Pistons Mailbag FAQs


Editor’s note: We began our Mailbag feature at the start of the 2006-07 season and, like most recurring features, it took a while to find and build an audience. It’s become an incredibly popular feature with hundreds of questions pouring in every week. We’re aware that new people are finding Pistons.com all the time and even those who’ve been here a while might be new to Mailbag. A handful of questions keep getting asked, so instead of answering the same questions repeatedly, we’ve put together a list of Mailbag FAQs. We’ll add more as they become relevant and take some off as they lose relevance, but we intend to keep Mailbag FAQs as a permanent feature of the Mailbag portion of pistons.com. Return to the Mailbag homepage.

Question: When will The Palace host an All-Star game?

Langlois: All-Star games are generally held in cities with new arenas or those where interest in the basketball team needs a shot in the arm. Many NBA teams are hesitant to host an All-Star game because the game – and, really, All-Star Weekend, as it has come to be known – has evolved into a significant marketing opportunity for the NBA to reward its corporate sponsors. Very few tickets are made available to the host city, and loyal season-ticket holders might feel alienated if they get shut out. Most tickets go to the NBA’s business partners, and those business partners can and often do use the tickets as either rewards for their top performers or to schmooze prospective clients. As a result, the NBA has gotten creative in choosing host sites. Two years ago, it was in Las Vegas, which doesn’t have an NBA team or season-ticketholders. And this year it will be in Dallas – but in the cavernous new Cowboys stadium.

Question: What draft choices do the Pistons have this year?

Langlois: The Pistons hold their own first-round pick for 2011 and the second-rounders of Toronto (the Carlos Delfino trade) and another from Denver (the least desirable of Denver’s or Portland’s) as a result of the Arron Afflalo trade. The Pistons’ own second-round pick for this season is owed to the Los Angeles Clippers as a result of the 2009 trade-deadline deal that sent Alex Acker to the Clippers and allowed the Pistons to get under the luxury-tax threshold. They also have a future second-rounder coming from Houston as a result of giving up the third of their three second-round picks in the 2009 draft. That pick has protections on it, starting in 2012 and expiring in 2015.

Question: Where can I get a custom-made protective face mask like the one Rip Hamilton wears?

Langlois: Pistons trainer Mike Abdenour suggests contacting Jeremy Murray at Michigan Hand & Sports Rehab Center, 11012 East 13 Mile Road, Suite 112, Warren MI 48093 or call (586) 573-8890.

Question: Will the Pistons wear their road red uniforms or another alternate jersey this season?

Langlois: Not for the 2010-11 season. The only uniforms the Pistons will wear this season are their traditional home whites and road blues. They reserve the right to revisit that situation each season.

Question: How can I become a Pistons ball boy?

Langlois: Go to Pistons.com and click on the “Promotions” tab and find the Tim Horton’s ball boy entry form.

Question: How can I get a job with the Pistons or another NBA team?

Langlois: If you’re interested in becoming a scout, coach or front-office employee, and you’re still in high school or in college, the best advice is to start on the ground floor. Volunteer with your high school or college coach. You might start out doing nothing more than chasing down loose balls and picking up discarded tape and soiled towels, but you’ll get to see the inner workings of a basketball program. Impress your high school coach and he’ll recommend you as a student manager to the coach at the college you attend. If you impress the college coach and eventually earn his trust to do more important things, like helping with video editing or assisting on recruiting visits, that will get your resume a longer look by an NBA team. It’s really no different than trying to work you way into any other profession. The sooner you can start and the more people you come across and impress for your enterprise and enthusiasm along the way, the better off you’ll be.

Question: Why did the Pistons trade Chase Budinger to Houston?

Langlois: After the Pistons had already selected Austin Daye in the first round and two players in the second round – DaJuan Summers and Jonas Jerebko – the Pistons believed would go in the first round, they knew they had three players worth of occupying roster spots for the 2009-10 season. They thought, at that point, they wouldn’t have room for another rookie draft choice. Had they exercised the pick, it would have been on a player who would have agreed to play in Europe for at least one season. Before making their pick, Houston called and offered cash and a future second-rounder for the No. 44 pick. The Pistons agreed to those terms. But because of rules governing the draft, the Pistons had to make the pick for Houston. So Houston instructed the Pistons to draft Budinger and they complied. The Pistons only drafted Budinger in the most technical sense. They did it at Houston’s bidding.

Question: Can you explain how the NBA draft lottery works?

Langlois: Fourteen Ping-Pong balls – numbered 1 through 14 – are placed in a lottery machine and four balls are randomly selected to determine a lottery combination. There are 1,001 possible outcomes when you discount order (for example, 1-2-3-4 is the same as 4-3-2-1). Of those 1,001 possible outcomes, one (11,12, 13, 14) is discounted and the other 1,000 are divided among the 14 lottery teams. The team with the worst record is assigned the most outcomes, 250. The team with the second-worst record will have 199, then 156, 119, 88, 63, 43, 28, 17, 11, 8, 7 6 and 5. So the team with the worst record will have a 25 percent chance of getting the No. 1 pick, a 21.5 percent chance of getting the No. 2 pick, a 17.8 percent chance of getting the No. 3 pick and a 35.7 percent chance of getting the No. 4 pick. That team could not pick lower than fourth. Even though that team will have a better chance than any other team of getting the No. 1 pick, it will actually have a better chance of getting the No. 4 pick than the No. 1 pick, though a better chance of landing inside the top three than outside of it. No team can be pushed down more than three spots from where they would pick based on record, but any of the 14 teams has a chance to land inside the top three based on having one of their four-digit combinations selected.

Question: How can I get an RSS feed for your True Blue Pistons blog?

Langlois: True Blue Pistons entries, as well as Mailbag entries, are included in the Pistons.com RSS feed. You can sign up here http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/rss.html