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Pistons Mailbag - October 22, 2014

One week until the regular season tips off and there are still plenty of issues to sort out for Stan Van Gundy, who takes a 4-2 record into Thursday’s Pistons preseason finale. On with Mailbag ...

Lennie (Auckland, New Zealand): With Will Bynum gone and KCP and Jodie Meeks out, do you see Spencer Dinwiddie getting regular minutes early on in the season even if it has to be at the two guard spot?

Langlois: I think that’s one of many possibilities, Lennie. If Dinwiddie looks like he’s ready to handle legitimate NBA minutes, Stan Van Gundy will certainly consider that one of his options. That’s the major question – not so much whether he can play shooting guard, just whether he’s ready for the NBA. He’s not only a rookie, he’s a rookie who didn’t have the benefit of playing in Summer League or going through training camp. Until last week, he wasn’t permitted to play except in non-contact situations. In other words, he’s got rust issues as well as the adjustment period that healthy rookies would have to endure. But Van Gundy is very high on Dinwiddie. He loves his size and his demeanor. He doesn’t get very deep into any conversation about Dinwiddie without mentioning his confidence, but it’s not a delusional confidence. He’s struck all as a level-headed young player, aware of his place. In discussing the possibility of Dinwiddie spending some time in the D-League this season just Tuesday, Van Gundy – while admitting that it would be a useful developmental tool for Dinwiddie – said it was important for him to get as much practice time with the Pistons as possible in addition to getting playing time, but went further to say that might be with the Pistons, not with Grand Rapids. Dinwiddie has had four practices before today and Van Gundy has liked what he’s seen. So he’s an option at shooting guard as long as Van Gundy is comfortable with him playing, period. The prevailing sense is that Kentavious Caldwell-Pope will be back in time for the regular season and, if so, he’s going to play 30-plus minutes at shooting guard, at least until Jodie Meeks gets back – hopefully in mid- to late December. Cartier Martin is another option, as well as Kyle Singler and Caron Butler, but Van Gundy certainly believes those players – the last two, certainly – are better suited to small forward. He also got a lot of mileage out of a Brandon Jennings-D.J. Augustin backcourt in the most recent preseason game at Atlanta. I don’t think he’d use that combination against backcourts with typical or above-average NBA size, but there are plenty of coaches these days comfortable with playing two point guards at a time, so Van Gundy might find more opportunities to use them together than you’d expect.

Stephen (Berkley, Mich.): How big of a role do you think Spencer Dinwiddie will play once he gets back to full health? Any how good of a player can he be?

Langlois: I wish I could give you a better answer, Stephen, but only time will tell. It would have been interesting to see where Dinwiddie might have been drafted if he hadn’t torn his ACL last January. At the time, by most accounts he was considered a first-round pick, at minimum, and potentially a lottery pick. But there’s only so much teams have at their fingertips at that point of the process to form the opinions that collectively lead to draft projections. Much can change in the nearly four months between the end of the college season and the draft. For instance, no one was projecting another rangy point guard, Elfrid Payton, as a top-10 pick in April or May. But that’s where he went on draft night. If Dinwiddie hadn’t been injured, there is every likelihood that Payton and Dinwiddie would have been paired together in workouts for teams looking at point guards. What if Dinwiddie had held his own (or better) against Payton? Every year, our opinions of players leading to the draft are shaped by the credible mock drafts that are really nothing more than a cross-section of opinions and hearsay from the 30 front offices. But take any one team’s draft board and it could look significantly different than the consensus. The Pistons clearly feel they landed a player at 38 whom they believe would have gone significantly higher than that if not for the injury. If they’re right, then they might have landed a player with a second-round pick who will become central to their future. I know Van Gundy is already considering the possibilities of one day playing Dinwiddie and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope together in a backcourt that would give him size, athleticism, shooting and defensive flexibility.

James (Kirkland, Wash.): I was impressed by Stan’s transparency right off the bat and when I read the article about how he has offensive and defensive principles on huge boards in the practice facility, I loved the clarity and simplicity it offers us as fans and, more importantly, the players. So my question is this: Does Stan have a similar set of principles he applies to himself and his coaching staff that he’s shared with the players? If so, what are they?

Langlois: Good question. Wish I had an answer. Van Gundy’s post-practice and pregame media scrums are far more illuminating and entertaining than those of most coaches, so it’s something I’ll try to throw at him when the time is right. I don’t know that he would have something as explicit as a list of coaching tenets in stone, but he’s extremely detail oriented – that’s one of the things virtually everyone who’s known him will tell you – so there is no question he has very clear ideas of what his job entails and what he asks of his assistant coaches. To take that a step further, he also has the gift of being able to communicate those thoughts so they’re as clear to the recipient as they are to him. It’s not always an apples-to-apples comparison, but I’ve generally found that a coach who can communicate well with the media can also effectively communicate with staff and players. And Van Gundy is as good as anyone I’ve encountered in almost 30 years of dealing with professional and major college coaches at communicating with the media. That’s a list that includes Chuck Daly, Bo Schembechler, Tom Izzo, Sparky Anderson and Scotty Bowman, too. (Aside: Bowman is something of an outlier for me. I found him a confounding interview and some players despised him, but others – and, generally, in the latter camp were guys you’d want in your foxhole – loved playing for him.) I’ll be surprised when Van Gundy’s time is finished with the Pistons if he’s not regarded in the company of Daly and Larry Brown as the greatest coaches in franchise history.

Kumar (Novi, Mich.): If Greg Monroe decides he wants to be part of the team and the Pistons want him, too, can they sign him to a contract, starting this year, before the season opens or later, even if they have signed him already for the qualifying option?

Langlois: I have been assured that Monroe can’t sign a contract extension or a new long-term contract with the Pistons, or anyone else, for that matter. Once he signed the qualifying offer, that was it. He can’t negotiate a contract now until next July 1. He also can’t be traded without his consent, and given that the team acquiring him would not have his Bird rights – as the Pistons would – then a Monroe trade at this point is also unlikely.

Larry (St. Clair Shores, Mich.): Do you think Stan Van Gundy will still go for Chase Budinger after acquiring Joel Anthony?

Langlois: If he was thinking about it before acquiring Anthony, I doubt that acquisition changes his or Jeff Bower’s thinking much. There was a report last week naming the Pistons as one of the teams that Minnesota had engaged in talks regarding Budinger, but they’ve probably engaged in talks with at least a handful of teams in recent weeks. If Budinger’s healthy, his shooting, size and athleticism makes him a useful player and I’m sure Van Gundy would get the most out of him given his ability to make use of players who can space the floor. If Minnesota is looking to move Budinger without taking back salary, then I’m not sure the Pistons are a match given the fact they have 16 guaranteed contracts already. One other issue they would have to consider: Budinger has a player option for the 2015-16 season at $5 million that would affect their cap space on July 1.

Demarcus (Lawrenceville, Ga.): It seems as if you’ve expressed that it isn’t feasible for the Pistons to trade Josh Smith if there isn’t a heavy rotation-eligible big man coming in return. Am I missing something or does Stan Van Gundy not have enough confidence in Jonas Jerebko to play 20-plus minutes per game? If he does have that confidence, couldn’t Tony Mitchell and any fringe big be the emergency plan and play whatever menial minutes that might remain?

Langlois: Van Gundy likes Jerebko just fine. He’s said almost nothing but positive things about him since June. After just a few days of training camp, he said the rotation would be at least nine deep but more likely 10, specifically citing Jerebko’s play as the factor in considering the higher number. But he likely doesn’t see him as a traditional power forward. For instance, he didn’t play Jerebko in the first half at Atlanta and might not have played him at all except for Josh Smith’s twisted ankle that kept him out for most of the second half. He said after the game that he thought it would be a tough matchup for Jerebko. There are plenty of perimeter-oriented power forwards in today’s NBA, stretch fours, and those are the matchups Van Gundy has in mind, it appears, for Jerebko.

De-Von (Indianapolis): This is a crazy question but do you think Stan Van Gundy should go for Andre Iguodala? He’s definitely Pistons material and can start at small forward. The Pistons could trade Will Bynum and Jonas Jerebko and throw in Tony Mitchell or Kyle Singler. Golden State might do it for cap relief and they could use Harrison Barnes for Iguodala. It’s crazy, but Iggy might come off the bench in Golden State.

Langlois: You said it, not me, De-Von: crazy. Golden State has pretty lofty expectations this season and Iguodala is a big piece of the puzzle, right behind Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. If they’re trading Iguodala, it’s impossible to envision a scenario in which they aren’t getting back another marquee player. But he fits their puzzle so well, I don’t see a fit. (Your question obviously came in just before the Bynum trade to Boston, but it doesn’t alter the bigger picture. This doesn’t strike me as a realistic deal.)

Nancy (Gladstone, Mich.): We used to be able to see the preseason games. What happened? That’s where we’d see how the new players were doing.

Langlois: I can’t speak to this with absolute certainty, Nancy, but I’m pretty sure FS Detroit has aired two preseason games in most recent years. This year, they only aired one – the Oct. 12 matinee at Washington. (Also, the Pistons played seven preseason games this season, one less than in other recent years.) I’m told the crux of the problem for them was that Red Wings games conflicted with Pistons preseason games and there was a reluctance to use FS Plus for preseason games. Cheer up, though: The regular season starts next week and you’ll be able to see all 82 games – 80 on FS Detroit and two on ESPN.