featured-image

Pistons Mailbag - February 15, 2017

With the All-Star break around the corner and the trade deadline not far behind, plenty of chatter about the state of the Pistons, their playoff chances and the likelihood of a deal being made in the latest edition of Pistons Mailbag.

Luke (@LukeWolthius): In comparison to last year at the All-Star break, do you think the Pistons have a better chance of making the playoffs this year?

Langlois: At the break last season, the Pistons had a better record (27-27 to 26-30 going into tonight’s game with Dallas) but were actually in slightly worse shape in the standings. There were eight teams ahead of them at the 2016 break. The Pistons also hadn’t yet made the trade of Brandon Jennings and Ersan Ilyasova for Tobias Harris. They’ve got some advantages with the schedule this season. This year’s Pistons have a better, deeper, more flexible roster. They’ve been more inconsistent this year in that they’ve had blowout wins and non-competitive losses to a greater degree than last season. The Reggie Jackson injury has lingered over the season. He’s the X-factor for the rest of the season, in my view. If he plays at last season’s level, I’m bullish on their playoff chances. If he doesn’t quite get there but is consistently more efficient than he’s been so far, they’ll still have a very good shot at hanging on to the No. 8 spot or rise a notch or two. The other wild card is the trade deadline and what does or doesn’t happen there relative to the teams bunched around them in the standings. The Pistons went into last year’s All-Star break with a thud, on a three-game losing streak while playing without an injured Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, then lost two more coming out of the break and subsequently lost Anthony Tolliver and Stanley Johnson for a few weeks apiece. But they snapped their five-game losing streak with an unlikely win at Cleveland – it was Harris’ first start, ahead of schedule due to Tolliver’s injury – and went 16-9 to close strong. Tough to predict something like that, but it’s surely possible for a repeat performance. The schedule favors the Pistons, for what it’s worth. By the numbers, they have the easiest remaining schedule in the East.

Darrell (Detroit): It’s really frustrating watching Reggie Jackson dribble up to the line to take a 3-point shot before giving the team a chance to run a set. It’s reminiscent of watching Josh Smith all over again. We saw what addition by subtraction did when the Pistons waived Smith. Jackson is too valuable to let go, so I suggest offering Jackson and Darrun Hilliard to Dallas to exchange for Deron Williams, Devin Harris and a future first-round pick. Williams can back up Ish Smith and Harris’ team option gives the Pistons more room to re-sign KCP this summer.

Langlois: Jackson hasn’t regained his level of play, coming off of the knee injury that sidelined him for nearly two months and cost him the season’s first 21 games. But he’s 26 and there’s not much in the way of history to suggest the nature of his injury should permanently rob him of his explosion. There was one possession in Sunday’s comeback win at Toronto – in which Jackson played just 17 minutes and not at all after five minutes into the second half – where he did what you suggest is a pattern: came down and jacked up a quick three. I said to myself at the time, “not a good shot.” The defense was set, it was early in the shot clock, the Pistons hadn’t probed to find anything else. But in and of itself, that’s not necessarily a bad shot. Stan Van Gundy is encouraging his players to shoot more 3-point shots. Jackson is shooting 35 percent from the 3-point line this season and that’s gone down by about 3 percentage points in the last few weeks as he’s slumped. So it’s a good shot for him; it never was a good shot for Smith. He’s struggling, no question, and my guess is it only has to do with the injury at this point to the extent that it cost him so much time away and has affected his rhythm and confidence. By all indications, including his own insistence, he isn’t feeling any pain or doubts about the stability of his knee. I would expect him to regain his footing at some point, though it might not happen this season – and, if that’s the case, obviously it’s going to be more difficult for the Pistons to win enough games to qualify for the postseason. But it would be foolish to cast him aside unless the net was another player of similar stature and importance to the future of the franchise. Your proposal isn’t outrageous, I suppose, though you can bet Dallas won’t be dealing first-round picks without protections that would diminish its potential for yielding substantial return. I can’t imagine Stan Van Gundy and Jeff Bower shopping Jackson based on the belief that he can’t physically achieve pre-injury form; if he’s dealt – big if – it will be for the reasons they use as their guideposts: talent and compatibility.

John (@JohnLoPresto): Is it realistic to think that Reggie Jackson may be moved?

Langlois: It’s realistic to think that everyone’s a candidate to be moved, but if the question is “is it likely that Reggie Jackson will be traded?” then the answer is no. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to trade Jackson at the moment, in my view, based on the assumption that I suspect his trade value would be at or near its bottom given his ups and downs since returning from a knee injury. It hasn’t been expressed by Jackson or anyone with the Pistons that they fear the relatively minor procedure he had is going to permanently rob him of strength or explosion in his left knee, but another team trading for him at mid-season isn’t likely to take it on faith that he’ll be back to normal soon – or next season, for that matter. It’s also difficult to trade your starting point guard in mid-season when the mechanisms to replace him available in the off-season don’t exist to nearly the same degree. If they were to trade Jackson for another point guard, problem solved. But a position-for-position swap at the trade deadline is pretty rare. Usually a team looking to trade for a point guard is doing so because of a need at the position, not simply to swap one player out for another at the same spot. And trading their starting point guard would leave the Pistons – still intent on a playoff drive, and understandably so – with Ish Smith and Beno Udrih only at the position. So not unrealistic, but a long way from likely.

Ryan (Aliso Viejo, Calif.): It seems like SVG is preaching offense more lately. Does this make the players embrace the defensive end more, knowing they don’t have to worry about taking a “bad” shot on offense?

Langlois: I’m not sure what you’ve seen or read to support your supposition, but I’ll roll with it to a degree. What I’ve heard Van Gundy say – something the players have talked about vaguely on and off this season – is that they’re allowing offensive lapses during games to seep into their focus and effort on the defensive end. There’s also the irrefutable fact that scoring – season over season, but even since the season started – has continued to go up across the league. As for players worrying about taking “bad” shots, Van Gundy just isn’t that guy. He doesn’t harp on shot selection and says he hasn’t since very early in his career when he figured out that players aren’t intentionally trying to miss shots. He gets on them about focus and effort and carrying out assignments if he senses deficiencies, but I’ve not heard him criticize shot selection beyond the most generic sense once in nearly three seasons.

Nelson (Hamtramck, Mich.): We have seen coaches rest key players during the regular season. Do you accept the decision to rest key players in regular-season games? I firmly believe resting players is very important to have them fresh and ready for the playoffs.

Langlois: I firmly believe you have to get to the playoffs in order to have being “fresh” or “not fresh” relevant once they arrive. I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all strategy where this is concerned. I’m not a fan of resting guys as a matter of course, but I get it when Gregg Popovich decides players, especially those north of 30, should take the occasional second of a back-to-back set off when playing for a team that expects to be active into late May or June. But is anyone seriously suggesting a Pistons team – with no starter older than Jon Leuer at 27 – that needs every win it can get to make the playoffs should be resting players now for a playoff series that might not be held?

Chase (@chasek92317): Do you think now that the Pistons are moving downtown there will be an All-Star game here in the near future?

Langlois: If Tom Gores makes it known to NBA commissioner Adam Silver and his 29 peers that he wants to host an All-Star game at Little Caesars Arena, I suspect it will happen within five years, give or take, of the arena’s opening. The Palace never held one, in part, because previous ownership and management really didn’t push for one. All-Star weekend brings a lot of attention and celebrity on its host city, but it’s also a delicate dance for the franchise and its sales representatives in dealing with their loyal season ticketholders – because the cold truth is that there are very few of them who are able to get their hands on tickets for the All-Star game. It’s a weekend for the NBA to grease the wheels of commerce by channeling tickets to their many corporate partners. So if you’re eager to come downtown and take part in the many fan-friendly activities generated by All-Star weekend, then root hard for the Pistons to host a future All-Star game. If you want them to host a game so you can get in line for a pair of tickets or more, that might not come to pass.

Paul (Phoenix): Shouldn’t the Pistons start using Ellenson and Gbinije to see what they have? This team as constructed has not progressed, has the same energy concerns, the same defensive lapses year after year and continued lazy point guard play. I don’t see a playoff team with the desire and makeup to advance beyond continued lottery pick status. Reggie Bullock and Aron Baynes will leave via free agency, so it may benefit the Pistons to evaluate what is on the roster.

Langlois: They’ve been evaluating Ellenson and Gbinije since they drafted them last June – selections based on the weight of the evaluation of their entire scouting department of them to that point. Stan Van Gundy sees them in practice every day. He, or at a minimum the assistant coaches who oversee their individual work, see them before and after practices and before NBA games during workouts. They’ve seen them play a dozen games with the Grand Rapids Drive, nearly 500 minutes worth of playing time. They know their strengths and weaknesses and how they might help the Pistons right now and where they would leave them vulnerable. If Van Gundy thought Ellenson and Gbinije were more likely to help produce wins than players ahead of them at their positions today, they’d be used. If Gbinije hadn’t suffered a deep forearm bruise that sidelined him for a long stretch in January, I suspect he might have gotten a crack at the rotation when Darrun Hilliard was struggling and Reggie Bullock was still out with his knee injury. But Stanley Johnson has played much better since then and Bullock is back. What you’re really saying is you want to see the rookies play – same way NFL fans what to see the backup quarterback whenever their offense struggles – so you can evaluate them.