whenever I see Fischella post, I gear up for a load of bullcrap which is only designed to make us feel bad about our team. he's just spamming us here. Totally unserious stuff.
Smith will play about 15 minutes a game at small forward, maximum. the truth is he'll spend about 30 minutes a game at power forward to subbing either for Monroe or Drummond. Smith is one of the very best defensive players in the league according to advanced statistics, so when he's in there the Pistons will always have a fabulous shots blocker in our lineup. When paired with Drummond - then good freaking luck scoring on us in the paint. If Mitchell develops well and can play as a role player, we could field the best shot blocking, athletic, defensive front court of all time with Drummond, Smith and Mitchell. No matter what our lineup and rotation is, with the front court we've got, plus two fine rebounding guards with KCP and Knight, we will likely own the offensive and defensive boards in every game we play.
If you don't like the possibilities of that, what can anyone say to you?
As teams collapse on the interior trying desperately to keep our incredibly talented big men out of the paint and off the boards, then Smith, Drummond and Monroe, all of whom are excellent passing big men - with Monroe being a passing savant, will be kicking the ball out to Knight and KCP which will likely be deadly since these are both great 3 pt shooters. Actually, so are Middleton and Singler, who should both have the chance to thrive playing 30 mpg at SF, when Smith is at
PF FOR 30 MINUTES EACH GAME WHEN EITHER DRUMMOND OR MONROE IS RESTING [Sorry, but Fischella needs to be shouted at!
].
And we haven't yet figured in the players the Pistons will get for JJ (good player who might be out of possible rotation minutes now), Stuckey (great expiring contract), and CV (great expiring contract).
Look, the team will have growing pains as they are extremely young - but our guys have another year under their belt. It'll also take time for the team to learn how to play together, and for a new coach employing a new system. We get all that. But we're now talking about a talent base with an emerging all-star PF (Monroe), another established all-star caliber PF in Smith, an emerging elite/franchise C in Drummond, some very talented guards, two SF's who I think will prove to be very good rotation players/glue guys in this league - both of whom can really shoot and score the ball, and a guy like Mitchell who could turn out to be a big star and who we can bring along slowly. We're also talking about a team who can add serious talent at any time up to the trade deadline this season because of about $17 million in expiring contracts, and some intriguing young talent that could be expendable because they are too far down the depth chart.
If you don't like this team's future, you're ridiculous.
