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Pistons Mailbag - April 1, 2015

Reggie Jackson's surging play, Greg Monroe's status, the pros and (mostly) cons of tanking and a little draft talk top the docket for this week's Pistons Mailbag.

Jason (@MisterJasonPTU): The Pistons play better without Greg Monroe. Agree?

Langlois: It's really tough to peel the onion and figure out exactly why the Pistons are 6-2 since Greg Monroe injured his knee, Jason. There are probably a lot of different factors that go into it. It's undeniable that Reggie Jackson has been a better player – like, waaaay better – over his last eight games. But Jackson all but predicted his turnaround on the very day that Monroe got hurt in practice before they beat Memphis on March 17. Jackson's mood was lifted after a round of heart-to-heart talks he had with his teammates, with Stan Van Gundy and with his brother among others in his inner circle. As he told me last week, "I decided if I'm going to out and this isn't going to work, I'm at least going to go out being myself." That had nothing to do with Monroe being hurt. Jackson was visibly pressing in his first few weeks as a Piston, wanting too badly to prove both that he was worthy of the franchise's trust in him and that he was deserving of the starting point guard role he had made known to Oklahoma City management that he wanted. So Jackson is convinced the timing of his ascendancy with Monroe's injury is purely coincidental. I wouldn't discount, though, the observations of Tayshaun Prince, who maintains that Jackson is more comfortable playing with four perimeter players and only one post player. Prince saw teammate Mike Conley go through the adjustment to playing with two post players (Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol) in Memphis and told Jackson that it would take time to figure it out. Van Gundy, Prince and Jackson are all confident that he would eventually be just as comfortable playing with Drummond and Monroe as Conley has become playing with Randolph and Gasol. And Van Gundy is adamant that the Pistons are best served by retaining Monroe in free agency and having the ability to play either style effectively.

Tom (Watervliet, Mich.): If the Pistons can't sign Greg Monroe is a sign and trade with a team like New Orleans possible or likely, like what they did with Grant Hill and Orlando in the trade for Ben Wallace and Chucky Atkins?

Langlois: It depends on the teams that go after Monroe, Tom. If a team doesn't need to trade contracts back to the Pistons (or doesn't see a benefit in doing so) in order to clear cap space to accommodate Monroe's first-year salary, then the odds diminish. There are at least a handful of teams that could clear enough cap room to offer Monroe a substantial contract. Whether any of those teams are attractive to Monroe is another matter. The Pistons don't have to engage in sign-and-trade talks to make it easy for another team to swipe Monroe away, either. You can bet Stan Van Gundy would only entertain the idea of a sign and trade if he truly coveted the players being offered in return. He'd almost surely rather have the cap space to go after players he sees as good fits than take players back just for the idea of getting something for Monroe.

Eli (Brooklyn, N.Y.): Toward the end of last season, I (and other fans) wrote you about the Pistons' annual end-of-season pointless winning streak. You maintained they should try their best to win as it could help build momentum and cohesion toward next year. As you know, last year it cost the Pistons their first-round draft pick, which we certainly could have used. Here we are again. The Pistons have managed to string some wins together. If you look at the draft board, the best shooters/scorers/small forwards that would help the Pistons best (Stanley Johnson, Mario Hezonja and Kelly Oubre) are all likely to be taken in the first seven picks. If the Pistons finish with the eighth or ninth pick, they will be ruining their future yet again. Do you still maintain that is not the case and the Pistons should continue to win these final few games?

Langlois: Start with what Stan Van Gundy said last week when he was asked a question that really wasn't about tanking at all, but about whether the final 11 games of the season (at the time the question was put to him) were even more important than they would otherwise be due to Reggie Jackson's acclimation process. If you think the Pistons are going to try to do anything other than win over the season's final two weeks, you're about to be disappointed. We've debated this point over the past five home stretches to seasons. There might be some organizations where the front office pulls in one direction on this issue and the coaching side in another. That certainly isn't an issue in Detroit – not that it was under the previous administration, either, on this count – with Van Gundy in charge of both sides. He hopes to coach young guys like Andre Drummond, Greg Monroe, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Jackson for the next several seasons. He wants them to learn how to win together. He also doesn't want to give them the impression that winning is a matter of convenience, not the utmost organizational priority. I think the tanking argument might hold a little more water if you can point to multiple shining examples of when it's really worked. Keep in mind the Pistons were right in the thick of the playoff race until early March. They've gone 6-2 since their 10-game losing streak. Is anyone seriously suggesting that finishing with the No. 8 or 9 lottery position as opposed to No. 7 is about to be a franchise-altering course? (As for your contention that Johnson, Hezonja and Oubre are all gone in the first seven picks, I'd wager that there's a better chance not one of them is gone by then.) This draft, perhaps to a greater degree than most, appears really muddled after the top four. I don't think there's anything close to a consensus of the order for picks 5-15, say. And about losing last year's lottery pick. Would you rather have lost it this season? Last year's draft doesn't appear to be shaping up as the transformative class it was ballyhooed to be. I believe that if the Pistons had stayed at No. 8, they would probably have wound up with somebody like Michigan's Nik Stauskas. That possibly would have meant they wouldn't have signed Jodie Meeks, so there would have been other ripple effects. But if you believe in this front office, then it's probably for the best that the pick was lost last season instead of this one, when Van Gundy, general manager Jeff Bower and their scouts have had all season to study the landscape and pick the player that best suits their roster after they've had a year to shape and study it.

Ken (Dharamsala, India): Do you see anything interesting in the upcoming Pistons forward draft? Justise Winslow? Bobby Portis?

Langlois: Pretty sure it's a long, long list right now, Ken. It'll get whittled down to a manageable number for Stan Van Gundy once the Pistons season ends. He's already keeping half an eye on the top prospects. He said last week that he watched NCAA Sweet 16 games on Friday knowing which players he was told to watch by general manager Jeff Bower and assistant general manager (in charge of college scouting) Brian Wright. That night, Wisconsin (Frank Kaminsky, Sam Dekker), Arizona (Stanley Johnson), Notre Dame (Jerian Grant) and Kentucky (your local McDonald's menu) were all playing, so you can extrapolate from there that he was flipping back and forth between channels to catch multiple games. Bower and Wright will schedule a trip to Europe for him to watch the two top-10 prospects, Kristaps Porzingis and Mario Hezonja, both of them playing professionally in Spain. I wouldn't confine your speculation just to forwards, though. Bower and Van Gundy have both told me, separately, over the past week that the priority will be to get the best player regardless of position or roster need. Maybe if you're looking for a final piece to the puzzle, you target a position. The Pistons aren't there yet.

Steve (Northport, Mich.): I think Spencer Dinwiddie is a guard with a lot of upside. It will be tough not to give him good minutes next year if he improves on all of his skills. How long do the Pistons have him under contract?

Langlois: He's under contract for two more seasons, Steve, with the 2016-17 non-guaranteed. The Pistons should have a good handle on Dinwiddie by that time. Other than a very low shooting percentage – .302 overall, .185 from the 3-point line – he's had a very solid rookie season, especially factoring in the loss of his rookie summer due to the knee injury he suffered in January 2014. Stan Van Gundy knows that Dinwiddie's shooting woes puts a big asterisk on his performance, but he's genuinely optimistic that Dinwiddie is going to be the second-round pick who beats the odds and becomes a very solid NBA rotation player. (In part, they feel that way because they viewed Dinwiddie as a first-round pick if not for the knee injury that ended his junior season at Colorado.) Given the uncertainty over Brandon Jennings' readiness for the start of the 2015-16 season as he recovers from an Achilles tendon rupture, Van Gundy told me last week that he would be comfortable as of now going into next season with Dinwiddie as his backup point guard while they wait on Jennings. That's a pretty good endorsement. It will be a very big summer for Dinwiddie, starting with running the Pistons entry in the Orlando Summer League and going from there.

Johnny (@JG_Hollywood): If we draft a small forward, which one do you think it would be? Is Justise Winslow best suited?

Langlois: It's still way too early to get into draft specifics, Johnny. We don't even know where the Pistons will be picking until the May 19 lottery is held (assuming they don't make a miracle run to the playoffs). That's one big step. The week before that comes the Chicago draft combine, where teams start to get a little better insight into the makeup of players when they meet with them in face-to-face interviews allotted there. After that comes the predraft workouts that teams hold for up to six players at a time. You can bet that the small forwards generally considered worthy of lottery selections – Winslow, Stanley Johnson and Kelly Oubre among American college players – will find themselves going up against each other in those group workouts, at least to the extent that teams can convince their agents to cooperate. If one of them starts gathering momentum coming out of Chicago where it appears he'll be a top-six pick, for example, then the Pistons might not be able to get that player in for a workout if they're picking eighth or ninth. Based on what I've seen of Winslow, there's a lot to like there. He's got at least one more game to play and that will be heavily scouted, of course, because NBA teams especially like to evaluate players on big stages like the Final Four. But even once he's done playing, the evaluation process for Winslow and others will continue right up until draft day, starting with review of their game tapes but also many other aspects of their personality, makeup and potential.

Alfred (Wauwatosa, Wis.): If the Pistons wind up drafting somewhere toward the bottom of the top 10, how reasonable is it to expect that they wind up with a player who can help them as a rookie?

Langlois: To a large degree, it would really depend on if that is their overriding motivation, Alfred. In other words, are they going to narrow their search to players ready to step in and help immediately? And I doubt they do that. I think, based on talking in general terms throughout the season with Stan Van Gundy, that his draft philosophy is going to be to take the player he believes has the best NBA future and he'll be willing to wait on development if he strongly believes in the payoff. So it could be, for instance, that they think one of the relatively older college players, like Wisconsin's Frank Kaminsky, represents the best value with their pick. In that case, it probably would be reasonable to expect him to immediately crack the rotation next season. But if the player they draft is a teen with one year of college basketball under his belt or a young European, then it might not be a slam dunk that they go into free agency projecting their draft pick as a lock to be in the season-opening rotation.

Gerard (Alpena, Mich.): What is the strength of this draft, in your opinion?

Langlois: I haven't done a whole lot of draft research yet, Gerard, but I have spoken casually with a few scouts recently that I've run into at NBA games and I've come away with a few general impressions. For starters, it seems that most people like this draft much better now than they did before the season began. In particular, they think it could be a very good draft in the range where the Pistons figure to be picking, though it might lack the potential star power at the very top where last year's draft had players (Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker, notably) that many felt had superstar potential. I've also heard from a few scouts recently that they think it could be a very strong draft for point guards and big men.