Crazy how much things changed in a month....

[bstein14]

One month ago today we beat the Bulls in our home opener to improve to 2-1 on the season. This board was full of hope and optimism. Not just from the record, but from huge games by Duren and Cade, Stew making threes, and Ausar playing impressive defense.

It wasn't just that early play either. A new coach, rookies that played well in summer league... Cade and Duren coming off impressive stints on the USA select team helping prepare for the FIBA tournament. Everything was looking up for us finally after years of being at the bottom.

I don't think I've ever seen a 180 like we've seen over the past month. Now 14 straight losses later I haven't seen this board this low in the 22+ years of posting here. If this isn't rock bottom I don't know what is.

[GreekAlex]

“It was all good just a week ago.”

-Jay-Z

[MrBigShot]

Yeah it's been pretty rough. I was close to being done with the team when we got the 5th pick in the lottery and missed out on Wemby. Even in the Stuckey era and the Knight/Moose days I wasn't as down on us as I am right now. The league is comparatively more talented, and Cade who was supposed to be "the guy" doesn't even look like a slight disappointment, he has been a downright net negative.

Monty also just ain't it. He is a bottom ~10-12 coach who managed to somehow get the (at the time) largest coaching deal in NBA history. The way he has mishandled Ivey this season has been embarrassing.

[mattao313]

Yeah it's been pretty rough. I was close to being done with the team when we got the 5th pick in the lottery and missed out on Wemby. Even in the Stuckey era and the Knight/Moose days I wasn't as down on us as I am right now. The league is comparatively more talented, and Cade who was supposed to be "the guy" doesn't even look like a slight disappointment, he has been a downright net negative.

That's my biggest concern right now, like I wasn't the highest on cade coming out the draft but I still thought he'll be a Allstar level player but right now he's looking like a D'Angelo Russell level guy at best.

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[Cowology]

I'm generally optimistic going into the season and I try to remain moderate when things are tough. From a culture standpoint I make a conscious effort to avoid being all doom & gloom and try to point out the positive, even when I'm being critical. I'm a bit sarcastic & have a dark sense of humor but I don't typically respond to, or engage with, people who simply complain all the time. It's too much negative energy for me.

I'm totally down for talking about what's not working and how to move forward, but at this point there isn't much left to say. Where do you go from here?

All we can really do is hope to get healthy & for Monty to work some magic. There is a world where we both get a high pick and are a vastly improved team down the stretch.

My biggest concern is each loss giving greater concern to Cade's long-term commitment. We aren't giving him a reason to want to stay. Which furthers my growing feeling that we may be better off moving him. Publicly criticizing the team a while ago should be a major red flag. Nothing since then has done anything to alter his view in a positive way.

I'm not sure we can afford to be patient & tank another year away. Makes sense organizationally, but not in terms of securing a commitment from Cade.

So we gotta do something. We do have the pieces to hypothetically go out and get a legit All-Star, but they need to be enticing enough to keep Cade. Somebody like LaVine probably doesn't move that needle.

Felt like we had a lot of potential a short while ago and now it's feeling tenuous at best. Not hopeless, but all paths looking a bit perilous. And I'm 100% against tanking.

[Snakebites]

My biggest concern is each loss giving greater concern to Cade's long-term commitment. We aren't giving him a reason to want to stay. Which furthers my growing feeling that we may be better off moving him. Publicly criticizing the team a while ago should be a major red flag. Nothing since then has done anything to alter his view in a positive way.

I’m more worried about Cade not being worth a long term commitment, though I do agree that there’s little reason he’d want to stay.

He simply hasn’t been very good on either end of the floor.

And yeah, I totally get that this hasn’t been an ideal situation for him, but even given that he’s struggled pretty mightily.

It at the moment feels like there’s something broken in the culture of the team. The team has zero resilience- they fold whenever it gets tough. And at this level it nearly always gets tough. I don’t know if any small number of personnel changes fix that.

[ComboGuardCity]

What a game. We’re back on the map. And I’m not talking flash in the pan Reggie/Andre pick and roll map. I’m not talking one legged Blake carrying us to a first round sweep map. This team is built to compete and the sky is the limit. This healthy core will be a problem in the East for years to come. It’s finally good to be a pistons fan again. It took 16 years, but we are back!

This was posted after the Bulls game, what a clown.

That being said, I still see talent on this team and I think we’ll turn it around. For the following reasons:

1. We started the season behind the 8 ball. Morris, Bogdan, and Livers. That’s 30% of our rotation was out with what was probably our #1 or 2 offensive option out. Even despite this we looked good 3 games in

2. We lost Duren and things got bad fast. He still doesn’t even look to be 100%

3. Burks was playing out of his mind, got hurt and has fallen off a cliff since. We lost Joe Harris too.

4. At this point Burks is back but his shooting isn’t. So we’re down pretty much all of our true shooters (Harris, Morris, Bogdan).


I truly believe this start might be the only reason why we aren’t a play in team. At some point we’re going to go back to that 2-1 team and I think it’s going to be as soon as tomorrow. Why?

1. Duren looks closer to 100%
2. Bogdan is back
3. Livers and Burks should start shaking off some rust
4. Ivey looks like he’s as good as last year

[Cowology]

My biggest concern is each loss giving greater concern to Cade's long-term commitment. We aren't giving him a reason to want to stay. Which furthers my growing feeling that we may be better off moving him. Publicly criticizing the team a while ago should be a major red flag. Nothing since then has done anything to alter his view in a positive way.

I’m more worried about Cade not being worth a long term commitment, though I do agree that there’s little reason he’d want to stay.

He simply hasn’t been very good on either end of the floor.

And yeah, I totally get that this hasn’t been an ideal situation for him, but even given that he’s struggled pretty mightily.

It at the moment feels like there’s something broken in the culture of the team. The team has zero resilience- they fold whenever it gets tough. And at this level it nearly always gets tough. I don’t know if any small number of personnel changes fix that.

Yeah, that's valid. It's also difficult to envision a lineup of Cade/Ausar/Duren working well. And Ivey has arguably played just as well, offering better outside shooting and a quicker tempo that better aligns with what we assume Monty is pushing for offensively.

Buuuuut it's hard to actually envision Weaver trading away his #1 pick, so I suspect we'll continue to try and make it work to unimpressive results. *shrug* Sooner or later Weaver is going to start making win-now moves to try and save his job and it's going to push us right back into the SVG era. I don't have a ton of confidence in the powers that be right now.

[Snakebites]

What a game. We’re back on the map. And I’m not talking flash in the pan Reggie/Andre pick and roll map. I’m not talking one legged Blake carrying us to a first round sweep map. This team is built to compete and the sky is the limit. This healthy core will be a problem in the East for years to come. It’s finally good to be a pistons fan again. It took 16 years, but we are back!

This was posted after the Bulls game, what a clown.

That being said, I still see talent on this team and I think we’ll turn it around. For the following reasons:

1. We started the season behind the 8 ball. Morris, Bogdan, and Livers. That’s 30% of our rotation was out with what was probably our #1 or 2 offensive option out. Even despite this we looked good 3 games in

2. We lost Duren and things got bad fast. He still doesn’t even look to be 100%

3. Burks was playing out of his mind, got hurt and has fallen off a cliff since. We lost Joe Harris too.

4. At this point Burks is back but his shooting isn’t. So we’re down pretty much all of our true shooters (Harris, Morris, Bogdan).


I truly believe this start might be the only reason why we aren’t a play in team. At some point we’re going to go back to that 2-1 team and I think it’s going to be as soon as tomorrow. Why?

1. Duren looks closer to 100%
2. Bogdan is back
3. Livers and Burks should start shaking off some rust
4. Ivey looks like he’s as good as last year

Don’t worry. I think a lot of us made remarks that aged poorly after that win.

We play well when teams guard Cade normally. Too bad they don’t have to do that.

[kreton]

This is the most optimistic any I've heard talk about the Pistons in the last 2 weeks has been.

[vege]

What a game. We’re back on the map. And I’m not talking flash in the pan Reggie/Andre pick and roll map. I’m not talking one legged Blake carrying us to a first round sweep map. This team is built to compete and the sky is the limit. This healthy core will be a problem in the East for years to come. It’s finally good to be a pistons fan again. It took 16 years, but we are back!

This was posted after the Bulls game, what a clown.

That being said, I still see talent on this team and I think we’ll turn it around. For the following reasons:

1. We started the season behind the 8 ball. Morris, Bogdan, and Livers. That’s 30% of our rotation was out with what was probably our #1 or 2 offensive option out. Even despite this we looked good 3 games in

2. We lost Duren and things got bad fast. He still doesn’t even look to be 100%

3. Burks was playing out of his mind, got hurt and has fallen off a cliff since. We lost Joe Harris too.

4. At this point Burks is back but his shooting isn’t. So we’re down pretty much all of our true shooters (Harris, Morris, Bogdan).


I truly believe this start might be the only reason why we aren’t a play in team. At some point we’re going to go back to that 2-1 team and I think it’s going to be as soon as tomorrow. Why?

1. Duren looks closer to 100%
2. Bogdan is back
3. Livers and Burks should start shaking off some rust
4. Ivey looks like he’s as good as last year

I even asked for the first 10 games prediction thread to be ignored and I made a new prediction.

It sucks, but I was right about Weaver and the rebuild, I wish I wasn't.

We played well for 3-4 games but after that things got ugly and snowballed fast.

I think when Bojan is healthy and playing 100% we will be semi decent, but this team is broken.

We need to get a bunch of players in their prime. We have a bunch of old players and a bunch of young players.

We also need to get guys with size and capable of playing the 3 and the 4. We have Ausar and Livers right now, and we will have Bojan. That's not enough.

We have too many centers and way too many guards. We also need a veteran 3rd stringer center, like Byiombo or Noel, someone capable of coming in and play defense is emergencies.

You all are giving up on Cade too fast. He may not be a franchise player, but he is in the worst possible situation. Give him a fighting chance first, if he fail ok, but at least give him a chance.

Even Toronto fans understand the situation, I remember them posting "imagine Scott Barnes playing 40 mpg with our 2nd and 3rd unit" it's impossible for someone to develop in a situation like that.

Put players that make sense around him. We only have Duren right now and they were doing great things together, before teams start to defend them properly, because we can't space the floor.

[DBC10]

What's also driving is the fact that every region of the East-West paradigm has gotten way more competitive too. I do believe the best West team will barely crack 50 wins again like last year. It's just so much wealth of talent and offensive explosion that has made things so unpredictable. If a West team cracks 60 wins and is healthy, they'll be chip bound

In that context our L woes do seem much more magnified but also points to how imbalanced this roster has been constructed from the bottom up

[Billl]

I think a lot of us called the team at 2-8 after the first 10 and said it looked just as tough going through this stretch. Disappointed with how poorly we are competing, but we aren't playing NBA quality shooters most nights so it's not surprising the offense has been horrid. Ausar is fun to root for a this point, but you can't put him out there with duren, stew and killian and be surprised that cade is getting tripled and teams are daring us to make a jumper. And by far the biggest flaw in cade's game now is how he handles a double, but we keep forcing that every possession in the 4th. Yes, he has to work on his flaws, but coach needs to utilize his strengths in some different ways. I don't even remember the last time we ran a play for someone off the ball. Like a real designed play and not just pick and roll and the ball handler reads the D and hits someone standing in the corner. I mean real off the ball motion where the first option is the guy moving off the ball, not the guy dribbling.

Anyway, i still think cade and duren is going to be a heck of a duo if we ever put them out there with guys who can space the floor. Hopefully we get a look at that soon. It's still going to be a flawed team, but at least it will provide some clear direction on what the team could look like with pieces that fit better.

[Canadafan]

[Kalamazoo317]

We’re the worst team in the league. I hate this.