RealGM

Here is my plan for your 2013 Deeeetroit Pistons! I've tried to keep it realistic and address clear needs.

Step 1) Draft Shabazz Muhammad. I hate this draft and I hate the age controversy with him, but we need to improve our shooting and Shabazz is currently the most realistic pick. He has ideal size for a SG and I think his potential for being a play maker is underrated.

Step 2) Address the PG position. There is nothing except hope to suggest Knight is the answer. I am willing to give him more time, but I am not going into 13/14 with him as a starter. CP3/Teague are not realistic. Burke is probably off the board. No interest in Calderon. The best option is to sign Jarret Jack as a starter. I do not see Golden State going into luxury tax to keep him and I don't see anybody else offering him a starting gig. His pick and roll offense is superb, he protects the ball, provides decent D and he can hit the open 3. No reason he can't be a starter. 3/21 gets it done.

Step 3) Overpay Iggy. Probably the most unrealistic option, but I think he opts out and hits the open market. He provides flexibility (SG/SF), leadership, defense and is a solid team player. 4/48 gets it done.

Step 4) Sign Martell Webster. Former lotto pick with a history of injuries that has quietly had a nice season in Washington. Deadly from the corners, with adequate D he's a great fit to round out the team. 3/12 gets it done.

Step 5) Get a cheap big. I don't think we should commit long term money to a backup big. I'll give Chris Kaman a 1 year $8m deal to finish up my roster.


Final Roster
-----------------

PG: Jack/Knight/Stuckey
SG: Iggy/Shabazz/Knight/Stuckey/English
SF: Webster/Singler/Middleton
PF: Monroe/CV/JJ
C: Drummond/Monroe/Kaman/Kravtsov

2013/2014 Salary is about 66M, well below luxury tax. Having a lot of expiring contracts (stuckey, CV, Krav, English) and a little room under the luxury tax gives flexibility to make a move during the season. Salary for 2014/2015 is around $38M so we have a tonne of flexibility in a year when we may not have a draft pick and will need to resign Moose.

Weakest position is probably SF, but I think Webster, Singler, and Middleton are all promising young players and I have only committed about 6M in salary to the position. I think there is a chance one of them takes a step forward. We also have the flexibility of moving Iggy to SF if Shabazz is the real deal.

I think you have the right idea. But since we would be drafting shabaaz, I think we should trade for Granger instead. I think it would be cheaper and it would make our team more rounded.

Jack/Knight
Shabaaz/Stuckey/English
Granger/singler/Middleton
Monroe/CV/Jerebko
Drummond/Kaman/Kravtsov

I don't care whether it's Calderon or Jack though. Jack is a good option too though.

I mostly like this plan, since it would make us pretty good next year--maybe 7th seed?--and leave some space for improvement down the line. Switching out Maggette for Iggs by itself makes us 5-6 wins better. The obvious downside is that we could be locking ourselves into the Milwaukee Bucks mediocrity zone: the starting lineup is decent but the bench is awful, and we'd be looking at having three players (Monroe, Igg, maybe Drummond) out of our top eight guys who are likely to be better than their opponents on any given night. That's not good.

A few thoughts on your specific moves:
--I'm not against taking Shabazz, but I can't see how anyone who watches the tape on him isn't pretty scared of picking him. That dude is mad risky. Kudos for not assuming he'll be a big part of our future if we take him. The only attitude that makes sense to me about him is: take him with the hope he reskills over a couple years in the NBA, and if he works out you've got a decent scorer. If not, it's not like we loved any other prospect that we took over him.
--Jack was pretty solid as a stopgap starter for NO last year (2011-12). He's not a good defender and isn't a great passer but he'd be fine as long as you're not expecting great things. He might stunt BK's development...but, then again, is letting BK use up as many possessions as possible really the best way to develop him?
--I'm a big fan of Iggy, and $12m is absolutely not 'overpaying' him. We'll need to give him 4/60 for him to consider leaving Denver. If he is signing for that little, he'll go to someplace with a more immediate future.
--Webster would be a solid signing but I don't know if he'll come that cheap. I'm also worried his shooting this year is a fluke. His 3pt shooting jumped from 33% last year to 42% this year, and if he shoots 35% or worse next year his value would be pretty minimal.
--I hope we don't live in a world where a team is happy they sign Chris Kaman for $8m per year.

Finally...can we throw that much money at free agents? With your plan, we're paying out about $32m in new contracts this offseason, which leaves us well under the tax but well above the cap, which is $58m. We only have $22-3m in cap space, plus a MLE that's usually about $5m. So you'd need to trim off another $4-5m from your plan, I think.

HotelVitale wrote:I mostly like this plan, since it would make us pretty good next year--maybe 7th seed?--and leave some space for improvement down the line. Switching out Maggette for Iggs by itself makes us 5-6 wins better. The obvious downside is that we could be locking ourselves into the Milwaukee Bucks mediocrity zone: the starting lineup is decent but the bench is awful, and we'd be looking at having three players (Monroe, Igg, maybe Drummond) out of our top eight guys who are likely to be better than their opponents on any given night. That's not good.

A few thoughts on your specific moves:
--I'm not against taking Shabazz, but I can't see how anyone who watches the tape on him isn't pretty scared of picking him. That dude is mad risky. Kudos for not assuming he'll be a big part of our future if we take him. The only attitude that makes sense to me about him is: take him with the hope he reskills over a couple years in the NBA, and if he works out you've got a decent scorer. If not, it's not like we loved any other prospect that we took over him.
--Jack was pretty solid as a stopgap starter for NO last year (2011-12). He's not a good defender and isn't a great passer but he'd be fine as long as you're not expecting great things. He might stunt BK's development...but, then again, is letting BK use up as many possessions as possible really the best way to develop him?
--I'm a big fan of Iggy, and $12m is absolutely not 'overpaying' him. We'll need to give him 4/60 for him to consider leaving Denver. If he is signing for that little, he'll go to someplace with a more immediate future.
--Webster would be a solid signing but I don't know if he'll come that cheap. I'm also worried his shooting this year is a fluke. His 3pt shooting jumped from 33% last year to 42% this year, and if he shoots 35% or worse next year his value would be pretty minimal.
--I hope we don't live in a world where a team is happy they sign Chris Kaman for $8m per year.

Finally...can we throw that much money at free agents? With your plan, we're paying out about $32m in new contracts this offseason, which leaves us well under the tax but well above the cap, which is $58m. We only have $22-3m in cap space, plus a MLE that's usually about $5m. So you'd need to trim off another $4-5m from your plan, I think.

Thanks for the feedback. I am not worried about Jack stunting Knight's development. Like you mentioned, force feeding him 30+ minutes per night wasn't helping him. I'm happy to keep Knight around and give him 20 minutes a night to see how he develops over the next few years. He needs to earn the starting gig.

Getting stuck in the mediocrity zone is always a risk. I think keeping cap flexibility in 14/15 is essential. I'm basically relying on Moose/Drummond to become a dominant front court and hoping Shabazz, Knight, or one of the young SF's develops. I tried to put the right players around them to make this as likely as possible.

Good point on the salary cap. Stuckey was never a part of my plan for next year. Letting him walk does make the plan slightly less realistic, but it's something I'd be willing to do to free up the extra $4.5M.

Spider156 wrote:I think you have the right idea. But since we would be drafting shabaaz, I think we should trade for Granger instead. I think it would be cheaper and it would make our team more rounded.

Jack/Knight
Shabaaz/Stuckey/English
Granger/singler/Middleton
Monroe/CV/Jerebko
Drummond/Kaman/Kravtsov

I don't care whether it's Calderon or Jack though. Jack is a good option too though.

I did consider Granger, but I have no idea what type of contribution he can be expected to make next year. Obviously he thought he was going to play this year and it didn't go to plan. I think you'd have to give up an asset (probably this years draft pick) to get him. The most I'd be willing to give up, given his recurring Knee problems are second round picks and guys like Singler, Stuckey and JJ.

Grangers only value is that hes is an expireing. If the Pacers think they are a player or 2 away and they can get them by tradeing Granger to the Pistons for a player (Stuckey?) and/or the TPE that we would give them then we can get him.

The OPs plan is the band-aid/panic mode plan that Hammonds has been useing in Milwaukee for the past several yrs.

Its just going to ve very hard to trade for a superstar player since they are almost all in NY,LA, Miami and OKC. You have to draft that supporting cast that can compete with the team up culture and that takes multiple drafts.

I do want to thank the OP for his time. I have tried a few of these (but the results are craptacular) and I appreciate the posts and enjoy reading them.

Jack and Iggy are not realistic targets.

/close thread.

Of the 30 or so plans I've seen on here about 29 have been virtually trash.

This one isn't bad tho, Knight will obviously be a starter but I like Jack off the bench (he's thrived in that role for GS) although I doubt he leaves GS.

I like Iggy/Granger idea, both will be the 3 though not the 2, even Shabazz at the 2 can only be for short times. Like the drafting of Shabazz though.

When Shabazz does something other than 1 assist every season or so (sarcasm, I know, but he just never passes the damn thing so far in his career), then perhaps we can say he could be a halfway decent ball-mover and assist man.

If he cannot defend because of his lack of athleticism, and he never passes, then drafting him seems suicidal.

I just can't get on the Bazz bandwagon, and he is also NOT a SG. Therein lies the problem - he is not athletic enough for SG, and probably too small for SF. I'm sure he can score in the NBA, but not sure if he can guard anyone, and those kind of players are a dime a dozen.

We just need one team to be dumb or land a winning imaginary ping pong so we don't have to make that draft.

I like the idea of Jack, though another combo guard seems redundant. He's consistently solid unlike yo-yo Stuckey. But if the plan includes vacating Rodney from Pistons, that's a solid upgrade. While I like Calderon's offense, half his game is wretched, and Dre's not ready to cover up that much defensive lapse, especially with Moose at the four.

Iggy to me still comes down to contract. Either discounted price for years or less years at a higher price makes that deal palpable or crushing. In other words, Dumars could sign him and get GM of the year or sign him and get his own walking papers.