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Pistons Mailbag - January 18, 2017

KCP’s shot at an All-Star berth, the looming trade deadline and just how concerning the last month should be top the docket in the latest edition of Pistons Mailbag.

Eli (@EBashed): Does KCP have a shot at being an All-Star reserve?

Langlois: I think it’s a long shot, Eli. If the last round of voting holds, Kyrie Irving and Dwyane Wade are the starters in the backcourt. If you take a look at the shooting guards in the Eastern Conference, DeMar DeRozan is pretty much a lock for averaging 28 points a game for the East’s solid No. 2 team. Bradley Beal is averaging 22 a game for a team also ahead of the Pistons in the standings. Avery Bradley is having an outstanding season for Boston, also established as a top-four team in the East. I can’t see any reasonable way Caldwell-Pope gets in ahead of any of them. If the Pistons were 24-19, he might have a chance. But they’re 19-24 and teams with losing records never get the benefit of the doubt from the coaches.

Dreedmuzik (@dreed2_0): How much potential do you think the Pistons have as a Finals team?

Langlois: Somewhere, Jim Mora is warming up his vocal cords to shriek, “Finals? FINALS?” The Pistons have to worry about playing well enough to win more often than they lose in the season’s final 39 games. Nothing else matters if they can’t do that. I don’t think anything less than a .500 record gets them a sniff of the playoffs, which means they’ll at least have to go 22-17 to break even and hope that’s enough. They probably need to go 24-15 to be safely in the playoffs. To do that, they’re going to have to be a top-10 defense from this point forward. And they surely have that capability. Over the first one-third of the season, 27 games, they had the NBA’s No. 2 rated defense. They’ve been in the bottom five since that time. That’s worrisome, but maybe not quite as much when you dig into the numbers a little and come to the realization that the greatest contributing factor – by a mile – to their defensive tailspin is phenomenal 3-point shooting by their opponents. Over the 15 games preceding Sunday’s win over the Lakers, in which they shot 6 of 26 from the arc, Pistons opponents had made 45 percent of their shots from the 3-point line. That would be a pretty decent number in overall shooting percentage, never mind from the 3-point line. Many analytics gurus will tell you that opposition 3-point shooting is largely random with little a defense can do to steer the percentage up or down. The Pistons are still among the league leaders at limiting the number of 3-point attempts – an area a defense can influence – but they’ve been badly hurt anyway. If there is the regression to the mean that you’d expect, that alone would be enough to account for two or three fewer triples a game – six or nine points. The Pistons were 4-11 in those 15 games. If teams like Memphis, Sacramento and Indiana had just had reasonably effective nights instead of spectacular ones from the 3-poine line, the Pistons would have been 7-8 in those games and the “crisis” they’re enduring wouldn’t appear nearly as catastrophic. But let’s tap the brakes on talk of their “Finals potential.” Improve their defense, start winning three-fourths of their home games, put consecutive wins together routinely – play like the team that finished last season, really – and then we can start thinking about postseason viability.

Keeb (@keebkahn): Do you see Ellenson getting some playing time with Jon Leuer out?

Langlois: Stan Van Gundy wouldn’t hesitate to use Ellenson – he threw him into the fray in the first half at Sacramento last week – but he’s not going to play him over guys he feels are better prepared to contribute to winning. Ellenson needs time – experience in the D-League, in practice, wherever he can find it without mistakes costing his team a chance to win games – and a little more physical strength to play defense at an acceptable level so the Pistons can unleash his offensive potential. Stanley Johnson has elevated his level of play recently, which allows Van Gundy to play him at small forward and swing either Tobias Harris or Marcus Morris to power forward. Against bigger power forwards, he can use Aron Baynes there – as he did last week at Utah, starting Baynes to match up with Derrick Favors. So the roster – at least when Van Gundy has all of his players available – allows for other options. Van Gundy is bullish on Ellenson’s future. He made that clear in preseason, when he volunteered glowing reviews of his practice exploits. But he just turned 20 last week. Big guys who can step into NBA lineups at that age are few and far between, which is why when a Karl Towns or Anthony Davis come along they usually go No. 1 in the draft. It will be interesting to see how much progress Ellenson can make between now and next October and what moves the Pistons make, if any, with their frontcourt to give hints as to how they gauge Ellenson’s readiness to be part of the rotation next season.

Ethan (@RaddyLife): Wouldn’t you agree people need to take their hand off the panic button and just chill?

Langlois: This is unscientific, of course, and perhaps naïve, but I suspect that anyone promoting radical, panic-induced change represents a vocal but narrow minority. That doesn’t mean the correct answer is to put your head down and keep doing what you’re doing more forcefully, either. Stan Van Gundy, as much as any coach I’ve been around, is vigilant about self-examination and open-mindedness in honest internal assessments. He has maintained throughout the past month, as the Pistons have played subpar defense and struggled to establish any type of footing, that he remains confident in the talent and mix of the roster and pointed the finger at himself often to figure a way to draw the best out of it. He reiterated again on Tuesday that he doesn’t feel a trade is necessary if the motivation is simply change for the sake of change. But I wouldn’t rule out a trade by the time the Feb. 23 trade deadline rolls around. It just won’t be motivated by panic.

Bob (Albany, Oregon): No time to panic with the roster. What do you think of the GM telling the coach that his young core is well suited to run? Ish had the team zipping and Reggie can run. That said, as the trade deadline nears, it seems SVG should be looking at moving Baynes, if only to open up minutes for Boban and Ellenson. Even if they miss the playoffs, the Pistons are headed in the right direction. Your thoughts?

Langlois: Van Gundy frequently urges Reggie Jackson to push the ball. If you’re at a Pistons game or if the TV camera catches him at the right moment, you’ll often see him using his hands – palms out, thrusting his arms toward the other basket – to get Jackson and his teammates to hurry across half court after the Pistons secure a defensive rebound and put the ball in Jackson’s hands. As for Baynes, keep reading. We’ll get to him.

Peter (Jackson, Mich.): Marcus Morris, Tobias Harris and Reggie Jackson are all excellent one-on-one offensive players. When the Pistons come unglued offensively, it’s usually because they are not moving the ball normally; it is one of those three players who is holding it and going one on one. I thought Tobias has been great since moving him to the sixth-man role, but when all three are on the floor ball movement stops. What is Stan Van Gundy going to do about that?

Langlois: The Pistons aren’t going to match the Golden States of the NBA for assist totals simply because that’s not the way they’re built. They don’t have catch-and-shoot whizzes like Steph Curry, Kevin Durant or Klay Thompson. Morris and Harris are both good isolation players, both good post-up players. That’s not really conducive to a high-assists offense. But the larger point is well taken. Jackson sometimes tends to hang on to the ball a little too long when teams trap aggressively. The Sacramento game last week comes to mind. Stan Van Gundy was frustrated by the way the Pistons attacked against it. The Pistons are at their best when Jackson comes off the screen and makes a quick decision – either attacking off the dribble or getting the ball out of his hands quickly so the Pistons play four on three. You’re right that Harris has been really good off the bench – still playing starter’s minutes, too. It wasn’t the primary reason Van Gundy decided to put Jon Leuer in the starting lineup – a quest for a better defensive starting lineup was – but an ancillary benefit was that it reduced by one the number of players Van Gundy felt compelled to call plays for and get involved in the offense early so as to bring out the best in all of his players. Now it’s a balance of Jackson-Drummond pick and rolls, isolations and post-ups for Morris and running dribble handoffs for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope or running him off of screens for catch-and-shoot opportunities. Then, when Harris comes on midway through the first quarter – usually for Morris – they fold him into the mix.

Jay (@ItsJustShad): Any chance we trade Reggie and someone else, a couple of firsts, for John Wall?

Langlois: Got a bunch of John Wall questions earlier in the season when Washington stumbled out of the gate. I didn’t see it at the time and that’s no judgment on whether the Wizards would be better off dealing Wall and relaunching but more an acknowledgment that they just hired Scott Brooks to a $35 million contract. Unless dealing Wall was the intent at that hiring – and it almost certainly was not – then I see no reason to believe the Wizards are ready to trade their franchise cornerstone. Since starting 2-8, Washington is 19-11. I think we can close the door on the possibility of Washington trading John Wall this season.

Pawel (Warsaw, Poland): I’ve read the questions people send and many could be put together under the title, “What should the Pistons do to make the step forward to become a real contender?” My perception is that this has something to do with Reggie Jackson and Andre Drummond’s limitations. One way to solve this problem could be a trade for John Wall in exchange for Reggie and Stanley Johnson. Is targeting John Wall a completely futile enterprise?

Langlois: See above. Maybe at season’s end, depending on how it plays out, depending on what Brooks and GM Ernie Grunfeld conclude about where the franchise is and what its realistic goals are with the current core, they re-evaluate. I doubt they conclude that moving Wall is the first step toward getting better even then, but I would be greatly surprised if they come to that determination before then.

Christian (@billlllk): Why did they go back to Baynes over Boban in LA?

Langlois: Stan Van Gundy said that on Saturday, after evaluating the team’s current defensive state, he determined the best course was to use players he felt would help constitute the team’s best defensive players. Baynes, by every defensive metric and, more importantly, by Van Gundy’s eye test, gives the Pistons their best defensive unit. Van Gundy is sold on Marjanovic’s offensive skills and his potential. He’s seen enough of his work ethic to feel he’ll evolve into a defender good enough that he’s an overall plus next season when it’s expected he’ll be the full-time backup center. He lauded the improvement he’s made in lateral mobility so far this season last week. But right now, he sees Baynes’ all-around defensive ability – from mindset to carrying out game-plan responsibilities to communications skills – as more critical to winning games. And the Pistons just don’t have much margin for error at 19-24. Baynes is more of a sure thing. That doesn’t mean Marjanovic won’t get thrown into the fray more often than he did before his successful pinch-hitting when Baynes sat out a few games with an ankle injury. But the expectation for now, at least, is Baynes will be Drummond’s backup most nights.

Buk (Bangkok, Thailand): He’ll be a free agent the Pistons can’t re-sign, he has value on a contender as a rim protector and a rebounder, he plays 15 minutes a night and the Pistons’ ceiling is the same with or without him. So why wouldn’t the Pistons trade Aron Baynes?

Langlois: If we get to Feb. 23 and Stan Van Gundy agrees with your assessment, it would surely bear consideration. I’d quibble with the “ceiling is the same with or without him” part of your assertion, Buk. He’s too consistent to suggest the Pistons are the same team without him. I suspect Van Gundy believes that the Pistons have a better chance to make a playoff run with Baynes than without him. But if the playoffs look like a dim possibility as the trade deadline nears, then the only surprise would be if the Pistons did not look at a way to convert Baynes into an asset. That still doesn’t mean they’ll move him. Teams have to offer something of value and there are only so many teams willing to give up so much for a rental player. If one of the handful of teams with a legitimate shot to go all the way develops a critical need for a big man over the next month, maybe it moves the needle enough for the Pistons to jump. But if the Pistons ride a wave of momentum between now and then, I can’t imagine Van Gundy would risk putting their chances at a playoff berth in peril. Even if they’re offering a first-round pick – and that’s a stretch – you’re talking about a selection in the mid-20s from that type of team. That’s an attractive piece if you’re out of the playoffs, but if it diminishes your shot at a playoff berth by even 20 percent is it worth it? That’s call Van Gundy and his inner circle would have to make.

Shameek (@shamshammgod): Under what circumstances do the Pistons start “tanking” and playing their younger guys more often?

Langlois: Under no circumstances are they “tanking.” And when you say “playing their younger guys,” are we really talking about Henry Ellenson? Darrun Hilliard has been given shots to play and just hasn’t been able to get any traction this season. I think Michael Gbinije might have gotten a shot, but he just got back to practice on Tuesday after dealing with a deep bone bruise in his right forearm. And, for what it’s worth, Gbinije is older than Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Hilliard is just two months younger. Ellenson … see above. The only other guys really out of the rotation are Beno Udrih, their oldest player, and Boban Marjanovic (at least if Baynes is more or less the No. 2 center), who at 28 is older than everyone except Udrih, Baynes and Ish Smith. It bears repeating that Stan Van Gundy believes that rather than accelerating a young player’s growth, playing them before they’ve proven they deserve to play actually impedes their development.

Michael (Austin, Texas): I understand injuries have been an issue, but notwithstanding, the Pistons really seem to have taken a step back this year. Do you think they’re missing the veteran leadership they had last year from guys like Steve Blake, Anthony Tolliver and Joel Anthony?

Langlois: When you’ve been around guys like that, the expectation is that when they leave some of their imprint remains. And it’s not like the Pistons are devoid of guys who’ve been around the league for a bit. Beno Udrih – a guy who wants to be a coach and has Stan Van Gundy’s endorsement – has filled some of the void. Aron Baynes is 30 and his experience in four different European pro leagues, plus his time spent in San Antonio – and, most critically, his toughness and demeanor – stamp him as a leader. Marcus Morris has plenty of leadership qualities. So does Tobias Harris. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope isn’t very vocal but his consistently high motor is a component of leadership – and one Van Gundy regards highly. Reggie Jackson has leadership qualities, particularly his willingness to unfailingly deal with media interviews, win or lose. Andre Drummond has tried to emulate the veterans around him, guys like Anthony and Tolliver, and is growing as a leader.