Betrayer

I don't know. There's 14 games left and if you look a bit deeper into how these teams have been playing more recently, I feel like it's actually a tough schedule. Washington, Golden State, Philly, Milwaukee, and Indy - All bad. There we agree. That's 5 probable wins, but the other 9 games... LA is 9-1 in their last 10 and they're on a tear. ATL has won 10 in a row and is the hottest team in the NBA. NO is 6-4, playing much better with no pick to tank for. MIN is a handful and we play them twice. OKC - just call this an automatic loss. TOR just beat us when we actually had Cade. ORL has found their groove and are 7-3 recently. CHA is playing well and are also 7-3 recently. That's a tough road without Cade and with BOS breathing down our necks.

Collapsed season. This was seriously painful news to hear this morning. If he's back for Round 1 you can probably expect him to be on a minutes restriction and have some conditioning issues. Only possible good thing I can imagine coming out of this is we slip to 2nd place, manage to get through Round 1 while Cade is working himself back into shape, and get to face the Knicks in Round 2 with a healthy Cade (and Stew) for our revenge. That's the best "Glass Half Full" I can come up with. As for the rest of the season, I'm guessing JB starts Jenkins in Cade's place. I'd actually consider just letting Ausar initiate the offense. We've seen him be the lead initiator before when Cade was out and it worked decently well. Ausar guards the other teams PG every night anyway, so less cross matching is needed. You can put another spacer in there to help spread the court for Ausar + Duren pick and rolls. I'd slide Green into the starting lineup at the SF. Javonte is our only legitimate 3-and-D player, shooting 37% from beyond the arc this year and whopping 50% from the corners.

Gotta admire his commitment to defense though.

If you're proposing moving one of the bad teams (like SAC) to these new cities, I'm cool with that idea. Just not 2 more teams to water down the league even more.

I'm sure it'll all go through, because there's money involved, but I truly hope it does not. The last thing this league needs is more bad teams.

Toronto beat us at our own game. Crushed on the offensive glass and beaten on points off turnovers. JD struggled to control the defensive boards and help at the same time and nobody else was strong enough to keep Poeltl off the glass on the rotation. Ausar looked a step slow coming back from injury and was on a minutes restriction. Seems like it would've been a great game to go bigger and have Reed share some minutes with Duren to control the glass. But no, why not run with a bunch of guards instead and hope to suddenly become the type of team that shoots their way back into games? Right, JB? Right?!

In case you were wondering if they're in tank mode or not, you have your answer.

Good to see them stomping the teams they should stomp again. Please save some of this hot shooting for the games we really need it in. Huerter with another solid game. He's no world beater, but I'd rather see him play than Lavert.

A lot of garbage basketball in there, but hey, if it pushes Kobe further down in the record books I'm ok with it.

But what about CLE catching NYK? If we stay at #1 then I need the Knicks at #4. Give me that sweet, sweet revenge.

I just want to make sure that wherever we land, we're lined up to get NYK in the 2nd round for some revenge. After that we can (and probably will) lose in the ECF to Boston or Cleveland. I think that'd be a pretty successful season of development and improvement from a team that was slated to be the 4-6 seed. Then in the offseason hopefully they can address the need for 3-and-D players and/or maybe another perimeter creator.

I'd love to agree with you that it's odd, but this is what he does in crunch time too. He comes out and says Stew is the best defensive big in the league but then doesn't play him as a closer, even for just one possession when you need a stop. Same with Ausar, who's a top 5 defender in the entire NBA, and winds up sitting most nights in crunch time because JB opts for poor offense instead of dominant defense. He's been saying one thing and doing another with his lineups for a long time now. Since we're talking about defense, here are some fun numbers. Over the past 10 games Pistons have had a 104 defensive rating with Ausar on the court (best in the league) and a 119 defensive rating when he's off the court (near the bottom of the league). There's a reason the sudden turnaround started right about the time he got back from the blood clot last year. This is going to be a tough stretch of games while he's out with the ankle injury.

Without Ausar in the starting lineup everyone's defense is being exposed. Duren, Harris, and Robinson are all poor defenders and Cade has been pretty bad recently as well. So, of course, with the defense suffering JB has been trying more offensive lineups as if any combination of offensive players on this team is going to beat any other team in the league. Our best offensive players outside of Cade wouldn't crack the top 5 of most other team's best offensive players. You aren't winning that way, no matter who you put in there. Look, it's not that difficult. Ausar is out so you start Holland or Green to get a similar style player in there and put some defense in the starting lineup. The guy who gets minutes off the bench as a result is Reed. He's highly disruptive on defense and produces anytime he's in the lineup. Any other minutes you want to give out to guys like Huerter or Sasser - those minutes come from the reduction LaVert and/or Jenkin's minutes. It really isn't hard to figure this out.

This pretty much sums it up. I'll just add a few of my observations as well. The only way you're beating the Spurs is if you can shoot from outside. Cade was shooting well from three in this one and probably needed to take about 5 more threes rather than forcing bad shots into Wemby because they were daring him to shoot. Teams like the Spurs that can protect the paint and don't turn it over are a real problem for this version of the Pistons. We can't score from the perimeter and if we aren't getting out in transition, we're in trouble. That's why Ausar is the 2nd most important player on this team, not the All-Star JD. I'll also add that Huerter had some nice minutes in this one. He certainly looked more playable than LaVert. Jenkins has been struggling since he signed that contract as well. Now watch JB start LaVert or Jenkins in place of Ausar in the next game rather than going to Holland, Huerter, or Green. It's time to find a way to get Reed 10 minutes per game. I actually liked the minutes with him and Stew in there and he always makes a positive impact on the game in some way.

They wanted to by most accounts I heard. NAW had other plans and wanted to go to Atlanta. Maybe he heard good things about the wings. But you're right that NAW would've been a great addition. They need guys who can do both the 3 and the D. I also agree, we probably aren't the favorites even though we're the #1 seed. Trajan seems like the patient sort who's ok with that for a super young team that came in with an expectation of winning about 47 games and is playing with house money. Personally, I'd love to have seen them address some weaknesses at the deadline because I agree with you that only get so many chances. Then again, I have no idea if any good deals were out there. I'm sure other teams didn't want LaVert at this point either, and I don't want to see them break the bank for a Blake Griffin type deal.