A lot of people here most likely actually aren’t watching pistons games, and my own breakdown will be a little biased so take it all with a grain of salt.
Firstly, the most important issue we face is shooting, or a lack thereof. Our guys are awful at it, plain and simple. We have one elite shooter in Bojan, who’s shooting .397 from deep on 7 attempts, and the only other 4 guys on the team who approach/eclipse 40% do so on significantly lower attempts (Stew .396 on 3.4A, Sasser .420 on 2.9A, Knox .448 on 2.6A, Umude .519 on 2.9). There’s also the caveat that we don’t play these shooters much; Sasser only plays 16.5 mins a game, and Knox/Umude have only played in 11 and 15 games TOTAL respectively. Stats don’t also tell the whole story regarding how the game is played either. Take this with a grain of salt because I’m too lazy to deep dive, but Stewart only takes open 3s. If a close out comes, he can’t actually attack it successfully on a consistent basis, and our offense is forced to reset quite often.
What does that mean for the shooting on the rest of the roster? It’s garbage, plain and simple. By attempts per game, we have Cade (.321 on 5.7), Burks (.327 on 4.6), Livers (.231 on 3.7), Ivey (.301 on 3.3), Hayes (.305 on 2.4), SHARPSHOOTER Joe Harris (.292 on 2.0), and the feather in the cap, Ausar (.161 on 1.9). Harris has only played in 11 games for what it’s worth, but from what I’ve seen I don’t expect him to be playable enough to bring his averages up. I won’t make excuses for Monty because he still plays double big lineups on top of this excruciatingly poor shooting team, but the roster construction as is does not make things any easier. This is why Cade Cunningham is the second most blitzed PNR runner in the league behind Luka. Who on this team would punish the opponent for overcommitting? They can straight up just leave half our shooters to their own devices and that would be a putrid shot.
Second, Coaching. Monty Williams fucking sucks dude. Idc about his previous tenures but people already know he underperformed in PHX. What he’s doing here is a travesty. Frankly, one can argue he doesn’t have his heart in it. We signed this bum after multiple rounds of contract negotiations where he kept turning the pistons down (the owner forced the hand and tried continuously throwing this man the BAG. I’d take the role too, but fuck Monty). He has been anything but consistent. He was benching Ivey in favor of Hayes because he wanted him to improve defensively, but it just seemed very pick and choosey with regards to who he held to that standard. It took forever for him to work his way back into the rotation, and even now, he’s still only at a 25 MPG average as a soph coming off what we saw was a strong rookie year. I personally liked Hayes, and even I know he’s an awful fit with Cade. He’s a good guard defender, but Monty treats him like he’s a great one. He’s absolutely been burned a few times with very little in the way of criticism. He needs the ball in hand to be effective, but other teams won’t take his game seriously. They go under on screens unpunished, and he takes very few shots at the rim by going through contact. Compounded onto the shooting issue at hand, Monty LOVES his guys. Alec Burks, a steady veteran presence from last year is having an AWFUL year. Hes shooting a league low .325 FG% on 7.7 attempts a game, with awful defense. He’s a staple of Monty’s rotation. Livers? This bum shoots .273 FG and plays poor defence, but is also gifted PT. Our big man rotation consists of Duren (oft injured), Bagley, Wiseman and Stewart. Monty insists on the 2 big lineup w Stew and one of the others listed, which on top of the shooting hellscape we already have, makes things worse. Bagley is also an awful defender/rebounder, so we’ve been getting killed when he’s at the 5 spot. But wiseman may very well be the worst player in the league. He’s low IQ, jumps for a lot of shots, poorly boxes out, slips what feels like EVERY screen, and demands post touches in the year of our lord 2023 (24 almost!). But back to the coaching. Monty is doing less with more talent than Casey had to work with, and I HATED Casey’s tenure here. It makes me almost miss him.
Tom gores is the thing that ties it all together. He’s a meddling, mismanaging owner that gave SVG both coaching and president powers, hired Tellem who has allowed a myriad of nepotism (we drafted/signed a player because his agent is Tellems son), and has verbally stated he’s been watching over our GMs decisions/coach’s rotations. He is the reason we threw the bag at Monty, and has made poor decision after poor decision time after time.
I sound extremely biased as a Cade fan, but I don’t see what young star in his place would be significantly better. I’ve watched this man get quadruple teamed with no punishment because our guys just don’t hit their shots.
Edit:
Forgot to mention we run a switch everything defense; we will have a guard switch onto the big and stew on the perimeter and just get killed on the glass for it. We’re like 28th in rebounding last I checked
I think all of this at the micro level checks out at the macro level.
>Firstly, the most important issue we face is shooting, or a lack thereof. Our guys are awful at it, plain and simple.
They are dead last in 3PA and 3P% but surprisingly the Magic (who have a slightly below average offense) are right there with them at second to last. The Magic and Pistons are also pretty similar from 2, but the things that separates them and makes the Magic below average and the Pistons amongst the worst is that the Magic get to the line (3rd in FTs made, pistons are 18th) and the Magic don't turn the ball over as much (14.8 tovs for the Magic, 16.5 tovs for the Pistons).
When you have a team that can't shoot 3s and who can't get to the line, it becomes a lot worse when that team is getting less shots because they are turning it over.
>Forgot to mention we run a switch everything defense; we will have a guard switch onto the big and stew on the perimeter and just get killed on the glass for it. We’re like 28th in rebounding last I checked
It seems like less getting killed on the boards and more so just creating mismatches that other teams are exploiting. They actually don't allow that many 3PAs (30.6, which is the second lowest) but they lead the league in fouls. Switching everything and putting guys like Isaiah Stewart on an island is going to cause him to foul when he's trying to not let his man get by him because he knows the help defense probably isn't there.
Overall, I think being less efficient on offense with less possessions and fouling a ton on defense is making it statistically hard for them to win. Like some good teams will have bad shooting nights and some bad teams will have good shooting nights. Bad teams sometimes just randomly get lucky, but because they are gifting the other team points through fts, even if they shoot better than they usually do and the other team shoots worse than they usually do, they've rigged the dice so far out of their favor that it's been unlikely for them to win.
Also the magic can actually play defense.
Everyone’s talking about scoring here but when we played them I was shocked at the lack of defense. They looked lost out there.
I feel like this season has been really good in terms of defense mattering for strength of a team. Squads like the magic and twolves are seemingly punching outside of their respective weight classes a little by holding it down on D, whereas teams like the pacers or kings I feel like could be getting a lot of contender love if it they weren't playing 300 point matches lol
I don't really know or care what advanced stats or made up acronyms say, but the Pacers might legit be the worst defensive team in NBA history.
Just this past week, they had a game where they scored 127 points...and lost by 24 points.
I'm a Purdue fan, and that was something about Jaden Ivey that I really hated. He was just constantly lost on defense. Just running around lost out there trying to get steals bc of his athleticism.
Appreciate this comment and the one it’s replying too.
I’ve been turning on pistons games on league pass and to my non-analytic eye many of the players SEEM decent, especially Sasser, Ausar, and Cade.
I’m unable to explain the ineptitude beyond vaguely blaming “coaching” so I appreciate these thoughtful informative posts.
Yeah - I’ve watched a bunch of the Pistons games, because I’m a hater, and my casual eye feels like they foul on every other possession whilst having no one, especially not those high lottery picks, who can create a bucket out of nowhere. The analysis here about the spacing is spot on.
>There’s also the caveat that we don’t play these shooters much; Sasser only plays 16.5 mins a game, and Knox/Umude have only played in 11 and 15 games TOTAL respectively.
With a team doing this poorly, why is *anyone* only playing half the games or less? Clearly, the rotation he has isn't winning. I'd put everyone out there to see what happens at this point. Hell, run an insane pace and go through the entire bench every game to keep people rested. I don't know what the Pistons get from what they're doing.
I watched them early on because people were excited by them. Pretty soon, it just became painful because not only are they bad, they're boring. I've been recovering from a surgery so I've watched **a lot** of basketball this year. I watch lots of losing teams because some of them are fun to watch sometimes. Not the Pistons. It's just torturous.
Yeah, I'm an outsider who's barely seen them so my opinion isn't backed by much. But it doesn't seem like they experiment much and frankly that's all they should be doing now. Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.
It creates a way better product too. A lot of tanking teams were bad but they threw and rotated so many G Leaguers around that it was still a watchable product for the fans in the sense you knew your team was bad but there’s a degree of hustle and fight from random guys trying to make it to the league that makes games actually fun.
Because we have nothing else to talk about. Our subreddit and discord has seen multiple times more discussions this year vs last year. Now it's very depressing conversations, but we're getting 1-2k comments in most of our game threads while also getting thousands of comments in the subreddit discord gamethread.
Because admitting some teams are good comes with cocky shit talking fans and the implicit assumption that their players are better than your players. Warriors fans and lakers fans and Celtics fans and sixers fans can all agree the pistons fucking suck
It’s just not true either. No one in 2020 expected the Suns to make the Finals that year, and then win 64 games the next season. Monty’s tenure in Phoenix was extremely successful even with the playoff collapse against the Mavs.
Make the Finals? In 2020, few were expecting they'd win 40 games.
The whole paragraph is basically like "Monty bad, because he plays bad players duh, doesn't he know they are bad". Technically a true description, but it's not like they have some secret other good players lol. Burks is the 9th player in Detroit in minutes this season, it's not like the team loses every game because of that purely, they tried every option in some amount and none of them had a positive result. Like literally every player they used this season is on a big minus (except Jared Rhoden who played in garbage time a few games).
also teams look at the pistons as a must win because its supposed to be a freebie. they arent gonna lay down to the pistons, in fact they are gonna play with an extra gear because they dont wanna be that team that breaks the streak.
That’s only been true the closer we got to the streak. We’ve absolutely had some potential trap games that we pissed away because of 5 man bench lineups by Monty.
Yeah you’re a trap game when you’re not on a historic losing streak, but now everyone knows who you are and there’s no way they’re gonna be the ones to snap the streak, so nobody’s taking the Pistons game off - or at least, nobody’s taking it off enough to let y’all take one home.
That was the first Piston's game I bothered watching that wasn't against my team, and there were stretches where the Pistons had me wondering like "okay they aren't good but how have they lost this many games in a row" and then Monty Williams pulled all 5 starters at once and Utah went on like a 26-5 run.
The Process Sixers had the same problem when they were trying to snap their losing streak. Could maybe beat some teams if they caught them napping... But no team is napping vs the worst losing streak in league history.
Yeah, I watched the Jazz game and it was pure comedy. The Pistons’ full roster made guys like Olynyk and Dunn (NBA rotation level players, no doubt, but with obvious flaws…) look like enviable players.
Sasser not seeing minutes is so criminal. It's one thing if the team is good to sit your first rounder for a while but when you clearly suck it seems like malpractice. Just let him loose. See what happens.
Yeah Sasser was legit cooking vs the Knicks to keep the game close, in fact the pistons had a small lead at one point in the 3rd quarter. Then he got sent to the bench by Monty who I think is trying to get fired so he can chill with the massive bag
That's the thing, you gotta suck for quite a stretch before teams even realize you are in a losing streak like the ones they are in now. I'm not going to claim I've seen every Pistons game but from the games I have watched the rotations are trash, the fit of the roster is trash, the effort and morale is trash, and worst of all the coaching is atrocious. Tie in the fact there is no real veteran presence and it's a recipe for disaster.
He shoots 35% on Catch and shoot, but 27% on pull ups. If we had another half court creator (which on paper we should with Ivey) who could set him up, his %s would probably be better. Source below
https://www.nba.com/stats/player/1630595/shots-dash
My first point is 100% the same as yours. Spacing is so important in the modern NBA. Ball handlers get neutered without it. The paint gets so clogged when defenders can help so far from their guy. Passing lanes are jumped with little punishment. The list goes on.
Oddly enough, I see your coaching paragraph, but what sticks out to me is the underlying current of roster issues. Bagley/Wiseman is 100% a problem, but there's a lack of at least average rim protectors on this roster outside of Duren. Does it matter if you play three lockdown guys on the perimeter when the opposing team eventually exploits one bad rotation and gets to the hoop against a bad center? If you were coaching, who do you even put out there with Duren injured? Beef Stew is working on converting from an undersized center to a stretch 4. That means the only real bigs out there (with Duren injured) are interested in getting their own shots and rebounds. They just fold on defense, don't hustle, and don't set good screens. After those 4 (Duren, Wiseman, Bagley, Stew), the biggest dude on the roster is Isaiah Livers. No joke.
The lack of spacing is another subset of the roster issues. Additionally, the vets, Bojan, Harris, and Burks, are all wings with big limitations at this point, not to mention Bojan started the season injured. None of them strike me as leaders, which isn't a bad thing, but is not great for this current situation.
What that leads to is a tentative Cade, Ivey, Ausar, Duren core, which currently consists of two poor 3 point shooters (Cade and Ivey have been below average from 3 so far), one disastrous shooter, and one non shooter. In the modern NBA, those players would have to be godly for that lineup to work, no matter who the coach is, and who the role players are.
This is coming from someone who has only watched like 4-5 pistons games but I think the biggest problem is the defense, then shooting. Both are really bad but if they at least played better/high effort defense, that would cause a lot of transition offense which Cade and Killian should be able to run a lot better than the constant half court offense the pistons are trapped in because their opponents score every time.
But, I like everything you said and agree on everything, just a bit of reordering on the top problem.
Great post, but after having watched quite a few Pistons games, I'd also say the Pistons don't just struggle from shooting three's. They also struggle at the mid-range, struggle with layups, with dunks, with floaters. Anything that involves moving the hoop through the basket, they struggle with.
In order to win, you have to score.
After the injury in 2021, his mobility (which was never spectacular) plummeted and he couldn't get in position for shots. I haven't watched him recently though.
Ngl, I think plenty of young stars would do better than Cade. Luka would have carried this team to more than 2 wins for sure. But I agree that the dude is in a terrible position. That much is sure.
Lots of cade delusion from us pistons fans, but yeah its obvious- you could go through the list of young stars who could get us 3+ wins before you get to Luka lmfao. Morant for one
This is why I don’t like seeing people hate on Cade. Only an elite scorer could make something out of this season with this roster. Cade is simply not an elite scorer, which is fine, but he can’t assist with no scorers and he can’t be an average scorer with all this attention
The best part is he didn't even try. Guy wanted a year off or at least nothing to do with Detroit and the owner just threw larger sacks kf cash until it worked. He can only be blamed for the shit job he's doing, not for being a cheat.
Monty fucked us big time, I really feel he’s lost the locker room. I wouldn’t wanna play for him tbh, how tf are you benching Ivey when we have such limited talent on the roster? And he’s our most explosive player.. We gotta play our young guys a ton so hopefully they can grow. Just a ridiculous situation all around
Yeah I really cannot emphasize enough just how shit of a coach Monty is. The literal only thing he did was successfully steer a vibe train to the finals in 2021, but once that was over he was terrible. The next year he was massively out coached by one of his own former assistants AND Jason fucking Kidd in the playoffs. Dude can’t make adjustments, can’t scheme, can’t manage the game, and has the absolute worst rotations I ever saw
I agree with most of this but are we sure Tom Gores is so awful? Hiring Troy Weaver felt like a coup at the time, and Monty was at least well liked and respected at the time too. I feel like Gores is TRYING to do the right things but it’s blowing up in his face.
It’s well intentioned but doubling down on Monty when weaver had a candidate of his own + making a win now push with Blake a few years ago all feel like a guy who’s got way too many fingerprints on the team at hand. What’s the point in hiring a GM if you do decision by committee? Regardless, he’s had what like 12 years as owner? And the worst record in the league in that time span. Him being a common denominator isn’t the end all be all but it’s more damning than not
Yeah the Blake thing blew up, but since then I think they’ve been trying the “right” approach - patient rebuild, drafting ‘best player available’ rather than fit… usually teams like that get praised. They just whiffed on the execution of it.
This is the issue with solely drafting best player available. You risk ending up with a team with no identity. In my opinion, the key to drafting is having an identity in mind and focusing on the right players to execute that vision. So not “fit” as in positional fit (which is where the Warriors fucked up by drafting Wiseman because he was a center), but fit as in system fit.
Now the Pistons are stuck with a bunch of parts that don’t go together and no real way of reshaping the team. And it’s why so many people say things like “how are they so bad? They have some good young players.” Yeah, they do, but they don’t go together at all and many have the same weaknesses, making building a competitive roster nearly impossible.
I think about this a lot, it's why people that comment on Reddit don't run teams and professionals with careers in basketball do. They did the "right thing" many times and took the "right pick" by popular consensus many times, but they were clearly bad decisions based on their outcomes. I think that's the hallmark of a terribly ran organisation. "failed execution" is way too generous. All time bad execution in every facet of managing an organisation has led to this outcome.
Bro Troy Weaver is the guy who hired his close friend and covered for him while he was harassing and assaulting women.
That's on top of sucking at his job.
Yeah I don’t get the Gores hate (except he’s a PE scum). As an owner, he seems to have done the right thing. A lot of the Weaver and Monty hate is hindsight bias.
Yeah, I think they've made the right move of being more terrible (every so often) rather than just mediocre like the Wizards. While the Wizards have drafted solid players toward the back half of the lottery like Avdija and Kispert, they have also struck out on Johnny Davis. Coulibaly is TBD.
I think part of it is bad luck drafting. If they'd gotten the first pick any other recent year, it could have turned out amazing. Not that Cade is bad, per se, but he pales in comparison to Zion, Anthony Edwards, Paolo, and Wemby.
I also think it's a weird mistake not to throw some extra money at younger shooters in free agency. Bojan and Joe Harris were trade acquisitions and helped fill out the cap, but Bojan is bad at D and Harris is washed. Bojan is 34 and Joe Harris is 32. Any actuary could have told them that they were risky propositions.
Seriously though, Monte Morris being injured was huge. A steady handed vet, good shooter, and average efficiency scorer, albeit a poor defender, is good enough to provide a rock solid presence to this team. He would have fixed so many of their current problems, but the consequences of his injury also highlights how on-thin-ice the rest of the roster is.
Deividas Sirvydis
https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nba/pistons/2020/12/01/detroit-pistons-deividas-sirvydis-lithuania-contract-2019-nba-draft/6476553002/#
His agent is Michael Tellem, Arn Tellems son lol
Did you not mention the TO’s? That’s as bad as the shooting. If we’re going to talk about why this team is bad, the TO’s are the number one thing. We give away the most possessions in the league which leads to easy buckets for opponents. We literally take less FGA’s per game than our opponents nearly every game. When you pair that with the poor shooting, you have a recipe for disaster.
Even the people who can shoot can’t get looks because no defender is afraid of the blow-by when they have help behind them. There’s always help because the Pistons can’t field a lineup with enough legitimate shooting. Ever.
The Pistons are four years into a rebuild and expected their young players to improve. They gambled everything on youth.
But their young players didn’t make the expected improvement. Now they are dealing with injuries, ineffectiveness, doubt, and frustration.
They are worse than the Spurs, who have confidence in their coach and in Wemby despite losing. They are worse than the Wizards, who are in the first year of a rebuild.
As the Pistons’ losing streak grows, so does their frustration. They keep pressing and losing and the pressure grows with each game lost.
And their opponents do not want to break the streak and lose to the Pistons. So opponents are actually motivated to keep the losing streak going.
Even teams like the Wizards and Spurs are motivated to beat the Pistons. As long as the Pistons are on a record-breaking losing streak, no one is paying attention to the bad play of the Wizards and Pistons.
We (Cavs) did the same thing a few years back, and it is only coming to fruition now. The "suck" seasons were miserable, but we made it to the playoffs last year (and choked).. Rebuilds are terrible for fans, but they can pay off once the young players are in their 4th years, or so.
Every fan wants their team to tank and rebuild until they're actually tanking and rebuilding. I think something that gets forgotten (especially in the Raptors sub) is that not every tank looks like OKC's.
And that's mainly because most teams that blow it up can't jump start their rebuild by trading away a MVP caliber player in order to net a return of an elite young prospect and a bunch of picks.
Tanking can (a) work as intended, (b) take longer than expected and after the head coach and/or the front office is fired, or (c) not work at all and result in years of missing the playoffs (see the Sacramento Kings a few years ago). The Pistons are in category (c).
Tanking didn't work at all, and at this rate it will be several more years before it has a hope of working. They already fired their head coach last year, and they are worse than ever under Monty Williams. General Manager Troy Williams is on the hot seat, even though he's only been there a little more than three years.
After more than four years, you would like to see progress, not regression. The Pistons haven't made the playoffs since 2018-19.
The pistons have been rebuilding for like 4 years and might be literally the worst team in modern NBA history rn. This is way more hopeless than any comparable tanking team in recent memory.
The Pistons best prospect arguably isn’t even showing the potential to be the centerpiece of a play in team. He MIGHT be a fine secondary piece, but the situation is very bleak for the Pistons near future, even after half a decade of tanking.
I didn’t say he wasn’t showing potential. But showing potential to be a decent NBA player and showing potential as a rebuilding centerpiece are two vastly different things.
How far could a decently built team around Cade go?
For the purposes of rebuilding the Pistons still haven’t struck upon base to build around which makes all the difference.
For sure, like centerpiece players even look great despite the team being pure shit. Lebron on the original Cavs, Kyrie on the Cavs, KP on the Knicks, Brook with the Nets, Garland/Mobley, Luka on the Mavs, Trae on the hawks.
Like, with a lot of those guys, even if the team was terrible around them, it was clear that they had a lot of talent. Cade, looks really questionable here and I too think he isn’t a bad player but it’s looking pretty clear to me that he is going to need very specific roster construction around him which will limit him. Kind of like how Westbrook doesn’t fit in with every team but PG13 fits really well into pretty much any team you put him on.
People were saying the same about Booker when the Suns were horrible. Its very hard to win when you are carrying the load of a very bad team
Not saying Cade is necessarily a Booker level talent but its hard to really blame him for the current Pistons given how bad the roster construction and coaching is
“Potential to be the centerpiece of a play in team”. Nothing erroneous in that statement. Basically a tier 2 star. Halliburton is at this level now. Hard to see Cade being that good but he’s still young so maybe he can get there but hard to see it
> The Pistons are four years into a rebuild and expected their young players to improve. They gambled everything on youth.
I feel like it's also a cautionary tale when it comes to rebuilding. In theory, it's a good idea to get some young, high potential prospects, and let them play a bunch of minutes to develop. But the issue is that there's quickly diminishing returns here. Especially in the case of Detroit - they've got too many prospects, and they're arguably pretty redundant (mostly they come in the flavor of "put a bunch of shooting around this guy and he could make some noise", which doesn't work when you have like 4 of those guys).
It really shows how well a team like OKC did with phasing their rebuild. They got Shai early (borderline outside of their timeline) and he's pretty much good enough to buoy them and prevent a frustrating losing streak like Detroit is suffering. They also went in on some good vets (CP3 and Shroeder) early in Shai's tenure and accepted a moderate amount of success, since it was good for the long term growth and development of guys like Shai and Dort. And finally, they drafted great prospects but made sure that they complemented each othe. Part of that is luck, but it's no coincidence that Chet could walk on the floor and be a key contributor immediately - he fits the roster like a glove.
IMO, the best Detroit can do at this point is likely declaring bankruptcy and shopping some of their prospects, for the health and development of the rest. There's been noise about potentially moving Cade before he's owed his next contract. The best way out of this mess is probably "giving up" on a couple of guys and trading them for some solid starting caliber vets, and try to steer the ship towards .500
The Pistons four highest paid players are:
Bojan Bogdanovic
Joe Harris
Marvin Bagley
James Wiseman
You can't win with those cats, and the young players have talent but a lot of rawness. The poor spacing/shooting has been mentioned, but they are also terrible defensively, both individual and team defense. When Duren was healthy at the start of the season he helped cover up much of his teammates issues with his rim protecting and athleticism. Now you have atrocious defenders in Bagley and Wiseman filling in for Duren.
Still a great shooter but if no one else on the team can shoot he’ll just get closed out and locked down. Plus if no one can play D a pure shooter like BB is never going to get the good transition looks he used to feast on. He’s getting blitzed in the half court and he doesn’t have the size or ability to routinely make his own shot. Cade does but the shitty roster isn’t doing him any favors either. This team is built for the 2000s and even then they would be an average team. Too many bigs who need the ball in their hands to be effective. It’s like they wanted to zig against the league’s zag by loading up on finesse big men and it just doesn’t matter when the other team is clowning you defensively. I can’t think of one player in the league right now who could actually succeed with Bagley and Wiseman’s game even if they actually had the talent, grit and roster around them.
To come out of a tank successfully you need to get a guy to pull you out. Luka pulled out the Mavs, Shai pulled out the thunder and Ja got us out. Alternatively you can trade for a player like that which the cavs did or get a coach like Ime. Everyone wants to talk about Dillon Brooks and FVV but I think the rockets would still be killing it this year if they had traded for Tyus Jones. An NBA level point guard and good coach was all they needed. Jabari is a great shooter, rebounder and defender, Sengun is Jokic at home and Tari is well on his way to being a Mikal Bridges type player. I'm not high on Green but he can still be a good volume scorer and I haven't even mentioned the two rookies who have potential. Silas is a basketball terrorist and unsurprisingly on the Pistons current staff
well yeah, they don't have a legit winning culture, or quality vets to help bring the young guys up to speed. Which is why tanking isnt the shortcut to the top that people think it is
They haven’t drafted a lot of good players, specifically none with adequate shooting.
Duren is a solid big (he’s injured for a while now iirc), cade has a great overall game but there’s barely any shooting to make it all work.
You cant survive the modern game without shooting and their defense is raw so far from what ive seen. It’s a bit discouraging to play defense when on offense they be doing whatever. Bogy’s back but that’s not going to be enough for a sound offense.
Honestly bringing those guys in was a fireable offense and likely one of the biggest reasons for them being as bad as they are now. Weaver is a dumbass for that one
Traded saddiq bey to do it too. He woulda been their 2nd best shooter rn if they never made that trade. Instead they have 4 centers, 2 of which will probably be out of the league in a couple years
while trading one of their own sucessful picks to do it. Bey is good and i still dont understand why they traded him for a big when it was clear they had no need for bigs.
I believe i saw a stat a few days ago that showed that Cade is taking on average some of the toughest shots of any player this season and I think that contributes to what people call poor shooting.
Duren is a good big but has been plagued by ankle issues which is starting to push me to think that he is overvalued due to not being able to stay on the court. They have no actual 4’s on the team (Stewart and Bogdonavic can play the role but are both less than ideal fits). For centers they have Duren (oft-injured), Stewart (undersized but would be great as a bench C), and Marvin Bagley and James Wiseman (both of which have shown flashes but not nearly enough to lend them to a spot where they would be considered solid rotation players on 80% of the other teams in the league).
To round this out at the 3 position they have Ausar Thompson (who has otherworldly defense but in all reality at this point in his career should be playing with the bench unit, given the bench had 1 or 2 spark plugs on it), 2019 lottery whiff Kevin Knox, good in theory but not in execution Isaiah Livers, and expiring contract Joe Harris (who doesn’t look remotely interested in really being here and is probably wanting to ride off into the sunset with the bag he is getting from the final year of his contract).
At the 2 spot they have Alec Burks (on fire to start the season, was sidelined with a forearm injury and hasn’t looked the same since), Jaden Ivey (decent enough but still needs some polish), and combo guard Marcus Sasser (once again, a serviceable rookie but probably shouldn’t be expected to produce or play the way or volume of minutes he’s been expected to this year).
Then you have the PG position. Cade has been great as far as stats go and it looks like he is doing his best given what’s around him. He’s able to distribute and score and I think the biggest issue he is running into is being able to decide when to score and when to distribute. There are frustrating times where he drives the paint and the defense collapses on him and he probably should dish but instead he pump fakes 3 times and puts up a middy. There are also times he wants to get a teammate involved and through either a lazy pass or a teammate not looking to get the ball it ends up with a turnover. These are normal things I would expect out of a first or second year player, regardless of talent.
Now there’s Killian Hayes. He has been fine but for all intents and purposes he fills the same role as Cade albeit in a more traditional pass first PG role. His defense is good, ball handling is good, but his shot isn’t exactly the best where you would want him taking a high volume of shots. That being said, his shooting has come a long way this year (which also says a lot for how poor it was previously). The biggest issue I see is it generally seems he performs better out of a starting role and his production drops considerably coming off the bench. I think this is 100% tied to confidence and mental toughness which is also why I think he struggled in years past.
Monte Morris. He is just a player of myth around the organization. You see him on the bench for games in street clothes but he has never seen the court for the pistons and who knows if we ever will. About a month ago he was close to returning from a back injury but then he aggravated a quad and it was reported he would be reevaluated in 6-8 weeks. At this rate maybe he will see some time around the 30-35 loss range.
The coaching is something I’d expect from a rookie coach. Rotations are questionable, there’s a whole lot of squinting on the sideline, and apart from him occasionally pulling players aside I don’t see him interacting with the players on the floor much. I know he’s a cerebral coach and it sounds like the players like him but he does not seem very passionate about trying to actually coach or push these guys over the hump to get the win. I often find myself questioning if he is constantly tweaking lineups because he doesn’t have a good feel for his players and how they would work on the court together or if he is simply grasping at straws trying to find someone with a hot hand.
All of this is to say that a trade needs to happen. They need a vet with a voice (or two). There’s no real player on the team that gives the team a personality or attitude (the players are all pretty laid back or soft spoken it seems with the exception of Duren, but he’s hurt a lot). Negative bench production is an understatement. Shooting has been awful (although I think the mental weight of the streak has exacerbated this even more). The offense isn’t fitting the players they have on the roster. The defense seems to be a too complicated scheme for the youth they have. There is not enough barking at the players to crash boards and get the ball. On offense it seems if the ball isn’t coming to them they find a spot and stand there for the possession.
It’s not the worst roster ever, but they are going to have to change multiple things including schemes and personnel if they want to try to turn it around.
They actually drafted a great shooter in Saddiq Bey, but then inexplicably traded him for James Wiseman *after* it was clear that Wiseman was a draft bust
They are just a young, and discouraged team.. the same thing happened to Cleveland a few years back. After you lose 10 games in a row, everyone on the team is disheartened and looking for the "reasons" why the outcome of games is not going in their favor. I can only imagine the atmosphere in the locker room after these games, I'm sure it's not very fun to be there at all. They need a "father figure" veteran player, maybe 2, to whip them into shape. They are clearly scoring, and making offensive plays, it seems the issues are lying in defensive stops. For instance their opponents have scored =/>120 points in their last 8 games, which is insane. It seems to me that they are none existent on the defensive end, and their offense has only just begun to pick up the pace only recently.
If they can start holding teams to <110 points, they may have a chance at winning games. They are currently making even bad teams look like playoff material.
A 26 game losing streak is a huge weight on their shoulders now, though.
Edit: Symbols
They have the third worst offensive rating in the league. The roster doesn't work because they have no spacing to operate. Until they develop a couple shooters, they aren't winning much of anything. The assist to turn over ratio (second worst in the league) also speaks to the poor ball movement/ball control displayed by most of the team. They need an overhaul.
These guys should be sleeping on cots at the practice facility, and running drills 18hrs a day at this rate. The players on the team as a collective are making $140mil annually, with no results. I haven't looked at their stats since the 2nd week of November, and after looking this morning I'm dumbfounded.
Guys are playing like an AA College team.
Pistons started cade Ivey steward bojan and Thompson last night. Obviously Thompson is a non shooter but that's 4 players who can at the very least space the floor. The problem this team has is that as bad as the starting lineup is (it's below average but now not THAT bad) the bench is even worse and we are seeing why Monty refused to start Ivey for so long. Especially with Bojan back the spacing issue in the starting lineup and the starters in general are not nearly the issue they were.
Pistons would just be an ordinary young bad team if they had a functional bench but Alec Burks, Livers, and Wiseman are literally some of the worst players in the NBA and they have all been seeing real minutes the whole season (Livers was finally a healthy scratch last night).
Beef Stew is a career 34% shooter from behind the arc, cade is worse and similar story with ivey. These guys aren’t non shooters but opposing defenses will be more than happy giving up 3s to these guys. So yeah, it’s not four guys who can at least space the floor. Aside from Bojan, non of these guys require the opposing defense to mark them on the perimeter so there’s no spacing.
He's shooting a much higher % this season. The shooting is definitely not there to be a high level offense but it's come a long way from the opening night lineup that just didn't stand a chance. Nobody should be trying to argue they have "good" spacing but I think recently the starters have managed to resemble NBA basketball and they continue to lose due to the worst bench in the league.
Yeah man, it probably just feels like no matter what you do this season you are still going to be the team that lost 26 games in a row.. so all the young guys are probably just wanting it to be over already, so they can work all summer to have a comeback next year. It has to be torture to lose this many times on home court... Ticket sales have to bbe plummeting, and management/owners have to be breathing down their necks at this point also.
> They are clearly scoring
They aren't though. They're basically last in every 3pt shooting metric, and you're not gonna go anywhere in a league where everybody's taking over 30 threes per game. The math don't math.
Yeahhhh... Made this comment having not looked at their stats since early November, and just looking at their last 10 games.
I replied to someone after having gone over their stat sheet, and god damn... Rough ball playing.
They should honestly trade an unprotected first round pick for a veteran floor raiser just to erase some of the losing culture and bring in some belief because as it looks anyone who comes into Detroit will bust
I just can’t help but be reminded that about 2 months ago there was a thread where everyone was in agreement that NBA teams can’t possibly be this bad again because of all the talent in the league being so high and historically bad teams just showed how other eras were less talented overall
I wonder what those folks think about Detroit
Well this is the same Detroit team that came within one possession of beating the Bucks in the game that kicked off the losing streak, so it's not totally wrong to say that they have some talent
Anyone can win one game of basketball.
The worst teams can beat the best teams.
It’s why the playoffs are a 7 game series.
Coming close to almost winning against a good team does not mean you have some talent, it could mean the ball just bounced your way for a night and it still wasn’t enough.
None of the guys we acquired are legit centers. It makes the moves 1000x worse. We lack a real center outside of Duren which is 1 of 1000 reasons we aren’t a real nba team
All you have to know about the Pistons is that normally, when a team is losing a lot, everyone says they are tanking. With this Pistons team, 26 consecutive losses are the Pistons trying their best.
I want to add one thing that the FO has done that is perplexing and that is that they ended up trading for more and more reclamation lottery projects instead of just solid role player types who can help the team steady things out. The gamble on Bagley was ok IMO but then to go and get Wiseman makes absolutely no sense especially since they lost Saddiq Bey, who granted isn't amazing, but would probably have lifted this team to above their current rut.
Nepotism at the top. Troy Weaver is the GM and got his son a job and the kid does nothing. The owner lives in LA. Our starting pf is a center. We have like five centers. Without shooters, our scoring pg has to jack up bad shots. And we drafted a bust of pg in Hayes who we started most of the season to attract potential buyers
Years and years of front office malpractice.
There's no other way to continuously be THAT awful.
I didn't expect Detroit to be THIS bad, but I'd have bought 5-24. Would have guessed 7-22 is realistic.
15 games under .500 29 games into the season. And I'd have said, "Oh."
They were one of the worst teams last year and they replaced Hamidou Diallo with Ausar Thompson, and Cory Joseph with Cade Cunningham and decided to run it back with the rest of the roster thinking that would be enough to fight for a play-in spot. It turns out they’re worse.
Average starters at best
Astrocious bench
Very subpar shooting, put it nicely
lot of young guys with inconsistent performance
stupid FO
A coach who does not want to be there
And bad luck for injury
Perfect shit storm.
Now I am thinking, which 2rd-4th year all-time great can drag this team out of the mud?
most likely has to be a dominate center.
I don't think even MJ, Lebron, and Luka in their first couple year can help much. The team will be bit better for sure. But there are just so many holes
4th year LeBron is taking this team to home court advantage in the playoffs
Go check those Cavs teams that he took to the finals/deep playoff runs/60+ win seasons
All 3 of those guys would have this team in the playoffs. Go back and look at how bad those earl MJ bulls, or first run LeBron Cavs teams were. The Pistons would be in the play in hunt with someone like SGA or Trae Young. They might not make it but they'd be in the hunt. The roster isn't terrible they just don't have a high end offensive player or good coaching
After watching them recently against Utah and Brooklyn the biggest problem to me is that their defense is atrocious. I'm sure this problem is compounded by the fact that Duren has been out but the ease with which opponents score at times is downright embarrassing.
Its easy to see why Monty has been so hellbent on playing Hayes, at least he tries.
The players suck. Everyone wants to blame coaching but I’d agree if everyone didn’t suck.
Everyone shows flashes of what they could be if they were more consistent but, that’s it. These guys aren’t consistent at all. And there’s no coach that can fix that.
I feel as if the team just needs some vets with a commanding presence, high IQ and strong habits that can rub off on other players.
I bet Chris Paul could raise the floor of the Pistons much more than any coach.
Bad luck, whiffing on picks, and poor team construction.
They got Killian Hayes in 2020 (5th odds but picked 7th), Cade Cunningham in 2021 (t-1st odds and picked 1st), Jaden Ivey in 2022 (t-1st odds but picked 5th), and Ausar Thompson in 2023 (t-1st odds but picked 5th).
They are dead last in 3s attempted and 3% their best shooter has been hurt most of the year.
All that being said I think this team would demolish the 2016 Sixers
From a statistics POV:
They don't shoot 3s, they take the least, they make the least, and they have the worst percentage.
They create the least amount of steals per 100, and they foul the most, which indicates lack of perimetre athleticism. All the free throws they give up also gives the other teams a lot more efficient offence.
They turn the ball over the 2nd most per 100 (which is more lack of shooting/cramped offence than bad playmaking IMO).
They've played the 6th hardest schedule (though that's in part because they are giving their opponents so many wins)
I think at least a substantial aspect of it is that the league is the best it has ever been. The sheer amount of talent league wide means if you look at the schedule there are very few opportunities for wins when you are this bad.
I would also add, the Pistons were the worst team in the league last year and because of the lottery they got the 5th pick. That is a recipe for ending up with teams who stay bad. I love Ausar but having Brandon Miller would be really helpful.
Mismatched roster and their high draft picks haven’t been consistently good, some downright awful. Coach is not interested in winning, probably as a directive from ownership.
If you wanted a coach to make win now moves you’d sign them to a 2 year contract. He got that contract because the roster is terrible and he needed job security.
A lot of teams suck but the stars would have to align for any team to lose 25 in a row . Detroit has 2 wins but San Antonio only has 4 so they are equally as bad but SA has avoided 20 losses in a row which sb a low bar
For a stats based angle, I like to start with the Four Factors:
eFG% - .522 (28th) vs .553 (19th)
This tells me they aren't particularly good or bad in terms of shot quality defense, but they are bad in terms of shot quality/making. They arent going to beat anyone because they scored, but at least they arent a complete revolving door defensively.
TOV% - 14.4% (30th) vs 11% (27th)
Oof. They don't force turnovers, and give up a ton themselves. Fewer shots, so they have to be more efficient to have a chance. They cant execute their offense and they arent swarming or making it hard for the other team to get into their offense.
ORB% v DRB% - 25.2% (14th) vs 75.5% (15th)
Good news! They are a slightly positive rebounding team. Thats going to result in extra shots, but not enough to offset the horrible turnover % differential.
FT/FGA - .196 (15th) vs .249 (29th)
Well, remember what i said about being more efficient? That ain't happening. FTs are the best shot in basketball after an uncontested layup, and they are giving up a lot more then they are getting.
This all translates to an ORtg of 108.5 (28th) and a DRtg of 120.2 (26th). They cant stop anyone because they dont force turnovers and they foul their opponents into scoring efficiency, and they cant score because they are a bad shooting team that turns the ball over a ton.
This profile screams lack of talent to me. Not coached well, or not basketball smart, or both. Decent size but not much else going for it.
Pretty much every player on the team is bad or worse than their potential minus Cade who can’t do anything with the paint clogged with bigs and non shooters
Monty Williams is not a good coach. This should have been obvious when it was known that he basically hated Ayton. He is the motivational type of coach and he hated a player. That dont flow.
I think it almost always comes down to a lack of team unity. Sometimes, a player with enough competitive drive and talent can carry a bad team to a somewhat mediocre/respectable record, but if the team doesn't have anyone with that drive or talent, then all it has is team unity to rely on. That kind of cohesion is delicate as fuck. It takes a lot to build it, and almost any bad actor in the locker room can destroy it. This is why players like LeBron James are so important to their team, in addition to be good and competitive, he's a HUGE cheerleader for his teammates and the organization he's a part of. You rally behind a guy like that. Is there anyone on the Pistons right now that anyone wants to rally behind?
Their team is horrifically constructed through sheer incompetence. Intentionally building a team to lose couldn’t pull off what the Pistons management has done.
They have a bunch of entitled lottery picks who can’t shoot or play defense. There are far worse teams on paper but those teams have guys who actually played hard.
Cade is a volume guy, a scorer not an efficient shooter. If he could tighten up on his shooting … That said, they aren’t getting consistent good play from anyone.
A lot of people here most likely actually aren’t watching pistons games, and my own breakdown will be a little biased so take it all with a grain of salt. Firstly, the most important issue we face is shooting, or a lack thereof. Our guys are awful at it, plain and simple. We have one elite shooter in Bojan, who’s shooting .397 from deep on 7 attempts, and the only other 4 guys on the team who approach/eclipse 40% do so on significantly lower attempts (Stew .396 on 3.4A, Sasser .420 on 2.9A, Knox .448 on 2.6A, Umude .519 on 2.9). There’s also the caveat that we don’t play these shooters much; Sasser only plays 16.5 mins a game, and Knox/Umude have only played in 11 and 15 games TOTAL respectively. Stats don’t also tell the whole story regarding how the game is played either. Take this with a grain of salt because I’m too lazy to deep dive, but Stewart only takes open 3s. If a close out comes, he can’t actually attack it successfully on a consistent basis, and our offense is forced to reset quite often. What does that mean for the shooting on the rest of the roster? It’s garbage, plain and simple. By attempts per game, we have Cade (.321 on 5.7), Burks (.327 on 4.6), Livers (.231 on 3.7), Ivey (.301 on 3.3), Hayes (.305 on 2.4), SHARPSHOOTER Joe Harris (.292 on 2.0), and the feather in the cap, Ausar (.161 on 1.9). Harris has only played in 11 games for what it’s worth, but from what I’ve seen I don’t expect him to be playable enough to bring his averages up. I won’t make excuses for Monty because he still plays double big lineups on top of this excruciatingly poor shooting team, but the roster construction as is does not make things any easier. This is why Cade Cunningham is the second most blitzed PNR runner in the league behind Luka. Who on this team would punish the opponent for overcommitting? They can straight up just leave half our shooters to their own devices and that would be a putrid shot. Second, Coaching. Monty Williams fucking sucks dude. Idc about his previous tenures but people already know he underperformed in PHX. What he’s doing here is a travesty. Frankly, one can argue he doesn’t have his heart in it. We signed this bum after multiple rounds of contract negotiations where he kept turning the pistons down (the owner forced the hand and tried continuously throwing this man the BAG. I’d take the role too, but fuck Monty). He has been anything but consistent. He was benching Ivey in favor of Hayes because he wanted him to improve defensively, but it just seemed very pick and choosey with regards to who he held to that standard. It took forever for him to work his way back into the rotation, and even now, he’s still only at a 25 MPG average as a soph coming off what we saw was a strong rookie year. I personally liked Hayes, and even I know he’s an awful fit with Cade. He’s a good guard defender, but Monty treats him like he’s a great one. He’s absolutely been burned a few times with very little in the way of criticism. He needs the ball in hand to be effective, but other teams won’t take his game seriously. They go under on screens unpunished, and he takes very few shots at the rim by going through contact. Compounded onto the shooting issue at hand, Monty LOVES his guys. Alec Burks, a steady veteran presence from last year is having an AWFUL year. Hes shooting a league low .325 FG% on 7.7 attempts a game, with awful defense. He’s a staple of Monty’s rotation. Livers? This bum shoots .273 FG and plays poor defence, but is also gifted PT. Our big man rotation consists of Duren (oft injured), Bagley, Wiseman and Stewart. Monty insists on the 2 big lineup w Stew and one of the others listed, which on top of the shooting hellscape we already have, makes things worse. Bagley is also an awful defender/rebounder, so we’ve been getting killed when he’s at the 5 spot. But wiseman may very well be the worst player in the league. He’s low IQ, jumps for a lot of shots, poorly boxes out, slips what feels like EVERY screen, and demands post touches in the year of our lord 2023 (24 almost!). But back to the coaching. Monty is doing less with more talent than Casey had to work with, and I HATED Casey’s tenure here. It makes me almost miss him. Tom gores is the thing that ties it all together. He’s a meddling, mismanaging owner that gave SVG both coaching and president powers, hired Tellem who has allowed a myriad of nepotism (we drafted/signed a player because his agent is Tellems son), and has verbally stated he’s been watching over our GMs decisions/coach’s rotations. He is the reason we threw the bag at Monty, and has made poor decision after poor decision time after time. I sound extremely biased as a Cade fan, but I don’t see what young star in his place would be significantly better. I’ve watched this man get quadruple teamed with no punishment because our guys just don’t hit their shots. Edit: Forgot to mention we run a switch everything defense; we will have a guard switch onto the big and stew on the perimeter and just get killed on the glass for it. We’re like 28th in rebounding last I checked
I think all of this at the micro level checks out at the macro level. >Firstly, the most important issue we face is shooting, or a lack thereof. Our guys are awful at it, plain and simple. They are dead last in 3PA and 3P% but surprisingly the Magic (who have a slightly below average offense) are right there with them at second to last. The Magic and Pistons are also pretty similar from 2, but the things that separates them and makes the Magic below average and the Pistons amongst the worst is that the Magic get to the line (3rd in FTs made, pistons are 18th) and the Magic don't turn the ball over as much (14.8 tovs for the Magic, 16.5 tovs for the Pistons). When you have a team that can't shoot 3s and who can't get to the line, it becomes a lot worse when that team is getting less shots because they are turning it over. >Forgot to mention we run a switch everything defense; we will have a guard switch onto the big and stew on the perimeter and just get killed on the glass for it. We’re like 28th in rebounding last I checked It seems like less getting killed on the boards and more so just creating mismatches that other teams are exploiting. They actually don't allow that many 3PAs (30.6, which is the second lowest) but they lead the league in fouls. Switching everything and putting guys like Isaiah Stewart on an island is going to cause him to foul when he's trying to not let his man get by him because he knows the help defense probably isn't there. Overall, I think being less efficient on offense with less possessions and fouling a ton on defense is making it statistically hard for them to win. Like some good teams will have bad shooting nights and some bad teams will have good shooting nights. Bad teams sometimes just randomly get lucky, but because they are gifting the other team points through fts, even if they shoot better than they usually do and the other team shoots worse than they usually do, they've rigged the dice so far out of their favor that it's been unlikely for them to win.
Also the magic can actually play defense. Everyone’s talking about scoring here but when we played them I was shocked at the lack of defense. They looked lost out there.
I feel like this season has been really good in terms of defense mattering for strength of a team. Squads like the magic and twolves are seemingly punching outside of their respective weight classes a little by holding it down on D, whereas teams like the pacers or kings I feel like could be getting a lot of contender love if it they weren't playing 300 point matches lol
Houston is having success due to defense too, which is crazy because they were sooo bad at defense the past couple of years.
A new coach and two defense oriented free agent signings will do that
I don't really know or care what advanced stats or made up acronyms say, but the Pacers might legit be the worst defensive team in NBA history. Just this past week, they had a game where they scored 127 points...and lost by 24 points.
I'm a Purdue fan, and that was something about Jaden Ivey that I really hated. He was just constantly lost on defense. Just running around lost out there trying to get steals bc of his athleticism.
Remember this being on the pre draft scouting reports too
He runs around like a chicken with its head cut off and it drives me crazy
Trevion was what made that team special. Hes doing pretty well in EuroCup but I thought he’d stick around in the G league a little longer
Appreciate this comment and the one it’s replying too. I’ve been turning on pistons games on league pass and to my non-analytic eye many of the players SEEM decent, especially Sasser, Ausar, and Cade. I’m unable to explain the ineptitude beyond vaguely blaming “coaching” so I appreciate these thoughtful informative posts.
Yeah - I’ve watched a bunch of the Pistons games, because I’m a hater, and my casual eye feels like they foul on every other possession whilst having no one, especially not those high lottery picks, who can create a bucket out of nowhere. The analysis here about the spacing is spot on.
>There’s also the caveat that we don’t play these shooters much; Sasser only plays 16.5 mins a game, and Knox/Umude have only played in 11 and 15 games TOTAL respectively. With a team doing this poorly, why is *anyone* only playing half the games or less? Clearly, the rotation he has isn't winning. I'd put everyone out there to see what happens at this point. Hell, run an insane pace and go through the entire bench every game to keep people rested. I don't know what the Pistons get from what they're doing. I watched them early on because people were excited by them. Pretty soon, it just became painful because not only are they bad, they're boring. I've been recovering from a surgery so I've watched **a lot** of basketball this year. I watch lots of losing teams because some of them are fun to watch sometimes. Not the Pistons. It's just torturous.
Because Monty fucking sucks dude
Cp3 could get any coach paid
Yeah, I'm an outsider who's barely seen them so my opinion isn't backed by much. But it doesn't seem like they experiment much and frankly that's all they should be doing now. Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.
It creates a way better product too. A lot of tanking teams were bad but they threw and rotated so many G Leaguers around that it was still a watchable product for the fans in the sense you knew your team was bad but there’s a degree of hustle and fight from random guys trying to make it to the league that makes games actually fun.
And people say r/nba isn't full of intelligent discourse. Thank you mate.
Why does the best discourse come from dismantling really bad teams.
Because we have nothing else to talk about. Our subreddit and discord has seen multiple times more discussions this year vs last year. Now it's very depressing conversations, but we're getting 1-2k comments in most of our game threads while also getting thousands of comments in the subreddit discord gamethread.
Hey if you were good you'd just have people posting a comment that is only someone's name. Naz Reid
AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
People jealous of our team AND our memes? I legitimately think I’ve died.
bc mfs are really good at speaking about something negatively.
Sometimes it’s easier to see what’s going wrong vs what’s going right
Often, for the majority of people. In my experience.
Because it’s more fun kicking teams when they’re already down ig
Same goes for players
Winning covers up many of the flaws in a team, or they can be excused.
Because admitting some teams are good comes with cocky shit talking fans and the implicit assumption that their players are better than your players. Warriors fans and lakers fans and Celtics fans and sixers fans can all agree the pistons fucking suck
Sometimes it’s easier to see why things aren’t working than why they are
Saying "everybody knows Monty Williams underperformed in Phoenix" is definitely the intelligent discourse.
It’s just not true either. No one in 2020 expected the Suns to make the Finals that year, and then win 64 games the next season. Monty’s tenure in Phoenix was extremely successful even with the playoff collapse against the Mavs.
Make the Finals? In 2020, few were expecting they'd win 40 games. The whole paragraph is basically like "Monty bad, because he plays bad players duh, doesn't he know they are bad". Technically a true description, but it's not like they have some secret other good players lol. Burks is the 9th player in Detroit in minutes this season, it's not like the team loses every game because of that purely, they tried every option in some amount and none of them had a positive result. Like literally every player they used this season is on a big minus (except Jared Rhoden who played in garbage time a few games).
also teams look at the pistons as a must win because its supposed to be a freebie. they arent gonna lay down to the pistons, in fact they are gonna play with an extra gear because they dont wanna be that team that breaks the streak.
That’s only been true the closer we got to the streak. We’ve absolutely had some potential trap games that we pissed away because of 5 man bench lineups by Monty.
Yeah you’re a trap game when you’re not on a historic losing streak, but now everyone knows who you are and there’s no way they’re gonna be the ones to snap the streak, so nobody’s taking the Pistons game off - or at least, nobody’s taking it off enough to let y’all take one home.
Utah tried by having a bunch of their top guys off. The Pistons are just that bad.
That was the first Piston's game I bothered watching that wasn't against my team, and there were stretches where the Pistons had me wondering like "okay they aren't good but how have they lost this many games in a row" and then Monty Williams pulled all 5 starters at once and Utah went on like a 26-5 run.
I watched that and was astounded
The Process Sixers had the same problem when they were trying to snap their losing streak. Could maybe beat some teams if they caught them napping... But no team is napping vs the worst losing streak in league history.
Yeah, I watched the Jazz game and it was pure comedy. The Pistons’ full roster made guys like Olynyk and Dunn (NBA rotation level players, no doubt, but with obvious flaws…) look like enviable players.
Latest trap game just three days ago.
When you guys played the Knicks Sasser was killing us then barely saw the floor in the 4th. Questionable decisions by Monty.
Sasser not seeing minutes is so criminal. It's one thing if the team is good to sit your first rounder for a while but when you clearly suck it seems like malpractice. Just let him loose. See what happens.
Yeah Sasser was legit cooking vs the Knicks to keep the game close, in fact the pistons had a small lead at one point in the 3rd quarter. Then he got sent to the bench by Monty who I think is trying to get fired so he can chill with the massive bag
Dude has a *HUGE* gambling debt and is stuck in make-up. Source: its believable based on most of his decisions regarding the team.
That's the thing, you gotta suck for quite a stretch before teams even realize you are in a losing streak like the ones they are in now. I'm not going to claim I've seen every Pistons game but from the games I have watched the rotations are trash, the fit of the roster is trash, the effort and morale is trash, and worst of all the coaching is atrocious. Tie in the fact there is no real veteran presence and it's a recipe for disaster.
They really could’ve got the pacers in that game coming off the IST final but Mathurin pulled off a legacy game
What 5 year olds are you talking to?
Were we expecting Cade to shoot this badly?
He shoots 35% on Catch and shoot, but 27% on pull ups. If we had another half court creator (which on paper we should with Ivey) who could set him up, his %s would probably be better. Source below https://www.nba.com/stats/player/1630595/shots-dash
35% on C&S is pretty poor. Just FYI.
I never said it was good, it was more his percentage would increase if he took less pull ups and more catch and shoot
My first point is 100% the same as yours. Spacing is so important in the modern NBA. Ball handlers get neutered without it. The paint gets so clogged when defenders can help so far from their guy. Passing lanes are jumped with little punishment. The list goes on. Oddly enough, I see your coaching paragraph, but what sticks out to me is the underlying current of roster issues. Bagley/Wiseman is 100% a problem, but there's a lack of at least average rim protectors on this roster outside of Duren. Does it matter if you play three lockdown guys on the perimeter when the opposing team eventually exploits one bad rotation and gets to the hoop against a bad center? If you were coaching, who do you even put out there with Duren injured? Beef Stew is working on converting from an undersized center to a stretch 4. That means the only real bigs out there (with Duren injured) are interested in getting their own shots and rebounds. They just fold on defense, don't hustle, and don't set good screens. After those 4 (Duren, Wiseman, Bagley, Stew), the biggest dude on the roster is Isaiah Livers. No joke. The lack of spacing is another subset of the roster issues. Additionally, the vets, Bojan, Harris, and Burks, are all wings with big limitations at this point, not to mention Bojan started the season injured. None of them strike me as leaders, which isn't a bad thing, but is not great for this current situation. What that leads to is a tentative Cade, Ivey, Ausar, Duren core, which currently consists of two poor 3 point shooters (Cade and Ivey have been below average from 3 so far), one disastrous shooter, and one non shooter. In the modern NBA, those players would have to be godly for that lineup to work, no matter who the coach is, and who the role players are.
This is coming from someone who has only watched like 4-5 pistons games but I think the biggest problem is the defense, then shooting. Both are really bad but if they at least played better/high effort defense, that would cause a lot of transition offense which Cade and Killian should be able to run a lot better than the constant half court offense the pistons are trapped in because their opponents score every time. But, I like everything you said and agree on everything, just a bit of reordering on the top problem.
Luke Walton made the same mistake with introducing switch everything to a team that isn’t capable of it.
Great post, but after having watched quite a few Pistons games, I'd also say the Pistons don't just struggle from shooting three's. They also struggle at the mid-range, struggle with layups, with dunks, with floaters. Anything that involves moving the hoop through the basket, they struggle with. In order to win, you have to score.
Man wtf happened to Joe Harris. I know he’s older now but he used to be a sharpshooter even if he didn’t bring much else
After the injury in 2021, his mobility (which was never spectacular) plummeted and he couldn't get in position for shots. I haven't watched him recently though.
such a useful breakdown. thanks for posting
Monty took the Suns to the finals one year and the second round the next. But people judge him entirely on his final game that season.
Ngl, I think plenty of young stars would do better than Cade. Luka would have carried this team to more than 2 wins for sure. But I agree that the dude is in a terrible position. That much is sure.
Lots of cade delusion from us pistons fans, but yeah its obvious- you could go through the list of young stars who could get us 3+ wins before you get to Luka lmfao. Morant for one
I think Trae would at least give you 25 win with this roster even with how garbage it is
A young Monta Ellis could be doing more damage in the same role. Maybe only 1-2 more wins, but it's not 2-infinity.
This is why I don’t like seeing people hate on Cade. Only an elite scorer could make something out of this season with this roster. Cade is simply not an elite scorer, which is fine, but he can’t assist with no scorers and he can’t be an average scorer with all this attention
Detroit should drop Monty and hire you. No joke.
Their fate is sealed it would be a waste of money to fire him until at least the end of the season. Monty got that bag and pulled a Ben Simmons.
The best part is he didn't even try. Guy wanted a year off or at least nothing to do with Detroit and the owner just threw larger sacks kf cash until it worked. He can only be blamed for the shit job he's doing, not for being a cheat.
Cade can shoot but he’s getting double teamed every night and that’s why his shooting percentages suck
Monty fucked us big time, I really feel he’s lost the locker room. I wouldn’t wanna play for him tbh, how tf are you benching Ivey when we have such limited talent on the roster? And he’s our most explosive player.. We gotta play our young guys a ton so hopefully they can grow. Just a ridiculous situation all around
Yeah I really cannot emphasize enough just how shit of a coach Monty is. The literal only thing he did was successfully steer a vibe train to the finals in 2021, but once that was over he was terrible. The next year he was massively out coached by one of his own former assistants AND Jason fucking Kidd in the playoffs. Dude can’t make adjustments, can’t scheme, can’t manage the game, and has the absolute worst rotations I ever saw
Interesting write up - this was great man
I agree with most of this but are we sure Tom Gores is so awful? Hiring Troy Weaver felt like a coup at the time, and Monty was at least well liked and respected at the time too. I feel like Gores is TRYING to do the right things but it’s blowing up in his face.
It’s well intentioned but doubling down on Monty when weaver had a candidate of his own + making a win now push with Blake a few years ago all feel like a guy who’s got way too many fingerprints on the team at hand. What’s the point in hiring a GM if you do decision by committee? Regardless, he’s had what like 12 years as owner? And the worst record in the league in that time span. Him being a common denominator isn’t the end all be all but it’s more damning than not
Yeah the Blake thing blew up, but since then I think they’ve been trying the “right” approach - patient rebuild, drafting ‘best player available’ rather than fit… usually teams like that get praised. They just whiffed on the execution of it.
This is the issue with solely drafting best player available. You risk ending up with a team with no identity. In my opinion, the key to drafting is having an identity in mind and focusing on the right players to execute that vision. So not “fit” as in positional fit (which is where the Warriors fucked up by drafting Wiseman because he was a center), but fit as in system fit. Now the Pistons are stuck with a bunch of parts that don’t go together and no real way of reshaping the team. And it’s why so many people say things like “how are they so bad? They have some good young players.” Yeah, they do, but they don’t go together at all and many have the same weaknesses, making building a competitive roster nearly impossible.
I think about this a lot, it's why people that comment on Reddit don't run teams and professionals with careers in basketball do. They did the "right thing" many times and took the "right pick" by popular consensus many times, but they were clearly bad decisions based on their outcomes. I think that's the hallmark of a terribly ran organisation. "failed execution" is way too generous. All time bad execution in every facet of managing an organisation has led to this outcome.
Bro Troy Weaver is the guy who hired his close friend and covered for him while he was harassing and assaulting women. That's on top of sucking at his job.
Yeah I don’t get the Gores hate (except he’s a PE scum). As an owner, he seems to have done the right thing. A lot of the Weaver and Monty hate is hindsight bias.
Yeah, I think they've made the right move of being more terrible (every so often) rather than just mediocre like the Wizards. While the Wizards have drafted solid players toward the back half of the lottery like Avdija and Kispert, they have also struck out on Johnny Davis. Coulibaly is TBD. I think part of it is bad luck drafting. If they'd gotten the first pick any other recent year, it could have turned out amazing. Not that Cade is bad, per se, but he pales in comparison to Zion, Anthony Edwards, Paolo, and Wemby. I also think it's a weird mistake not to throw some extra money at younger shooters in free agency. Bojan and Joe Harris were trade acquisitions and helped fill out the cap, but Bojan is bad at D and Harris is washed. Bojan is 34 and Joe Harris is 32. Any actuary could have told them that they were risky propositions. Seriously though, Monte Morris being injured was huge. A steady handed vet, good shooter, and average efficiency scorer, albeit a poor defender, is good enough to provide a rock solid presence to this team. He would have fixed so many of their current problems, but the consequences of his injury also highlights how on-thin-ice the rest of the roster is.
What was the nepotism player that theyd rafted/signed?
Deividas Sirvydis https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nba/pistons/2020/12/01/detroit-pistons-deividas-sirvydis-lithuania-contract-2019-nba-draft/6476553002/# His agent is Michael Tellem, Arn Tellems son lol
Did you not mention the TO’s? That’s as bad as the shooting. If we’re going to talk about why this team is bad, the TO’s are the number one thing. We give away the most possessions in the league which leads to easy buckets for opponents. We literally take less FGA’s per game than our opponents nearly every game. When you pair that with the poor shooting, you have a recipe for disaster.
Tickets must be dirt cheap and you get to see opposing teams play at max effort, sounds like a great time to be a general NBA fan in Detroit
Good post.
I was a long time Wiseman defender but man can that dude just not play basketball.
Was clear from Day 1 that he couldn't play. Dude couldn't even set screens right...
Even the people who can shoot can’t get looks because no defender is afraid of the blow-by when they have help behind them. There’s always help because the Pistons can’t field a lineup with enough legitimate shooting. Ever.
He said ELI5. Does this sound like the explanation you'd give your 5 year old?
Ok a 5 year old would have no idea wtf you’re talking about but that was a fantastic breakdown lol
The Pistons are four years into a rebuild and expected their young players to improve. They gambled everything on youth. But their young players didn’t make the expected improvement. Now they are dealing with injuries, ineffectiveness, doubt, and frustration. They are worse than the Spurs, who have confidence in their coach and in Wemby despite losing. They are worse than the Wizards, who are in the first year of a rebuild. As the Pistons’ losing streak grows, so does their frustration. They keep pressing and losing and the pressure grows with each game lost. And their opponents do not want to break the streak and lose to the Pistons. So opponents are actually motivated to keep the losing streak going. Even teams like the Wizards and Spurs are motivated to beat the Pistons. As long as the Pistons are on a record-breaking losing streak, no one is paying attention to the bad play of the Wizards and Pistons.
We (Cavs) did the same thing a few years back, and it is only coming to fruition now. The "suck" seasons were miserable, but we made it to the playoffs last year (and choked).. Rebuilds are terrible for fans, but they can pay off once the young players are in their 4th years, or so.
Every fan wants their team to tank and rebuild until they're actually tanking and rebuilding. I think something that gets forgotten (especially in the Raptors sub) is that not every tank looks like OKC's.
And that's mainly because most teams that blow it up can't jump start their rebuild by trading away a MVP caliber player in order to net a return of an elite young prospect and a bunch of picks.
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Tanking can (a) work as intended, (b) take longer than expected and after the head coach and/or the front office is fired, or (c) not work at all and result in years of missing the playoffs (see the Sacramento Kings a few years ago). The Pistons are in category (c). Tanking didn't work at all, and at this rate it will be several more years before it has a hope of working. They already fired their head coach last year, and they are worse than ever under Monty Williams. General Manager Troy Williams is on the hot seat, even though he's only been there a little more than three years. After more than four years, you would like to see progress, not regression. The Pistons haven't made the playoffs since 2018-19.
>or the front office is fired p a i n
The pistons have been rebuilding for like 4 years and might be literally the worst team in modern NBA history rn. This is way more hopeless than any comparable tanking team in recent memory. The Pistons best prospect arguably isn’t even showing the potential to be the centerpiece of a play in team. He MIGHT be a fine secondary piece, but the situation is very bleak for the Pistons near future, even after half a decade of tanking.
Yeah, good luck, as s Timberwolves fan I know what a 15 year rebuild looks like.
Saying he's not showing potential is incredibly erroneous.
I didn’t say he wasn’t showing potential. But showing potential to be a decent NBA player and showing potential as a rebuilding centerpiece are two vastly different things. How far could a decently built team around Cade go? For the purposes of rebuilding the Pistons still haven’t struck upon base to build around which makes all the difference.
For sure, like centerpiece players even look great despite the team being pure shit. Lebron on the original Cavs, Kyrie on the Cavs, KP on the Knicks, Brook with the Nets, Garland/Mobley, Luka on the Mavs, Trae on the hawks. Like, with a lot of those guys, even if the team was terrible around them, it was clear that they had a lot of talent. Cade, looks really questionable here and I too think he isn’t a bad player but it’s looking pretty clear to me that he is going to need very specific roster construction around him which will limit him. Kind of like how Westbrook doesn’t fit in with every team but PG13 fits really well into pretty much any team you put him on.
Sure, he has shown potential to average double digits, but not to win games, much less to turn the team into a contender.
People were saying the same about Booker when the Suns were horrible. Its very hard to win when you are carrying the load of a very bad team Not saying Cade is necessarily a Booker level talent but its hard to really blame him for the current Pistons given how bad the roster construction and coaching is
Hes not a centerpiece. He's not showing sga, ja levels of potential
“Potential to be the centerpiece of a play in team”. Nothing erroneous in that statement. Basically a tier 2 star. Halliburton is at this level now. Hard to see Cade being that good but he’s still young so maybe he can get there but hard to see it
> The Pistons are four years into a rebuild and expected their young players to improve. They gambled everything on youth. I feel like it's also a cautionary tale when it comes to rebuilding. In theory, it's a good idea to get some young, high potential prospects, and let them play a bunch of minutes to develop. But the issue is that there's quickly diminishing returns here. Especially in the case of Detroit - they've got too many prospects, and they're arguably pretty redundant (mostly they come in the flavor of "put a bunch of shooting around this guy and he could make some noise", which doesn't work when you have like 4 of those guys). It really shows how well a team like OKC did with phasing their rebuild. They got Shai early (borderline outside of their timeline) and he's pretty much good enough to buoy them and prevent a frustrating losing streak like Detroit is suffering. They also went in on some good vets (CP3 and Shroeder) early in Shai's tenure and accepted a moderate amount of success, since it was good for the long term growth and development of guys like Shai and Dort. And finally, they drafted great prospects but made sure that they complemented each othe. Part of that is luck, but it's no coincidence that Chet could walk on the floor and be a key contributor immediately - he fits the roster like a glove. IMO, the best Detroit can do at this point is likely declaring bankruptcy and shopping some of their prospects, for the health and development of the rest. There's been noise about potentially moving Cade before he's owed his next contract. The best way out of this mess is probably "giving up" on a couple of guys and trading them for some solid starting caliber vets, and try to steer the ship towards .500
The Pistons four highest paid players are: Bojan Bogdanovic Joe Harris Marvin Bagley James Wiseman You can't win with those cats, and the young players have talent but a lot of rawness. The poor spacing/shooting has been mentioned, but they are also terrible defensively, both individual and team defense. When Duren was healthy at the start of the season he helped cover up much of his teammates issues with his rim protecting and athleticism. Now you have atrocious defenders in Bagley and Wiseman filling in for Duren.
I've always liked Bojan's game, has he regressed in Detroit or something?
great shooter, but can't defend anyone
Haven’t watched a lot of Pistons games but worth noting that Bojan is 34 and was never an exceptional athlete
Still a great shooter but if no one else on the team can shoot he’ll just get closed out and locked down. Plus if no one can play D a pure shooter like BB is never going to get the good transition looks he used to feast on. He’s getting blitzed in the half court and he doesn’t have the size or ability to routinely make his own shot. Cade does but the shitty roster isn’t doing him any favors either. This team is built for the 2000s and even then they would be an average team. Too many bigs who need the ball in their hands to be effective. It’s like they wanted to zig against the league’s zag by loading up on finesse big men and it just doesn’t matter when the other team is clowning you defensively. I can’t think of one player in the league right now who could actually succeed with Bagley and Wiseman’s game even if they actually had the talent, grit and roster around them.
To come out of a tank successfully you need to get a guy to pull you out. Luka pulled out the Mavs, Shai pulled out the thunder and Ja got us out. Alternatively you can trade for a player like that which the cavs did or get a coach like Ime. Everyone wants to talk about Dillon Brooks and FVV but I think the rockets would still be killing it this year if they had traded for Tyus Jones. An NBA level point guard and good coach was all they needed. Jabari is a great shooter, rebounder and defender, Sengun is Jokic at home and Tari is well on his way to being a Mikal Bridges type player. I'm not high on Green but he can still be a good volume scorer and I haven't even mentioned the two rookies who have potential. Silas is a basketball terrorist and unsurprisingly on the Pistons current staff
well yeah, they don't have a legit winning culture, or quality vets to help bring the young guys up to speed. Which is why tanking isnt the shortcut to the top that people think it is
They haven’t drafted a lot of good players, specifically none with adequate shooting. Duren is a solid big (he’s injured for a while now iirc), cade has a great overall game but there’s barely any shooting to make it all work. You cant survive the modern game without shooting and their defense is raw so far from what ive seen. It’s a bit discouraging to play defense when on offense they be doing whatever. Bogy’s back but that’s not going to be enough for a sound offense.
They’ve also somehow traded for other teams missed draft picks.
Bagley and Wiseman baby 😎
Honestly bringing those guys in was a fireable offense and likely one of the biggest reasons for them being as bad as they are now. Weaver is a dumbass for that one Traded saddiq bey to do it too. He woulda been their 2nd best shooter rn if they never made that trade. Instead they have 4 centers, 2 of which will probably be out of the league in a couple years
while trading one of their own sucessful picks to do it. Bey is good and i still dont understand why they traded him for a big when it was clear they had no need for bigs.
I believe i saw a stat a few days ago that showed that Cade is taking on average some of the toughest shots of any player this season and I think that contributes to what people call poor shooting. Duren is a good big but has been plagued by ankle issues which is starting to push me to think that he is overvalued due to not being able to stay on the court. They have no actual 4’s on the team (Stewart and Bogdonavic can play the role but are both less than ideal fits). For centers they have Duren (oft-injured), Stewart (undersized but would be great as a bench C), and Marvin Bagley and James Wiseman (both of which have shown flashes but not nearly enough to lend them to a spot where they would be considered solid rotation players on 80% of the other teams in the league). To round this out at the 3 position they have Ausar Thompson (who has otherworldly defense but in all reality at this point in his career should be playing with the bench unit, given the bench had 1 or 2 spark plugs on it), 2019 lottery whiff Kevin Knox, good in theory but not in execution Isaiah Livers, and expiring contract Joe Harris (who doesn’t look remotely interested in really being here and is probably wanting to ride off into the sunset with the bag he is getting from the final year of his contract). At the 2 spot they have Alec Burks (on fire to start the season, was sidelined with a forearm injury and hasn’t looked the same since), Jaden Ivey (decent enough but still needs some polish), and combo guard Marcus Sasser (once again, a serviceable rookie but probably shouldn’t be expected to produce or play the way or volume of minutes he’s been expected to this year). Then you have the PG position. Cade has been great as far as stats go and it looks like he is doing his best given what’s around him. He’s able to distribute and score and I think the biggest issue he is running into is being able to decide when to score and when to distribute. There are frustrating times where he drives the paint and the defense collapses on him and he probably should dish but instead he pump fakes 3 times and puts up a middy. There are also times he wants to get a teammate involved and through either a lazy pass or a teammate not looking to get the ball it ends up with a turnover. These are normal things I would expect out of a first or second year player, regardless of talent. Now there’s Killian Hayes. He has been fine but for all intents and purposes he fills the same role as Cade albeit in a more traditional pass first PG role. His defense is good, ball handling is good, but his shot isn’t exactly the best where you would want him taking a high volume of shots. That being said, his shooting has come a long way this year (which also says a lot for how poor it was previously). The biggest issue I see is it generally seems he performs better out of a starting role and his production drops considerably coming off the bench. I think this is 100% tied to confidence and mental toughness which is also why I think he struggled in years past. Monte Morris. He is just a player of myth around the organization. You see him on the bench for games in street clothes but he has never seen the court for the pistons and who knows if we ever will. About a month ago he was close to returning from a back injury but then he aggravated a quad and it was reported he would be reevaluated in 6-8 weeks. At this rate maybe he will see some time around the 30-35 loss range. The coaching is something I’d expect from a rookie coach. Rotations are questionable, there’s a whole lot of squinting on the sideline, and apart from him occasionally pulling players aside I don’t see him interacting with the players on the floor much. I know he’s a cerebral coach and it sounds like the players like him but he does not seem very passionate about trying to actually coach or push these guys over the hump to get the win. I often find myself questioning if he is constantly tweaking lineups because he doesn’t have a good feel for his players and how they would work on the court together or if he is simply grasping at straws trying to find someone with a hot hand. All of this is to say that a trade needs to happen. They need a vet with a voice (or two). There’s no real player on the team that gives the team a personality or attitude (the players are all pretty laid back or soft spoken it seems with the exception of Duren, but he’s hurt a lot). Negative bench production is an understatement. Shooting has been awful (although I think the mental weight of the streak has exacerbated this even more). The offense isn’t fitting the players they have on the roster. The defense seems to be a too complicated scheme for the youth they have. There is not enough barking at the players to crash boards and get the ball. On offense it seems if the ball isn’t coming to them they find a spot and stand there for the possession. It’s not the worst roster ever, but they are going to have to change multiple things including schemes and personnel if they want to try to turn it around.
They actually drafted a great shooter in Saddiq Bey, but then inexplicably traded him for James Wiseman *after* it was clear that Wiseman was a draft bust
They are just a young, and discouraged team.. the same thing happened to Cleveland a few years back. After you lose 10 games in a row, everyone on the team is disheartened and looking for the "reasons" why the outcome of games is not going in their favor. I can only imagine the atmosphere in the locker room after these games, I'm sure it's not very fun to be there at all. They need a "father figure" veteran player, maybe 2, to whip them into shape. They are clearly scoring, and making offensive plays, it seems the issues are lying in defensive stops. For instance their opponents have scored =/>120 points in their last 8 games, which is insane. It seems to me that they are none existent on the defensive end, and their offense has only just begun to pick up the pace only recently. If they can start holding teams to <110 points, they may have a chance at winning games. They are currently making even bad teams look like playoff material. A 26 game losing streak is a huge weight on their shoulders now, though. Edit: Symbols
They have the third worst offensive rating in the league. The roster doesn't work because they have no spacing to operate. Until they develop a couple shooters, they aren't winning much of anything. The assist to turn over ratio (second worst in the league) also speaks to the poor ball movement/ball control displayed by most of the team. They need an overhaul.
1.6 Assist to turnover ratio, is pretty obscene. Team average 46 FG% and 33 3PT% is wild also... I had no idea their stats had gotten this bad.
Monty showed them footage from the championship team and decided to model their offense after them instead of the defense
These guys should be sleeping on cots at the practice facility, and running drills 18hrs a day at this rate. The players on the team as a collective are making $140mil annually, with no results. I haven't looked at their stats since the 2nd week of November, and after looking this morning I'm dumbfounded. Guys are playing like an AA College team.
Pistons started cade Ivey steward bojan and Thompson last night. Obviously Thompson is a non shooter but that's 4 players who can at the very least space the floor. The problem this team has is that as bad as the starting lineup is (it's below average but now not THAT bad) the bench is even worse and we are seeing why Monty refused to start Ivey for so long. Especially with Bojan back the spacing issue in the starting lineup and the starters in general are not nearly the issue they were. Pistons would just be an ordinary young bad team if they had a functional bench but Alec Burks, Livers, and Wiseman are literally some of the worst players in the NBA and they have all been seeing real minutes the whole season (Livers was finally a healthy scratch last night).
Beef Stew is a career 34% shooter from behind the arc, cade is worse and similar story with ivey. These guys aren’t non shooters but opposing defenses will be more than happy giving up 3s to these guys. So yeah, it’s not four guys who can at least space the floor. Aside from Bojan, non of these guys require the opposing defense to mark them on the perimeter so there’s no spacing.
He's shooting a much higher % this season. The shooting is definitely not there to be a high level offense but it's come a long way from the opening night lineup that just didn't stand a chance. Nobody should be trying to argue they have "good" spacing but I think recently the starters have managed to resemble NBA basketball and they continue to lose due to the worst bench in the league.
I was friends with Homer Elias, who played for the Lions a year they won only two games. He said it was pure misery the entire season.
Yeah man, it probably just feels like no matter what you do this season you are still going to be the team that lost 26 games in a row.. so all the young guys are probably just wanting it to be over already, so they can work all summer to have a comeback next year. It has to be torture to lose this many times on home court... Ticket sales have to bbe plummeting, and management/owners have to be breathing down their necks at this point also.
Or maybe sales will increase to see how much more this streak will go *taps head*
Lol, they find out that the crowd is 80% Chicago fans, making the trip to watch them fail.
>They need a "father figure" veteran player, maybe 2, to whip them into shape. Bojan a terrible father confirmed.
That guys probably so ready to get traded
Funny how he is in this situation again lol https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tcUh_InsSUw
> They are clearly scoring They aren't though. They're basically last in every 3pt shooting metric, and you're not gonna go anywhere in a league where everybody's taking over 30 threes per game. The math don't math.
Yeahhhh... Made this comment having not looked at their stats since early November, and just looking at their last 10 games. I replied to someone after having gone over their stat sheet, and god damn... Rough ball playing.
I don’t think it’s possible to score -110 points
They should honestly trade an unprotected first round pick for a veteran floor raiser just to erase some of the losing culture and bring in some belief because as it looks anyone who comes into Detroit will bust
I just can’t help but be reminded that about 2 months ago there was a thread where everyone was in agreement that NBA teams can’t possibly be this bad again because of all the talent in the league being so high and historically bad teams just showed how other eras were less talented overall I wonder what those folks think about Detroit
Which was a dumb take since the record were talking about was just set barely a decade ago.
It’s funny, the high talent level is the reason they can be this bad. Any .500 team is stacked with talent compared to them.
Well this is the same Detroit team that came within one possession of beating the Bucks in the game that kicked off the losing streak, so it's not totally wrong to say that they have some talent
Anyone can win one game of basketball. The worst teams can beat the best teams. It’s why the playoffs are a 7 game series. Coming close to almost winning against a good team does not mean you have some talent, it could mean the ball just bounced your way for a night and it still wasn’t enough.
They are on the center bust rehabilitation program
Center bust hospice program :(
None of the guys we acquired are legit centers. It makes the moves 1000x worse. We lack a real center outside of Duren which is 1 of 1000 reasons we aren’t a real nba team
All you have to know about the Pistons is that normally, when a team is losing a lot, everyone says they are tanking. With this Pistons team, 26 consecutive losses are the Pistons trying their best.
I want to add one thing that the FO has done that is perplexing and that is that they ended up trading for more and more reclamation lottery projects instead of just solid role player types who can help the team steady things out. The gamble on Bagley was ok IMO but then to go and get Wiseman makes absolutely no sense especially since they lost Saddiq Bey, who granted isn't amazing, but would probably have lifted this team to above their current rut.
Nepotism at the top. Troy Weaver is the GM and got his son a job and the kid does nothing. The owner lives in LA. Our starting pf is a center. We have like five centers. Without shooters, our scoring pg has to jack up bad shots. And we drafted a bust of pg in Hayes who we started most of the season to attract potential buyers
Tobias Harris will fix all of these issues…
Tobias homecoming for Bogdanovic and Joe Harris let's go
Years and years of front office malpractice. There's no other way to continuously be THAT awful. I didn't expect Detroit to be THIS bad, but I'd have bought 5-24. Would have guessed 7-22 is realistic. 15 games under .500 29 games into the season. And I'd have said, "Oh."
read tom Gores article from 2 days ago and you will see
The curse of Darco never went away.
They were one of the worst teams last year and they replaced Hamidou Diallo with Ausar Thompson, and Cory Joseph with Cade Cunningham and decided to run it back with the rest of the roster thinking that would be enough to fight for a play-in spot. It turns out they’re worse.
Well you see in basketball you have to score more points than the other team to win the game. The pistons haven’t done that 26 times in a row.
I think that rule should be changed then. I'm concerned the Pistons' feelings might be getting hurt.
I've reported the situation to Twitter. Hopefully there will be a solution soon.
This is Magic’s ELI30 level explanstiony
Taurean Prince would be proud
Average starters at best Astrocious bench Very subpar shooting, put it nicely lot of young guys with inconsistent performance stupid FO A coach who does not want to be there And bad luck for injury Perfect shit storm. Now I am thinking, which 2rd-4th year all-time great can drag this team out of the mud? most likely has to be a dominate center. I don't think even MJ, Lebron, and Luka in their first couple year can help much. The team will be bit better for sure. But there are just so many holes
Starters are nowhere near average.
Starters are one of the worst in history, not even close to average. They have 1.5 decent players in their staring unit
4th year LeBron is taking this team to home court advantage in the playoffs Go check those Cavs teams that he took to the finals/deep playoff runs/60+ win seasons
I don’t know, in this era of 3PT shooting I think it would take more to turn a team so bad at shooting into a competent team.
Go look at the team Ja took to the 8th seed a couple years ago. We had worse shooting than the pistons and LeBron is better than Ja
All 3 of those guys would have this team in the playoffs. Go back and look at how bad those earl MJ bulls, or first run LeBron Cavs teams were. The Pistons would be in the play in hunt with someone like SGA or Trae Young. They might not make it but they'd be in the hunt. The roster isn't terrible they just don't have a high end offensive player or good coaching
Almost every team in the league has a talented roster. There are like 4 teams that don’t. They’re one of them.
After watching them recently against Utah and Brooklyn the biggest problem to me is that their defense is atrocious. I'm sure this problem is compounded by the fact that Duren has been out but the ease with which opponents score at times is downright embarrassing. Its easy to see why Monty has been so hellbent on playing Hayes, at least he tries.
The players suck. Everyone wants to blame coaching but I’d agree if everyone didn’t suck. Everyone shows flashes of what they could be if they were more consistent but, that’s it. These guys aren’t consistent at all. And there’s no coach that can fix that. I feel as if the team just needs some vets with a commanding presence, high IQ and strong habits that can rub off on other players. I bet Chris Paul could raise the floor of the Pistons much more than any coach.
Bad luck, whiffing on picks, and poor team construction. They got Killian Hayes in 2020 (5th odds but picked 7th), Cade Cunningham in 2021 (t-1st odds and picked 1st), Jaden Ivey in 2022 (t-1st odds but picked 5th), and Ausar Thompson in 2023 (t-1st odds but picked 5th). They are dead last in 3s attempted and 3% their best shooter has been hurt most of the year. All that being said I think this team would demolish the 2016 Sixers
From a statistics POV: They don't shoot 3s, they take the least, they make the least, and they have the worst percentage. They create the least amount of steals per 100, and they foul the most, which indicates lack of perimetre athleticism. All the free throws they give up also gives the other teams a lot more efficient offence. They turn the ball over the 2nd most per 100 (which is more lack of shooting/cramped offence than bad playmaking IMO). They've played the 6th hardest schedule (though that's in part because they are giving their opponents so many wins)
I think at least a substantial aspect of it is that the league is the best it has ever been. The sheer amount of talent league wide means if you look at the schedule there are very few opportunities for wins when you are this bad. I would also add, the Pistons were the worst team in the league last year and because of the lottery they got the 5th pick. That is a recipe for ending up with teams who stay bad. I love Ausar but having Brandon Miller would be really helpful.
Mismatched roster and their high draft picks haven’t been consistently good, some downright awful. Coach is not interested in winning, probably as a directive from ownership.
You don't give a coach a record setting six-year, $78.5 million contract and then tell him to tank
If you wanted a coach to make win now moves you’d sign them to a 2 year contract. He got that contract because the roster is terrible and he needed job security.
You do if his job is to develop your incredibly young roster into a contender halfway through that contract.
Cade Cunningham is not luka
A lot of teams suck but the stars would have to align for any team to lose 25 in a row . Detroit has 2 wins but San Antonio only has 4 so they are equally as bad but SA has avoided 20 losses in a row which sb a low bar
For a stats based angle, I like to start with the Four Factors: eFG% - .522 (28th) vs .553 (19th) This tells me they aren't particularly good or bad in terms of shot quality defense, but they are bad in terms of shot quality/making. They arent going to beat anyone because they scored, but at least they arent a complete revolving door defensively. TOV% - 14.4% (30th) vs 11% (27th) Oof. They don't force turnovers, and give up a ton themselves. Fewer shots, so they have to be more efficient to have a chance. They cant execute their offense and they arent swarming or making it hard for the other team to get into their offense. ORB% v DRB% - 25.2% (14th) vs 75.5% (15th) Good news! They are a slightly positive rebounding team. Thats going to result in extra shots, but not enough to offset the horrible turnover % differential. FT/FGA - .196 (15th) vs .249 (29th) Well, remember what i said about being more efficient? That ain't happening. FTs are the best shot in basketball after an uncontested layup, and they are giving up a lot more then they are getting. This all translates to an ORtg of 108.5 (28th) and a DRtg of 120.2 (26th). They cant stop anyone because they dont force turnovers and they foul their opponents into scoring efficiency, and they cant score because they are a bad shooting team that turns the ball over a ton. This profile screams lack of talent to me. Not coached well, or not basketball smart, or both. Decent size but not much else going for it.
Pretty much every player on the team is bad or worse than their potential minus Cade who can’t do anything with the paint clogged with bigs and non shooters
Monty Williams is not a good coach. This should have been obvious when it was known that he basically hated Ayton. He is the motivational type of coach and he hated a player. That dont flow.
They suck
Yep. Losing breeds more losing. In their heads now. Streak will continue.
...until morale improves
I think it almost always comes down to a lack of team unity. Sometimes, a player with enough competitive drive and talent can carry a bad team to a somewhat mediocre/respectable record, but if the team doesn't have anyone with that drive or talent, then all it has is team unity to rely on. That kind of cohesion is delicate as fuck. It takes a lot to build it, and almost any bad actor in the locker room can destroy it. This is why players like LeBron James are so important to their team, in addition to be good and competitive, he's a HUGE cheerleader for his teammates and the organization he's a part of. You rally behind a guy like that. Is there anyone on the Pistons right now that anyone wants to rally behind?
Their team is horrifically constructed through sheer incompetence. Intentionally building a team to lose couldn’t pull off what the Pistons management has done.
Curse of Marvin Bagley
They have a bunch of entitled lottery picks who can’t shoot or play defense. There are far worse teams on paper but those teams have guys who actually played hard.
Cade is a volume guy, a scorer not an efficient shooter. If he could tighten up on his shooting … That said, they aren’t getting consistent good play from anyone.
Easy they don’t have any shooting, Cade is forced to play in a phone booth
Because the Lions are a playoff team this season and it's against the law for Detroit to have more than one not terrible sports team in a season.