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Nothing provokes Mailbag comments quite like the extended Q&A sessions we conduct with Joe Dumars throughout the season, and sure enough, Part I of a three-part conversation got posted late Wednesday afternoon and within minutes Mailbag started to get feedback. I'm going to save most of them for next Monday's Mailbag, but I took the first one that came in - from Pedro of Guadalajara, Mexcio - and answered that to get today's Mailbag rolling. On with Mailbag …
As the season winds down, more and more Mailbag questions want to know what the Pistons will do in the off-season - what trades they'll explore, what their strategy will be in free agency and especially what type of help they can expect to get out of the draft. With the NCAA tournament starting this week, there will be plenty of opportunities to watch the players who figure to dominate the lottery - John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins of No. 1 seed Kentucky, Cole Aldrich of No. 1 seed Kansas, Evan Turner of Ohio State, Derrick Favors of Georgia Tech, Wesley Johnson of Syracuse, Greg Monroe of Georgetown and Al Farouq-Aminu of Wake Forest among them. On with Mailbag …
Mailbag messages from fans have poured in offering tips and suggestions as to Rodney Stuckey’s condition. Stress, migraines, vertigo, dehydration, the effects of nutritional supplements, sleep deprivation tests to determine epilepsy, constricted blood vessels in the brain leading to the risk of aneurysm … you name it, Pistons fans are offering their experiences to try to help the medical community get to the bottom of what caused his incident last week in Cleveland. I’ve passed along the suggestions to the training staff, but Stuckey has seen doctors from at least three of the most highly respected hospital groups in the nation – Cleveland Clinic, Detroit Medical Center and University of Michigan – and I think we can all safely assume that the collective brainpower and experience of the medical teams working his case will rule out everything that would cause concern before they allow him to resume playing NBA basketball. On with Mailbag …
Steven (West Bloomfield, Mich.): Will Bynum sure looked good in the starting lineup, didn’t he? What are the chances that, assuming the Pistons re-sign Bynum this summer, that he slides into the starting spot with Stuckey coming off the bench? My guess is zero percent, but that guy runs the team better than Stuckey. What Stuckey does well is score and rebound. I’d also love to see a starting backcourt of Bynum and Stuckey. I know the sample size is small, but in two career starts Bynum is 2-0 in games the Pistons probably should not have won.
Langlois: You’re right – the sample size is dangerously small. I’ve been as tantalized by Bynum’s potential as anyone and I’ll be blogging about him and his situation today. But his size is a consideration. One reason John Kuester made the call to make Bynum the starter against Houston was Aaron Brooks was the counterpart, another diminutive point guard. Will has 19 more games to make his case. I don’t know how Kuester will divvy up the minutes if Rodney Stuckey is cleared to return soon, but if Bynum keeps giving him an 11:1 assists-to-turnovers ratio, he’ll get his minutes. And it could be that he tinkers with some of the playing combinations. That situation is one of the most compelling reasons to pay attention down the stretch even though the Pistons are out of playoff contention.
Langlois: So far, what we know is that the medical team at the renowned Cleveland Clinic ran him through a battery of tests and found nothing that explains his Friday incident. That sounds very similar to the outcome of a like incident Stuckey experienced in November 2008. They’re certainly not going to be foolish and rush him back if there are warning signs advising against a return. We hope to learn more in the next few days, but it appears Stuckey will be undergoing more tests before he’s cleared to return.
Pedro (Guadalajara, Mexico): In your past Mailbags, you have denied the benefits of tanking the season and playing the rookies by saying (1) the draft doesn’t favor those who tank and (2) Joe D wants to see what this team can do at full strength. At what point do we say this team stinks – losing five in a row and allowing the Knicks 128 points? – and we should play our rookies?
Langlois: If I’m John Kuester and Joe Dumars, that’s a conversation I’m probably having on an ongoing basis. But I don’t expect we’ll see anything as dramatic as putting Rip Hamilton or Tayshaun Prince on the inactive list. There are 21 games left in the season, 13 in March and eight in April covering two weeks. Maybe when April arrives, DaJuan Summers becomes part of the rotation and Austin Daye starts getting 20 minutes a night. Maybe Charlie Villanueva starts getting force fed more minutes to see if that helps kick start him. As far as out-and-out tanking, it seems to me that the risks – sending a message to coaches, players and fans that losing is tolerable in certain circumstances – far outweigh the rewards of a lottery system that guarantees very little. There’s no way the Pistons can lose enough games to catch teams like the Nets and Timberwolves, so their odds of a top-three pick aren’t going to be significantly altered no matter how the rest of the schedule plays out.
Langlois: No, Chris, you can’t include cap exceptions in trades. Exceptions are there for just that purpose – to allow teams over the salary cap to still sign free agents for all or part of the mid-level (by definition, the average NBA salary, which last year meant a first-year salary of $5.85 million) or the biannual (available to use every other season for teams over the cap, roughly $2 million in the first year of a two-year deal). If the Pistons were to take part in a sign-and-trade that would deliver to them a player signing a max contract with his current team, the trade partner could take back up to 125 percent plus $100,000. So Prince’s salary alone comes pretty close. If you use $16.5 million as the first-year salary for a max free agent next season – the exact number won’t be known until early July, when the salary cap and mid-level exception are set – then whoever works out a sign and trade for Bosh would have to send to Toronto at least $12.175 million in salary. Prince is due a reported $11.15 million next year. Toronto would want more than one established starter for Bosh, but a package of a solid starter with a short-term deal plus at least a No. 1 draft pick and a young player with potential would put a suitor in the running. There’s another complication possible with sign-and-trade deals – base-year compensation. For trade purposes, some newly signed free agents become BYC players – meaning that only 50 percent of their salary is considered when meeting trade parameters – but Bosh won’t fall into that category because even when he signs a max deal, he will not have received a raise of at least 20 percent.
Langlois: I asked him after his impressive Tuesday outing against Boston how much weight he’s put on since being drafted last summer and he said about seven solid pounds of muscle. I don’t think Daye is ever going to look significantly different than he does now (did Reggie Miller ever change body types? Tayshaun Prince?), but nobody I’ve spoken with – and that includes both Pistons strength coach Arnie Kander and Daye’s summer workout supervisor, the well-regarded Joe Abunassar – believes lack of strength will keep him from realizing his considerable potential.
Phil (Munising, Mich.): Why wasn’t the Pistons-Golden State game on FS Detroit or FS Plus on Saturday night?
Langlois: FS Detroit was contractually obligated to air a certain number of games, but when ESPN passed on televising two other Pistons games and FS Detroit chose to pick them up, it decided to defray costs by dropping two other games. The Golden State game was one of them. The other is the March 13 game at Atlanta.
Langlois: I think sprained ankles has been their bigger curse, Ali. People inside and outside the NBA who understand the salary cap generally applauded the intent of trading Billups. The Pistons weren’t going to win an NBA title as constituted after coming up a little shorter each time in three successive conference finals ousters. Getting the chance to dip below the salary cap and add some young veterans presented a legitimate shot to make the transition from one era to the next as painless as possible. But nobody realistically believed it would be pain free. I still think the investments in Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva will bear fruit. Gordon’s productivity in Chicago was amazingly consistent. There’s no reason to believe his current struggles aren’t directly related to recovering from injuries the magnitude of which he simply has never experienced. Charlie V will benefit from stability around him. The Pistons didn’t expect they got a franchise savior when they signed him, but a uniquely gifted big man signed to a contract that should yet prove very reasonable. Joe D fully understood he was trading away a very good basketball player when he shipped Billups to Denver. If you get caught up in what you’re sending away in trade and not focused on what the trade does for you, you wouldn’t get much done in this league.
Langlois: Sheesh, they make ’em cynical young Down Under these days, don’t they? If you believe in karma, Jack, then it follows there should be no reward for tanking, though the 2002-03 Cleveland Cavaliers are the exception that prove the rule. The Pistons are a proud organization and Joe Dumars holds the same distaste for losing as an executive that he did as a player. John Kuester is getting his first shot to be an NBA head coach after 20 years in the league. You think he’s going to abide any grand plan that has him coaching to lose? Maybe if the Pistons had gotten where they are with a healthy roster, there would be the sliver of an argument for giving more playing time to DaJuan Summers and Austin Daye, but Joe D’s off-season in part will be informed by what he sees from the team he put together last summer but hasn’t gotten the chance to fully assess even as the season is nearly three-quarters complete.
