GAME 56: Thunder @ Pistons 7PM

[MotownMadness]

Anybody else wanna keep Frank Jackson? Numbers are solid and still only 22. I like that he stays aggressive and has that first step.

[ducler]

Anybody else wanna keep Frank Jackson? Numbers are solid and still only 22. I like that he stays aggressive and has that first step.

To me he's just a G-Leaguer who is going hard to showcase himself for a contract. I don't see him passing the ball often to anyone. His defense is not over the top, so he's basically a short SG who can only knock some corner threes. He's totally replaceable IMO.

[440BB]

I wouldn't mind having Frank on our bench next year. He should be pretty inexpensive and still has time to develop further.

[edmunder_prc]

First it was "Casey plays the veterans too much because he's trying to win games; play the kids more so they can develop and the Pistons will lose at the same time" except that the Pistons WERE losing games. And now that the kids are getting lots of minutes and because they're developing, becoming competitive and barely beat the worst lineup on the floor in the NBA, the Pistons are somehow supposed to field a roster that's even worse than that? How will the kids develop then?

You can either develop the kids by playing them, which at this point means they're going to be winning games because--shocker--they're actually pretty damn good for their age. Or you can sit every veteran, every good player, and every kid who shows promise, which would HINDER their development, just to hypothetically lose every remaining game to supposedly get a higher draft pick?

You can either play and develop the kids and, what appears to be the case at this point, win games you don't really want to win. Or you can sit them and slow their development in order to lose. Pick one or the other since it's clearly been demonstrated that you're not going to develop the kids and lose every game at the same time. And again, the part that has to be taken into consideration is that Joe Blow Casual fan who's taking the wife and kids to the one game he can afford to go to each year wants to see the stars/promising kids play and win. They don't want to see four scrubs and a G-leaguer they've never heard of play 35 minutes a game and lose. And for what gain? The draft lottery odds clearly will not guarantee the #1 pick to any team anyway.

If the Pistons started hypothetically playing the lineup they'd intend to have on the floor next season at the number of minutes they'd typically play, that lineup really develops and gels, and for the remaining 17 games that lineup is pounding bad teams/lineups and beating/being competitive against the top teams, why would it be viewed as a bad thing if the Pistons hypothetically dropped to even the 10th draft spot? Isn't the entire point of the rebuild to put together a good to great ENTIRE TEAM?

Admittedly, that's just me. I'd rather be in a position of having 5-6 young guys who clearly are getting damn good and appear to be capable of getting better at the cost of a higher draft position than 5-6 guys who maybe show some potential to get better

I've heard you say that before: People dont want to see those G-leaguers. Ok, so what are OKC, Orlando, Houston, etc doing? Do they have some magic power that allows them to make those choices while the Pistons cant? Please explain why the Pistons cant do what other teams have been doing the last 5 years, with GSW, previous champs, doing it just last year. Yes they had Klay get injured. Then they held out possible MVP Curry for a whole season with a broken hand, along with Draymond.

We have Bey and Stewart. They can play just fine and not playing in the last 15 games of this throwaway season does not matter. They have both shown that they can play and Pistons fans should be excited about that. Count those as great successes for Weaver. Now lets tank. If they dont play against OKC g-leaguers does that matter? No, it does not matter at all. Stewart gets to crush some guy who was barely making a G-league team. Pistons get the win. OKC doesnt seem to mind because they gained a win against one of the few teams that matters. Maybe OKC management are all really dumb and dont understand how this works. That seems unlikely. They are trying to get a top 3 pick to ADD to their enormous haul coming up. Sounds really good doesnt it.

As for the middle point: The answer is NO, the NBA is entirely, 100% about a superstar. If you dont have a possible MVP candidate then your chances of long term success is near zero. Lebron, Curry, Durant, Embiid, Jokic plus some above average players can win a championship. Grant, Bey, Stewart, Hayes plus another above average player can not. That is 5th-8th seed every year. I dont have to make this argument - watch the playoffs each year, its always the same. Getting the 10th pick for this garbage season means complete failure for Weaver.

Straw man. I never said it wasn't important to have a superstar to win a championship. The difference in our opinions is that you believe the Pistons only have a chance to get that superstar in this year's draft, and therefore building an over performing supporting cast first is somehow a screw up on Weaver's part. I believe it's easier to build the core first then get the star/superstar than get the superstar first then try to build a team around him and hope you succeed before he decides to bail for a contending team. Case in point--Lebron. As far as GSW doing what they did, they already had a championship team and hit some bad luck so the figured they may as well just bail on the season. Not the same thing. As far as tanking goes, look at the past NBA champions and show me the team that last tanked and won a championship as a result. In any case, the current picture points a lot more toward the Pistons getting a top 4 pick than 10th but I guess the Chicken Littles of the world just need to be crying about something. Because if Orlando and OKC are doing it right and the Pistons are doing it wrong, why do the Pistons have fewer wins than both those teams? Answer that question.

Getting kind of long now, but you managed not to answer any of my issues, that you say I am wrong about.

Why can OKC, ORL and other teams for the last 5 years tank, but it is impossible for the Pistons? OKC will end up with fewer wins than the Pistons, starting out with just 20 games or so to end the season - they went full tank. Are they going to lose their NBA team or something? Doesn't look like it. In fact, watching the JJ Reddick podcast that had Steven Adams on, the fans in OKC are crazy about the Thunder. They don't mind the tanking at all, if he can be believed. So why can't the Pistons?

Point 2: Why is it important for Stewart and Bey to play against G-leaguers? Will they forget how to play basketball in the next few weeks if we sit them. OKC isnt worried.

Point 3: Why would it be good for the Pistons to drop to 10th spot by beating the other tanking teams? You doubled down that the 10th pick is fine, but no team is winning a championship with a MVP caliber player. How have the Pistons ~10th picks worked out: Brandon Knight, Drummond, Monroe. Did we get MVP talent there?

Bey, Stewart, Hayes, Grant plus Jalen Smith (10th pick in 2020 NBA draft). Is that a championship core?

Again, you are quick to call out people and name call as Chicken Littles and whiners, etc, but you plan for winning looks awful. Let's beat up WAS, ORL, OKC and get the 10th pick. That'll show the NBA!


To answer your question, yes, many teams have tanked and it worked out great:

CLE tanked HARD ended up with Lebron, which was nice. He left, came back and they won.

According to their coach John Lucas they did tank:

"While the owner of the team at the time, Gordon Gund, denied that the team was intentionally losing, head coach John Lucas knew exactly what was going on, telling AOL Fanhouse back in 2010, “They trade all our guys away and we go real young, and the goal was to get LeBron and also to sell the team. You can’t fault the Cavaliers for wanting to get LeBron. It was hard to get free agents to come there.”

The Cavs did indeed trade their three best scorers – Andre Miller, Wesley Person and Lamond Murray – without getting much value in return. As a result the team turned to the oft-maligned Ricky Davis to lead the Cavaliers, resulting in a record of 17-65 and the top pick in the 2003 NBA Draft."

Hmmm, a place that is hard to get free agents? Would be nice to get a top talent from the draft then, wouldnt it?


Supersonics/Thunder should have won a bunch of championships, because tanking worked perfectly, but the owner decided to send out Harden for nothing. Imagine tanking for 3 years and getting Durant, Westbrook and Harden.

[440BB]

Too bad the lottery rules in all those examples were different back then, guaranteeing the worst team the best pick.

Those examples don't apply to today's NBA lottery, where a team can tank for the worst record and get the fifth best pick.

[NYPiston]

The Pistons aren't tanking? They're 17-39, they traded away most of their top veterans and even last night, they sat every vet basically.
Not sure what some of you guys want. It's not easy to finish bottom 3 in the league. The Pistons finished 5th worst last season and are likely to finish 5th worst this season despite losing a **** ton of games.

When it comes to the draft, what it boils down to is luck with the lottery balls and a GM who can identify talent as not every superstar in the league was drafted in the top 3. They seem to have a GM who has a pretty good eye for talent, they've done their part with tanking although not quite enough to get the most lottery balls and now it's up to the basketball gods essentially to reward them with a top 3 pick and if not, the GM will have to his job and build a contending team through other means with good scouting/smart trades/free agent signings. I don't see the point in getting upset about a 17-39 not trying to be bad enough.

[Manocad]

I've heard you say that before: People dont want to see those G-leaguers. Ok, so what are OKC, Orlando, Houston, etc doing? Do they have some magic power that allows them to make those choices while the Pistons cant? Please explain why the Pistons cant do what other teams have been doing the last 5 years, with GSW, previous champs, doing it just last year. Yes they had Klay get injured. Then they held out possible MVP Curry for a whole season with a broken hand, along with Draymond.

We have Bey and Stewart. They can play just fine and not playing in the last 15 games of this throwaway season does not matter. They have both shown that they can play and Pistons fans should be excited about that. Count those as great successes for Weaver. Now lets tank. If they dont play against OKC g-leaguers does that matter? No, it does not matter at all. Stewart gets to crush some guy who was barely making a G-league team. Pistons get the win. OKC doesnt seem to mind because they gained a win against one of the few teams that matters. Maybe OKC management are all really dumb and dont understand how this works. That seems unlikely. They are trying to get a top 3 pick to ADD to their enormous haul coming up. Sounds really good doesnt it.

As for the middle point: The answer is NO, the NBA is entirely, 100% about a superstar. If you dont have a possible MVP candidate then your chances of long term success is near zero. Lebron, Curry, Durant, Embiid, Jokic plus some above average players can win a championship. Grant, Bey, Stewart, Hayes plus another above average player can not. That is 5th-8th seed every year. I dont have to make this argument - watch the playoffs each year, its always the same. Getting the 10th pick for this garbage season means complete failure for Weaver.

Straw man. I never said it wasn't important to have a superstar to win a championship. The difference in our opinions is that you believe the Pistons only have a chance to get that superstar in this year's draft, and therefore building an over performing supporting cast first is somehow a screw up on Weaver's part. I believe it's easier to build the core first then get the star/superstar than get the superstar first then try to build a team around him and hope you succeed before he decides to bail for a contending team. Case in point--Lebron. As far as GSW doing what they did, they already had a championship team and hit some bad luck so the figured they may as well just bail on the season. Not the same thing. As far as tanking goes, look at the past NBA champions and show me the team that last tanked and won a championship as a result. In any case, the current picture points a lot more toward the Pistons getting a top 4 pick than 10th but I guess the Chicken Littles of the world just need to be crying about something. Because if Orlando and OKC are doing it right and the Pistons are doing it wrong, why do the Pistons have fewer wins than both those teams? Answer that question.

Getting kind of long now, but you managed not to answer any of my issues, that you say I am wrong about.

Why can OKC, ORL and other teams for the last 5 years tank, but it is impossible for the Pistons? OKC will end up with fewer wins than the Pistons, starting out with just 20 games or so to end the season - they went full tank. Are they going to lose their NBA team or something? Doesn't look like it. In fact, watching the JJ Reddick podcast that had Steven Adams on, the fans in OKC are crazy about the Thunder. They don't mind the tanking at all, if he can be believed. So why can't the Pistons?

Point 2: Why is it important for Stewart and Bey to play against G-leaguers? Will they forget how to play basketball in the next few weeks if we sit them. OKC isnt worried.

Point 3: Why would it be good for the Pistons to drop to 10th spot by beating the other tanking teams? You doubled down that the 10th pick is fine, but no team is winning a championship with a MVP caliber player. How have the Pistons ~10th picks worked out: Brandon Knight, Drummond, Monroe. Did we get MVP talent there?

Bey, Stewart, Hayes, Grant plus Jalen Smith (10th pick in 2020 NBA draft). Is that a championship core?

Again, you are quick to call out people and name call as Chicken Littles and whiners, etc, but you plan for winning looks awful. Let's beat up WAS, ORL, OKC and get the 10th pick. That'll show the NBA!


To answer your question, yes, many teams have tanked and it worked out great:

CLE tanked HARD ended up with Lebron, which was nice. He left, came back and they won.

According to their coach John Lucas they did tank:

"While the owner of the team at the time, Gordon Gund, denied that the team was intentionally losing, head coach John Lucas knew exactly what was going on, telling AOL Fanhouse back in 2010, “They trade all our guys away and we go real young, and the goal was to get LeBron and also to sell the team. You can’t fault the Cavaliers for wanting to get LeBron. It was hard to get free agents to come there.”

The Cavs did indeed trade their three best scorers – Andre Miller, Wesley Person and Lamond Murray – without getting much value in return. As a result the team turned to the oft-maligned Ricky Davis to lead the Cavaliers, resulting in a record of 17-65 and the top pick in the 2003 NBA Draft."

Hmmm, a place that is hard to get free agents? Would be nice to get a top talent from the draft then, wouldnt it?


Supersonics/Thunder should have won a bunch of championships, because tanking worked perfectly, but the owner decided to send out Harden for nothing. Imagine tanking for 3 years and getting Durant, Westbrook and Harden.

I'll make this really simple for you...there is no guaranteed method for building a team that can win an NBA championship. If you win one, you obviously did it right. If you don't, you didn't. The difference between you and me is that you're judging Weaver as a failure if the Pistons don't get a top 4 pick. I'll judge him as a failure if he can't build a team that wins a championship. If the Pistons fall to the 10th pick and win a championship in 2023 with that 10th pick, by your measure Weaver failed. By my measure he succeeded.

Cleveland fits my example, not yours, exactly as I said. They got Lebron first, didn't build a good enough team around him in time, and he left. Tanking didn't get them a championship; a superstar deciding to go to Cleveland and demand that other stars be put around him did. Regardless, you say "many teams have tanked and it worked out great" then go on to name ONE. Look at all the NBA champions and see which championship teams tanked and which didn't. I'll save you the time--the data is on my side, not yours. That is indisputable.

I didn't say dropping to the 10th spot was good nor did I say that's what the Pistons should plan for. I said that if the team as it exists today was as good as I described, dropping to the 10th pick would hardly mean Weaver has failed because the REST OF THE TEAM IS OBVIOUSLY PRETTY DAMN GOOD.

I never said you were wrong about anything. I said that your idea that "No top 4 pick = failure" is completely short-sighted and premature, as if there is no chance for the Pistons to win a championship unless they get a top 4 pick this year. Now you can argue the merits of that judgment all you want, but you can't see the future.

[DBC10]

The Pistons played a G-league team. Trying to get a loss against the Thunder is a tall order.

One or both between OKC and ORL are our biggest competition. At this rate, I'm starting to lean towards them both passing us if they're being this aggressive towards the bottom like this. It's looking like a toss up of being 4th with DET, OKC, and ORL all easily interchangeable each night. Our young guys are far along developed than their G-Leaguers and they want to finish the season strong, which I don't blame after witnessing the failed Blake redemption tour early on

There's always Emoni next year I guess.

It all comes down to luck, don't be shocked if the 10th and 9th worst teams jump into the top 4.

For sure. I am fully anticipating full chaos since that's just as likely as the Zion draft was

[chrbal]

The lottery rules changed since the Sonics/Thunder got really lucky and found a way to botch it. That really can’t be relied on anymore. Not the way it was.

The Pistons didn’t set themselves up to full on tank. But mostly because we didn’t waste multiple roster spots per team on the likes of Justin Jackson, Khem Birch, etc. (McGruder has his merits, Devidis is pointless). But all that really changes is we won’t have a slightly better chance at lottery luck. Meh

I think it’s funny that we’ve gotten rid of veterans in the way of the younger players like Rose and Griffin. We’re basically not playing Ellington or McGruder much anymore. Veterans Grant, Joseph, and Plumlee are getting rest days. Even Hayes is. We’re basically playing all the younger guys.
But in spite of all this we’re screwing up something that can’t really be controlled, because we are fielding something of an actual developable NBA roster as opposed to a lot of the guys taking up space on the full tanking teams.

[Moses ShamMoses]

I think we are headed in the right direction to be a playoff team sooner rather than later. These young guys are tough, play hard, and have some talent. My biggest concern is do we have enough talent to be much more than a 5-7 seed someday? We are still missing that #1 guy like a Green or Cunnigham could be. I know we'll need lotto luck either way but this team is too good right now to be going into draft night as one of the worst 3 teams. I'm mentally preparing for us to pick outside of the Top 5 again.

[whitehops]

short of literally forfeiting games i'm not sure how much more we can do to tank.

[MotownMadness]

Also gotta remember these young guys on the team are still gonna develop alot (hopefully). We still have a good shot at the top 4 as anyone but just lost the luxury of not dropping out of it by not being the worst.

[Manocad]

Also gotta remember these young guys on the team are still gonna develop alot (hopefully). We still have a good shot at the top 4 as anyone but just lost the luxury of not dropping out of it by not being the worst.

Mathematically that's far from being true. It's not likely that the Pistons will finish with the worst record but that possibility isn't gone yet by any means.

[DetroitSho]

Anybody else wanna keep Frank Jackson? Numbers are solid and still only 22. I like that he stays aggressive and has that first step.

To me he's just a G-Leaguer who is going hard to showcase himself for a contract. I don't see him passing the ball often to anyone. His defense is not over the top, so he's basically a short SG who can only knock some corner threes. He's totally replaceable IMO.

I didn't want him getting minutes at first but he's proven he could play. At worst he can be in the Langston Galloway/Seth Curry range. For a minimum contract you can definitely use a guy like him to come in and make shots.

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[DetroitSho]

short of literally forfeiting games i'm not sure how much more we can do to tank.

Apparently multiple "leg contusions".

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[MotownMadness]

Also gotta remember these young guys on the team are still gonna develop alot (hopefully). We still have a good shot at the top 4 as anyone but just lost the luxury of not dropping out of it by not being the worst.

Mathematically that's far from being true. It's not likely that the Pistons will finish with the worst record but that possibility isn't gone yet by any means.

Feels hopeless to me to that we finish worst but that would be great.