Official: Were you here when the Pistons hit rock bottom?

[ComboGuardCity]

It’s official. We just finished our worst year in 40+ years. At least in this era of Pistons basketball, this should theoretically be our worst season for a while…hopefully.

1. We have a guaranteed top 5 pick
2. We have loads of cap space
3. We have 3 players who look like potential future all stars (Cade, Ivey, Duren)
4. We have potential high end rotational pieces who might be assets (Wiseman, Bagley, and Stewart)
5. We have win now assets (Bogie and Burks)
6. We have a backup PG who has shown flashes he can be decent (Killian)

We are ripe for a turnaround. So much so that rock bottom probably was after we rolled our Blake’s corpse the season after he carried us to a sweep.

Memorialize your time as a pistons fan during these grueling times below.

What was your favorite moment of this season?

What was your least?

[zeebneeb]

This was, during my 35+ years of Piston Fandom, the worst season I can remember. There were some really bad teams along the way, but this season was particularly bad due to Cades injury so early, and any hope/hype deflating quickly thereafter.

Favorite moment of the season? Duren having his breakout game, damn near dropping a 30/20 monster, along with 4 blocks, and 3 assists. Really showed what he can do, and at 19 years of age.

Least favorite? Man, that's like asking which chunk of the dog turd looks the worst. Probably finding out about Cades injury, because he could still come back, and not be the same player he was becoming, or everytime Cojo played.

I am excited for next season, and also nervous because of the many moving parts, that could break the team for another few years.

[Spider156]

My favorite moment is Ivey turning into the stud that I guessed he was gonna become. Granted this draft class was pretty good. The most exciting is probably draft Ivey and then later Duren so that happened before the season started so it goes to show you how bad this season was. Next exciting news is getting Wiseman which I’m still positive about over Bey and then of course having the worst record in the league is pretty exciting knowing we have a guaranteed Top 5.

Least favorite part is Cade getting injured because the team was pretty awful to watch until Wiseman came around and then all of the sudden Ivey started taking over games post All Star break.

In my opinion the real future setter is the new coach we’re hiring. The second is the lottery unless we get first or second then that sets the future itself tbh. As far as free agent, I think we take the route of dumping Bagley to take on a bigger contract of a player weaver likes like how we got Bogan and Burke. Another wing that’s as good as Bogan and that’s about all we need given our young core growing. I’d get rid of Diallo, Hampton, Cojo, Rhoden, Bagley, and likely Killian if we’re serious but he’s finally becoming a veteran so I’d wait to see how he does off the bench. This year could be a blessing to his career next year but we’ll see if Weaver keeps him around. I’m guessing there’s a lot of better veteran guards out there.

Our future sets itself on May 16 because that will determine the next coach that could possibly become available after say Nuggets coach gets fired for not making Western Conference Finals.

[vege]

Rock Bottom imo was the end of Joe D days.

The coaches (Kuester/Michael Curry/Lawrence Frank/Mo Cheeks/John Loyer),
the awful vets (RIP/AI/TMac),
the players attitude (loling when Kuester got ejected, boycoting practice etc etc),
the laughable prospects (Rodney Stuckey...)

[JNewton]

Rock Bottom imo was the end of Joe D days.

The coaches (Kuester/Michael Curry/Lawrence Frank/Mo Cheeks/John Loyer),
the awful vets (RIP/AI/TMac),
the players attitude (loling when Kuester got ejected, boycoting practice etc etc),
the laughable prospects (Rodney Stuckey...)

Absolutely. I think there's a lot of younger posters or people with short memories here, so not being knowledgeable about those days is forgivable, but the 2009-2014 was the bleakest time in Pistons basketball that I can remember. Sure, the team had a worse record now (hell, post All-Star break the Pistons tanked to a level that would make The Process era 76ers blush), but there is reason for genuine optimism in the coming years. Whether it will pan out or not is certainly not guaranteed, but I'll take now over the hopelessness of those days.

[dVs33]

Yeah it may have been the worst record, but it feels like we’re in a much better position now than the last 10 years.

I think Ivey and duren were my highlights. They have such high ceilings.
Hayes was also an inconsistent highlight. He developed a lot. If he takes a similar sized step next years he’ll be a solid back up and occasional starter.

[bstein14]

Cade, Ivey and Duren are all nice young pieces on rookie contracts. The hope is that they at least end up as good positive starters by the end of their rookie contracts, if not more.... but people were putting Bey in the group of exciting young talent the past two years and we just gave him away for almost nothing so its sometimes hard to say how things will pan out with young guys until they really take that next step into all-star or near all-star.

One year from now essentially the Pistons organization will have to decide whether or not to lock up Cade on a 5 year $200 million rookie extension, or let him become a RFA the following year. Young Cade on a rookie deal is a lot more appealing than Max $$$ face of the franchise Cade from what we've seen thus far. If I was Weaver, I wouldn't feel great knowing that decision is coming up in a year and we haven't really seen enough of Cade to know whether or not he is going to be worth that deal.

Bojan and Burk are both solid older vets... likely have them both for just one more season. Both are positive rotation players and they were clearly our two best players last season.

Bagley, Livers, Stewart, Wiseman are all looking most likely like bench players.. nothing really to get too excited about but hopefully one of those 4 end up being good enough to be a starter on a good team. Some of those guys aren't making the rotation on good teams.

I won't comment on Hayes other than at best he's looking like an average backup PG next season... and in reality that would require him taking a big step forward.

A lot of next season feels like it depends on our draft pick and our FA signing. Best case in the draft is that we end up with VW or Scoot.

C:Duren / Wiseman
PF: Stewart / Bagley
SF: Bojan / Livers
SG: Ivey / Burks
PG: Cade / Hayes

Two of those players aren't even good enough to crack the rotation on our lottery team next year (after you add one FA and one top 5 pick) so I think that perhaps tells you something about people here overvaluing what we have. A few guys out of those 10 aren't rotation players on most teams.

[NYPiston]

Rock bottom was the SVG era or the post-Joe Dumars, pre-Weaver era as a whole. Nothing worse than being a fan of a treadmill team whose absolute ceiling was .500 and 1st round fodder for a contender. I've experienced mostly success a Pistons fan, Bad Boy and Goin' To Work eras covered most of my Pistons fandom years with the mid to late 90s Grant Hill (Teal) era sprinkled in so it's been mostly a good run and shouldn't complain too much about the 10 years of hopelessness before the rebuild.

As poor as the record has been the last 3 years, at least the Pistons have a direction finally so I wouldn't consider this era to be rock bottom. As long as there's high potential to work with, you can deal with the lean years as long as it's leading to something big.
I feel that's the case here so I think better times aren't that far off. Lots of work to do to get there but the baseline is there for something potentially special down the line depending heavily on Cade's development and the lottery balls.

[Billl]

This year was brutal, but at least we got to watch some guys who could realistically be part of our next contending team. We had a lot of years were it was absolutely obvious that the team was going nowhere and that none of those guys were going to be focal points on an actual contender.

[SuperBad]

The years of Charlie Villanueva/Ben Gordon, Maxceill,
Stuckey, Bynum, Herman. Ugly years at least we got guys on there up now.

[Uncle Mxy]

The first NBA game I attended was coached by Dick Vitale (though to be fair, I didn't know the coach or most of the Pistons players -- was a kid who wanted to see Dr. J). This year ain't rock bottom.

[Rip32]

It’s official. We just finished our worst year in 40+ years. At least in this era of Pistons basketball, this should theoretically be our worst season for a while…hopefully.

1. We have a guaranteed top 5 pick
2. We have loads of cap space
3. We have 3 players who look like potential future all stars (Cade, Ivey, Duren)
4. We have potential high end rotational pieces who might be assets (Wiseman, Bagley, and Stewart)
5. We have win now assets (Bogie and Burks)
6. We have a backup PG who has shown flashes he can be decent (Killian)

We are ripe for a turnaround. So much so that rock bottom probably was after we rolled our Blake’s corpse the season after he carried us to a sweep.

Memorialize your time as a pistons fan during these grueling times below.

What was your favorite moment of this season?

What was your least?

None of the top 5 picks will turn this franchise around in 1 year

[Kalamazoo317]

Non-Cade injury lowlight for me was moving on from Bey. I think it was a good trade and I'm glad we made it, but I had such high hopes for Bey's development coming into the season, so it was pretty disappointing. Highlight was how quickly Duren established himself as one of the better players on the team and a future building block.

[Snakebites]

We hope this is rock bottom.

In 79-80 the team had one fewer win and had traded their first rounder than season for a washed up Bob McAdoo- the Celtics got our pick and traded it to the Warriors for Parish and McHale.

You can always fall further.

[JerseyJungle]

Another highlight was the improvement shown by both Jaden Ivey, who shot better and better and had fewer and fewer turnovers as the season wore on, and Killian Hayes who, if nothing else, developed a sweet little intermediate game.

[JerseyJungle]

Rock Bottom imo was the end of Joe D days.

the 2009-2014 was the bleakest time in Pistons basketball that I can remember. Sure, the team had a worse record now (hell, post All-Star break the Pistons tanked to a level that would make The Process era 76ers blush), but there is reason for genuine optimism in the coming years. Whether it will pan out or not is certainly not guaranteed, but I'll take now over the hopelessness of those days.

Yes.
Those years made me stop watching Pistons basketball...up until two years ago.
I came back to a different game, but at least the team is young and has hope.

[Invictus88]

I'm sorry but rock bottom isn't now. It's years in the past where we've had no young talent and have been saddled with albatross contracts for players producing at negative net value (DnP CV, Smoove, Blake in his last year, etc).

Today we have the worst record but it has been largely intentional. We have prospects on our roster and a top 5 pick on the way. Our books largely look good.

This is not rock bottom. Folks wanting treadmill solutions just failed to recognize when it was happening earlier.

[zeebneeb]

Rock bottom is whatever the individual person feels it is.

Not a competition, it's a question.

[Pistonrings]

This year was tough, but not as bad as other years where we had so few options for the future.
This year, we knew as fans that the team was obviously tanking. We also knew that tanking was the proper decision when Cade went down. We let our young guys play a lot and learn. and we got plenty of losses for the lottery in return and by massive coincidence, it just so happens there are two possible generational players in the draft, and who knows, the Miller kid may end up being a superstar himself. So tough to sit through, yep, but nowhere near the actual misery this kind of record could have been. How would you like to have sat through this knowing that we had traded our 1st pick with no protection a few years ago in our great deal with the Clippers? That would have been pure hell.

We also know darn well the players are not stupid and knew full well the FO wanted losses. So of course their defensive energy and spirit went into the toilet while we tanked. So no way are these players as bad as this record. Noway can anyone reasonably claim that these players were totally invested in winning and playing hard and the right way.

So IMO, this team will be really invested next season knowing full well the tanking is over they are now on the real path upwards. I think many will be shocked at how good this team will be next season when the players and coaches are truly trying to win. All those considerations make me unable to see this season as the disaster the record implies it was. It was on purpose, not because we are that bad.

[chrbal]

The day of the Blake Griffin trade. That was the day I fully realized that teams don’t always think what’s best for the team, a lot of times it’s what’s best for the owners pocketbook.

We had been right around .500 with a team that looked like it was slowly improving, nothing amazing it just seemed like we could get better without having to make an attention getting focused trade.

It was incredibly obvious that the clippers were just trying to unload him on some suckers for whatever value they could get before his value became absolutely worthless. Not to mention Drummond/Monroe already didn’t work out. So why not get another past era 4 who costs significantly more and see if that magically works out.

We wound up with a similar record to the season before. Blake’s first full season with us he plays unbelievable…and we wind up 41-41.

Meanwhile Tobias Harris, a more modern 4, is having a very good season. Is younger, healthier and cheaper than Blake.

We also traded a good lockeroom guy in Boban Marjanović and Avery Bradley. “But at least we didn’t trade a first”

We absolutely did. Pick became miles bridges. Chances are we wouldn’t have picked him. But ignore the off court stuff and he would have been a perfect fit for us.

I realize I’m rehashing old stuff, but for one event that was it. And I view SVGs time here as worse then Dumars because of what he accomplished prior to guys like Gordon, Villanueva and Josh Smith.