yeah I’d guess that nearly every starter from the 4 best teams in the league would be better than Cade
lol no way. Counting stats matter for awards. It’s not building the best team in the NBA or else the All-NBA teams would look roughly the same every season.
The following players have been All-NBA:
Julius Randle
De’Aaron Fox
Pascal Siakam
Bradley Beal
Ben Simmons
Detroit Pistons Blake Griffin
Kemba Walker
Victor Oladipo
Isaiah Thomas
Some of these were just guys that had really good counting stats seasons. They weren’t necessarily top 15 players in the NBA.
I mean
Derrick White is great at his role but he’s not better than Cade
Dean Wade starts for the Cavs
Lou Dort for OKC
That’s strong
Poorer year in what sense? Scoring? It’s down due to his Achilles injury that he can’t get to the rim regularly and he has been more of a facilitator due to the emergence of Jalen Johnson plus the young roster can space on offense. Trae led the league in assists and potential assists by a significant margin.
I mean I’m not attempting who media members will pick. They gave Karl Malone an MVP over Jordan idk
Enough NBA media dudes these days are super stat literate though, I haven’t seen many egregious errors
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their 5 best when healthy then, w/e. if Cade was top 20 the Pistons would be much better. and as you noted the Pistons dumped a ton of minutes from the absolute worst players in the league y/y.
Yes it’s by far his poorest shooting season which is an important metric for a guy taking 20 shots
His passing has been great, as always
Yeah your first sentence was my point
All NBA guys don’t play on the 20th best team in net rating because if they were All NBA their team would be better than 20th in net rating
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Speaking of all nba
Wemby 
Or maybe AJ Green
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yeah my take before the season was that the Spurs had a good shot at the play in simply bc Wemby is a GOAT waiting to happen and that’s worth a couple truckloads of wins even if the rest of the team was totally replev and that’s basically where we are.
you could start a team of 5 dudes as good as Cade and the Spurs would still be better.
Bombing 10 threes a game and making 36% while being the best defender in the league BY FAR
That’s just not true. Bucks are 18-16. Denver is 20-15. Dallas is 21-16. Lakers are 20-16 (and lost twice to Detroit). TWolves are 19-17 (and lost to Detroit). Phoenix is 16-19 (and lost to Detroit). If they all had a top 20 player they would be better than that.
How many players in the NBA would make this Pistons roster have a better than 19-18 record right now? There are some, but not many. Pistons roster is better than last year’s roster, but it is still one of the worst rosters in the league. How many players besides Cade would start for any of the other playoff teams? Somehow they are over .500 and in the playoff mix. It’s certainly not Tobias Harris getting them there.
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For fun
If we are going positionless, if the season ended now
1st:
Jokic
Shea
Wemby
Giannis
Tatum
2nd
Mobley
Brunson
Curry
Luka
Garland
3rd
Franz
Kyrie
Williams
Mitchell
JJJ
Obviously injury situations have three of these dudes a bit risky
You’re right, those much better players leading replev supporting casts hasn’t resulted in significantly better regular season teams.
I mean the pistons net rating is 3 points better with Cade than without
The Nuggets net rating is 26 points better with Jokic than without
The Nuggets are literally the worst team in the NBA without him, and possibly historically bad
Wemby shifts 15 points of net rating
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Nuggets entire starting lineup would start for Detroit. It’s a far more talented roster.
I’m just saying the statement that “if Cade was actually top 20, the Pistons would be better” is false. Much better players than Cade with much better rosters around them than the Pistons have teams that have struggled this year.
Dude the. Nuggets are a horror movie right now without Jokic
My feeling is that the Pistons “other guys” have mostly been better than you’re giving them credit for
Maybe less so now that Ivey is dead
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So are you saying Murray, MPJ and Gordon wouldn’t start for Detroit and aren’t better than the Pistons starters? Christian Braun would be one of the pistons best players too.
I think Ivey was significantly better than Murray has been this year for SURE
Gordon is really good but has played like 15 games which is part of their problem
Beasley is basically a clone of MPJ in most ways that matter despite the foot height difference
Murray has a 54% TS on 23% USG and unless you think he’s a monster defender I think that speaks for itself.
Braun is a low usage OK D gritty grindy whatever.
Gordon hasn’t played.
People don’t like MPJ but I suspect he’s the best of the bunch. He’s not a smart enough player to benefit much from playing w Jokic but he make ball go in good.
The best way I think to do this would to just do cumulative wins added by roster by player curves with BPM, maybe I’ll do that tomorrow. But it would be a good illustration of why you can play a bunch of meh guys and be pretty good in the NBA.
Which is what the Pistons are doing and I was wrong about.