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Langlois: It’s not unusual at all, Sharon, for injured veteran players not to sit courtside during games. Tayshaun Prince has a ruptured disc in his back. I’m guessing the worst thing he could do would be to sit in street clothes, behind the players’ bench, in a folding chair, trying to get up and down all night or crane his neck to see what’s going on. Rip was at the game taking treatment on his injured ankle. I did see him outside the locker room after the game and asked him about his ankle. He’s still a ways away from getting back. When I asked if he thought he’d make it back for any of the four-game West Coast trip that starts next week, he indicated it wasn’t likely. And happy belated birthday!
Langlois: I got several Mailbag entries similar to yours, Odeh. Everyone in the organization understands that winning over a skeptical fan base isn’t going to happen overnight, but I’m seeing a pretty healthy percentage of fans who are optimistic for the future and excited to see the development in the present. They’re going into a particularly brutal seven-game stretch right now with five tough road games and home games against Dallas and Cleveland. It’s not a good time to be without Prince and Hamilton, but they’ve shown they’ll compete every time out. This stretch might knock them back, record-wise at least, but when they get back to full strength, and the schedule straightens out, I think they’ll put together a nice run and wind up in the thick of the playoff race.
Langlois: It’s pretty indisputable that Stuckey is farther ahead of the game at 23 than Billups was, partly due to opportunity, partly due to injury, partly due to the greater stability Stuckey has enjoyed – though to say there was much stability in his second season would be a stretch. It’s also worth remembering that even the Chauncey Billups who came to the Pistons to start the 2002-03 season was a long way from an elite point guard. By the end of that season, it was pretty clear Joe Dumars had landed a bargain with the mid-level exception, but at the midway point of that first season – which was Billups’ sixth year in the NBA – the jury was still out.
Langlois: He doesn’t seem to get many breaks, Bryan. Some of it is proving yourself to veteran officials. He’s got to resist getting frustrated and reacting by the lack of calls he gets. If he gets the reputation as a whiner, it’ll only get worse. So far, he hasn’t fallen into that trap. It will help when he becomes more selective in choosing when to go hard to the basket and when to pull up, and it will help further when he has more success finishing without getting his shot blocked or altered on plays where he clearly isn’t fouled. He’s getting better, generally, in both areas, by the way. When he gets a little more solidly established and becomes a more consistent finisher, the calls will start falling his way more and more frequently.
Langlois: We’ve had daily updates, pretty much, in my True Blue Pistons blog, Andy. The current blog entry has Hamilton saying it doesn’t look good for him to return in the next 10 days or so while the Pistons are on their four-game Western swing. He’s day to day, but he hasn’t even begun to run yet. Once he starts running, then it’s on to the next step – being able to cut and jump and lasting through a full practice. When that happens, he’ll be ready to resume playing. But we haven’t taken the first step down that path yet.
Langlois: Only in the same way they keep an eye on all segments of the basketball world – college, D-League, international pro leagues, etc. They do not own the rights to any of the players you mentioned any longer. They could reach out and sign any one of them if both sides agreed to a deal, but they don’t hold exclusive rights to any player not currently on their roster other than Trent Plaisted, the 2008 second-rounder playing in Croatia.
Langlois: Decided not to wear them this season, simple as that. The Pistons are going with just their home whites and road blues this season.
Langlois: Been getting this one quite a bit, Dingo, but there’s nothing beyond a numbers game to report. If you were to make a checklist of all the things a player needs to succeed in the NBA, Summers might get more boxes checked off right now than Austin Daye or Jonas Jerebko. But Jerebko is more ready to defend NBA starting-caliber forwards and that got him the starting nod. Daye is simply a unique offensive talent whose strengths outweigh whatever weaknesses he might have. Think of the way John Kuester has used Jason Maxiell and Chris Wilcox so far. He has room for four big men and he wants to see which one among those two can better fill that role. The winner of the competition will be in the rotation. The loser will be on the outside looking in. There might not be a hair’s breadth between them, but Kuester has to decide which one plays and which one doesn’t. Same thing at work with the rookies. When Prince and Hamilton are healthy, he might have room for only one, if that. With both of them out, he’s patching the hole at small forward with Jerebko and Daye. That doesn’t mean Summers isn’t capable of filling in, as well, just that Kuester had to make a decision of who fits best with the makeup of the team at the moment and Jerebko, for his defense and pro experience in Italy, got the first call, and Daye, for his unique skills on such a long frame, got the next call. One specific area where Summers probably needs more work is defending on the perimeter. At Georgetown, especially after Jeff Green and then Roy Hibbert left, they needed him to defend in the post.
Langlois: Not a great one, Boris, but it’s a good question and I’ll do my best to answer it. I’ve heard one theory is that the explosive athleticism Wilcox had coming out of Maryland – always the quality that endeared him most to NBA scouts – has eroded a little bit due to an assortment of minor injuries. Don’t know if that’s so or no; he’s made some astounding put-back dunks in preseason and into the season in limited minutes. I sense, because of the quick hooks he got even in some preseason games, that he hasn’t been as assignment-sure as John Kuester’s other big men. He’s made some poor decisions with the ball. He’s been foul prone. And he hasn’t really put up much in the way of numbers, perhaps most surprisingly of all. Aside from the injuries to Prince and Hamilton, it’s fair to say that Wilcox’s performance has probably been the biggest disappointment of an otherwise encouraging season so far. Kuester, though, continues to insist Wilcox is showing signs of turning the corner in practice and will be a factor before it’s all over.
Langlois: Not in the big picture, Sue. Right now, with Prince and Hamilton hurt, Afflalo would probably be giving the Pistons 15 to 20 solid minutes a night at both spots. But after the Pistons signed Ben Gordon and drafted Austin Daye, DaJuan Summers and Jonas Jerebko, they were amply endowed at the positions where Afflalo lent depth. They traded him, along with Walter Sharpe, to clear about $2 million in cap space that Joe Dumars needed to sign a No. 4 big man to go with Jason Maxiell, Kwame Brown and Charlie Villanueva. (At the time, Ben Wallace had yet to sign for the veteran’s minimum.) The Pistons used that money to sign Chris Wilcox. So far, Wilcox hasn’t given the Pistons great return, but it’s early, and the contract he signed – one year at $3 million, with a second year for the same amount at Wilcox’s option – doesn’t hamper the Pistons’ roster flexibility going forward.
Langlois: Legitimate concern, Paul, but John Kuester vows to be smart about managing Ben’s minutes, especially in back-to-back sets. Unless and until he shows signs of a dropoff, I’d expect him to continue to be used for somewhere between 25 and 32 minutes a night. He still gives them their best chance to win.
Langlois: If they’re both still missing when the Pistons hit the road for the West Coast next week – and that’s looking at least like a strong possibility at this point – then no one with the Pistons will be looking at it as a blessing, David. In short doses, yeah, it’s nice to get the playing time for the kids and see them make progress. But if the goal is to compete for a playoff spot, and it is, then watching the kids make progress but losing ground to the competition isn’t a favorable tradeoff. Now, if they can tread water through the next 10 days or so, and steal a game or two on that crushing four-game trip – back-to-backs at the Lakers and Portland, then another at Utah and Phoenix – and then get their two veterans back, things will look really good heading into the Thanksgiving to Christmas stretch.
Langlois: This year? Sell. I’m as high on Stuckey as anybody, but there are too many ahead of him in the East right now – Arenas, Rondo, Harris, Nelson, Mo Williams, perhaps Derrick Rose and Jose Calderon – at least from a perception standpoint. When the Pistons get back at full strength, when Stuckey is fully acclimated to John Kuester’s system, when he gets just a little more attuned to the balance between attacking and pulling up, and when his jump shot starts falling a little more consistently, he has the potential to be a great point guard. But it’s not going to come together fast enough for him to crack this year’s All-Star roster.
Langlois: Give him your write-in vote, Clark. Can’t fault the NBA on this one. At the time the ballot was being put together, even the Pistons would have been surprised to learn Ben Wallace was going to work his way into the rotation as a fixture, never mind as a starter, never mind as a guy looking very much like an All-Defensive Team candidate.
Langlois: A little too early to start making historical comparisons, James, but I’ve thought since Summer League performances that this rookie class was going to have a far greater impact than predraft predictions, when it was being compared to some of the least productive crops in history. Drafts tend to be judged by the presence of potential superstars at the top of it, so a draft that has Greg Oden and Kevin Durant or Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley – never mind that, today, only two of those players appear likely to become franchise players – is labeled strong and one like last year’s, where after Blake Griffin there was no one the scouts were betting on for future All-Star appearances, let alone superstardom, gets slammed. But the Pistons, even going into the draft, thought they’d wind up with at least two good players from their three second-round picks – and then they were floored when both DaJuan Summers and Jonas Jerebko fell to them at 35 and 39. The draft looks like it was especially loaded at point guard, with players like Jonny Flynn, Brandon Jennings, Ty Lawson, Stephen Curry and Jeff Teague are already making contributions and several others with lesser opportunities to date have shown promise.
Langlois: Can’t do it, Santiago. A contract of less than four years in length cannot be extended. Bynum signed a two-year deal in the summer of 2008. He’ll be a restricted free agent next July 1. Keep in mind that restricted free agents who are coveted by their original teams almost never get away unless the original team is facing some economic difficulty, such as Milwaukee having to watch Charlie Villanueva and Ramon Sessions leave last summer and the Lakers letting Ronny Turiaf go the summer before that to avoid heavy luxury-tax consequences. I’d say it’s at least a 90 percent likelihood that Bynum is back with the Pistons next season, and that’s probably understating it. Remember, too, that Bynum is extremely happy to be a Piston and grateful to Joe Dumars for bringing him back from Europe at a time he had zero guaranteed offers from the NBA.
