Game 52: Pistons @ Clippers 2/10/2024

[GreekAlex]

Here’s Fontecchio’s post game interview for those interested:

https://youtu.be/ZMwF5Jl0-IQ?si=Hfk5TaPhAJwWLhjN

If you don’t like this guy’s attitude, you suck.

If you are purposefully calling him a type of pasta instead of his name, you also suck.

Simone can play. Obviously he’s not gonna average 20 or get that many shots most nights, but he’ll contribute on both ends and play hard. He could very easily be one of our starting forwards next year. We’ll be in better shape if he isn’t, but he’d be solid.

I wouldn’t automatically discount him as a starter.

Utah is playing 500 ball in a tough western conference with him starting 34 of the 50 games they played.

Cade/ Sasser
Ivey/ Grimes
Fontecchio/ Risacher or Cody Williams
Tobias Harris/ Ausar
Duren/ Stewart

Depth: TBJ

[ComboGuardCity]

That was a horribly officiated game. At first I was screaming to take advantage of their lack of size when they played Westbrook at center. Then I realized the refs swallowed their whistle and said it’s ok to foul Clips, we won’t call it. Cade and Ivey should’ve had 30 if they called anything which is a great sign. Excited for the future.

[Mr Peanut]

Here’s Fontecchio’s post game interview for those interested:

https://youtu.be/ZMwF5Jl0-IQ?si=Hfk5TaPhAJwWLhjN

If you don’t like this guy’s attitude, you suck.

If you are purposefully calling him a type of pasta instead of his name, you also suck.

Simone can play. Obviously he’s not gonna average 20 or get that many shots most nights, but he’ll contribute on both ends and play hard. He could very easily be one of our starting forwards next year. We’ll be in better shape if he isn’t, but he’d be solid.

Upset over a nickname? Hahaha

Probably more the fact that some could perceive it as a lazy racial stereotype.

Anyway, I was impressed with his game. He only came into the NBA last season, so even though he's 28 there still seems to be room to grow (much in the way Bogey came into the league age 25/26 and peaked in his early 30s).

[mcmurphy]

If you don’t like this guy’s attitude, you suck.

If you are purposefully calling him a type of pasta instead of his name, you also suck.

Simone can play. Obviously he’s not gonna average 20 or get that many shots most nights, but he’ll contribute on both ends and play hard. He could very easily be one of our starting forwards next year. We’ll be in better shape if he isn’t, but he’d be solid.

Upset over a nickname? Hahaha

Probably more the fact that some could perceive it as a lazy racial stereotype.

Anyway, I was impressed with his game. He only came into the NBA last season, so even though he's 28 there still seems to be room to grow (much in the way Bogey came into the league age 25/26 and peaked in his early 30s).

exactly...

regarding the name... it can happen that you get the name wrong the first time but persevering only means wanting to ridicule (at least in Italy)

regarding the nickname... if you are black and I see you in Italy what should I call you, "Vu cumprà"? ... do you know what stereotypes are?

... and regarding the guy (Vege) that from day one say Simone suck in defence and continuing after the Clippers game I don't know what game he saw (if he saw it) because I see a different game

Simone despite it being the first match (so still a little lost in the patterns and in need of adjustments as he also said in the interview) he never lost the attacker and always countered him by moving well... and this fact is ' also confirmed by the statistical data of yesterday's match (3/11 against him -22% relative to average defender)
https://www.nba.com/stats/players/defense-dash-overall?LastNGames=1&TeamID=1610612765

clearly one game does not make statistics but in any case the over 40+ games with Utah do

[mcmurphy]

Here’s Fontecchio’s post game interview for those interested:

https://youtu.be/ZMwF5Jl0-IQ?si=Hfk5TaPhAJwWLhjN

If you don’t like this guy’s attitude, you suck.

If you are purposefully calling him a type of pasta instead of his name, you also suck.

Simone can play. Obviously he’s not gonna average 20 or get that many shots most nights, but he’ll contribute on both ends and play hard. He could very easily be one of our starting forwards next year. We’ll be in better shape if he isn’t, but he’d be solid.

I wouldn’t automatically discount him as a starter.

Utah is playing 500 ball in a tough western conference with him starting 34 of the 50 games they played.

Cade/ Sasser
Ivey/ Grimes
Fontecchio/ Risacher or Cody Williams
Tobias Harris/ Ausar
Duren/ Stewart

Depth: TBJ

I agree... Fontecchio is more a SF than a PF (as seen here)

[BDM22]

... and regarding the guy (Vege) that from day one say Simone suck in defence and continuing after the Clippers game I don't know what game he saw (if he saw it) because I see a different game

Simone despite it being the first match (so still a little lost in the patterns and in need of adjustments as he also said in the interview) he never lost the attacker and always countered him by moving well... and this fact is ' also confirmed by the statistical data of yesterday's match (3/11 against him -22% relative to average defender)
https://www.nba.com/stats/players/defense-dash-overall?LastNGames=1&TeamID=1610612765

clearly one game does not make statistics but in any case the over 40+ games with Utah do

Good stat pull there. Matches the eye test.

[DetroitSho]

Upset over a nickname? Hahaha

Probably more the fact that some could perceive it as a lazy racial stereotype.

Anyway, I was impressed with his game. He only came into the NBA last season, so even though he's 28 there still seems to be room to grow (much in the way Bogey came into the league age 25/26 and peaked in his early 30s).

exactly...

regarding the name... it can happen that you get the name wrong the first time but persevering only means wanting to ridicule (at least in Italy)

regarding the nickname... if you are black and I see you in Italy what should I call you, "Vu cumprà"? ... do you know what stereotypes are?

... and regarding the guy (Vege) that from day one say Simone suck in defence and continuing after the Clippers game I don't know what game he saw (if he saw it) because I see a different game

Simone despite it being the first match (so still a little lost in the patterns and in need of adjustments as he also said in the interview) he never lost the attacker and always countered him by moving well... and this fact is ' also confirmed by the statistical data of yesterday's match (3/11 against him -22% relative to average defender)
https://www.nba.com/stats/players/defense-dash-overall?LastNGames=1&TeamID=1610612765

clearly one game does not make statistics but in any case the over 40+ games with Utah do

Man, don't waste your time with Vege. He works strictly off confirmation bias and thinks he's right when there's literally nothing to back up anything he's saying. "I was wrong" doesn't exist in his world. Just weird double downs.

Sent from my SM-S918U using RealGM mobile app

[zeebneeb]

I just got done rewatching the game again, and finally realized what I was seeing in Teks game, and who he reminds me of so much;

Franz Wagner.

His game is very similar. I watch a lot of Magic basketball, and it took me a minute to realize it.

Can obviously shoot, but he doesn't need a ton of space to do it, and can create his own at the three-point line. Can shoot in traffic. Can shoot fast-break pull-ups.

Can handle the ball, and if you hard close on him, he will drive right around you for a dunk. From just the first game, have a ton of confidence in his ability to handle the rock. Think of the hard closeouts on Stew, Musky, e.t.c. they cannot really drive after that, and give up the ball. Tek will punish you.

Cutting. I was surprised at how much diving into the lane, off-ball he was doing. Most guys will stand at that three-point line, and wait for the ball. Tek is active, and moves all over the place.

Defence. He bodies people up, and plays hard. He is not a great defender, but he's not just going to allow you to go downhill, and walk to the basket either. Very surprised.

I didn't know much about this cat before today's game(Utah is not on my must watch replay list of teams)but I certainly do now.

https://youtu.be/cXjUQ73zlVU?si=CSGb64TkRaoSxodb

[Moses ShamMoses]

Things are looking up for the Pistons. Solid effort. I didn't love all the iso ball late in the 4th quarter. Not sure why we went away from moving the ball.

[DBC10]

Things are looking up for the Pistons. Solid effort. I didn't love all the iso ball late in the 4th quarter. Not sure why we went away from moving the ball.

Monty Williams

[BDM22]

Things are looking up for the Pistons. Solid effort. I didn't love all the iso ball late in the 4th quarter. Not sure why we went away from moving the ball.

They also stopped pushing the ball in transition off of defensive rebounds. I recall a moment in the 4th where we went into "slow it down" mode, and the offense just stalled out from there. The score gets closer and we start playing on our heels.

This team needs to keep running. I don't like when they start defaulting to dropping it back to Cade and then we don't get into any offense until there's like 10 seconds on the shot clock left.

[Sort]

Happy to see the Pistons competing hard and growing. This can never excuse what a disaster the whole front office has been to create that wretched roster nor just how much Monty Williams failed at taking advantage of the talent on the roster, let alone doing nothing for its development. Heliocentric ball should be dead even if you have Luka, and Cade is not even Luka Light.

Look, Weaver should have been fired for failing that bad. Monty Williams should never have been hired - he was having a fine time taking a year off while coaching.

But this is what it is. Pistons were never going anywhere real this year, but they can at least set themselves up for next year. Monty Williams has his limitations - he never has defined roles for players ever - but he's better than this. And Weaver did just appear to upgrade the roster.

If anyone didn't notice, everyone thought New York won the trade deadline, but Bojan and Burk helped New York to lose by double digits in their first home game. I didn't watch that game, but having all two-way players matters.

[MotownMadness]

I just got done rewatching the game again, and finally realized what I was seeing in Teks game, and who he reminds me of so much;

Franz Wagner.

His game is very similar. I watch a lot of Magic basketball, and it took me a minute to realize it.

Can obviously shoot, but he doesn't need a ton of space to do it, and can create his own at the three-point line. Can shoot in traffic. Can shoot fast-break pull-ups.

Can handle the ball, and if you hard close on him, he will drive right around you for a dunk. From just the first game, have a ton of confidence in his ability to handle the rock. Think of the hard closeouts on Stew, Musky, e.t.c. they cannot really drive after that, and give up the ball. Tek will punish you.

Cutting. I was surprised at how much diving into the lane, off-ball he was doing. Most guys will stand at that three-point line, and wait for the ball. Tek is active, and moves all over the place.

Defence. He bodies people up, and plays hard. He is not a great defender, but he's not just going to allow you to go downhill, and walk to the basket either. Very surprised.

I didn't know much about this cat before today's game(Utah is not on my must watch replay list of teams)but I certainly do now.

https://youtu.be/cXjUQ73zlVU?si=CSGb64TkRaoSxodb

I only knew who he was cause he stood out against us when we played the Jazz

[vege]

Upset over a nickname? Hahaha

Probably more the fact that some could perceive it as a lazy racial stereotype.

Anyway, I was impressed with his game. He only came into the NBA last season, so even though he's 28 there still seems to be room to grow (much in the way Bogey came into the league age 25/26 and peaked in his early 30s).

exactly...

regarding the name... it can happen that you get the name wrong the first time but persevering only means wanting to ridicule (at least in Italy)

regarding the nickname... if you are black and I see you in Italy what should I call you, "Vu cumprà"? ... do you know what stereotypes are?

... and regarding the guy (Vege) that from day one say Simone suck in defence and continuing after the Clippers game I don't know what game he saw (if he saw it) because I see a different game

Simone despite it being the first match (so still a little lost in the patterns and in need of adjustments as he also said in the interview) he never lost the attacker and always countered him by moving well... and this fact is ' also confirmed by the statistical data of yesterday's match (3/11 against him -22% relative to average defender)
https://www.nba.com/stats/players/defense-dash-overall?LastNGames=1&TeamID=1610612765

clearly one game does not make statistics but in any case the over 40+ games with Utah do

I honestly don't give a **** if you are butthurt, I will call him whatever I want. If you want to think I am trying to ridicule him, you do you.

I want Fettuccine to succeed, and he had a good offensive game and a subpar defensive game, with a disastrous clutch time.

The highlight was the missed wide open 3 (it was a corner 3 iirc but I could be wrong), where he had 3+ seconds to set up the shot with nobody getting close to him to contest, he missed, got embarrassed, and commited a frustration fould, resulting in 2 FTs (we were over the limit) and 2 easy points to the opponent. He is not a 16 yo kid. He got to do better than that.

If he misses a shot I expect him to sprint back to defense, play defense, and if there is a new opportunity, shoot again, without hesitation. That's what the guy he's replacing would've done (Bojan)

He had a bunch of other bad plays during the last 5 minutes of the game, but overall I like what I saw from him.

He played bad defense in that game, I am not going to break down the plays to show you, but he was bad, as expected. His issue is not lack of effort, which is good, he is just not good at it.

[Mr Peanut]

If anyone didn't notice, everyone thought New York won the trade deadline, but Bojan and Burk helped New York to lose by double digits in their first home game. I didn't watch that game, but having all two-way players matters.

I didn't watch the game either but was interesting reading the reaction of NY fans. A significant portion of them seemed to be reminded of why they traded Burks in the first place (apart from needing to free up cap space for Brunson), that being he is a streaky shooter and subpar on defense. They also appreciated Bojan will be a solid contributor to their offense but is a turnstile on defense.

I think if Grimes proves to be a good rotation player for us, and given he has one more year of his rookie contract to go while Burks is up for a new deal and Bojan on the hook for another 20M next year, the value of this trade becomes much closer.

[NYPiston]

On/Off wise the team was much better when Bojan wasn't on, he's good offensively but gave up everything + more defensively

On/Off net rating per 100 poss:

Stew + 8.6
Duren + 4
Ivey + 4.1
Ausar +3.5
Sasser +1.2
Burks 0
Cade -1
Killian -4.3
Bojan -5.6
Wiseman -8.2
Livers -13.5

Per 100 possessions

I've been saying this since the trades happened. I was actually glad to see both Bogey and Burks gone, both are great scorers when they're on but they're ball stoppers on offense and give even more back at the other end. The fact that they got Grimes back is a bonus. They will play more as a TEAM now with more well rounded players, are younger and have more upside now going forward.

I never understood why there was so much vitriol thrown Weaver's way by some here as if Bogey and Burks were moving the needle now and going forward in any meaningful way. I think both are better fits on a contender where they have to be the focal point of an offense and can be heavily sheltered defensively. Good trade for both teams. Still lots of work to do but this was a step in the right direction.

On another note, that stat illustrates that Stew is a bit underrated. He has his limitations but out of all the young guys he probably plays the most fundamental basketball, or in other words, things that constitute winning basketball.