Monty to Bickerstaff is night and day. He has done an awesome job with this team this year
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Ant with 38, Cade with 30 and itās only the middle of the 3rd quarter
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Ant is going to eclipse 60 tonight. Hopefully the Pistons can hang on for the W
break up the pistons!!
Update: Ant had 51 points with 9 mins to go and didnāt score again until the final buzzer. Cade ends with 40. Great win
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Another 3 game win streak with a chance for more. They host Portland on Monday.
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Weaver to Langdon was also a big change.
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Iām not sure itās evidenced yet (although being allowed to hire a good coach who wants to coach without being vetoed is a big difference)
The Hardaway/Beasley signings for me really sort of duplicate the premise Weaver tried with Morris/Harris but these guys have actually been mostly healthy. The Beasley signing is obviously way better than anyone could have guessed, reminiscent maybe of Grant a few years ago.
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Canāt deny that a Langdon signing has popped in a way that Weaver could not replicate since Grant, but then again thatās also related to the coaching change and the coaching change in turn is also related to perhaps the owner smartening up. Lots of moving parts here, but all of it reiterates for me the notion that it starts at the top and continues through to the bottomā¦
And we started 0-4!
Iām like three games from declaring that James Edwards III was the problem
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Pistons have been remarkably consistent this year in beating teams under .500 and losing to teams over (I know there are exceptions - please do not point them out). Which obviously definitionally gets you around .500. Huge progress.
Beasleyās shooting has been waaaaayyyy beyond what anyone could have thought, but I donāt think theyāre getting that much positively from the other two acquisitions - Harris and Hardaway. What those two DO, though, is push everyone else down a notch on the pecking order and saves you from a situation where Killian Hayes and James Wiseman get 1000 minutes apiece and Marvin Bagley, Kevin Knox, and Isaiah Livers (it kills me to say it) get 500. Sasser got 1300 minutes, and this year, despite presumably being better due to aging curves, is on pace for 850.
Forgetting Sasser those 5 guys are on pace to combine for 512 minutes this year after the Pistons getting them 3500+ last year. Madness!
It turns out having 10 guys who deserve a contract at all times matters!
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Sort of funny. Way back in November, I posted the Pistonsā net rating statsā¦despite a worse record, their net rating was actually better than today (which suggested they were probably better than their record, today I think it means theyāre probably a little worse).
To recap - at the time, 16th in net rating at -0.5. 22nd in offense, where the only thing they did well really was offensive rebounding, and 6th in defense, where their eFG% allowed and rebounding carried the metrics.
Today, theyāre 19th in net rating at -1.9 - a drop of about a point and a half. Offense has risen to 20th (basically, their shooting is up to about league average now) but their defense has dropped to 17th and is now worse than their offense. This is almost completely due to a shooting regression to the mean on that side of the ball.
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They swept the LAL which all it matters. I declare them the LAL/Pistons regular season champion!
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And the Lakers are a +.500 team!
Iāll be at the game tonight, rooting for them to get their first 4-game winning streak since 2019.
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8 of their wins have come against teams that have winning records (Lakers x2, Heat x2, T-Wolves, Knicks, Magic, and Bucks), and 1 against the Pacers who are 18-18.
Our resident Rutgers fan should be happy to know that the Pistons signed Ron Harper Jr. to a two-way contract.
Can they forego the draft process and sign Dylan?