Betrayer

Well, that was not fun. The Knicks would look like the '96 Bulls if they could play the Pistons for 82 games.

Games like this are what most people were expecting this year. Close and competitive, but still a loss. Defense was strong early on and decent for much of the night, but they once again hit the 4th quarter and went to Casey hero-ball to end the game. Didn't get any good looks at shots and everything seemed forced. Credit Cavs defense for stopping the first option and discredit Casey for his playbook that doesn't shift the defense at all, forcing guys to try to create with no time on the clock after 3 dribble-hand-offs did nothing. Defense looked way better early in this game than most of the year. Both Livers and Hayes were out there putting in some work defensively. Killian is slowly putting together a nice stretch of basketball here. Sample size is still too small for me to get excited after what we witnessed for the previous 100 games, but let's just see where this goes. Same with Knox. Bagley is a mixed bag as usual. Has a nice touch around the rim, but is a train wreck on defense most of the time.

Always feels like he's slightly unhinged. Prime candidate for the next guy to go into the stands and pull an Artest or Stephen Jackson move.

Wasn't it Luke Kennard, Bruce Brown, and 3 second rounders for Saddiq and McGruder in a three team deal with BKN and LAC?

First road win last night. Will they make it back to back?

Hayes and Ivey were struggling down the stretch so Casey went to his vets in the backcourt to seal the deal. A lot more CoJo minutes than I like to see, but watching a win was a nice change. Part of the problem is the Casey hero-ball scheme. I'd watch a Nuggets offensive set where someone would cut or screen off ball rather than stand around and I'd think, "that'd be nice." But every time down the court our players would just take turns trying to size up their man with dribble moves while everyone stood around watching. That requires a lot of reading and reacting to what the defense is doing and the vet guards simply have the experience to do that better than the young players. If they actually ran a decent offensive set to get guys open off ball, we could have had the youngsters out there in crunch time which would have been good for their development. However, I am glad Casey finally let Duren close the game over Bagley. I wonder how long before he just puts Duren in the starting lineup.

Cade, Ivey, Booker, Scoot lineup incoming?

When the three ball is going you can score some points, but you aren't stopping anyone with that front line out there. It was looking better with Duren in the game, but Casey did Casey things in the last 6 minutes to throw this thing away. As soon as he put Bagley back in they targeted him and went to work. Not to mention giving up second chance points because he couldn't rebound the ball. Bagley is an absolute train wreck on defense. Also, Killian iso against a double team for a mid-range floater is not what you need coming out of a timeout down the stretch of a close game. Three games on this road trip so far and all three were winnable with a coach who could get this team to play better than the sum of their parts rather than below it. Not that anyone is rooting for wins right now. Tank crowd is full steam ahead just 18 games into the season. This is going to be a loooong 5 months.

Can we go back to the old lottery odds for one year? It's starting to look like we're going to run away with worst record at this pace.

And Saddiq Bey went out as well with a turned ankle.

Ugh. That's going to make this an even more painful season. I guess Ivey gets thrown to the wolves and we see if this Killian uptick can be sustained. Either way, it's going to result in a lot of losses so I guess that's good for the tank crowd.

I don't really trust Livers yet. It's too small of a sample size. But the sample size on Bey is large enough that it's less about my trust in Livers and more about my distrust in Saddiq's outside shot and defense. You've got nothing to lose giving Livers a try with the starters or giving the Stew at PF lineup a try as well. Things aren't working with Bey and Bojan in the starting lineup regardless, so we might as well experiment. As Del eluded to though, both of those guys are just placeholders. We need a far more talented two way wing at some point if we're going to get anywhere. Good thing we'll have a lottery pick and something like 50M in cap space to try to figure that out this offseason.

I think it's more a question of role right now. Bey isn't providing what the starters need, which is outside shooting and wing defense. I think Livers is currently better suited to that role. He's a better shooter, defensive communicator, ball mover, and team defender. He knows his role. We don't need Bey trying to be a 1-on-1 bucket getter next to Cade, Ivey, and Bojan. We need a guy who can shoot the three when open and play better defense. That's Livers over Bey. Conversely, the bench needs another guy who can get to the line and maybe bully the opponents second unit. So Bey could flourish in that role. If he figures out his three ball, then maybe you can bring him back up with the starters, but it could be that he's more of the Corliss Williamson off the bench guy rather than the 3 and D Jae Crowder type people thought he would be. All that said, I just want to see Stew get healthy so we can try out the Stew + Duren (or Bagley for now, I guess) lineup, which would mean neither Livers nor Bey in the starting unit.

I watched it. Haven't missed a game since around 2001... ...and it was just as ugly as the box score would lead you to believe. I'd love to say it was a old school defensive slugfest, but it wasn't. Neither team could shoot for most of the game. They could've built a new arena with all the bricks. It was the perfect opportunity to steal a win on the road trip, but ultimately the Pistons missed open shot after shot to throw it away despite a good offensive game from Bojan. I can't comprehend what's happened to Bey since his rookie year but he needs to figure his shot out. It's nice that he's getting to the line, but if he can't shoot league average from three it doesn't matter alongside his poor defense and lack of athleticism.

Going to be a rough couple of weeks. Road trip No Cade for at least a couple games No Stew Teams might just drop 130 on us every night, especially if we start Bagley next to Bey and Bogey. The three "B"s might be the worst defensive front line in the entire NBA. I would hope they'd at least give Duren a try in order to have some sort of rim protection and rebounding in there with the starters. And/Or maybe leave Bey in his bench role to get him ready for Stew's return and put Livers in there at the 4. He's not a stopper, but he's a far superior team defender than Bey.

The Raptors are just so long and athletic and they play like every possession matters. Second half lineup with some athleticism (Ivey, Hami, Duren) was able to make a run, but it wasn't enough in the end. Ivey took over in the 4th and if anyone could hit a shot (Bogey missed a ton of open threes), Pistons could've taken this one. Sad to see Stew get hurt right when they tried him at the PF next to another big man. I really wanted to see that lineup for a few games.

Looks like he's miming an invisible wall.

Would be nice to see Burks suit up against his old team. Looks like Mitchell Robinson is out, so that should help the tiny lineup that Casey keeps rolling out there to start games.

After two years of watching Grant in a Pistons uniform, at no point did I think he was going to take that to the hole and dunk it. I've seen the beginning of that play a hundred times and it had 20 foot jumper written all over it every time in a Pistons uniform. Goes to show you what being on a team that has a chance to win games does for a person - they actually try harder.

Just looks like a Celtics jersey.

Couple of near triple doubles last night with Cade and Ivey both hitting the glass hard. Rough first half, but a killer 3rd quarter changed the game for the good guys. Also good to see Casey starting to stagger the rotations more. Hopefully he keeps it up even when the reserves come back healthy.

If the criteria for spacing the court was 38-40% on 7 attempts per game, no teams would have spacing because there are only so many Klay Thompson's in the league. Defenses still have to respect players with a far lower percentage (for example, Saddiq Bey) and far less attempts (for example, Corey Joseph) - and if they don't respect them, then those guys are getting wide open shots which is also good outcome for that possession. Remember, the point of spacing isn't necessarily to create space in the lane, the point is to find an open look for one of your players because they're too spread apart for the defense to recover and contest after it gets shifted. That open shot could be from the lane, but it could also be from three which is also an acceptable (and sometimes better) result. The Pistons have a problem with rebounding and interior defense. They're 5th worse in defensive rebounding. They're 5th worst in opponents second chance points. They're 3rd worst in points allowed in the paint. They're 5th worst in blocks. Conversely, their offensive rating is actually a little better than last year. My proposal was to try Stew+Duren in the starting lineup to mitigate some of the paint issues. You've proposed starting Bagley+Duren, to which I responded that it would result in both worse offense and worse defense than the Stew+Duren combo. I've yet to hear anything to convince me that Bagley at the 4 is a better idea on either end of the court next to another non-shooting big. But, as I said in the other thread, we're just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic here.

Look, I think we both agree that the team needs to try to get bigger. They're getting killed on the offensive glass, they have the worst defensive rating in the league by a wide margin, they simply can't protect the paint at all, and the guards don't have a vertical threat with the starters. The fact is that we're rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but in the interest of seeing 10-15% improvement in this team, I prefer Stew + Duren or Stew + Bagley to the Bagley + Duren combo that you were suggesting. Within my first posts I laid out my reasons on both offense and defense. Yes, one of those reasons was the potential for better spacing on offense, and I stand by that opinion. It's true that he's a 31.5% 3pt shooter for his career and he's being left open 10 games into the season. I can live with that because his form is excellent and the potential is there for him to get to 33% or higher early on this year. At 1 point or more per possession (which he isn't far from), guys will start to come out and contest more of his shots, but these things take time to prove. On the other hand, you're going to have to look long and hard to find anyone who believes Bagley can be an outside shooter anytime soon - so there's zero potential for spacing with him and another big out there. He needs to be close to the basket to do what he does best. On top of that, we don't have the personnel or the coach to run an offense that can deal with three defenders in the lane - no matter what the Warriors are doing with their lineups - so we need to try to develop that potential for spacing. So, at the end of the day, I'll take the potential of Stew creating spacing by mid-season while getting me around 1 pt per possession on his threes in the meantime - along with far superior defense, better shot blocking, and better rebounding which is this team's biggest issue at the moment. Oh, and the bonus of separating Bagley and Duren is that even with Casey's 5-in/5-out lineups I get to keep one of Duren or Bagley on the court at all times for the size and verticality.

He's auditioning for the Casey offense.

Oh, I see it now. We'll have one Center who can post up and score inside, but is absolutely terrible on defense. Then we'll put him next to another Center who's really good at rebounding and rim running. This sounds familiar somehow. Too bad it didn't work last time either with Monroe + Drummond in an even less perimeter oriented NBA. Nobody is saying that Stewart at the 4 is the answer to all this team's problems and they'll suddenly become contenders. What I'm saying is that it's the lesser of evils and that Bagley + Duren is by far the worst option available to us, both defensively and offensively. Either way, I'm pretty sure we're going to have to agree to disagree on this.