stone Gossard and, at some point, we were talking about Rodman and he said āI donāt think heās going to be back with the Spurs next season.ā Sure enough, he wasnāt.
I thought the Spurs totally mishandled the situation but my opinion wasnāt exactly objective. Anyway, I started to like them less and wasnāt happy when they tanked and got lucky enough to land Tim Duncan.
I also had some friends who were Spurs fans, but they hated the Bad Boys. So, then I started liking the Spurs even less.
And then the 2005 Finals happened.
I used to hate Popovic but Iāve softened on that stance. He seems like a pretty good guy.
But them getting a 3rd generational big man in the same time span that the Pistons have had zero does get my blood pressure up a bit.
*I have actually spoken to him since. I had to break the bad news that heād drank all the N/A beer that the nightclub I worked at had in stock (not a ton), so there was no more for him to have.
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Any chance Wembayana turns out to be another Darko? Remember people were talking up Darko as the next transcendent (I have never typed that word before) player. He seems very young and very skinny.
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Being young is a feature not a bug. Theyāre on different stratospheres as prospects.
Mentioning darko every time thereās a hype European is as silly as mentioning Kwame Brown for every hyped American
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I mean there is obviously a chance heās not good as there is a with anyone
The chances of anyone being the next Lebron (qualitatively speaking) are small for anyone
But there is obviously a healing mountain of stuff to like
It feels like the ceiling is Durant/HOF but the floor isnāt Darkoā¦it is something much higher. His height, length, and athleticism are true differentiators in ways they never were for Darko, Kwame, Curry ā¦ Other hyped busts.
I think the better āglass half fullā outlook for the Pistons being screwed by the lottery is that there is a very real chance that the 5th player taken has as good or better career as anyone 2-4.
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The most obvious argument against has nothing to do with specifically - just guys that big historically donāt have great longevity in their lower bodies
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Is there a study on this? Seems like people just think itās true.
FWIW just eyeballing draft picks, the rate of dudes missing at least one full season to injury seems really high across the board. Pro basketball maybe not the healthiest thing to do.
Well Iād say there probably arenāt that many 7ā6" guys to base it on.
Just thinking of other mega-tall guys like this, Bol and Bradley definitely did, Embiid obviously
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My off-season plan:
See if Monty Williams is interested, if not I like Jarron Collins.
Draft Whitmore
Identify teams that are looking to shed salary or rebuild and use the cap space to acquire a couple proven veteran role players to fill out the roster. Dorian Finney-Smith-types.
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The draft is the draft and out of their hands. In their shoes I cross my fingers and gnash my teeth and hope I can get Whitmore or Hendricks, but I wouldnāt trade anyone (unless we can interest anyone in a pair of centers who were top two picks, pretty please!?) to guarantee it.
To me, they have two major questions they need to answer as quickly as possible, the first way more important than the second:
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Can Ivey and Cunningham play together effectively on offense, if so, what are their respective roles? In order to do this, you need to fill out the rest of the roster in a way that enables them to play NBA offense with NBA space, which the Pistons have not done
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Can Stewart be an honest to goodness NBA starting 4? (a negative answer here could very well hurt the āNBA Offenseā thing above)
I think coming up with a roadmap for the guard pairing is byyyyyy faaaarrrrrrr the biggest thing
Because ācan they play togetherā and ācan they both be all-star caliber players together (ie, they donāt take away from one another qualitatively)ā are two different questions and if the latter is no, you could be better off trying to use that value on a different position.
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- I think they can play together effectively. Jadenās shooting split off the ball is very good. In 1304 minutes at SG, he shot 43% on corner 3s and 38% on 3ās overall.
- I think Beef Stewās future lies with off the bench utility PF/C player. He can provide spacing. His shooting was more than passable before he got hurt at 36-37%. When he got hurt, he shot at 30% from 3s.
One question I have for Duren is can he improve on defense where he can help in PnR, protect the rim and cover for others down low? Bagley is who he is, a bad defender. Wiseman is also a bad defender but do you buy into his athleticism and potential where he can be developed there?
The Pistons need more wing players who can shoot and defend which is the obvious need.
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Right now if I were taking one off the ball it wouldnāt be Ivey. Hence the question. (I will admit I am SIGNIFICANTLY higher on Ivey than Cade)
And Iām not saying they can or canāt, but figuring that pair out - and figuring out if that pairing is worth sinking a future kingās ransom into - is THE thing
Duren, whatever - passable centers are a dime a dozen, if he works great, if not, meh
Not quite. There was much more hype around Darko. āDirk with a mean streakā, and stuff like that.
But, I do agree that the Wemby hype exceeds whatever was talked about Darko. Thereās been at least a year of build up for Victor. And comparing his arrival to that of the guy taken before Darko in the '03 draft.
Cool, ty. Curious if thereās a ālisted heightā effect. Guys like Durant and Garnett never got listed at 7 ft e.g. so you might have a confounder where athletic guys end up listed just under and more lumbering guys are just over. Also a good example of why bucketing is annoying and you can just model the effect and plot the model output vs. a bucketized actual injury rate.
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I think basically itās ride or die. Weāve gotten our number one pick for the next 40 years; if he doesnāt pan out weāre going to suck. Thatās that. I personally feel good about those two and I feel good about Duren. But I donāt see how any of them have any trade value as of yet at this point so as to give us options in which you could envision a successful future without those two main players. We just have to hope they develop as envisioned.
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