True Blue Pistons
The Official Pistons.com Blog

Award-winning journalist Keith Langlois, most recently lead sports columnist at The Oakland Press, joined Pistons.com as the web site editor on October 2, 2006. Langlois, who brings over 27 years of professional sports journalism experience to Palace Sports & Entertainment, serves as Pistons.com's official beat writer and covers the team on a daily basis.
Questions and comments on Keith's posts can be submitted via the Pistons Mailbag. Or follow Keith on Twitter.
Josh Harrellson’s path to the NBA was the road less taken. It wasn’t the four-lane freeway of AAU stardom and courtships from a college basketball who’s who, but country roads pocked with orange construction barrels.
His one big break, though, came as a Kentucky senior when the type of bad timing that had previously besieged him struck incoming hot-shot UK freshman Enes Kanter. While Kanter fought a losing battle with the NCAA over eligibility, Harrellson benefitted by playing nearly 30 minutes a game for a team that John Calipari and a freshman point guard named Brandon Knight would carry all the way to the Final Four.
The Pistons caught an eyeful of Harrellson that winter of 2010-11, assistant general manager George David spending many nights in Lexington. The Pistons needed a big man to pair with Greg Monroe and Kanter – who would become the No. 3 pick of Utah despite never playing a college game – intrigued them. Kentucky practices were the only opportunity to see him play as his eligibility battle dragged on.
Continue reading Harrellson Makes 15 >>
Posted Wednesday, August 21, 2013
The summer’s been great. Busy, but great. I got married on July 27 and then went on a honeymoon to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico for a week. Right at the end of it, I got the call from Detroit saying the Pistons were going to sign me. Flew back in that night to Louisville and flew right here the next day to sign my contract, then flew to New York right after I signed here that same day and went to the Rookie Transition Program.
After that, I had a little camp in Louisville for a couple of days. It was T-Will’s camp – Terrence Williams, from Seattle like me, the first one from Seattle who went to Louisville, who I’ve known since I was a kid – and we had fun there. Now I’m here in Detroit, working out, and I’ll be here right until training camp starts.
Hearing the news that the Pistons had made the trade for Brandon Jennings and there was a roster spot for me was a great wedding present, absolutely. I was very excited about that. I found out on my honeymoon and I couldn’t wait to get back on the court.
Continue reading Summer School: Peyton Siva >>
Posted Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Andre Drummond turned 20 this month and now he’s starting to flex his leadership muscles. Seeing the dividends that spending much of the summer before his rookie season working out in Auburn Hills under Pistons assistant coaches yielded, he urged the three 2013 draftees to show up early, as well.
“I got Peyton (Siva) to come to town, Tony’s (Mitchell) coming in the next day or two and Kentavious (Caldwell-Pope), too,” Drummond said. “I’m making sure all the rookies come in. Last year, I was here real early. I’m like, ‘You guys need to get here early. Just because you made it to the league, don’t think you can come back when all the veterans come back.’ ”
After Siva experienced his first brisk workout, he acknowledged to Drummond that he felt winded and was happy to have the six weeks until training camp opens to acclimate.
Continue reading Taking Charge>>
Posted Monday, August 19, 2013
Andre Drummond soaks up a little knowledge from Rasheed Wallace every day they spend together. One of the most searing lessons so far: Don’t engage him in a game of H-O-R-S-E.
“I played with him the other day – it wasn’t fun,” Drummond grinned after a Monday workout. What did coach Wallace throw at his prodigy?
“Everything. The little side corner shot with his feet against the out-of-bounds line. The shot from the track line (that runs behind the basket), over the hoop, made it in. And then the two-ball thing. He’s a natural. I don’t know why I did it to myself. I have no idea why I did it.”
Rasheed didn’t pitch a shutout, though.
“I got him with a couple of things. He can’t dunk still, so I had to do some things he couldn’t do.”
Continue reading Lessons Learned>>
Posted Friday, August 16, 2013
There can’t be many more daunting challenges in the NBA spectrum than the one Peyton Siva stared down last month. As the No. 56 pick in the 2013 draft, the Louisville rookie went with the Pistons to Summer League knowing he had a little more than a week to give a team with more than $20 million in cap space to fill their roster a reason to save one of the 15 precious spots for him.
He also knew the Pistons wanted to showcase the players they expected at the time to be a part of their 2013-14 roster, including top picks Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Tony Mitchell and blossoming star center Andre Drummond.
Now factor in the Summer League variable of unfamiliarity among teammates and the inevitable chaos that ensues when players desperate to win a contract, either with an NBA or foreign-based team, play with frantic energy, and an environment that can make a point guard look overwhelmed can be easily created.
Continue reading Summer Review: Siva >>
Posted Thursday, August 15, 2013
(Editor’s note: Fourth in a series that looks at the five first- or second-year Pistons who participated in Summer League practices or games last month. Next: Peyton Siva.)
Andre Drummond might not have participated in more than one Summer League game if not for the major chunk of his rookie season he missed recovering from a back injury. He probably wouldn’t have suited up for more than a couple if not for the need to get in peak shape for the Team USA minicamp later in July. And he surely wouldn’t have played in all but one of the five but for the groin injury that limited Slava Kravtsov to just two games.
But once Drummond was all in, he figured he might as well go ahead and dominate Summer League.
And so he did.
“What I said to him after Summer League was, ‘You went down and did what you were supposed to do. You’re supposed to go down and be a presence and every time you step on the floor, you have to be a presence,’ ” Joe Dumars said. “He’s growing. We want to see him continue to grow, but he’s taken all the right steps.”
Drummond stuffed the stat sheet prodigiously in Orlando, averaging 15.5 points, 14.8 rebounds, 2.5 steals and 2.0 blocked shots a game. The Pistons asked him to stretch his boundaries there, giving him more post touches in a week than he probably got all of his rookie season, and it resulted in 20 turnovers over his four games, all part of the learning process.
Continue reading Summer Review: Drummond >>
Posted Wednesday, August 14, 2013
(Editor’s note: Third in a series that looks at the five first- or second-year Pistons who participated in Summer League practices or games last month. Next: Andre Drummond.)
Over his final three Summer League games, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope averaged 18 points, shot 19 free throws and found his 3-point stroke. If there were sighs of relief, they weren’t coming from Joe Dumars and Maurice Cheeks. The No. 8 pick in June’s draft had already made an impression on them, even as he missed 13 of 14 shots from the 3-point line over his first two games.
“After the first couple of games, when his shot wasn’t falling, Mo said, ‘I love this kid. I love what he’s doing on the court.’ You don’t worry about a guy’s shot the first day, the first time he steps on the court,” Dumars said. “You watch to see how he plays, how he adjusts, how he’s defending, running, getting into people, rebounding, steals. He was doing all those things. Those are the things that jump out and caught our eye.”
From the first practice run by Maz Trakh, who accompanied Cheeks from the staff at Oklahoma City, Caldwell-Pope’s quick hands were apparent. His practices followed the course of his five-game Summer League performance – the shot wasn’t there at first, but the totality of the rookie’s game emerged day by day. At 6-foot-6 with long arms and quick feet, he’s a candidate to instantly help the Pistons on the defensive perimeter even if the offensive adjustment isn’t immediate.
Continue reading Summer Review: KCP >>
Posted Tuesday, August 13, 2013
(Editor’s note: Second in a series that looks at the five first- or second-year Pistons who participated in Summer League practices or games last month. Next: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.)
The Pistons will go into the 2013-14 season asking of Tony Mitchell what they asked of Andre Drummond a season ago: No matter when and where your opportunity to play might arise, make sure that every time you step on the floor your athleticism makes itself felt.
“His message is to be the best athlete on the floor at all times,” Pistons assistant general manager George David said. “And what I mean is, it can’t just be for scoring. He’s got to use his athleticism to impact a number of different things on the court. The more things he can impact with athleticism, the quicker and the more impressive his improvement is going to be.”
With Drummond coming farther faster than anyone could have anticipated and with the addition of Josh Smith in free agency, the Pistons are now vastly more athletic up front than they were heading into the 2012-13 season. Greg Monroe is entrenched ahead of Mitchell on the depth charter at power forward, Smith figures to spend a good chunk of every night playing there when Monroe isn’t, and veterans Charlie Villanueva and Jonas Jerebko further crowd the position.
Continue reading Summer Review: Tony Mitchell >>
Posted Monday, August 12, 2013
In a summer when the Pistons made waves, no one created a bigger splash than Josh Smith. Joe Dumars met with the nine-year veteran at the first opportunity when the door to free agency swung open on July 1 and less than a week later the two sides came to a contract agreement.
With Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond already established as frontcourt starters, the pitch to Smith was obvious. He’s penciled in as Detroit’s starter at small forward, where his length, athleticism and defensive prowess should give the Pistons consistent matchup advantages.
On the surface, that would appear to limit the opportunities for Kyle Singler, who moved into the Pistons’ starting lineup in the season’s ninth game as a rookie and never left. The Pistons won that night, after a nightmarish 0-8 start, and no one regarded it as mere coincidence. Singler played in all 82 games, averaging 8.8 points and 4.0 rebounds in 28 minutes and shooting a respectable 35 percent from the 3-point line.
Continue reading Summer Review: Kyle Singler >>
Posted Thursday, August 8, 2013
Among the 24 players who suited up for the USA Basketball Showcase in Las Vegas last month that included Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond, there were seven point guards and three shooting guards. All three shooting guards – Dion Waiters, Klay Thompson and DeMar DeRozan – lined up for the same team.
The guards on the White team – Drummond’s team – were Jrue Holiday, Kyrie Irving, Mike Conley and Ty Lawson. There was never a moment that team didn’t have two point guards on the court.
In scrimmages over the three days of minicamp practices, more often than not the backcourt combinations were point guard-point guard.
If you’re looking for trends, the one emerging isn’t that NBA teams are looking to pair point guards so much as they’re going to be more inclined to put their two best guards on the floor together, regardless of position – or perceived position, more specifically.
Continue reading Point Guard Possibilities >>
Posted Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Unlike a season ago, when they hit the road for a brutal six-game trek through the Western Conference less than 24 hours after a crushing opening-night home loss to Houston, the Pistons will get a chance to gather some momentum at The Palace in the 2013-14 season’s first week.
The Pistons host Washington on Oct. 30 to open the season, play at Memphis two nights later and then return for three more home games before embarking on their annual November trip west while the circus takes over The Palace.
Those first five games will give first-year coach Maurice Cheeks the opportunity to fit seven newcomers into the mix among a more friendly environment, but three of those games come against legitimate NBA title contenders Memphis, Indiana and Oklahoma City. The Pacers and Thunder comes to The Palace on Nov. 5 and Nov. 8. The Pistons would do well to build momentum fast, too, because they’ll be on the road plenty down the home stretch of the regular season.
Continue reading Schedule Breakdown >>
Posted Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Joe Dumars and John Hammond were both in Las Vegas late last month checking in on their young big men with eyes on cracking the United States national team roster, Detroit’s Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe and Milwaukee’s Larry Sanders. But the Pistons and Bucks bosses left for home without broaching the possibility of swapping point guards.
The next day, on July 26, Hammond called his former boss and asked, “Do you have any interest in Brandon Jennings?”
“I don’t know,” Dumars replied, intrigued but cautious. “Do I?”
It wasn’t that Dumars needed to be convinced of Jennings’ talent or his fit on a roster that, in his mind, needed someone with more of a playmaking bent at point guard. It was that he feared the price would be too high. When Hammond let him know he wasn’t asking for any draft picks, merely a trade based on Brandon Knight and the contracts of Khris Middleton and Slava Kravtsov to satisfy salary-cap parameters, the wheels were set in motion for a deal that came together very quickly.
Continue reading Detroit Lob City >>
Posted Monday, August 5, 2013
Peyton Siva got married on the last Saturday of July. His wedding present from the Pistons arrived a few days later. Last week’s trade that sent three players to Milwaukee in exchange for Brandon Jennings opened two roster spots, clearing the way for Siva to spend the 2013-14 season in the NBA instead of looking for a spot overseas.
The Pistons signed Siva, whom they drafted with the 56th pick in June and then watched as he made a strong case during Orlando Summer League to stick, to a contract on Monday.
The flip side of the Jennings trade is that it further crowds Siva’s point guard position. He’ll come to camp No. 4 on the depth chart behind Jennings and two players with long Pistons histories signed as free agents in July, Chauncey Billups and Will Bynum. Brandon Knight, who went to Milwaukee in the trade along with Khris Middleton and Slava Kravtsov, could have moved over to shooting guard to ease the logjam, but Jennings is strictly a point guard.
So is Siva, and in Orlando he showed why an NBA team would want to keep him around. Over four games – Siva sat out the finale with a minor ankle sprain – spanning 104 minutes, Siva committed a mere six turnovers while racking up 24 assists. In an especially frenetic opener, filled with Brooklyn Nets hopefuls trying to crack the back end of a top-heavy roster on minimum-wage contracts and playing with appropriate desperation, Siva committed one of the game’s 45 turnovers.
Continue reading A Spot for Siva >>
Posted Friday, August 2, 2013
As established NBA stars with open invitations to return to Team USA for next summer’s World Cup sign on, it might leave no more than a handful of open berths for the 28 players who gathered last week in Las Vegas hoping to catch the eye of USA Basketball officials.
It behooved all of them to make the most of their opportunities to impress. Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond did just that, Pistons assistant general manager George David said.
“I thought both guys were able to show the USA Basketball staff the reason they were invited,” David said. “Greg was able to show, as a post player, his great feel for the game – for passing, for making the right play. He showed his ability to post up and create scoring opportunities for himself.
“I thought Andre did so, as well. He had a great presence on the floor and was able to show what he could add through his ability to play above the rim. What I was hoping for was each guy to be able to demonstrate what they do best and basically show why they got the invitations. I came away with tremendous pride for what both of them were able to do in the week, not only in the game, but in the week. I told both of them they should feel good about themselves for what they showed.”
Continue reading Making Their Case >>
Posted Thursday, August 1, 2013
Joe Dumars had a checklist of attributes he hoped to add with a lottery pick and more than $20 million in cap space. He added athleticism with Josh Smith, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Tony Mitchell. He injected perimeter shooting with Chauncey Billups, Gigi Datome and Caldwell-Pope. He got bigger on the wings with Smith and Caldwell-Pope.
The lottery pick expended, the cap space allocated, he then looked at the roster, figured he had a team ready not only to make a playoff push but perhaps to arrive at mid-April making a high seed very uncomfortable with the idea of a first-round matchup against the Detroit Pistons, and decided to seize the opportunity to land a point guard closer to being ready to lead that charge.
Brandon Jennings arrives in Detroit feeling on the one hand liberated, his trying experience with the quirks of restricted free agency finally behind him, and on the other hand, no doubt, feeling a little agitated that among the many point guards from the landmark 2009 draft class who’ve already signed lucrative extensions with their original teams or are in line to do so – Steph Curry, Jrue Holiday, Ty Lawson, Ricky Rubio – he was overlooked.
If there’s a chip on his shoulder, he’ll have to make room in a locker room that figures to be crowded by newcomers with similar motivational impetus.
Continue reading Something to Prove >>
Posted Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Eleven summers ago, Joe Dumars used every available avenue to overhaul a Pistons roster in need of a transfusion. He drafted Tayshaun Prince, signed Chauncey Billups as a free agent and traded for Rip Hamilton.
He didn’t rub his hands and proclaim the Pistons championship worthy after all of that, and Wednesday's trade that brings Brandon Jennings on board from Milwaukee might not provide the final piece to an overhaul that includes the recent free-agent acquisition of Josh Smith and the drafting of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
Then again, the 2002 Pistons were short one building block up front to pair with Ben Wallace, and the 2013 Pistons start with Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond – players whose promise was recognized by USA Basketball with their invitation to last week’s minicamp in Las Vegas.
Adding Jennings surely ups their firepower. A four-year veteran, Jennings averaged 17.4 points per game last season, when he shared Milwaukee’s backcourt with Monta Ellis. He averaged 19.5 the previous season, when Ellis was acquired midway through the season.
Continue reading Pistons Add Punch >>
Posted Tuesday, July 30, 2013
A number of high-profile college basketball coaches dropped in on USA Basketball’s Las Vegas minicamp last week, but none had a more vested interest than Kentucky’s John Calipari. Four of his recent UK players were among the 28 camp participants, and his 2013-14 Kentucky roster will be loaded with future Team USA candidates.
While there, Calipari spotted Maurice Cheeks, with whom he spent the 1999-2000 season as assistant coaches under Larry Brown in Philadelphia. He congratulated Cheeks on his new job as Pistons head coach and gave him an earful about what he could expect from Brandon Knight, Calipari’s point guard on Kentucky’s 2011 Final Four team.
“Mo is one of the great people, great basketball people,” Calipari told me. “I hadn’t seen him in a while and told him how happy I am for him. They’re going to be great for each other. We were just talking about DeMarcus (Cousins). DeMarcus should be starting for me. These kids are 18, 19 and now they become 20 and you expect them to be 25. They’re not.
Continue reading Knight Booster>>
Posted Monday, July 29, 2013
Kevin Durant was on his way to greatness before Maurice Cheeks joined the Oklahoma City coaching staff four years ago. But Cheeks helped to accelerate the process, says a source close to the situation. That source: Kevin Durant.
“I loved being around him,” Durant told me in Las Vegas last week, where he showed up on the final practice day of Team USA’s four-day minicamp in which Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond participated. “He’s helped me so much as a player. There were nights I’d be playing so terrible and he calmed me down and I turned my game around. He was a great teacher for us and he’s going to do so well with those younger guys in Detroit.”
A consistent theme I’ve heard in talking with more than a half-dozen NBA sources who’ve crossed paths with Cheeks over the years is that he has a way of instilling confidence in his players. Durant added to the chorus.
Continue reading An A-OK from OKC>>
Posted Friday, July 26, 2013
LAS VEGAS – Even if their week under the scorching Las Vegas sun and the equally withering scrutiny of Team USA officials doesn’t yield a berth on the 2014 national team – and they won’t know anything on that score for months – Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond loved their week in the desert.
“When you’re able to play with players like this, it’s not normal – at all,” Monroe said of the three days of practices and Thursday finale, in which both players put their best foot forward as Drummond’s White team pulled away in the fourth quarter for a 128-106 win. “Some people might work out in different cities and you might be working out with other pros, but the level of talent here is kind of hard to mimic. This is a rare opportunity to get better in the middle of summer.”
“The caliber of players out there, we’re all getting up and down the floor really well and we’re pushing ourselves to get better,” Drummond said. “For me, it was a learning experience. All the other guys are older than me and some of them have been at this camp before. It was fun for me to be out here and compete against some of the guys.”
Monroe finished with 10 points, six rebounds, two assists, a blocked shot and a steal in 18 minutes, scoring three times at the rim in the third quarter, once on a dazzling spin move with a right-hand finish that left DeAndre Jordan flat-footed. Drummond logged 13 minutes but made them count, scoring 11 points to go with six rebounds, a pretty assist and a blocked shot.
Continue reading Best of the Best >>
Posted Wednesday, July 24, 2013
LAS VEGAS – Mr. Big Shot really is a big shot. Chauncey Billups would have been in Las Vegas this week even if he hadn’t chosen to return to the Pistons. Having Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond in town just made it a little more interesting for him.
Billups, who signed last week as a free agent after being traded from the Pistons nearly five years ago, is among the 11 people on USA Basketball’s board of directors as an athlete representative. So he’s been on hand for practices the past three days on UNLV’s campus with a natural curiosity to see how the two young Pistons big men have fared. He’s bullish on their futures.
“Drummond, he’s a freak athlete,” said Billups, who had dinner Tuesday night with both of his new teammates. “He’s very, very young, wants to learn, wants to be really good and I think he will be because of that. He doesn’t mind working. You love that about a young guy, that he doesn’t mind the grind. I love that about him.
“Greg is a little older, a little more polished in his game. Very smart player, very good player. I think I’m really going to enjoy playing with him, as well, because he’s smart. I love basketball IQ – being able to outsmart teams, beat them mentally, not only physically. Those two guys have got bright futures, man.”
Continue reading Vegas: Day Three >>
Posted Wednesday, July 24, 2013
LAS VEGAS – It doesn’t matter how short you want to make the list of coaches who can speak with authority to the viability of a Greg Monroe-Andre Drummond frontcourt pairing, John Thompson is on it.
And the 1999 Hall of Fame inductee loves what he knows of the young Pistons big men and what he saw from them on day two of USA Basketball’s four-day minicamp here on Tuesday.
Thompson coached some of college basketball’s most dominant big men during his time at Georgetown – including Patrick Ewing, Dikembe Mutombo and Alonzo Mourning, the latter pair overlapping – and says he would have relished the chance to coach Monroe and Drummond.
“I think anybody would like to have a chance – you become a good coach if you have good players,” said Thompson, who was the U.S. national team coach for the 1988 Olympics. “I like the attitude of those guys, too. I think the two travel simultaneously together, their attitude as well as their ability to play. I like that. I like what’s going on.”
Thompson holds a special fondness for Monroe, recruited to Georgetown by son John Thompson III, and playfully patted Monroe on the head as he addressed the 28 Team USA hopefuls following practice at the invitation of national team coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Continue reading Vegas: Day Two >>
Posted Tuesday, July 23, 2013
LAS VEGAS – First he tried to recruit them, then he had to coach against them in the Big East Conference. Now, finally, Jim Boeheim gets to put his hands on Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond.
Monroe and Drummond went through the paces for Monday’s opening day of USA Basketball’s four-day minicamp and Boeheim, longtime Syracuse coach and Mike Krzyzewski’s national team assistant, saw the growth in the two young Pistons big men who played for Boeheim’s two biggest rivals, Georgetown and Connecticut.
“Andre has got such a physical presence on the court,” Boeheim said. “You forget he’s still young, but he’s got such a presence out there and he’s going to get better. People have to remember, the Olympics is still three years away. How much better is he going to get in three years?
“Greg Monroe is a tremendous, skilled big guy. He can shoot the ball, he can pass and he’s got just a great future.”
In his time with Krzyzewski, who has been men’s national team coach since 2005 and has led the United States to Olympic gold in 2008 and ’12 and to the 2010 World Championship gold medal, Boeheim has seen young players’ growth accelerated time and again by the experience of competing against peers hoping to land Team USA berths.
Continue reading Vegas: Day One >>
Posted Monday, July 22, 2013
LAS VEGAS – For Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond, the quest for Olympic gold begins in a city built on the fantasy of fortunes to be won. The two young Pistons cornerstones will participate in USA Basketball’s four-day minicamp here starting today, including three days of practice and concluding with a Thursday night scrimmage.
They’ll arrive fresh off of Summer League, where Monroe participated in five practices earlier this month and Drummond in practices plus four of the five games. As both made clear in Orlando, they’re aware of the stakes: This is a first hurdle on the way to being considered for a spot on the United States men’s national team for next summer’s FIBA Basketball World Cup in Spain and the 2016 Olympic games in Brazil.
Drummond will be the youngest NBA player among the camp’s 28 participants – Indiana’s George Hill and Chicago’s Taj Gibson were late withdrawals – and second-youngest among all players only to Oklahoma State sophomore guard Marcus Smart. He and Creighton senior Doug McDermott, the only collegians, recently competed with the national team at the World University games in Russia.
Beyond the individual honor of being chosen by USA Basketball to compete for a national team berth, the four days of intense competition can only benefit Monroe and Drummond’s growth as players, Joe Dumars believes.
Posted Thursday, July 18, 2013
They grew up nearly 30 years apart but a stone’s throw from each other on Chicago’s hardscrabble south side. If Will Bynum had chosen to attend the school across the street from where he lived at the time instead of Crane Tech to the west, he’d have worn the same DuSable High uniform Maurice Cheeks donned in the early ’70s.
There were a few moving pieces that had to fit to bring Bynum back to the Pistons – the only NBA team he’s known, save for a 15-game trial with Golden State as a 23-year-old undrafted rookie – but perhaps none was bigger than Cheeks being hired as head coach.
Cheeks wanted Bynum back, he said, and Bynum believed their shared roots would be conducive to an environment that would lead to a healthy and productive relationship.
Continue reading Will to Win>>
Posted Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Championship contenders with top-heavy payrolls dominated by superstars are always on the hunt for veterans who’ve already banked their big paydays, know the end is in sight and want one or two last grabs for the gold. That’s the economic reality of today’s salary-cap NBA. Good players willing to work for cheap are coveted in the same way draft picks and young players on rookie contracts are closely held.
So it says something that Chauncey Billups is coming home to the Pistons. He’s at that point in his career, turning 37 before training camp starts, where he was undeniably and obviously attractive to the Miamis, San Antonios and Oklahoma Cities, teams at the top of the Las Vegas odds to win the 2014 NBA title.
The Pistons aren’t yet in that tier, but neither are they at the other end in the inevitable NBA life cycle of contention-dissolution-rebuilding-emergence. Mr. Big Shot wasn’t coming back to the Pistons to languish through the 25-win seasons. And those days are behind them now.
Continue reading Mr. Big Shot's Back>>
Posted Monday, July 15, 2013
Will Bynum got a chance to observe Luigi “Gigi” Datome work out before the Pistons introduced their two free-agent acquisitions Monday afternoon. As someone who also had to prove his NBA chops by playing internationally, Bynum has a pretty good handle on what it takes to make the leap across the pond successfully.
“He can play,” Bynum said. “He understands the game. He’s going to be able to keep up. He’s going to have to get used to playing at a certain speed and how spaced the court is, but if you can shoot it in this league, there’s always going to be a spot for you. He’s 6-0, he can shoot it, put it on the floor and he’s tough, too. He’s got an edge about him. I was watching him shoot. He can shoot it – easy, too.”
Datome, 25, is a 10-year pro in Italy who was eligible to sign with any NBA team as a free agent because he’d never been drafted. His play over the last two seasons took a marked leap, culminating in an MVP 2012-13 season when he averaged 16.7 points and 5.7 rebounds and carried Virtus Roma to the league championship series. He shot 40 percent from the 3-point line, nearly 50 percent overall and better than 90 percent at the foul line.
Datome suddenly became the most coveted European free agent with San Antonio, Houston, Memphis, Milwaukee and Boston among others reportedly in pursuit in addition to the Pistons.
Continue reading Long-Distance Help>>
Posted Friday, July 12, 2013
ORLANDO – The Pistons didn’t invite E.J. Singler to play on their Summer League team because they thought it would be a heart-warming brothers-as-teammates story. They added him to fill out their roster because they couldn’t help but notice how he led a team devoid of McDonald’s All-Americans to the Pac-12 title and a berth in the NCAA tournament.
Singler wasn’t a McDonald’s All-American, either, unlike big brother Kyle, who was a senior when E.J. was his sophomore wing man as South Medford High won the Oregon state title by knocking off Kevin Love’s Lake Oswego team, avenging a loss in the title game from the year before.
Other than those two years in high school, they’ve never played on the same team. Kyle didn’t play in Orlando’s Summer League games this week, but he took part in the five practices over three days leading to Sunday’s opener. And when E.J. turned the corner and got a step on Kyle in one of the first scrimmages, Kyle administered the same hard foul he might have done a thousand times in the Singler driveway or at a Medford playground.
“Not the first time,” E.J. grinned. “We’ve had battles like that our whole lives. That’s what has made us good competitors – just battling each other since we were young. We’re both used it. We’re fine with it.”
As an undrafted free agent, and with roster spots tight, E.J. faces an uphill battle to be with the Pistons into the regular season, or with any NBA team, for that matter. But he’s prepared, if necessary, to follow in Kyle’s footsteps in another way by playing in Europe.
Continue reading Singler Times 2>>
Posted Friday, July 12, 2013
Atop the Pistons’ Summer League checklist were assessing Andre Drummond’s readiness for taking the next step and gauging whether Kentavious Caldwell-Pope would show the first signs of being ready to handle a spot in the backcourt rotation.
It’s fair to say Joe Dumars, Maurice Cheeks and their staffs will leave Orlando after five practices, five games and a few morning shootarounds feeling as good about those questions as they possibly could, with the caveat that Summer League is merely a snap shot in time.
Caldwell-Pope got progressively better as the week unfolded, though he consistently played hard even while his shots went awry in the first few games. But he saved his best for last, scoring a game-high 20 points to go with five rebounds, four assists and a steal in Friday’s 90-85 loss to Miami.
A few late misses, including a potential tying 3-pointer in the final seconds, dropped Caldwell-Pope’s final shooting line to 7 of 14, but he played an extremely efficient game offensively, with several other good passes that didn’t yield assists. He scored in a variety of ways: jump shots, an artfully banked runner, put-backs and frequent trips to the basket that resulted in six free throws. Over his last two games, Caldwell-Pope was awarded 16 foul shots.
Continue reading Check, Check>>
Posted Thursday, July 11, 2013
There’s a temptation to group Andre Drummond’s Summer League reign of terror under the “man among boys” heading, except then you remember this: He’s the youngest guy on anyone’s roster in Orlando.
Drummond, who doesn’t turn 20 until next month, set an Orlando Summer League record for rebounds with 18 in a 78-77 Pistons win over Miami on Thursday to go with 23 points, two steals and two blocked shots. That puts his three-game averages – and Drummond is almost surely sitting out Friday’s finale – at 15.7 points, 15 rebounds, 2.7 blocks and 2.7 steals a game.
The game was won on Tony Mitchell’s put-back slam of Korie Lucious’ air-ball runner with 1.7 seconds left. Mitchell and Drummond both grabbed seven offensive rebounds, a testament to the huge upgrade in athleticism Detroit’s front office has managed in the past two off-seasons.
Continue reading Man Among Boys>>
Posted Wednesday, July 10, 2013
If you don’t believe in destiny, maybe the story of how Josh Smith became a Detroit Piston persuades you otherwise. Smith was drafted into the NBA a matter of days after the Pistons won the 2004 NBA title. The Atlanta Hawks took him 17th with a pick they got from … the Pistons.
It was partial payment for the Hawks shipping Rasheed Wallace to Detroit, cementing the roster for a team that would play in six straight Eastern Conference finals and back-to-back NBA Finals. A few weeks before free agency opened on July 1, new Pistons coach Maurice Cheeks made an overture to Wallace to join his staff, where he’ll now be coaching … Josh Smith.
The parallels go one layer deeper. Joe Dumars wanted Wallace nine years ago mostly for his versatility – a player as coveted for his defense as his offense, where he put up points in multiple ways – but also for the jolt of personality he’d provide a locker room of great foot soldiers.
Continue reading Smith Destined to Detroit>>
Posted Tuesday, July 9, 2013
ORLANDO – Kentavious Caldwell-Pope knew shots would start falling sooner or later, but he was rooting hard for sooner.
Sooner came in a hurry after halftime of Tuesday’s 79-75 loss to Oklahoma City as the rookie shooting guard out of Georgia scored 11 quick points to give the Pistons a double-digit lead from a halftime tie. He finished with 19 points and made 4 of 10 3-point shots, which included a desperation try at the buzzer with the Pistons trailing by four.
“It did feel good knocking down a couple of 3-pointers, a couple of easy layups and just knocking down jump shots,” he said. “It just felt good getting my offensive game coming.”
While he struggled to a 1 of 14 showing from behind the 3-point line over his first two games, Caldwell-Pope was urged to continue to take shots the offense is designed to produce by the coaching staff. His teammates, as well, had been in his ear to ignore the results and focus on the process.
Continue reading KCP Breaks Out>>
Posted Tuesday, July 9, 2013
ORLANDO – When Kentavious Caldwell-Pope decided to parlay a sizzling second half to his sophomore season into a run at the NBA draft, the assessment from the league’s advisory committee wasn’t particularly glowing. They had him pegged as a borderline first-round pick.
“Late first round, early second round – that was the feedback I was getting,” he told me here as the Pistons participated in Summer League. “But I wouldn’t have been satisfied with that. I thought I could do better than that. I thought I could compete with the players in my draft class and I showed that in Chicago and in the workouts.”
Caldwell-Pope never wavered, never considered returning to Georgia for his junior season, once he made up his mind to test the waters. And it didn’t take him long, once the draft evaluation process kicked up a notch, to justify the faith in himself.
Continue reading Soaring Expectations>>
Posted Monday, July 8, 2013
ORLANDO – Not long after Joe Dumars decided on Maurice Cheeks to coach the Pistons, Cheeks walked up the stairs from his office to Joe D’s and told him he had a crazy idea. What about adding Rasheed Wallace to the staff?
When Cheeks got around to broaching the subject with Wallace, a week after his hiring, here’s the response he got: “What took you so long to ask?”
NBA assistant coaches burn the candle at both ends, in the building at 8 o’clock the morning after a night game to prepare for that day’s practice, staying late to work with players on individual skills or to pore over videotape of the next opponent. Basketball knowledge oozes from Rasheed Wallace’s pores and teammates for years have extolled his knack for communicating that know-how in digestible bites.
But unless he was ready to commit to the 14-hour, 7-day grind, none of that would matter. It wasn’t a question in Wallace’s mind if he could make the player-to-coach transition, it was a question of did he want it?
Continue reading Coach Wallace>>
Posted Monday, July 8, 2013
ORLANDO – Brandon Knight’s second NBA season was a cycle of pain. It started right here, last July, when he played through stabbing plantar fasciitis in Summer League that dogged him throughout the off-season and cost him valuable training time. The only cure? Staying off your feet, which Knight never fully obliged, and so the pain in his foot never really ebbed, though it was sometimes surpassed by various other ailments, including a hyperextended knee and a sprained ankle.
Physical pain begat emotional pain. Losing didn’t help and neither did the dislocation he felt when Jose Calderon arrived via trade and forced his move to shooting guard. But as Knight sat with ice bags on his knees and ankles after a strenuous Summer League practice over the weekend, he felt re-energized and optimistic for his third season to get going. It starts with his belief in the young core and his initial response to the new coaching staff.
“With our coaching staff and how they push us so far, I love it,” he said. “How they motivate our guys, the things they say. It’s not necessarily about Xs and Os, it’s just how they deliver the message.”
As we spoke, free agents were flying off the shelves to other teams. A few hours later, the Pistons would be linked to one of the biggest names available, but Knight wasn’t sweating it out.
Continue reading A Fresh Start >>
Posted Sunday, July 7, 2013
ORLANDO – It was as rough and ragged as you’d expect of a Summer League opener, but one clearly discernible impression emerged from the muck and mire of the Pistons’ turnover-plagued 76-67 win over Brooklyn: Joe Dumars’ draft-night plan to increase his team’s athleticism was accomplished.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope missed his first eight shots Sunday and finished with four points, but made two eye-grabbing plays to underscore the skill set that enticed the Pistons into using the No. 8 pick on the Georgia sophomore.
The only shot he attempted inside of 18 feet in the first half was a dunk where he took off one very long stride from the rim and soared well above it – and a Brooklyn shot-blocker – forcing a hard foul as he crammed the ball into the back rim. Seconds later, he recovered defensively along the baseline from the weak side to swat away a layup attempt.
“Who would’ve thought he was going to come down the lane and try to dunk on somebody that’s a lot bigger than him?” Andre Drummond grinned after the game. “I didn’t know he had it in him. I thought he was just a shooter, but he told me he had bounce and he proved it. I’m looking forward to more stuff he does.”
Continue reading Off and Running >>
Posted Sunday, July 7, 2013
ORLANDO – Tony Mitchell isn’t running from his reputation earned during a disappointing sophomore season at North Texas, though he could probably either run away from it or jump over it if he chose. It’s that athleticism – on full display through three days of Summer League practices leading to today’s opening game – that got him drafted 37th overall by the Pistons last week.
But it will be how he channels his innate gifts that will determine how high Mitchell can fly in the NBA, which flushes great athletes out of its system routinely if they can’t master the discipline required to harness their athleticism.
Mitchell was a part of Brandon Knight’s 2010 high school class and was regarded in his stratosphere as a prospect, too. Rivals.com ranked him the nation’s No. 12 player – Knight was ranked sixth – and called him a “freak athlete with good ball skills.”
But Mitchell, who was ticketed to join Kim English at Missouri, sat out the 2010-11 season due to academic ineligibility before debuting at North Texas with a bang the following season, averaging 14.7 points, 10.3 rebounds and 3.0 blocked shots a game while shooting 57 percent overall and 44 percent from the 3-point line. While Mitchell only shot 41 triples for the season, the accuracy speaks to the rare combination of athleticism and skill he possesses.
Continue reading High Flyer >>
Posted Saturday, July 6, 2013
ORLANDO – Teammates in Detroit, Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond have the chance to be teammates for America. Then again, they just might be two players fighting for one Team USA roster spot.
“It’s going to be fun,” Drummond told me this week as he and Monroe took part in practices leading to the five-game Pistons Summer League schedule. “We most likely will be playing for the same spot, so we’ll push each other to get the best out of ourselves. Hopefully, it’s both of us. We’re just going to be excited to be on the same floor together and to work hard.”
The two franchise cornerstones of the Pistons are among 27 young NBA veterans who have been invited to the Team USA minicamp scheduled for July 22-25 in Las Vegas. The next big international competition comes in August and September 2014 in Spain, the FIBA Basketball World Cup. Monroe and Drummond could put themselves in position to be part of the national team with strong performances in Las Vegas before USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo and head coach Mike Krzyzewski and his staff.
Continue reading Going for Gold >>
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013
ORLANDO – Peyton Siva knows pressure. You don’t run Rick Pitino’s offense for three years as his starting point guard without coping mechanisms in place. You don’t have the ball in your hands for a team that wins the national championship without the ability to slow time when chaos engulfs you.
But the stakes are a little different now. The most dire consequence of a Pitino tongue lashing might be humiliation or a few extra wind sprints. The worst result of an NCAA tournament loss is an early flight home and no celebratory parade.
Now it’s not his pride on the line; it’s his livelihood. Siva parlayed his four-year bachelor of basketball degree from Louisville into the No. 56 pick in last month’s NBA draft. That’s an area of the draft that guarantees not much beyond a press conference and photo opportunity shared with lottery pick Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and early second-rounder Tony Mitchell.
Continue reading Opportunity Knocks >>
Posted Thursday, July 4, 2013
ORLANDO – While most of America brushes beach sand from its toes, puts a fresh bag of ice in the cooler and secures the best fireworks vantage point, the Detroit Pistons will be quietly launching their 2013-14 NBA season in a modest Florida rec center.
Draft picks Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Tony Mitchell and Peyton Siva will be joined by 2012-13 rookies Andre Drummond, Kyle Singler, Khris Middleton, Kim English and Slava Kravtsov as new coach Maurice Cheeks and the coaching staff he’s still assembling gather the team for an evening practice in advance of Sunday’s Orlando Summer League opener.
They’re expected to be joined by young veterans Greg Monroe and Brandon Knight for the next few days of practices, with double sessions scheduled Friday and Saturday, all while Joe Dumars and staff continue their pursuit of free agents and draft targets that could dramatically alter the roster.
Of the seven or eight players on the Summer League roster whose rights the Pistons hold and who figure to be on next season’s roster, Andre Drummond has the most certain role, regardless of what veterans are added between now and training camp. Drummond will be the starting center on opening night. He and Singler finished last season as starters and neither figures to play more than a game or two, by all indications, of the five scheduled over six days in Orlando.
Continue reading Summer League Checklist >>
Posted Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Over two nights last November, NBA scouts flocked to Brooklyn’s new Barclays Center. The main attractions were Indiana sophomore center Cody Zeller and UCLA debuting freshman Shabazz Muhammad. Those dozens of scouts couldn’t have known it then, but there were three other lottery prospects on display over those two nights – more than one-third of the 2013 NBA lottery’s 14 picks.
Georgetown sophomore Otto Porter was considered a mid-first rounder at the time before establishing himself as a lottery prospect starting with an impressive showing in Brooklyn. Indiana junior Victor Oladipo was seen as athletic and tenacious but not much else, perhaps a late first-rounder at best, before he also launched a breakthrough season with impressive outings in Brooklyn. And Georgia sophomore Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was on the watch list but not considered very likely to enter the NBA draft in 2013.
The most ballyhooed of the five at the time, Muhammad, wound up being the last of the five picked, 14th. Indiana teammates Oladipo and Zeller went second and fourth, sandwiched around Porter.
Caldwell-Pope, of course, went eighth to the Pistons, and to the extent it’s possible for a McDonald’s All-American playing in a BCS conference to fly under the radar, that’s pretty much what the 6-foot-6 shooting guard did.
Continue reading Second-Half Surge >>
Posted Monday, July 1, 2013
Joe Dumars and his staff put the draft behind them quickly and moved on to free agency, with various reports already linking them to meetings with a few of the most prominent available players.
In two days, the team’s Summer League traveling party heads to Orlando for practices leading to Sunday’s tipoff of five games over six days. So … busy times.
But before we delve too deeply into free agency and Summer League, let’s look a little more at last week’s draft with a perspective gained over the last few days.
It was no accident that the Pistons were rarely linked to Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in the weeks leading to the draft. They ran an extraordinarily covert campaign to keep it that way. Why? Because it soon became apparent to them that Minnesota, picking one spot behind the Pistons, was intently focused on coming out of Thursday’s draft with a shooting guard with great size.
Posted Friday, June 28, 2013
In the 1985 draft, Jack McCloskey was looking for a long-term partner for Isiah Thomas in his backcourt. Not too many miles west of the Silverdome seemed an obvious solution. Sam Vincent was a local hero, Michigan’s first Mr. Basketball winner in 1981 and a decorated All-American at Michigan State.
When Dallas took Indiana center Uwe Blab with the 17th pick, the way was clear for McCloskey to draft Vincent. At least one prominent person expected him to do exactly that.
But when Trader Jack told Pistons owner Bill Davidson that the pick was going to be a guard from tiny McNeese State instead, and spelled out his name, Mr. D roared, “Who the hell is Joe Dumars?”
Across the street from the Silverdome, at the lounge where they were holding a draft viewing party for fans, the boos cascaded down the M-59 corridor. Joe Dumars was not a popular pick, not with Sam Vincent still on the board.
Posted Thursday, June 27, 2013
About 20 minutes after taking Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and lauding the athleticism he’d bring to the Pistons, Joe Dumars volunteered that the quest wasn’t over.
“You need multiple wing athletes in today’s NBA,” he said.
A few hours later, he proved it.
The Pistons took one of the top handful of pure athletes in the 2013 draft when they selected Tony Mitchell of North Texas State with the 37th pick. At 6-foot-8¾ and 236 pounds with a 38-inch vertical leap and 5.6 percent body fat, Mitchell was viewed as a lottery pick when the college season started.
But he had an underwhelming sophomore season in the Sun Belt Conference, averaging 13.0 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.7 blocked shots after posting 14.7, 10.3 and 3.0 numbers as a freshman. His shooting also dropped off, from .567 to .440, and his stock plunged.
“From a talent standpoint, this is somebody who could very well be the best athlete in the entire draft,” Pistons assistant general manager George David said.
The Pistons interviewed Mitchell at last month’s NBA draft combine in Chicago, but did not get the chance to bring him to Auburn Hills for a workout because Mitchell was expected to be long gone by the 37th pick.
Continue reading Upping the Athleticism >>
Posted Thursday, June 27, 2013
Joe Dumars pulled no punches: The Pistons went into Thursday’s draft with a laser focus on drafting an athlete who could beat everyone from one end of the floor to the other and stretch it to give Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe maximum room to operate around the rim.
They snowed everyone who believed they were hoping someone like Anthony Bennett might fall to them as Monroe, Brandon Knight and Drummond had the last three years, or that they were agonizing over the merits of point guards Trey Burke, Michael Carter-Williams and C.J. McCollum.
All along, they were fixated on one of the two shooting guards they believed would give them major jolts of size, athleticism and perimeter shooting: Ben McLemore and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
When Phoenix took Maryland 7-footer Alex Len at No. 5, both McLemore and Caldwell-Pope were on the board. Dumars said every indication he knew pointed at New Orleans passing on a shooting guard, so he knew one of this two coveted targets would be available. Sacramento grabbed McLemore at No. 7, leaving Caldwell-Pope to the Pistons at No. 8.
Continue reading Welcome, KCP >>
Posted Thursday, June 27, 2013
If you want to root for the Pistons to come out of the draft with the best possible player at the best probable fit, then root for Alex Len to be taken before they pick. Considering he’s firmly in play at No. 1 for Cleveland – with obvious landing spots at four (Charlotte) and six (New Orleans) if the Cavs go elsewhere – there’s a good chance that wish will be fulfilled.
The fact it’s draft day and we still can’t rule out Len, Nerlens Noel, Anthony Bennett, Victor Oladipo, Otto Porter or Ben McLemore as Cleveland’s pick at No. 1 is only one reason it’s a shot in the dark to guess whom the Pistons might take at No. 8.
Not knowing who’s there – not knowing which player they don’t expect to drop but might, in fact, be available to them – is just a part of the uncertainty for the Pistons.
Continue reading Still Murky>>
Posted Wednesday, June 26, 2013
(Editor’s note: Last in a recurring series that previews the 2013 NBA draft.)
There was a time when the draft was as simple as analyzing the available talent and figuring out which player offered the most talent at the best fit for your roster.
That day might not have ended the moment the salary cap came to be, but the evolution of a world governed by a cap has made it inevitable that talent and fit are no longer the sole considerations.
That trend is likely to be only hastened by the onset of new and more punitive luxury tax consequences for the 2013-14 season. Two types of teams, with that in mind, figure to go into Thursday’s draft intent on avoiding having a 2013 first-round draft choice on their opening night roster: teams like Dallas and Atlanta, perhaps, who’d like to create maximum cap space; and teams facing stiff tax bills who’d like to trade out of the first round altogether.
Posted Wednesday, June 26, 2013
(Editor’s note: Seventeenth in a recurring series leading to Thursday’s draft. Coming next: the True Blue Pistons 2013 NBA mock draft.)
When evaluating players for a late second-round draft pick, it’s usually better to be a master of one skill than a jack of all trades. If Minnesota power forward Trevor Mbakwe is going to complete a circuitous path to the NBA, it will be because somebody sees in him a player who can come off the bench and stir things up with his ability to dominate the glass.
Mbakwe is cut from the Jason Maxiell cloth, an undersized power forward who compensates for his lack of height (6-foot-8, 236 pounds as measured at the NBA draft combine in Chicago last month) with exceptional reach (7-foot-4 wing span), a solid frame and tenacity.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Bigs at 56>>
Posted Tuesday, June 25, 2013
I took a look in Monday’s True Blue Pistons blog at the consensus top seven and laid odds on each of those players’ chances of slipping to No. 8 and joining Greg Monroe, Brandon Knight and Andre Drummond among a core that was never supposed to be available to the Pistons. Today I’ll look at the five other players profiled over the past month as possibilities with the No. 8 pick and how things appear to be shaking out with the draft two days away.
Before we get to that, keep in mind that four days after the draft is the start of free agency, and the timing of those two events is a complicating factor for a team with the more than $20 million in cap space the Pistons are about to possess.
We don’t know what Joe Dumars knows – or has reason to believe, at least – about what is going to happen when the doors to free agency open on July 1. But it’s fair to assume that because the Pistons opened the door to free agency 2013 exactly one year ago – two days before the 2012 draft, when they traded Ben Gordon to Charlotte – there is a huge body of exploratory evidence at his fingertips for what might happen.
Continue reading Options at 8>>
Posted Monday, June 24, 2013
When we launched our draft series back on May 20 – the day before the lottery set the draft order – I started from the premise that there were only two players who would certainly be gone before the Pistons picked if they didn’t move into the top three: Nerlens Noel and Ben McLemore.
Now we’re three days before the draft, at a time when the picture most years is at least coming into a soft focus, and I’m less sure that Noel and McLemore will be unavailable than I was then. Yeah, it’s that volatile this time around.
The odds are still lopsided that Noel and McLemore will go in the top five, but they’re no longer the sure-fire 1-2 or 2-1 combination they were a month ago. In fact, you can talk yourself into believing that anyone and everyone is a potential Pistons pick at No. 8.
Continue reading Potential Pistons>>
Posted Monday, June 24, 2013
(Editor’s note: Sixteenth in a recurring series leading to Thursday’s draft. Coming Wednesday: a look at big men who are candidates to be the pick at 56 in the second round.)
Just as UCLA once churned out dominant 7-foot centers for NBA teams and Penn State became a linebacker mill for the NFL, Marquette is gaining a reputation among NBA front offices for producing a certain brand of player: tough, gritty, blue-collar, team-first perimeter defensive aces.
Wesley Matthews, Jimmy Butler and Jae Crowder have already carved out NBA niches for themselves, each one propping the door open a little wider for the next. Who might that be? This year’s candidate is Vander Blue, who left Buzz Williams’ program after helping another typically take-no-quarters Marquette team to the elite eight of the NCAA tournament with a season of eligibility remaining.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Perimeter at 56>>
Posted Friday, June 21, 2013
(Editor’s note: Fifteenth in a recurring series leading to Thursday’s draft. Coming Monday: A look at perimeter options with the 56th pick.)
One of the biggest head scratchers to college basketball fans when the list of NBA early entrants came out in mid-April was Grant Jerrett. He played 18 minutes a game as a freshman and didn’t exactly tear up the Pac-12 Conference, averaging 5.2 points and 3.6 rebounds a game.
Many speculated the real reason Jerrett made the surprising decision to leave Arizona after a less than spectacular debut was concern that his role would be further reduced next season, when ballyhooed McDonald’s All-American Aaron Gordon – already a projected top-five pick in a top-heavy 2014 draft – arrives on campus. That will further crowd a frontcourt that also includes Jerrett’s classmates, NBA prospects Kaleb Tarczewski and Brandon Ashley.
Jerrett denied that pushed him to the NBA prematurely while at the NBA draft combine in May.
“It was a goal, a dream,” he said. “I feel like it was a good time for me to go. I enjoyed (Arizona). Honestly, it’s hard to say anything bad about it. It just felt like if I wanted to make my dream, my goal, it was better to leave now.”
Continue reading Draft Preview: Bigs at 37>>
Posted Thursday, June 20, 2013
The last living coach to guide the Pistons to an NBA title couldn’t be more certain that Joe Dumars hired the right guy to put them on a path to the next championship.
“You’re getting a star,” Larry Brown told me this week about Maurice Cheeks. “He’s great.”
I’ve talked to a handful of people about Cheeks over the past week since he was introduced as Lawrence Frank’s successor and a consistent picture is emerging of the type of coach he’ll be. He’s a teacher, foremost. He’s flexible, someone who dissects a game quickly after the ball goes up and is willing to go away from the scouting report. More than anything, those who’ve known him say, he connects to players very quickly and very deeply and has the ability to infuse them with confidence.
Continue reading Larry Brown: Cheeks ‘A Star'>>
Posted Wednesday, June 19, 2013
(Editor’s note: Fourteenth in a recurring series leading to the June 27 draft. Coming Friday: centers and power forwards that might be under consideration with the No. 37 pick.)
History says there will be a talented wing player available somewhere around where the Pistons are picking in the first third of round two in the June 27 draft. The Pistons themselves have plucked two forwards from that area over the past four drafts, Jonas Jerebko in 2009 and Khris Middleton in 2012, both with the 39th pick.
Two years ago, Houston grabbed Chandler Parsons with the 38th pick. In 2010, New York found Landry Fields at 39 and Indiana took Lance Stephenson at 40.
Two such candidates this season, each offering something quite different than the other, are Michigan’s Tim Hardaway Jr. and Colorado’s Andre Roberson.
Hardaway, leaving Michigan after a junior season that ended with a loss in the NCAA title game, has moved himself into first-round consideration with a strong predraft showing that began at the May combine in Chicago. Hardaway’s shooting performance in drill work was among the most dazzling and he tested better than anticipated athletically.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Wings at 37>>
Posted Tuesday, June 18, 2013
There’s a decent chance the Pistons come out of next week’s draft with a point guard. It could happen with their lottery pick, where you can find no shortage of mock drafts that have either C.J. McCollum or Michael Carter-Williams tied to the Pistons. It could happen with the 37th pick, where I’ve identified eight point guards who could start coming off the board in the latter third of the first round.
The front office runs the draft for the Pistons with varying degrees of input from the coaching staff, which is how it works for most teams. NBA coaches are simply too consumed by the demands of their 82-game regular season to pay any attention to the college game. Coaches get involved on some level once the round of predraft group or individual workouts starts in the weeks leading to the draft, often leading those workouts and sometimes delving into videotape study.
But it’s the scouts who spend 12 months a year identifying and following draft prospects, seeing lottery prospects in person a few dozen times cumulatively and every one of the top 100 or so prospects at least a few times whose opinions count most when Joe Dumars gets on the phone to make the call.
All of that said, if the Pistons are going to grab a point guard with either the eighth or 37th pick in next week’s draft, I’d expect the likely candidates will have been thoroughly vetted between now and then by Maurice Cheeks.
Continue reading Valued Voice>>
Posted Monday, June 17, 2013
(Editor’s note: Thirteenth in a recurring series leading to the June 27 draft. Coming Wednesday: shooting guards and small forwards possible at 37.)
The Pistons finished last season with a four-guard rotation that consisted entirely of players who’d spent the bulk of their NBA careers running offenses from the point. Jose Calderon and Will Bynum split time at point guard with Brandon Knight and Rodney Stuckey occupying the bulk of their minutes at shooting guard until a late-season Calderon injury moved Stuckey back to the point.
Yet there’s a decent chance the Pistons will spend one of their first two picks on a point guard in the June 27 draft. That speaks both to the uncertainty at the position going into the 2013-14 season and the quality of the draft at the 8th and 37th picks. Calderon and Bynum hit free agency on July 1 and Stuckey, with a year left on a partially guaranteed contract, could be Joe Dumars’ most valuable trade chip assuming he doesn’t wish to dip into the young core of Greg Monroe, Andre Drummond and Knight, whose ability to play either spot gives the Pistons flexibility both on the draft and trade fronts.
The three likeliest possibilities with their lottery pick are Trey Burke, C.J. McCollum and Michael Carter-Williams, all profiled previously in our True Blue Pistons draft preview series. If the Pistons are wowed by German teen Dennis Schroeder’s potential, he’s a long-shot possibility to be their lottery pick.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Point Guards at 37>>
Posted Friday, June 14, 2013
(Editor’s note: Twelfth in a recurring series leading to the June 27 draft. Coming Monday: A look at a group of point guards who could be under consideration for the Pistons with their first of two second-round picks, No. 37.)
With two major interior building blocks in place and more than $20 million in cap space looming to rebuild their perimeter, the Pistons go into the 2013 NBA draft empowered to take purely the best talent.
Over the past three weeks, we’ve identified players at every position who could be in the mix. Not all of them will be available at the No. 8 pick, but half of them – assuming Nerlens Noel and Ben McLemore are off the board – will be within reach of the Pistons from among the group that includes center Alex Len, power forwards Cody Zeller and Anthony Bennett, small forwards Otto Porter and Shabazz Muhammad, shooting guards Victor Oladipo and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and point guards Trey Burke, Michael Carter-Williams and C.J. McCollum.
But the search for another franchise cornerstone to join forces with Greg Monroe, Brandon Knight and Andre Drummond – the fruit of the past three NBA drafts – isn’t limited to that list. The Pistons are likely to bring in a number of other players generally considered as top-20 talents for individual or group workouts and interviews. Most have a bit of mystery to them as only one, Duke’s Mason Plumlee, is an American native who played college basketball in the United States.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Sleepers at 8>>
Posted Thursday, June 13, 2013
It’s not always easy to go from field general to first lieutenant. Maurice Cheeks had been a field general for a good long run between his stints in Portland and Philadelphia. But he enjoyed his four years at Scott Brooks’ side in Oklahoma City. It was a good organization with great young talent and championship possibilities. He wasn’t itching to jump at just any job.
But when Joe Dumars made it known that Cheeks was under consideration to coach the Detroit Pistons … well, easy call.
“The tradition of this organization sold me, period,” Cheeks said at his introductory press conference Thursday at The Palace. “Joe Dumars, Isiah Thomas, those guys, the way they played the game. I always point to the jerseys in the rafters. Those guys played right, they played committed and I think this is what this team needs to be.”
There shouldn’t be much debate about team president and coach being on the same page with Joe D and Cheeks. Their harmony couldn’t possibly be better synchronized when it comes to a vision for how a team should be molded and the qualities it should live and breathe.
Continue reading Exactly What We Needed >>
Posted Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Maurice Cheeks now has two outstanding reasons to be in Las Vegas in late July. Already on his docket is a 30th reunion of the Philadelphia 76ers 1983 NBA championship team. He can write it off as a business trip if he chooses, though, because Cheeks certainly will want to check in on two of the most compelling reasons he was interested in becoming Pistons coach, Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond.
The two young franchise cornerstones will be in Las Vegas, as well, as part of USA Basketball’s National Team minicamp July 22-25.
Twenty-seven of the NBA’s most promising young players, representing 19 teams, will assemble under coach Mike Krzyzewski, who recently agreed to another stint as National Team coach after leading the United States to gold medals in each of the past two Olympic games. Only Cleveland – with Kyrie Irving, Dion Waiters and Tyler Zeller invited – has more than the Pistons’ two representatives.
“It’s a great honor and opportunity for Greg and Andre to be a part of the USA Basketball minicamp,” said Joe Dumars, who drafted Monroe with the No. 7 pick in 2010 and grabbed Drummond in 2012 with the No. 9 pick.
Continue reading Team USA Twosome >>
Posted Wednesday, June 12, 2013
In the 2010 draft, there were four small forwards considered worthy of being picked in the lottery. They went in this order: Wesley Johnson, Al-Farouq Aminu, Gordon Hayward and Paul George, which matched predraft evaluations. Three years later, the order of those picks likely would be exactly reversed, with George a lock to be the first taken.
Coming into the 2011 draft, there is the same near unanimity among NBA front offices that the top two shooting guards available are Ben McLemore and Victor Oladipo. The Pistons probably won’t get a chance to draft either one with the No. 8 pick, though so much is uncertain about this year’s draft that no one would be stunned if one managed to slip through the top seven spots.
The No. 3-ranked shooting guard, by most accounts, is Georgia sophomore Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Three years from now, will Caldwell-Pope prove to be the most promising young NBA player of the bunch?
Both Caldwell-Pope and McLemore came out of high school two years ago, though McLemore was a Kansas freshman last season after being academically ineligible for the 2011-12 season. Caldwell-Pope was widely seen as the better prospect back then, ranking No. 12 in his high school class by both Rivals.com and Scout.com to McLemore’s 34 and 55.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope >>
Posted Tuesday, June 11, 2013
You’re right to be leery when you hear broad generalizations about a coach, any coach. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an essential truth to the characterization of Maurice Cheeks as being a good coach for young players, but the caveat is that young players come in all shapes, sizes and dispositions.
Different young players require various motivational approaches, same as for stars in their prime or role players near the end of the line. Any coach who adopts a cookie-cutter mentality to reach players is destined to fall short of pulling out the best in his team. That holds for any era, but it’s fair to say it’s probably never been more essential than it is today with life-altering money at stake in a way it wasn’t to graying generations of NBA stars. That’s an equation changer and a complicating factor for the modern NBA head coach.
The Pistons will introduce Cheeks as their next head coach later this week and I suspect one of the lines of questioning for him will be his work with Russell Westbrook in Oklahoma City, and before him, with the likes of Andre Iguodala and Thaddeus Young and Lou Williams in Philadelphia. There are a lot of young players across the NBA who will speak highly of Cheeks’ role in shepherding them through their formative, sometimes traumatic, early years in the NBA.
Continue reading A Logical Choice >>
Posted Monday, June 10, 2013
Earl Cureton arrived in the NBA in 1980 to a loaded Philadelphia 76ers roster filled with big names and powerful personalities. Julius Erving, Darryl Dawkins and Andrew Toney were headline-grabbing stars, but the 76ers also had Doug Collins, Lionel Hollins and Bobby Jones dotting the lineup of a team that won 62 games. By the time they were ready to win a championship two years later, smack in the middle of the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird era, the Sixers had added another gargantuan talent and outsized personality, Moses Malone.
But it didn’t take the Detroit native long to find out whom another legendary name with a powerful personality, Billy Cunningham, trusted to run his team: Mo Cheeks, a second-round pick out of West Texas State by way of Chicago who was in his third NBA season when Cureton arrived.
“Billy had a lot of confidence in Mo,” Cureton told me Monday from Phoenix, where he serves as an assistant coach with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury. “He ran the team. He came from a small college, but we had some high-profile players on that team. To be able to come in there and be able to control the egos and manage the team the way he did, he did a great job of keeping people happy. I think that translates into becoming an NBA coach. He’s really good with players. You never see Mo being too riled up.”
Cureton, who played three seasons with the Pistons after his time in Philly, was a teammate of Joe Dumars’ during the latter’s rookie season. He and the members of the 1983 NBA championship 76ers remain close, he said, with a 30th reunion planned for late July in Las Vegas. He talks frequently to Cheeks and knew of his interest in the Pistons job.
Continue reading Cureton: ‘The Right Guy’ >>
Posted Monday, June 10, 2013
Coaching isn’t the only profession where being in the right place at the right time under the right circumstances is more often than not what separates success from failure. But under the public glare of coaching in professional sports, labels are harder to shake than they are for a district sales manager who has a tough year because the company he represents had to issue a product recall.
Mo Cheeks comes to the Pistons with essentially a .500 career record across two coaching stops. He’s 284-286 in six full seasons and parts of two others with both Portland and Philadelphia. In an NBA off-season where it appears a full 40 percent of jobs will turn over – assuming Memphis eventually splits with Lionel Hollins after granting him permission to look around – his wasn’t considered a glitzy name.
You know who else wasn’t considered a very glitzy coaching name less than a decade ago? Doc Rivers, who shares with Cheeks a background as products of Chicago’s prep basketball scene and careers as NBA point guards. Now he’s the second-longest tenured head coach in the NBA, behind only Gregg Popovich, and if Rivers hits the free-agent market the only suitors who need to queue up are those with championship-ready rosters and contract offers that start somewhere north of $5 million a year.
Continue reading Mo's Moment >>
Posted Monday, June 10, 2013
(Editor’s note: Tenth in a recurring series leading to the June 27 draft. Coming Wednesday: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.)
As if there wasn’t enough uncertainty in a draft with no clear-cut pecking order at the top, throw in the fact that three near-certain top-10 picks are coming off of recent surgeries and can’t work out for NBA teams with millions to invest in their futures.
If they were baseball pitchers, then Anthony Bennett’s shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff might be more worrisome than Nerlens Noel’s ACL tear or Alex Len’s ankle stress fracture. In the big picture, teams might have more pressing concerns about Bennett’s asthma that could limit his conditioning level or even a back issue that caused him to miss time in each of his last two years at Findlay Prep in Las Vegas, where the Ontario native played before landing at UNLV.
Even though Bennett comes to the NBA after just one college season, teams probably feel like they have a pretty clear picture of him. Bennett’s shoulder surgery – it’s to his left, non-shooting shoulder – prevented him from traveling to Chicago last month for the combine, but at the 2012 Nike Hoop Summit he measured in at 6-foot-7 in shoes. That makes him an undersized power forward in the strictest sense, but his wing span at the same event was recorded at an outstanding 7-foot-1.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Anthony Bennett >>
Posted Friday, June 7, 2013
(Editor’s note: Ninth in a recurring series leading to the 2013 NBA draft. Coming Monday: Anthony Bennett.)
The college player who most surprised NBA personnel executives by not declaring for the draft in 2013 is Marcus Smart, projected as a top-three pick before announcing he’d return for his sophomore season at Oklahoma State. Last year’s big surprise was Cody Zeller.
The last of three high-profile Indiana brothers – Luke played at Notre Dame and last season debuted with the Phoenix Suns, Tyler went to North Carolina and was a 2012 No. 1 pick – Cody Zeller was projected to go ahead of the Pistons, picking ninth, a year ago.
This year, in a draft considered among the weakest in recent seasons, most credible projections have Zeller available when the Pistons pick at No. 8.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Cody Zeller >>
Posted Thursday, June 6, 2013
The surprise Joe Dumars and his staff expressed at being able to pluck Greg Monroe, Brandon Knight and Andre Drummond from the past three drafts wasn’t the typical drummed-up enthusiasm common to breathless postdraft celebrations. The fact not one of those players agreed to come to Auburn Hills prior to their drafts to work out for the Pistons is compelling proof that their agents, too, were taken aback by their draft-night plunges. It’s the job of agents to put their clients in the most favorable light during the draft process, a balancing act that includes resistance to granting workouts to teams below what they see as their client’s deserved landing spot.
For Monroe, it was Golden State, picking one spot ahead of the Pistons. For Knight, it was Toronto, picking three spots ahead of them. A year ago, Drummond’s agent Rob Pelinka held off on workouts beyond the top six teams or arranging a meeting with the Pistons until two nights before the draft, when he invited Dumars and assistant general manager George David to New York for a meeting.
What are the odds the Pistons will again draft a player who doesn’t come to Auburn Hills prior to the draft?
Continue reading Scoping Out the Draft >>
Posted Wednesday, June 5, 2013
(Editor’s note: Eighth in a recurring series leading to the June 27 draft. Coming Friday: Cody Zeller.)
While there isn’t much definitive about the 2013 NBA draft, a loose consensus top six has emerged that consists of Nerlens Noel, Ben McLemore, Otto Porter, Victor Oladipo, Trey Burke and Anthony Bennett.
And that might present a dilemma for the Pistons, picking at No. 8. No outsider can say for certain, of course, how their draft board will stack up after they complete the individual workouts for candidates they’ll consider with that pick. Those workouts almost always take place in the final 10 days or so before the draft, giving the Pistons the latest possible feel for how the draft might shake out and the most recent impression of the players under consideration.
But what happens if those top six are all off the board and the clear best value, in their estimation, for the No. 8 pick is Maryland sophomore 7-footer Alex Len? Andre Drummond might be many things, but right now it’s clear that all of those things involve him playing close to the rim on both defense and offense – to protect it at one end and punish it with emphatic lob-dunk or put-back finishes at the other.
Len is a pure center, as well, in the view of nearly every draft evaluator. The most common comparison made is to Toronto’s Jonas Valanciunas, the No. 4 pick in the 2011 draft. Len came to Maryland from Ukraine, also home to Pistons backup center Slava Kravtsov, not far from Valanciunas’ Lithuania. He didn’t put up eye-popping numbers for the Terrapins – 11.9 points, 7.8 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game – but shows flashes of dominance that make many believe he could grow into a top-tier NBA center.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Alex Len >>
Posted Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Cleveland owns the No. 1 pick in the June 27 draft and the widely held expectation is that the Cavs take Kentucky’s Nerlens Noel, despite the ACL rehabilitation that clouds his rookie availability. But Cleveland hasn’t done the expected in the past two drafts and, in fact, it’s been the Cavaliers’ unpredictability that has steered both Brandon Knight and Andre Drummond to the Pistons.
Cleveland made the two eyebrow-raising picks in each of the past two draft’s top five with Tristan Thompson in 2011 and Dion Waiters in 2012, both with the No. 4 pick. Almost nobody saw those moves coming a week or less ahead of them happening. And this year’s draft is murkier at the top than those two by a safe margin, so good luck figuring out who’ll be off the board when the Pistons go on the clock in 23 days.
The Cavaliers could go in a number of directions: (1) play the chalk and draft Noel; (2) throw another curveball, a la Thompson and Waiters, and take neither Noel nor Ben McLemore, seen as the only alternative to Noel on NBA upside; or (3) trade the pick and start converting some of their assets to veteran help.
Whatever the Cavs do, it sets the path that leads to No. 8, where the Pistons hope the draft’s twists and turns benefit them as they have each of the past three seasons.
Continue reading Twists & Turns >>
Posted Monday, June 3, 2013
(Editor’s note: Seventh in a recurring series previewing the 2013 NBA draft. Coming Wednesday: Alex Len.)
In a draft filled with uncertainty at the top, Otto Porter stands apart as a player seen as relatively fool-proof. Scouts might wonder about his athleticism and doubt he’ll ever rise to the level of All-Star, perhaps, but the general manager who takes the Georgetown sophomore on June 27 probably will sleep pretty well that night, even if his dreams don’t start with championship parades.
The current NBA player most often evoked in a Porter comparison is Tayshaun Prince, who was a rock for the Goin’ to Work era Pistons and a 2004 NBA champion. But he was never an All-Star and he was taken 23rd in a historically weak draft. Porter, it seems, is destined to be a top-five pick, perhaps a top-three pick.
Over the past month, I’ve separated Nerlens Noel and Ben McLemore as the only two players who would certainly be unavailable to the Pistons unless they pulled a top-three lottery pick, which they failed to do, falling instead from seventh to eighth.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Otto Porter >>
Posted Friday, May 31, 2013
(Editor’s note: Sixth in a recurring series leading to the June 27 draft. Coming Monday: Otto Porter.)
They grew up in opposite corners of the United States, one a right-hander and the other a lefty. One’s a classic center with game-changing ability despite nothing in the way of a signature offensive move, the other a prototypical small forward who must prove he can do something besides score to thrive at the NBA level.
For all of their stark differences, Shabazz Muhammad is to the 2013 NBA draft what Andre Drummond was 12 months earlier. They both entered their college freshman seasons in the thick of discussion to be the No. 1 pick the following spring, then saw their stock gradually sink as each passing month raised more questions about their ability to transition to the NBA.
Muhammad’s stock peaked last April, when he scored a record 35 of Team USA’s 75 points at the Nike Hoop Summit, as well scouted by NBA personnel executives as any annual event in the world. He was universally regarded as the nation’s No. 1 recruit by major scouting services, choosing UCLA from the usual slew of powerhouse offers.
Just as Drummond was considered 1 and 1A with Anthony Davis a year earlier after he reclassified to be in the high school class of 2011, so Muhammad and Nerlens Noel were 1 and 1A throughout last summer.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Shabazz Muhammad >>
Posted Thursday, May 30, 2013
Down the stretch of the season, when some Pistons fans were debating whether it was better to win games or lose to better their lottery odds and the media focused on Lawrence Frank’s job security, Khris Middleton savored every minute of every opportunity granted him to establish his NBA future.
After appearing in just eight games over the season’s first four months, Middleton joined the rotation for the season’s final 19 games, nearly one-quarter of the season. He averaged 20 minutes a game as Kyle Singler’s backup at small forward and showed in increasing glimpses his innate scoring gifts. Middleton averaged 7.1 points and shot nearly 50 percent.
Especially encouraging was his improvement from start to finish of that six-week stretch. Over the season’s final five games, Middleton averaged 9.0 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.2 assists while making 18 of 37 shots, 4 of 10 from the 3-point arc.
“It was huge for me,” Middleton said Wednesday after a workout at the team’s practice facility and a consultation with Arnie Kander, who told me earlier this month that continuing to build strength will dominate Middleton’s off-season agenda. “I just know what to expect from day one next season. I fought my way toward getting in there and proved what I was capable of doing, but now I want to take the next step next year.”
Continue reading Seizing Opportunity >>
Posted Wednesday, May 29, 2013
(Editor’s note: Fifth in a recurring series leading to the June 27 draft. Coming Friday: Shabazz Muhammad.)
It speaks to how thoroughly Tom Crean has restored Indiana to its customary elite status after the NCAA put the Hoosiers in shackles over Kelvin Sampson’s recruiting transgressions that Victor Oladipo probably wouldn’t be on Crean’s A recruiting list these days.
But for where the Hoosiers were four years ago, when Oladipo was a rising senior in suburban Washington, D.C., and playing at storied DeMatha Catholic as the nation’s 41st ranked shooting guard, according to Rivals.com, Crean saw a building block – a highly athletic player who would play hard and play defense, even if his athleticism on the offensive end seemed a long, long way from being harnessed.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Victor Oladipo >>
Posted Tuesday, May 28, 2013
The most frequently asked question at Pistons Mailbag these days goes like this: “Who are the Pistons most likely to draft at No. 8?” That’s kind of like asking who’ll finish eighth in the Indy 500 before the race is run. It helps to know who’ll finish first through seventh.
Let me put it another way. Asked that question each of the last three springs, here are three names I would not have answered: Greg Monroe, Brandon Knight and Andre Drummond.
I don’t think Joe Dumars, George David and company are sitting back and waiting for another unexpected name to drop to them on June 27. They’re going about the work of assessing 100 players or so, an unusually large number simply because they’re drafting at three distinctly different areas – the top 10, the middle, the bottom 10.
But I’ll guarantee they’ll be spending as much time looking at Otto Porter and Anthony Bennett and Trey Burke – players widely projected to be off the board when their time on the clock at No. 8 rolls around – as they are on the perceived next tier of players. That’s a group that includes Cody Zeller, C.J. McCollum, Michael Carter-Williams, Shabazz Muhammad and Alex Len – and a few more, to be sure – that seems more likely to produce the next prospect to don a Pistons baseball cap while shaking David Stern’s hand.
Continue reading Who's No. 8? >>
Posted Tuesday, May 28, 2013
(Editor’s note: Fourth in a recurring series leading to the June 27 draft. Coming Wednesday: Victor Oladipo.)
Drawing a bead on Syracuse point guard Michael Carter-Williams might be one of the most challenging assessments among potential 2013 lottery picks. Is he the player who posted eight points and assists double-doubles during a sophomore season in which he led the Orange to the Final Four? Or is he the player whose season ended with a clunker, putting up two points and two assists, shooting 1 of 6 with five turnovers, in Syracuse’s national semifinal loss to Michigan?
Scouts who tend to be less confident in Carter-Williams’ NBA future acknowledge he has a high ceiling as a rangy (6-foot-5¾) point guard with dazzling passing skills, as underscored by his 7.3 assists in his only season as a Syracuse starter – he came off the bench behind 2012 lottery pick Dion Waiters and All-Big East point guard Scoop Jardine as a freshman.
But those scouts simply aren’t as comfortable as others that Carter-Williams will put it all together to reach what many see as All-Star potential. The most common comparison is to Shaun Livingston, the No. 4 pick in 2004 straight out of high school whose promising career was derailed in his third season by a devastating knee injury. Others see a little Jrue Holiday in his game at the same stage, but whether his career parallels Holiday’s will depend on how Carter-Williams’ offensive game develops – mostly, his ability to develop as an efficient scorer to enhance the threat of his passing skills.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Michael Carter-Williams >>
Posted Friday, May 24, 2013
(Editor’s note: Third in a recurring series leading to the June 27 draft. Coming Monday: Syracuse point guard Michael Carter-Williams.)
C.J. McCollum’s story is a little like Steph Curry and Damian Lillard’s: a lightly recruited guard who winds up at in college basketball’s netherworld and shines so brightly he emerges as a top-10 draft prospect.
What league personnel executives will be asking themselves repeatedly between now and the June 27 draft is if McCollum has the same chance as those dynamic players to see his small-college success carry over to the NBA.
There’s no question that McCollum will strike a cord with those executives when he sits down with them in predraft interviews. He spent four years at Lehigh and graduated with a degree in journalism and minors in mass communication and sociology days after last week’s NBA draft combine in Chicago. He’s bright-eyed, articulate and congenial and will instantly dispel any doubts about his maturity and readiness to stand on his own.
Continue reading Draft Preview: C.J. McCollum >>
Posted Thursday, May 23, 2013
Nerlens Noel might indeed turn out to be a very good NBA player, perhaps even a great one. But it speaks to the uncertainty of this draft that a 206-pound center with a torn ACL who’ll miss a big chunk of his rookie season is the presumptive No. 1 pick.
The run-up to the draft is a strange time in which there is an intense focus on what players can’t do, the reverse of what happens once a guy’s been in the league a few years. At that point, he becomes an asset, trade or otherwise, based on what he can do, his strengths exploited by a good coach, his weaknesses understood and accommodated.
Which explains, in large measure, how Greg Monroe, Brandon Knight and Andre Drummond were nit-picked to the great good fortune of the Pistons in the weeks leading to the past three drafts. And gives hope that they’ll benefit again by the scrutiny due over the next four weeks that could send another gem into their arms at the No. 8 pick.
Think back three years to how Monroe was perceived. Passing ability was identified as Monroe’s biggest asset. And while that’s certainly been on display during his three seasons with the Pistons – something Lawrence Frank worked to incorporate into his offense, an attribute that argues for the success of a Monroe-Drummond pairing – it wouldn’t necessarily be the first thing you’d tick off if someone who’d never seen him play asked for a scouting report.
Continue reading A Snap Shot in Time >>
Posted Wednesday, May 22, 2013
(Editor’s note: Second in a recurring series leading to the June 27 draft. Coming Friday: A look at Lehigh guard C.J. McCollum.)
No position is more difficult for NBA scouts to project than point guard. College basketball is rife with undersized guards who dominate their sport, but good luck finding the one among a dozen of them whose skills will translate to the radically different NBA game.
Trey Burke oozes the intangibles that weaken the knees of NBA general managers whose teams lack that critical catalytic ingredient a dynamic point guard brings to the equation. The right point guard draws out the potential of the teammates at his side and elevates the whole above the sum of its parts.
Thirteen years ago, a point guard who oozed all of those same intangibles led Michigan State to the NCAA championship and put the onus of assessing how his mix of below-average height, modest quickness and limited shooting range would translate to the NBA on general managers. In a historically weak draft – Kenyon Martin, Stromile Swift, Darius Miles and Marcus Fizer were the first four taken – Joe Dumars grabbed Mateen Cleaves No. 1 with his first pick as Pistons president of basketball operations at the 14th position, right between the soon forgotten Courtney Alexander and Jason Collier.
Continue reading Draft Preview: Trey Burke >>
Posted Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Timing is everything. What at first blush might appear crushing disappointment in Tuesday’s lottery results … well, not really.
If there was a common refrain I heard last week in Chicago among team personnel executives at the NBA draft combine, it was some variation on this theme: If there was ever a year you didn’t want to exhaust your supply of lottery luck and draw a top-three pick, this was the one.
Joe Dumars and his staff aren’t going to lose any sleep over Tuesday results. Oh, sure, they would have preferred to stay at No. 7 rather than getting bumped to No. 8 – the exact scenario that played out two years ago, when they wound up taking Brandon Knight – and they wouldn’t have given back the No. 1 pick if it had turned out that way.
Continue reading Pistons Drop to 8 >>
Posted Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Here’s what the Pistons would tell you about the process through which the NBA determines draft order: It’s better to be lucky on draft night than on lottery night.
The Pistons haven’t moved into the top three in any of the previous three lotteries, their standing unchanged in 2010 and ’12 while getting bumped down one rung in 2011. But they’ve come away with franchise cornerstone big men in Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond to go with the fiercely competitive Brandon Knight, a backcourt staple. Combined with the ample cap space Joe Dumars takes to the marketplace this July, those three players are at the heart of what the Pistons believe will be a playoff push under a new coach in 2013-14.
The odds are long that the Pistons will land the No. 1 pick or pull into the top three when the NBA holds the lottery at 8 tonight from Times Square in New York, televised by ESPN prior to Game 2 of the Western Conference finals between San Antonio and Memphis. In fact, they’re longer than they were in both 2010 and ’11, though slightly better than they were a year ago.
Continue reading Lottery Lowdown >>
Posted Monday, May 20, 2013
(Editor’s note: First in a recurring series leading to the June 27 NBA draft. Coming Wednesday: A look at Michigan point guard Trey Burke.)
In a draft pocked by uncertainty, this much the Pistons can take to the bank: The only two players they won’t have any shot to draft without moving into the top three when the NBA draft lottery is held Tuesday night are Nerlens Noel and Ben McLemore.
It’s not a lock that those two players will go 1-2 or 2-1, necessarily, but no one believes they’ll last to No. 7 – the earliest the Pistons could pick unless they are one of the three teams that vaults to the top of the lottery when the results are made public before Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.
Most lottery teams, it’s widely believed, would take Noel with the No. 1 pick. But it speaks loudly to the lack of sure-fire impact talent that a player coming off a torn ACL, who won’t be available until late December at the earliest and who weighed a mere 206 pounds at last week’s NBA draft combine in Chicago, is not only a lottery lock but the odds-on favorite to be the No. 1 pick.
Continue reading Cream of the Crop >>
Posted Friday, May 17, 2013
CHICAGO – Beauty – or a red flag – is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to the NBA’s measurements registered as part of the league’s annual draft combine. Some organizations place more of a premium on what the numbers say than others, but nobody really lets the numbers scare them away from a player they believe can improve their roster.
Then again, nobody wants to put up a number that furrows eyebrows.
So it was big for Trey Burke that he measured a little better than 6-foot-1 in shoes after some fears he’d check in at under 6 feet. Victor Oladipo’s athleticism and work ethic are likely to outweigh most concerns that he’s a tad undersized, at 6-foot-4¼, for shooting guard, but a 6-foot-9¼ wing span will give him an offsetting boost.
Cody Zeller was relieved that his wing span measured 6-foot-10¾ – the same as his height. Anything less than an even ratio between height and wing span is considered a negative for a big man.
“It’s still not good,” he shrugged, “but it’s better than 6-8,” a figure that had been making the rounds before Chicago set the record straight.
Continue reading Numbers Crunching >>
Posted Thursday, May 16, 2013
CHICAGO – The Pistons ended last season with a four-guard rotation that consisted entirely of players who’ve spent the bulk of their careers as point guards. Yet it’s conceivable they’ll draft one with their lottery pick on June 27.
Both Jose Calderon and Will Bynum are scheduled to hit free agency less than a week after the draft and there’s no guarantee either one, let alone both, will be back. Rodney Stuckey has only a year left on his contract before he hits free agency, but he could be perhaps the most attractive trade chip in Joe Dumars’ arsenal in what shapes up as an active summer. And Brandon Knight’s ability to shoot off of screens – and a motor that figures to get him open frequently to do just that – means his move to shooting guard could become permanent.
So it’s not hard to see the way to an opening for the Pistons to grab one of the three point guards considered top-10 picks: Michigan’s Trey Burke, Syracuse’s Michael Carter-Williams and Lehigh’s C.J. McCollum.
They all bring something different to the table. Burke carried Michigan to the NCAA title game and oozed the qualities of a leader and winner in a player who can score in a variety of ways but also set up his teammates. Carter-Williams is more of an old-school point guard with the great size that remains Burke’s biggest question mark. And McCollum is more of a scoring point guard who many teams like for his ability to handle either backcourt spot.
Posted Thursday, May 16, 2013
A year ago, Kim English and his class of 2012 draft mates were in the shoes – some of them stuffed with extra-thick socks to pad height – of the hopefuls who’ll be filing from one hotel conference room to the next and station to station for testing and measurements this week at Chicago’s Harrison Street Athletics Facility.
Many approach the NBA draft combine as a job interview, and English did to a degree, as well. But he went confident that showing what he was – both on the court and in conversations with the NBA executives who ultimately would decide his fate – would be enough to sell his case. He did no exceptional preparation, either to dazzle scouts with his athleticism or executives with his interpersonal skills.
“The team staff and front office know what you can do,” he said. “They bring you in, they know what you can do. They’ve watched you to a crazy extent. Four years of them watching. So I wasn’t going to come in here and try to reinvent myself. I was just going to play hard and make shots and show them what I was going to do in the league.”
Some prospects spend the time between the end of their college seasons and the draft working out under trainers far away from campus, going to training centers in Los Angeles, Arizona or Florida. English eschewed all of that, choosing to stay in school – he earned his degree from Missouri last spring – and work out under the supervision of Bryan Tibaldi.
Continue reading Measuring Up >>
Posted Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Many of the hands David Stern will shake six weeks from Thursday, when NBA teams will parcel out the next wave of incoming talent at the draft, will belong to players teams have been tracking for three, four and five years. Even one-and-done prospects like Nerlens Noel, Ben McLemore and Anthony Bennett were identified as NBA prospects long before they got to college campuses.
That said, these next six weeks will account for a huge chunk of the evaluation process. There are no more games to evaluate, of course, but individual workouts, formal interviews, more casual conversations over lunch, background probes, videotape review, medical evaluations and even psychological profiles will be conducted to gauge NBA readiness and potential, roster and cultural fit.
That process shifts into a higher gear starting Wednesday, when approximately 60 players – mostly college products with a few international prospects sprinkled in – gather in Chicago to be poked and prodded by representatives from all 30 NBA teams.
Continue reading Ramping Up >>
Posted Monday, May 13, 2013
Between the 7-foot extremes of Andre Drummond, taken in the lottery, and Slava Kravtsov, signed as an undrafted free agent, came the three other Pistons rookies on last season’s roster: second-round picks Kyle Singler, Khris Middleton and Kim English.
English was the first player off the bench in the season opener when Lawrence Frank was still auditioning for a more manageable rotation. Singler moved into the starting lineup when Rodney Stuckey came up ill in the ninth game with the Pistons still winless and never left. Middleton came from the back end of the bench to finish the season as Singler’s backup at small forward.
The window can open and close on second-round picks in a flash, but all three of Singler, Middleton and English go into a critical off-season in the plans for 2013-14 as it stands now. There are certain factors out of their control, including what happens in the June draft, July free agency and a summer-long trade market enhanced for the Pistons by the cap space they’ll have at their disposal.
Continue reading Rookie Class >>
Posted Friday, May 10, 2013
Given that the strong consensus heading into the June 27 draft holds that Nerlens Noel and Ben McLemore are 1-2 or 2-1 atop the board, followed by a thick muddle, you wonder if the GM who’ll have to work hardest at forcing a grin come lottery night will be the guy who pulls the No. 3 pick.
Noel and McLemore are considered potential stars from a draft otherwise thought to be devoid of them. If you buy that a similar talent can be had through the top 10 as at No. 3, then the reality is that you’re paying 50 percent more – last year’s No. 3 pick, Bradley Beal, was slotted at $4.1 million; last year’s No. 7, Harrison Barnes, at $2.8 million – for a similar player.
Given that the Pistons will be well under the cap this year, and intend to use their cap space to leverage more talent on to the roster, that extra $1.3 million might come in very handy on the open market.
The Pistons have a 5 percent chance (OK, 4.91 percent) of landing the No. 3 pick, slightly better than their chances of getting the No. 2 (4.16 percent) or the No. 1 pick (3.6 percent). Their likeliest landing spots, far and away, are at No. 7 (59.93 percent) or No. 8 (25.3 percent).
But just for fun, what would they do if they landed at 1, 2 or 3?
Continue reading Draft a Puzzle >>
Posted Thursday, May 9, 2013
Arnie Kander sees glimpses of elite explosiveness in Brandon Knight – the transition dunks where he breaks from a pack and gets to the rim in a heartbeat, the dynamic drive for the game-winner against Toronto last season – and envisions the frequency of those instances multiplying.
He’ll start by slowing Knight down.
“I’m going to really work at his process for changing speeds,” the Pistons strength and conditioning coach said. “Slowing way, way down. Getting better at the task, but more importantly getting better at what’s between tasks.”
Think Chris Paul, perhaps, or Tony Parker. Knight is in their ballpark for speed and quickness, but just as not every pitcher who throws 100 mph is as effective as Justin Verlander, neither is a steady diet of full-throttle pace a recipe for consistently beating defenders off the dribble.
Continue reading Gearing Down to Gear Up >>
Posted Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Two things – odds of the Pistons moving into the top three during the May 21 lottery and the emerging consensus at the top of the draft – likely mean there are six players who won’t be joining the young core of Greg Monroe, Brandon Knight and Andre Drummond culled from the last three NBA drafts.
Nerlens Noel, Ben McLemore, Anthony Bennett, Victor Oladipo, Trey Burke and Otto Porter certainly aren’t a unanimous top six for the June 27 draft, but they have risen to the status of “consensus” top six, it appears. Both DraftExpress.com’s Jonathan Givony and ESPN.com’s Chad Ford, the two most credible independent draft evaluators, have them in their top six, with Noel and McLemore – in that order – their first two.
The Pistons have a 12.67 percent chance to draw into the top three and 85.23 percent odds of picking either seventh (59.93) – that’s the spot at which they enter the lottery draw – or eighth (25.3).
So if you concede that Noel, McLemore, Bennett, Oladipo, Burke and Porter will be gone before David Stern has to step to the podium a seventh time, where do the Pistons turn for help?
Continue reading Playing the Odds >>
Posted Monday, May 6, 2013
Greg Monroe’s move to power forward doesn’t fundamentally change the summer Arnie Kander has planned for him, but there will be tweaks made in his training regimen to acknowledge the change.
It might sound curious at first blush that the Pistons’ strength and conditioning coach will focus on getting Monroe stronger to play a position that will demand greater defensive range and mobility. Until you hear his logic, at least, and then it all makes perfect sense.
For the increased lateral mobility Monroe will need to guard the expanding number of range-shooting power forwards, Kander says, he’ll first need to strengthen his legs and hips.
“You have to first work on muscle strength to be able to get in those positions,” he said. “It means get better at basketball movement. What gets in your way? What blocks things? For Greg, it’s getting better at stances. On offense, he can get away with an upright stance. Defensively, he has to really learn defensive stance – stay wide. When you start narrowing your stance, it’s hard to go lateral. Great defenders stay wide.”
Continue reading Prepared for Change >>
Posted Friday, May 3, 2013
Among the many expectations Andre Drummond exceeded in his rookie season? Andre Drummond’s.
“Yeah, I definitely did,” he said. “I think I did a lot better than I thought I was going to do. I knew it was going to be tough coming in with a lot of bigger guys, more athletes. We all know I don’t have much of an offensive game as of yet, so I just used what I know I was good at to help my team win games and help me get more comfortable in the league.”
While Drummond’s rookie performance for the Pistons – he finished fourth in Rookie of the Year voting despite missing 22 games and starting only after he returned for the season’s final 10 games – might have surprised him, it didn’t fulfill him. A little success has only served to fuel his desire for a lot of success.
“I know when I start to get more adjusted to the league and learn different things, I’ll be a lot more successful and hopefully be one of the greatest players to play,” he said. “That’s my goal – to be great, never good.”
Continue reading A Goal to be Great >>
Posted Thursday, May 2, 2013
Tom Gores’ vow to use every available resource to restore the Pistons to greatness has led him to Phil Jackson, who has agreed to serve in an advisory capacity in the franchise’s search for a head coach.
“Phil Jackson is a friend and one of the best minds in the business,” Gores said. “We are thrilled to have him as an adviser as we make some very important decisions for this franchise. Joe (Dumars) and I discussed this and he and I are in full agreement that this is a great opportunity.”
A spokesman for Gores indicated that this is an advisory role and not a formal position inside the Pistons organization. Joe Dumars, president of basketball operations, said he welcomes Jackson’s input.
“Tom and I discussed using a consultant as part of our decision-making process in our search for a head coach and we feel that Phil Jackson is a great resource to use,” Dumars said. “I look forward to talking with Phil next week.”
Dumars is directly linked to all three NBA titles won by the Pistons, more than all but four other franchises. The Hall of Famer won two titles as a player with the 1989 and ’90 Bad Boys and as president of basketball operations built the 2004 NBA champions.
Continue reading Jackson to Advise on Coach Search >>
Posted Thursday, May 2, 2013
There are certain players Arnie Kander doesn’t want to see for a month. Brandon Knight, dealing with plantar fasciitis that stretches back to last summer, is one of them. Kyle Singler, who’s had precious little time off since signing to play in Spain in the summer of 2011, is another.
Andre Drummond is on a different list. Because he’s the youngest player on the team, still a teenager. Because until last summer, he’d never really been in a supervised weight-training program. Because just a few months under the eye of the Pistons’ esteemed strength coach in the months between last June’s draft and the October opening of training camp produced such dramatic results.
“I go back to last summer,” Kander said. “There are certain things I measure – stride length, stopping angles, how quick getting up, speed getting down the court, change of direction, how quick sideline to sideline – the level of improvement was off the charts. Everyone heard the word ‘potential,’ but it went way beyond that for me. Because when I saw the focus, the commitment, the dedication, potential becomes very easy to attain if you’re willing to put the work in and he did that all season. For me, he’s not even a piece of clay. He’s beyond a piece of clay.”
Continue reading Another Level>>
Posted Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Mike Abdenour is good at barking orders and establishing timelines for athletes in their recovery from physical setbacks, but he’s got some work to do at following instructions and adhering to timelines others set for his recovery.
He’s back at work this week after 32 days off – he could give you the minutes and seconds breakdown if you give him a chance to update the standings – and doesn’t plan on going away again anytime soon. He’d have been back a lot sooner, if he’d had his way. Like five days after the March 24 heart attack that sidelined him – doctor’s orders, with an assist to Joe Dumars – for the remainder of the season.
And he’s already making up for lost time, which explains why he recounted his month away while walking briskly on a treadmill inside the Pistons practice facility, attacking his job with a zeal that would bring knowing smiles to the hundreds of paths he’s crossed during his nearly four decades with the Pistons.
Continue reading Back on the Job>>
Posted Monday, April 29, 2013
The NBA deadline for college underclassmen to declare for the June draft passed at midnight Sunday with fewer than a handful of players who mattered still waffling. Adreian Payne and Isaiah Austin decided to stay in school at Michigan State and Baylor, while Andre Roberson chose to leave Colorado for the NBA.
None of those decisions will affect the Pistons with respect to their lottery pick. The only player considered a probable top-five pick who chose not to enter the draft is Marcus Smart, the Big 12 Player of the Year who announced his intention to return to Oklahoma State for his sophomore season.
What does it mean for the Pistons?
Continue reading Options Aplenty>>
Posted Friday, April 26, 2013
For as long as Greg Monroe had to envision the product of his pairing with Andre Drummond, for as much as he prepared for the switch to power forward to accommodate Drummond’s ascension to the starting lineup, nothing was more instructive – or more encouraging – than experiencing the reality for the season’s final 10 games.
“It’s an unofficial attachment when it comes to big men playing together,” he told me this week. “You have to know where each other is on the court – spacing, movement. Learning where he’s going to be and his habits was the key this year as far as us moving forward. Summertime, we’ll work out. Once the season starts back up, we’ll get more acclimated. But I think we played very well and I think we’ll only get better with time.
“The plan is for us to move forward playing together, so I have to be as comfortable playing with him as anybody could be.”
Continue reading Power Couple>>
Posted Thursday, April 25, 2013
George David’s first draft as Pistons assistant general manager isn’t much different for him than the past several as personnel director. He’s added some duties outside of draft prep in his new role, but he remains the central figure in the run-up to draft night for the Pistons – the guy who directs the scouting staff, puts the draft board together and makes sure Joe Dumars sees every viable candidate for their No. 1 pick in person.
The decisions on draft night are Joe D’s. Making sure he is as well-prepared to make those decisions is perhaps the best way to describe David’s draft role.
As such, he goes by the Boy Scout creed: always be prepared. So when the Pistons were awarded the second-round clip of the Los Angeles Clippers that once seemed unlikely, it was a nice bonus but not something that caught David unprepared.
The Pistons will be picking from one extreme to the other in the June 27 draft – a top-10 pick, a bottom-10 pick and one very near the middle.
Continue Reading Working the Draft>>
Posted Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Greg Monroe doesn’t know who’ll be filling out the lineup card next season, but he’s fairly certain whoever it is will pencil him in next to Andre Drummond at center.
Back in the gym to get in some weight-lifting under Arnie Kander’s supervision on Tuesday, less than a week after his third season wrapped up, Monroe will prepare this off-season to come back with a game more suited to power forward than center.
He’ll split his summer similarly to a year ago – back home in Louisiana for a month, then off to Georgetown for a summer session in the classroom with plenty of ex-Hoyas available to partner up in the gym, then set up shop in Auburn Hills alongside a core of teammates in the weeks leading up to the start of training camp.
Continue Reading A New Frontier>>
Posted Monday, April 22, 2013
It barely registered a blip on the Richter scale of Pistons fandom, but there were a few high fives around the executive offices late Friday afternoon when the Pistons won both of the NBA draft tiebreakers that involved them.
One puts them ahead of Washington in the lottery pecking order, the other gives them a bonus late second-round pick. Assistant general manager George David wasn’t in position to exchange any of those high fives – he was in Portland along with scouting director Doug Ash at the Nike Hoop Summit – but it’s safe to say he cracked a smile.
The tiebreaker win with Washington gives the Pistons a slightly better chance to draw a top-three pick, but the bigger benefit is being slotted one spot ahead of the Wizards.
Posted Friday, April 19, 2013
For a franchise that hasn’t gotten many breaks lately, the Pistons got two Friday afternoon – perhaps an omen that better fortune lies ahead. They won both tiebreakers that involved them for determining lottery position and draft order.
As a result, the Pistons will go into the May 21 lottery in the No. 7 spot. They’ll pick ahead of Washington, with which they shared a 29-52 record, if neither team moves into the top three for the June 27 draft. Washington will thus pick ahead of the Pistons in the second round, which means the Pistons will have the 38th pick. They will also choose 56th as a result of the Los Angeles Clippers winning their tiebreaker with Memphis.
The Pistons were in a similar spot going into the 2010 draft, when they tied with Philadelphia for the sixth spot but lost the tiebreaker. Philadelphia wound up drawing the No. 2 pick and the Pistons picked seventh, selecting Greg Monroe.
Continue Reading A Little Luck>>
Posted Friday, April 19, 2013
In an increasingly polarized world where there is no patience for nuanced positions, we sort coaches into two bins: dictators or pushovers, often coded as “a player’s coach.”
Except the best coaches rise above those labels. Chuck Daly, the best coach in Pistons history, certainly did.
If he were available, Joe Dumars would hire him. Alas, he’s not. So the search goes on.
As it will for roughly a quarter of the league, perhaps a third, in the days and weeks ahead. Philadelphia will be looking for its fifth coach since 2006 with Doug Collins’ departure. Milwaukee might be looking for its fifth, depending on what happens with Jim Boylan. Minnesota could be on the hunt for its sixth coach in that time if Rick Adelman walks away, as he’s said he’s considered. Phoenix will be looking for its fifth coach if Lindsey Hunter isn’t retained.
Continue Reading An Easy Sell>>
Posted Thursday, April 18, 2013
Tom Gores made good on his word to thoroughly but “very, very quickly” make the tough decisions necessary for the future of the Detroit Pistons.
The Pistons on Thursday fired coach Lawrence Frank, less than 24 hours after what Frank described as a “very tough, very turbulent” season came to an end with a loss at Brooklyn.
“We thank Lawrence for his hard work and dedication, but we feel it is in the best interest of the franchise to make a change at this time,” Joe Dumars, president of basketball operations, said in a prepared statement released by the team. “Decisions like this are never easy and we wish Lawrence well in the future.”
Continue Reading Pistons Fire Frank>>
Posted Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Their four-game winning streak came to an end in the season finale. Now the Pistons wait on word whether the Lawrence Frank era ended in Brooklyn, as well.
The Pistons fell 103-99 to the Nets, finishing a season Frank described after the game as “a very tough season, both personally and professionally.” He now awaits a decision on his future with the franchise after owner Tom Gores, while attending Monday’s home finale, promised a swift review of team leadership.
Asked whether he was optimistic about his chances to return, Frank said, “I think very realistic. Tom and I have very honest dialog. We’ll just kind of see how it plays out. You go into it eyes wide open. We both have mutual respect for each other, so we’ll figure it out.”
Frank thanked the players for staying the course, his coaching and support staffs in the locker room after the game, which left the Pistons with a 29-53 record. The Pistons went 25-41 in his lockout-shortened first season.
Continue Reading That's a Wrap>>
Posted Tuesday, April 16, 2013
The cap space Joe Dumars carved out for the looming off-season creates a gaping opportunity to upgrade the Pistons’ talent base. Given the success rate the Pistons have had in the previous three lotteries, adding another top-10 pick likely means a fourth building block will be secured in June. But the greatest source of optimism for a great leap forward in 2013-14 lies in the potency, individually but particularly in the collective, of the Greg Monroe-Andre Drummond tandem.
The Pistons have now had roughly 10 percent of an NBA season – nine games with only Wednesday’s season finale at Brooklyn remaining – to gauge the effectiveness of Monroe and Drummond together.
Ten percent is an amply sufficient sample size to paint an accurate portrayal of the situation as it exists – precise polling can be done with far less of a slice – but it’s still not a lot to go on when projecting the future.
Continue Reading So Far, So Good>>
Posted Monday, April 15, 2013
When Tom Gores spoke before the Pistons’ home finale about his excitement for the future, he wasn’t solely referencing the cache of cap space the franchise will take into the July free agency period. He also had in mind the young nucleus built in the first two years of his stewardship.
A few hours later, he might have been feeling even more optimistic about that young nucleus.
Even with Andre Drummond playing on a testy right ankle, the one he sprained three nights earlier and made him a game-time decision for Monday’s home finale, the Pistons gave their owner a glimpse of what might be with a 109-101 win over Philadelphia.
Greg Monroe racked up his 36th double-double by the first minute of the second half and finished with 27 points and 16 rebounds. Brandon Knight’s bounce fueled a 33-21 third-quarter advantage that put the Pistons squarely in control. Rookie small forwards Kyle Singler (16 points) and Khris Middleton combined for a high-efficiency job sharing role, contributing 26 points and seven rebounds on 10 of 18 shooting.
Drummond didn’t dent the stat sheet with quite the same authority as he’s done frequently since returning from injury nine games ago, accumulating two quick fouls that likely further inhibited his aggressiveness on top of the ankle injury. But he flashed his athleticism and havoc-inducing defensive presence often enough in the second half, when he grabbed five rebounds and added two steals in addition to altering or dissuading several shots.
Continue Reading Closing Strong>>
Posted Monday, April 15, 2013
Tom Gores understands the coming off-season presents the Pistons with an opportunity for a magnitude of change that might not come around again for several years. To ensure those personnel decisions are made with all due consideration, Gores will make the decisions he needs to make soon, he said before Monday’s home finale.
“We’re assessing everything fast,” Gores said when asked if he had a timeline in mind for decisions on the futures of team leadership. “It’s a very important time, a critical time for the franchise. We’re fortunate enough to have a good young group of people, so we’ll do it fast, like we did when we came in and bought the team. We’re going to do this very, very quickly, but thoroughly.”
Gores said he met with president of basketball operations Joe Dumars and head coach Lawrence Frank on Sunday.
“I expected better results,” he said. “I met with Joe and Lawrence yesterday and let them know that. They’re great guys that know their business, but I’m here assessing everything. My job is to move this franchise forward.”
Continue Reading Whatever it Takes>>
Posted Sunday, April 14, 2013
The front office that scouted Khris Middleton for three college seasons and saw him hold his own against NBA players in summer camp pickup games wasn’t fazed by his performances in Orlando’s Summer League. But the coaching staff that didn’t have that history with him? Well …
“In Summer League, look, there were a lot of questions,” Lawrence Frank said as the season headed to its final week with Middleton now in the rotation as Kyle Singler’s backup. “Part of it is him getting healthy with his knee. I think he has a lot more confidence in his legs. A lot of work he’s put into his game. He’s very studious. He knows that he has to continue to work and get stronger. He’s in the weight room. He watches film every day. At the end of practice, he’s working on his individual skills, one on one.”
When Joe Dumars huddles his inner circle at season’s end and plots a future that includes the opening that an estimated $25 million or more in cap space this summer provides, he’ll write the names of his last three No. 1 draft choices in ink: Greg Monroe, Brandon Knight and Andre Drummond. He’ll have Kyle Singler on that list, too, and now Rodney Stuckey and Jonas Jerebko have grown into the class of young veterans, both putting strong finishing kicks onto disappointing seasons.
Continue Reading Closing Rush>>
Posted Friday, April 12, 2013
Charlotte stumbled to the league’s worst season ever a year ago by winning percentage, going 7-59 and praying with every loss for the payoff that never came. They wanted Kentucky’s Anthony Davis, as did all teams that landed in the lottery. But the Bobcats came up with the No. 2 pick instead. They could have taken Andre Drummond.
And that possibility could well haunt the franchise for years. Drummond gave the Bobcats a glimpse into what might have been on Friday, scoring 15 points and grabbing nine rebounds, just as he likely turned Cleveland wistful two nights earlier with a 29-point, 11-rebound outing for passing on him with the No. 4 pick.
“He puts a presence on the offensive boards,” Charlotte coach Mike Dunlap said before Friday’s 113-93 Pistons win, their third straight. “It’s like there’s a piece of meat on the tip of the rim and he’s going after that sucker like a hound dog that hasn’t been fed for seven days. Defensively, he’s just a good athlete who covers a lot of mistakes at the rim and he’s willing to leave his man to block shots, take charges. I think he’s gritty.”
Drummond’s numbers might have been better, but he left the game just 2:40 after returning in the fourth quarter when he stepped on Bismack Biyombo’s foot and rolled his right ankle. He said X-rays revealed nothing more serious than a sprain and felt he’d be ready for the season’s final two games, Monday vs. Philadelphia at The Palace and Wednesday’s finale at Brooklyn. The team called him day to day.
Posted Thursday, April 11, 2013
About 20 minutes before tipoff of Wednesday’s game at Cleveland, Cavs TV analyst Austin Carr, doing a live in-arena interview to preview the Pistons-Cavs game, proclaimed Cleveland shooting guard Dion Waiters “the best rookie in the Eastern Conference.”
Perked my ears up a little bit. Fans in Washington (Bradley Beal) and Charlotte (Michael Kidd-Gilchrist) would probably object, but fans in Detroit – perhaps the only place where Andre Drummond’s impact is fully appreciated – surely would.
But, OK. Waiters has been pretty good, scoring almost 15 points a game despite low shooting percentages, and Carr, a Notre Dame legend who averaged 38 points a game as a junior and senior 40-plus years ago, is likely inclined to value scoring above all else.
Continue Reading The Right Stuff>>
Posted Wednesday, April 10, 2013
CLEVELAND – Andre Drummond diligently practices his free throws every day, despite what his 34 percent success rate in an otherwise revelatory rookie season might suggest. He just usually doesn’t get to practice them with 14,000 onlookers. But when Cleveland coach Byron Scott dragged out the Hack-a-Dre strategy with a little more than five minutes left in Wednesday’s fourth quarter, Drummond took a philosophical approach.
“I got a chance to work on my free throws today. That’s how I look at it,” the rookie said after scoring nine points in 17 attempts at the line as part of a career-best 29-point outburst in a 111-104 Pistons win that swept the four-game season series from Cleveland. “I just got a chance to work at it. Now I know I can do it, so there’s no excuse not to do it again next game. The more and more they foul me, the more and more I got confidence. I just said to myself, ‘You get the next one.’ If I missed one, ‘You get the next one.’ I was focused. That’s what I call it. I was focused.”
Seven times in a span of nine possessions over 3:15, Cleveland players mugged Drummond. He split the pair on the first six trips and made both on the final one.
Continue Reading Drummond Dominates>>
Posted Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Lawrence Frank admits he comes at this from the perspective of a man who dreamed of being a coach the way other kids hope to become an astronaut or movie star. Outsiders making sweeping assumptions and proclamations armed with a fraction of the proprietary knowledge the coach possesses drive him a little crazy.
And when he hears the rumblings directed at Michigan coach John Beilein after Monday’s championship game loss to Louisville in one of the most competitive and entertaining title games of its era, he bristles.
When Michigan’s national player of the year, Trey Burke, picked up his second foul before the mid-point of the first half, Beilein put him on the bench. He left him there for the rest of the half as freshman backup Spike Albrecht’s shooting allowed Michigan to build a double-digit lead with 17 first-half points. Louisville wound up cutting Michigan’s halftime lead to one when Luke Hancock drilled four 3-pointers in the final two minutes.
Continue Reading A Coach's Perspective>>
Posted Monday, April 8, 2013
As a rookie, Jonas Jerebko left little doubt that no one could possibly have more fun than he derived from playing basketball. When his stints on the court ended, he’d come to the bench with red cheeks that more often than not matched red floor burns on his knees and elbows.
The Pistons weren’t abundantly talented that season, 2009-10, but with Jerebko starting in place of an injured Tayshaun Prince, they put together a five-game November winning streak with a starting five that consisted of two players making the veteran minimum – Chucky Atkins and Ben Wallace – plus Jason Maxiell, Rodney Stuckey and the second-round rookie from Sweden. Together, they were earning less than $10 million, a sum dwarfed by more than 70 individual NBA players that season.
That Jonas Jerebko wasn’t much in evidence this season. Of course, any Jonas Jerebko wasn’t much in evidence over a 28-game span from late November to late January in which he played in just six minutes of one game.
Continue Reading A Jonas Bonus>>
Posted Sunday, April 7, 2013
In a season filled with too many near-misses and nights lamented for the lack of the one or two plays that weren’t made, the Pistons might not look back more fondly at any game than the 99-85 win over Chicago in Game 78.
It was made doubly satisfying for the way it obliterated the burden of the 18-game losing streak the Pistons dragged into the game at Chicago’s hands, symbolically washed away in the chest bump Andre Drummond and Jonas Jerebko shared when Drummond charged off the bench to meet Jerebko near mid-court after the Swede’s dunk put the Pistons up 14 with seven minutes to play and forced a Chicago timeout.
“We hadn’t beaten them since Andre was born,” Lawrence Frank grinned. “That’s a long time – 18 straight times. Not that we know the date – Dec. 23, 2008.”
Continue Reading By the Horns>>
Posted Saturday, April 6, 2013
When the Pistons look back at a season that will vex them, one of the most perplexing elements of it will be their road performance against Western Conference teams. Saturday was their last shot to get a win against the West and they gave themselves a chance they haven’t often had in their previous 14 such games. But their inability to hang on to the basketball – on their offensive end for the first 59 minutes and at Minnesota’s end in the final 60 seconds – cost them in a 107-101 loss.
The Pistons were within a point after Brandon Knight’s 3-pointer made it 102-101, but couldn’t corral an offensive rebound with 20 seconds left that went off Andre Drummond’s fingers. Forced to foul, they failed to grab Luke Ridnour’s miss on the second attempt, allowing him to make it a four-point game when they were again forced to foul with 15 seconds to go.
They lost a key jump ball also in the last few minutes with Andre Drummond up against point guard Ricky Rubio, and Brandon Knight – who played a gutty game, scoring 25 points after tossing away the protective mask for his broken nose five minutes into the game – fouled Rubio on a desperation 3-pointer at a time Rubio was 0 of 11.
Continue Reading Turnover Trouble>>
Posted Friday, April 5, 2013
The four horsemen of Brandon Knight’s apocalyptic season: plantar fasciitis, hyperextended knee, sprained ankle, broken nose. For all of that, he’s missed seven games: three with the knee, four with the ankle.
“It’s always something,” he said, palming the hard plastic face mask he abhors but has been ordered to wear for the remainder of the season, “but normally it’s one thing. My entire college season, it was tendinitis. I don’t think I’ve ever had this many minor things added together at one time.”
They’ve all converged down the stretch of the season, too, with the plantar fasciitis that first flared last summer causing him stabbing pain again now. On Thursday, when the Pistons returned from their three-game road trip and before they headed back out to Minnesota on Friday, Knight and teammate Corey Maggette had their broken noses reset.
Continue Reading Playing Over Pain>>
Posted Thursday, April 4, 2013
The pairing of Andre Drummond with Greg Monroe, an experiment less than a week in the making, opens the door to a world of possibilities for the Pistons. It also poses a number of questions, the answers to which are only in the infancy of being formed.
The Pistons are getting a taste of how teams are going to defend them, though Lawrence Frank says the young pair hasn’t yet risen to the level that they become the focus of opposition defensive schemes. But in the minutiae that makes up a game plan, teams are deciding who guards Monroe and who guards Drummond, and how they can force Frank into having to choose one or the other late in games – or take his chances that a mismatch on one end of the floor will play to his advantage more than a mismatch on the opposite end will inflict damage.
“It’s all about combinations,” Frank said. “If they’re more worried about Andre’s rolls, they’ll probably use their best pick-and-roll defender on Andre. If they’re worried about Greg’s postups, they’ll put their better postup defender on Greg.”
So Monroe isn’t going to automatically be able to go against power forwards over whom he might have a significant size and strength advantage. Teams might still guard Monroe with their center and let their power forward take his chances against Drummond, whose strengths are offensive rebounding and finishing lob dunks off pick-and-roll plays – not posting up.
Continue Reading Making it Work>>
Posted Wednesday, April 3, 2013
BOSTON – Lawrence Frank struck gold with an unlikely lineup to win Monday at Toronto and nearly did it again with a new mix Wednesday at Boston. Down 18 midway through the third quarter, the Pistons came within three minutes by the midway mark in the fourth.
But for miserable 3-point shooting numbers and a half-dozen turnovers in the first six minutes of the fourth quarter, the Pistons would have left Boston with a five-game winning streak over the Celtics and a comeback for the ages. Instead, they sat in a locker room with dumbfounded looks as the reality of some staggering shooting numbers sunk in.
“Two for 17?” Jonas Jerebko repeated when he heard Charlie Villanueva’s shooting numbers. Nobody takes more 3-pointers as a percentage of his shots than Villanueva and there’s nobody the Pistons would rather have taking them, either, but he missed all eight of his shots from distance against the Celtics, including two in the final minute – one for the lead, one for a last-possession tie.
“Charlie’s a shooter. He’s going to keep shooting it. Two for 17 – we could have won by 10. But the ball didn’t bounce our way. We got great looks. We shared the ball. I’m happy with the way we played. We had some unfortunate missed ones.”
Posted Tuesday, April 2, 2013
There could not have been a more intimidating NBA roster on which Jason Maxiell would attempt to make an impression than the 2005-06 Pistons. They were coming off back-to-back NBA Finals appearances, beating the vaunted Lakers in the 2004 “five-game sweep” and pushing the equally star-laden San Antonio Spurs to seven grinding games into late June the next season.
A few days later, the Pistons used the 26th pick of the 2005 draft to select Maxiell, a conventionally undersized post player even by the standards of college basketball. But the Pistons saw in him a certain fearlessness and toughness they instinctively viewed as a fit for grooming behind Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace and the player Joe Dumars would sign days later as a free agent, Antonio McDyess.
All three of those veterans could spot a phony a mile away. No rookie, no matter how decorated or hyped upon arrival, would win an ounce of their respect until it was earned.
It speaks volumes that all three quickly took Maxiell under their collective wing because they saw in him a kindred spirit, a player who believed the only NBA currency that mattered was tied to work ethic, selflessness and team success.
Posted Monday, April 1, 2013
TORONTO – When the halftime buzzer sounded at Air Canada Centre, Jose Calderon headed to the locker room. The wrong locker room. The one he called home for the first seven-plus seasons of his NBA career.
“I went to the wrong tunnel,” Calderon grinned sheepishly after the game. “But they called me out really quick. It was just like three or four steps. That’s all.”
Those were the only three or four missteps of Calderon’s homecoming, which the Pistons made a triumphant one by putting up 33 fourth-quarter points with a group that probably hadn’t logged two meaningful minutes together all season.
Continue Reading Turnabout in Toronto>>
Posted Monday, April 1, 2013
Save for an ankle injury that cost him a mid-March game at Utah, Jason Maxiell started all of the Pistons’ first 72 games this season – until the last one he played, last Friday, when Andre Drummond returned from a back injury.
That will stand as Maxiell’s last game of the season, the Pistons announced on Monday – and it could be the last game of his eight-year run with the franchise that made him its 2005 first-round pick. Maxiell, a pending free agent whose return is questionable with Drummond and Greg Monroe established as the starting frontcourt of the future, will miss the season’s final eight games after undergoing surgery to repair a detached retina.
“You feel horrible for Jason,” Lawrence Frank said before Monday’s game at Toronto. “He’s a very, very professional guy. You know exactly what you’re going to get every day. You hate to see any of your guys get injured and especially like that, where your season is over.”
Continue Reading Maxiell's Season Ends>>
Posted Sunday, March 31, 2013
CHICAGO – The Pistons avoided the third-quarter meltdown that led to embarrassing home losses to Minnesota and Toronto last week. They got 29 points off their bench in the first half alone. They dominated the glass, a testament to the difference Andre Drummond makes.
But the Chicago Bulls might as well be a vampire to them, defeated only by having a stake driven cleanly through the heart.
The streak now stands at 18 and stretches to the George W. Bush administration. In both of their previous meetings this season, the Pistons saw Chicago overcome 17-point deficits to win. In this one, the Pistons led by 13 early and for all of the first three-plus quarters.
“I don’t even know that our guys know the last time we beat them was Dec. 23, 2008,” Lawrence Frank said after the 95-94 win in a game the Pistons nearly tied with six seconds to play on a Charlie Villanueva triple. “I know that, but I don’t even think they know it. The bottom line is we’ve given ourselves three chances to win and that’s such a fine line. They’re a 40-win team. You think about it: We hold them to under 40 percent, we shoot 50 percent from the field, 43 percent from three, you think you’re going to win the game.”
Posted Saturday, March 30, 2013
Andre Drummond moved fluidly, got 10 shots within arm’s length of the rim and made 80 percent of them. His four rebounds in 19 minutes didn’t jump out of the box score, but the way he speared them – darting from one side of the rim to the other – underscored the rare combination of length and athleticism the Pistons so dearly missed in his absence. He blocked two shots but appeared to get his hands on at least two others and altered or dissuaded another handful. He was credited with two steals.
But Drummond’s first game back was so eerily like his last game missed – both lopsided losses to teams with records nearly identical to the Pistons, both games essentially decided by one-sided third quarters – as to be a sobering reminder of what Lawrence Frank emphasized in the days and hours leading to Drummond’s Friday return: Good to have him back, but it’s not a magic bullet.
With the postseason no longer even a remote possibility, the focus of outsiders and fans, at least, is on Drummond and the ripple effects of his return. With Drummond starting, Greg Monroe – who has played nothing but center for his first three NBA seasons – slides to power forward. For Frank, well, the focus is on something else.
“This is bigger,” Frank said. “What we’re dealing with, our play post All-Star break and what it’s been quite frankly for the last five years, we have to find a way. We’ve got to stop talking about individual players and start talking about the team. We’ve got to get where we’re playing much more competitive basketball.”
Posted Friday, March 29, 2013
It was simultaneously painful yet fitting that Andre Drummond returned to the Pistons – and this time as a starter – one day after they’d been officially eliminated from playoff contention. Drummond’s return was both a reminder of what might have been had he not missed the past 22 games and a blueprint for what they hope to be.
With Drummond presenting an inviting above-the-rim target, the Pistons got off to a fast start and led Toronto by 10 points five minutes into the game. But another third-quarter meltdown served to underscore what Lawrence Frank warned before the game: “The last thing I want to do is, OK, Andre’s back, our problems are solved. That is the furthest thing from the truth there is.”
Toronto outscored the Pistons 36-15 in the third quarter, breaking open a one-point halftime game, and rolled to a 99-82 win that looked and felt much like Minnesota’s 105-82 win three nights earlier.
“Very similar to the Minnesota game,” Frank said. “Competitive game. Third quarter, 25-8 run. It just doesn’t add up. When you’re competitive for a half and then it just snowballs on us and we don’t have the resolve right now to put more into it. This is embarrassing. You’re got to sustain your focus, effort, discipline for 48 minutes. We’re not doing it.”
Posted Friday, March 29, 2013
Andre Drummond not only returns to the Pistons tonight, he’ll make his first NBA start, alongside Greg Monroe.
“We’re going to try, as much as we can, to maximize those guys’ minutes in terms of when they’re on the floor,” Lawrence Frank said after Friday’s morning shootaround. “Especially with Andre building up his minutes, another good reason to start him and make sure those guys are together.”
Frank, who dropped pretty strong hints on Thursday that Drummond’s return would come tonight against Toronto, said Drummond had been told just before he got hurt that he was moving into the starting lineup. The move would have come in the days just before the All-Star break, Frank said.
Posted Thursday, March 28, 2013
Never having been drafted, Jose Calderon came to the NBA unlike the vast majority of players who wind up leaving anything approaching a legacy. Or maybe not so much unlike them after all. Yes, Calderon signed with Toronto as a free agent – but only because Toronto was the one NBA team that went after the slight point guard from Spain.
“I really didn’t have so many options at that time, I’ve got to say,” Calderon smiled. “It’s not like I had five or six teams out there making me an offer. Toronto, they wanted me to travel to Toronto and see the city, they were really interested, so they give me the contract I was looking for so I could pay my way out. It wasn’t too many offers I had to choose. It was just them.”
Twice over the next four days, Calderon will compete against players who wear the only NBA uniform he’d donned until the late-January trade uprooted him and dropped him in Detroit. He’s not expecting to be emotionally overwrought when the Raptors play at The Palace on Friday, but when the Pistons repay the visit on Monday at Air Canada Centre … well, that might shake him a little.
Posted Thursday, March 28, 2013
Lawrence Frank wouldn’t commit to Andre Drummond being in uniform and available to play when Toronto comes to The Palace on Friday, but he certainly circled close to such an admission.
“In terms of tomorrow, I’ll give you that answer tomorrow,” Frank said after a Thursday practice he described as one with “good spirit, good energy, good effort” – perhaps, in some measure, because Drummond was again a full participant and spent a good chunk of it playing alongside Greg Monroe.
“We may want to create a competitive situation where we may not want to tell Toronto exactly what we’re doing,” Frank grinned. “That may be a part of it, too.”
Posted Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Lawrence Frank anticipated giving the Pistons the day off on Wednesday. That was clearly what the calendar dictated with 72 games of pounding on the knees and backs of his players and two days off before the Pistons host Toronto to start another stretch of three games in four nights.
But the ghoulish specter of Tuesday’s 23-point dousing by the Minnesota Timberwolves needed to be purged and so …
“They needed to watch it,” Frank said after a practice light on the physical and heavy on the mental. “When you get embarrassed like we got embarrassed, it’s important to see it as opposed to waiting another day and letting it linger – address it.”
Posted Tuesday, March 26, 2013
During a home losing drought that now stretches out nearly six weeks, the Pistons could at least say they had lost to all quality basketball teams. Until Tuesday night, at least. The Minnesota Timberwolves, whose season ran off the rails a long time ago due to an overwhelming run of injuries, outscored the Pistons by 22 in the third quarter and led by 28 after three quarters.
They heard those diehard home fans who’ve stuck with them through a disappointing season boo them off the floor at that point.
“They deserve to,” said Lawrence Frank, upbeat after the 1-1 road trip last weekend that included hanging tough with the rampaging Miami Heat and winning in the final minute against a Charlotte team that had won two straight and three of five, after the 105-82 final. “We get what we deserved. The fans that are coming out, these guys are loyal fans. We have 24 wins and we only have a handful of home games left. These guys are loyalists. We deserve to be booed. That comes with the territory. We have to give them a better product and we didn’t do it tonight.”
Posted Monday, March 25, 2013
If you were looking for a compelling reason to pay attention to the final 11 games of the Pistons’ season, how about the anticipated return of Andre Drummond? It’s probably coming soon – but it won’t be Tuesday when the Pistons host Minnesota.
“He’s on course to get back and we’ll just read it,” Lawrence Frank said on Monday after Drummond went through his second full practice, in addition to participating in the last two game-day shootarounds, since suffering a stress fracture in his lower back in early February, 21 games ago. “It’s very encouraging, what you see, but as much as you try to simulate it, practice isn’t an NBA game. But he’s working hard and it’s great to see him back on the court.”
Drummond’s first practice came on Thursday before the Pistons played a weekend back-to-back set at Miami and Charlotte, where their losing streak was extended to 10 games on Friday before it was snapped on Saturday. The team didn’t practice on Sunday, but Drummond worked with Frank’s staff and got in another conditioning session.
Posted Sunday, March 24, 2013
The last time Joe Dumars made an in-season trade for a high-profile veteran on an expiring contract he intended to pursue in free agency, it was 2004. The player was Rasheed Wallace and the best sales tool Joe D had at his disposal was the NBA championship run on which the Goin’ to Work Pistons embarked.
He has no such aphrodisiac by which to woo Jose Calderon.
“Obviously, it’s a different, different team – a younger team that’s trying to build vs. a team that’s vying for a championship, so that in itself makes the experience completely and totally different,” Dumars told me last week. “But a guy can still make a decision based on the environment, based on the culture, based on the surroundings, the way an organization goes about its business.
Posted Saturday, March 23, 2013
CHARLOTTE – For the second time in 24 hours, the Pistons found themselves up against an opponent working on a rare winning streak: 24 straight in Miami’s case, two in Charlotte’s. Snicker if you will, but the last time the Bobcats had done so was way back in mid-November, and the redemptive combination of two wins plus two days off made Charlotte a more formidable opponent than its 16-40 record suggested.
Especially at a time the Pistons are enduring the throes of their own streak, 10 straight losses after Friday’s setback to the sizzling Heat in which they invested what energy and emotion they had left following a disheartening stretch of basketball.
So their 92-91 win over Charlotte will get lost in the hubbub of March Madness, but the mixture of joy and relief on all of their faces was palpable when Charlie Villanueva secured a loose rebound before the buzzer sounded and his teammates converged on him in celebration.
Posted Friday, March 22, 2013
MIAMI – It was the loss the world expected but for the longest time it didn’t follow the plot anyone anticipated. And the 103-89 loss to Miami – the Pistons’ 10th straight setback, the Heat’s 25th straight win – or at least the first three quarters of it, should serve as the blueprint for how they conduct their business over the final 12 games of a season fraught with disappointment.
“I think this is our team,” Jose Calderon said. “This is the team we’ve got to be. It’s not about winning or losing at this time of the season. It’s about showing what we can do, have pride, play 48 minutes. They’re a great team, but I think we gave it our best. It’s not like they just beat us. They beat 24 teams before us. I think a lot of people expected us to come here and they beat us by 40 or 50. That’s not going to happen. We’ve got to be positive with the effort we (gave) tonight. That’s for sure.”
The Pistons led for almost all of the first three quarters, and by as much as 11 points in the first half. Miami came with all of its defensive fury in the second half, holding the Pistons to 35 points and 30 percent shooting after a 54-point first half in which the Pistons shot 52 percent. Turnovers were especially costly: The Pistons committed 22 and the Heat pounced on them for 27 points.
Posted Friday, March 22, 2013
Joe Dumars wasn’t really worried about how Brandon Knight would take the news of Jose Calderon, the dictionary definition of a point guard, joining the Pistons in a late January trade. Dumars knows ultimately that Knight’s abiding interest is in winning. But he had a few good, long heart-to-heart talks, anyway, with the player who had occupied that position for virtually all of his first 100-plus NBA games.
“I said, ‘Brandon, just understand something. This doesn’t mean you’re not going to handle the ball any more. We’re going to get stops and rebounds and we’ll kick it out to you. You’re going to push the ball and attack, run drag screens and come off and, yeah, you’re going to do all of that. Trust me. You can have two guards in the backcourt who can handle the ball. It’ll work. It’ll work.’ ”
Between the first two injuries of his career that cost Knight games – a hyperextended right knee that sidelined him for three games in late February and a sprained left ankle that will keep him out of his fourth consecutive game at Miami tonight – the 21-year-old Knight has given clear signs that he could flourish playing off of the ball.
Posted Thursday, March 21, 2013
Joe Dumars spent all of last week scouring the talent pool for June’s NBA draft at various conference tournaments from Las Vegas to New York. So where would Andre Drummond go if he had waited for the 2013 draft instead of leaving UConn after an uneven freshman season?
“Let’s just say he would go really high,” Dumars said after a good belly laugh. “Really high.”
If the low point of the Pistons season was learning of the diagnosis of a stress fracture in the rookie’s lower back, it’s overwhelmed by the transformative effect Drummond’s emergence has had on the future of the franchise.
Posted Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Assuming Miami survives the anti-LeBron James fervor in Cleveland tonight, the Pistons’ nine-game losing streak will collide head-on with a 23-game winning streak in the cauldron of a party atmosphere on a Friday night on South Beach.
“If we’re going down there, we better have the belief that we can win,” Lawrence Frank said after Wednesday’s practice. “If not, then why go? Someone’s going to beat them. Why not us?”
In late December, before the Heat turned invincible, the Pistons beat Miami 109-99 in front of their own partying Friday night crowd. Miami was firing on about half of its cylinders at the time and went 9-7 over its next 16 games, a stretch that included a 110-88 revenge victory over the Pistons on another Friday night in Miami.
Nine days later, on Super Bowl Sunday, the fates of the two franchises’ seasons diverged. The Heat won at Toronto and haven’t lost since. The Pistons played well but lost by a point to the Lakers. But they lost far more than a game that day. Though they didn’t know it at the time, they also lost Andre Drummond, whose impact on games and value to the team had been expanding by the week.
Posted Tuesday, March 19, 2013
When the Pistons scout upcoming opponents, they look at the most relevant information – which is the most recent information. They look, specifically, at the last five games to gauge lineup combinations, tendencies, strengths and weaknesses.
They hold themselves up against the same standard – the last five games.
Lawrence Frank isn’t going to like what he sees when that report hits his desk.
The Pistons gave up 112 points a game on their 0-4 West Coast road trip last week when opponents shot 55 percent and only Portland, which scored 112 on the nose, made fewer than half of its shots. The Palace proved no elixir upon their return, either, as Brooklyn started a stretch of eight consecutive road games on the right foot by dropping 119 points on the Pistons and shooting 54 percent.
Posted Monday, March 18, 2013
Andre Drummond was a big part of the Pistons’ improved defense over the season’s first 50 games – and maybe a bigger part than even they realized at the time – but Lawrence Frank’s faith that defense will be the touchstone for a franchise renaissance transcends roster makeup and goes to mind-set.
“The thing that we have to restore is pride in being a Piston,” Frank said. “As we’ve struggled post-All-Star break, that’s one of the things that stands out. As you have time to reflect, that’s something that stands out to me. We have to, every single day, figure out a way to restore the pride in being a part of this team, because we’re a whole lot more capable than what we’re doing.”
He said that before Monday’s game, when the Pistons suffered a particularly one-sided loss, falling by 37 points – their worst home loss of the season and second only to their March 3 39-point loss at San Antonio among all games – to the Brooklyn Nets. Almost every ugly loss of the season has come over the past month since returning from the All-Star break.
Posted Saturday, March 16, 2013
PORTLAND – On a list that also must include David West and Luis Scola, count LaMarcus Aldridge as a power forward who bedevils the Pistons. Aldridge did it again Saturday night, opening the fourth quarter by scoring on each of Portland’s first four possessions on his way to another monstrous night at Detroit’s expense.
Aldridge scored on increasingly tough jump shots on Portland’s first three trips of the final quarter, after the Pistons had lost an 11-point first-half lead but were still squarely in contention. On the fourth trip, Jason Maxiell, already giving Aldridge precious little breathing room, got too close and fouled him, and Aldridge drained both free throws.
“As great a job as Jason Maxiell was doing on him, he made two or three shots that I don’t even know how he made them, quite honestly,” Brian Hill said after Portland’s 112-101 win. “He hurt us in the second half.”
Posted Friday, March 15, 2013
PORTLAND – When Pistons executive George David dug into Kyle Singler’s Duke career and talked to the staff that had coached him for four years, he kept hearing a similar refrain: We don’t feel comfortable when he’s not on the floor. Pistons coaches discovered the same thing in Summer League, playing him all 20 minutes of the second half one game and then shutting him down to remove the temptation to keep doing so.
So imagine how Dennis Murphy felt while coaching Singler in high school.
“It gets back to he’s so competitive, so tenacious and so smart,” Murphy said. “The result is, how do you take the guy off the floor? That’s exactly who he is.”
Murphy has grown South Medford High School in Medford, Ore., a city of 75,000 about 270 miles south of Portland near the California border, into a state power during his 25 years at the school, winning 17 conference championships. But his best teams were the ones that included Singler, a four-year varsity letter-winner who led the Panthers to consecutive state title appearances where they ran into a familiar opponent led by another pretty fair player: Lake Oswego and Kevin Love.
Posted Thursday, March 14, 2013
If a point guard is the equivalent of a quarterback when his team is on offense, then a center’s responsibilities translate with equal appropriateness to those of a middle linebacker. A center must serve as the eyes for perimeter defenders unaware of what’s happening behind them, must help teammates get in the proper position as he anticipates the action of the play unfolding.
One critical component of the smothering defensive ability of the Goin’ to Work Pistons was the communication skills of Rasheed Wallace and Ben Wallace, not only intelligent individual defenders but players able and willing to vocalize their observations.
And that quality might be the key to Slava Kravtsov carving out a career in the NBA. Gifted with a rare combination of size and athleticism to be a premier shot-blocker and intimidating defensive presence, Kravtsov’s ability to force his way into a more prominent role with the Pistons depends on his abilities to learn the nuances of NBA post defense and to communicate the proper defensive calls as part of a big man’s responsibilities.
Posted Wednesday, March 13, 2013
OAKLAND, Calif. – Down two key players in Andre Drummond and Brandon Knight, the Pistons saw in Wednesday’s loss at Golden State what could be when they’re healthy and they get the kind of production out of two key positions lacking for much of the season.
Rodney Stuckey, starting for the injured Brandon Knight, scored 22 points and got to the foul line six times. Hard to believe he went three straight games earlier this month without a basket, but when Stuckey is attacking the basket and getting to the foul line the Pistons have a much different offensive dynamic. Stuckey led five Pistons in double figures as they came back from double-digit deficits in both halves and pushed a hot Golden State team to the final minute before losing 105-97.
“We’re dangerous with Stuck attacking like that,” said Will Bynum, who added 16 points and four assists off the bench. “Nobody can guard him when he’s attacking. We need that from him.”
Stuckey, who added five assists, has had success both as a starter and a reserve, so he wasn’t assigning his success to being back in the starting lineup after Knight rolled his left ankle in Monday’s loss at Golden State. But he did attribute it to having more opportunities to play to his strength.
Posted Wednesday, March 13, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO – Lugging a six-game losing streak with them up the West Coast, it speaks to the turn the Pistons’ season has taken that the first questions put to their coach is now the injury report. It really speaks to the turn the season has taken that the coach is Brian Hill, standing in for Lawrence Frank, who has been away from the team for 10 days at the side of his wife, Susan, as she deals with a health issue in New Jersey.
Jason Maxiell, who missed Monday’s loss at Utah after spraining his right ankle in Sunday’s game with the Clippers, went through shootaround and is expected to play tonight at Golden State.
That’s the good news. Two players central to their future, Andre Drummond and Brandon Knight, remain sidelined. Both worked with strength coach Arnie Kander on conditioning and rehabilitation as shootaround concluded, Knight – minus the crutches that carried out of him Energy Solutions Arena in Salt Lake City two nights earlier – walking in place while Kander directed hand movements for him at one point.
Posted Tuesday, March 12, 2013
To be certain, what happens in Las Vegas this week will not stay in Las Vegas. It will be taken back to 30 NBA cities and discussed among colleagues openly and at length.
It might be late in the college basketball season, but it’s early in the process of assessing college players. And that assessment is going to take place this week mostly in Las Vegas, where four separate conference tournaments will be held.
That explains why the top two Pistons executives, Joe Dumars and George David, merely hitched a ride west on Roundball One over the weekend with the Pistons headed to Los Angeles to start a weeklong, four-game trip up the Pacific Coast.
Dumars and David watched the Pistons lose to the Clippers on Sunday night, then stayed behind when the team left for Utah after the game. They both headed instead to Las Vegas, which this week serves as the intersection for the West Coast Conference, which wrapped up its tournament Monday night with Gonzaga beating Saint Mary’s for the title at Orleans Arena; the Pacific-12, which starts Wednesday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena; the Western Athletic, which starts today at Orleans; and the Mountain West, which starts today at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center.
Posted Monday, March 11, 2013
SALT LAKE CITY – After the insult for Brandon Knight came the injury.
One night after he challenged a DeAndre Jordan dunk and lost, Knight went down in a heap under the basket early in Monday’s loss at Utah with a sprained left ankle. Knight clutched at his leg as he was falling to the court and appeared to be in tremendous pain. As Pistons trainers Arnie Kander and Mike Abdenour tended to him, he removed his mouthpiece and flung it over the backboard. When he was assisted to his feet, Knight could put no weight on his left leg.
On crutches afterward, Knight said he feared it might have been something worse than a sprain at first.
“To be honest with you, I wasn’t sure,” he said. “Normally, when I sprain my ankle, I have the power to at least walk off the court. I turn ’em and I can walk it off. But this one, the pain wasn’t going away and I couldn’t put any pressure on it.”
The pall of Knight’s injury overshadowed a much better performance by the Pistons than they registered in Sunday’s 32-point loss to the Clippers. Trailing by 18 late in the first half, they put up 33 points in the third quarter to close to within six and had it at five with eight minutes to play. But playing shorthanded – they went the whole game without Jason Maxiell, as well – the Pistons simply didn’t have enough firepower to win in a building where they last won nearly 11 years ago.
Posted Sunday, March 10, 2013
LOS ANGELES – The Pistons are 0-11 on the road against Western Conference teams this season. If they’re going to pick up any wins on the four-game swing up the Pacific Coast this week, they’re going to need to be better by a wide margin at both ends of the floor and between the lines than they were in getting thumped 129-97 by the Clippers in Sunday night’s opener.
Mostly, they’re going to have to be better between the ears and, as the Pistons themselves asserted, they’re going to have to display a lot more heart.
“There was just no effort, no fight,” Greg Monroe said, clearly upset and clearly sending a message. “It was an embarrassment. Maybe guys don’t care. Something has to change, though. This can’t continue. If you don’t want to play, just say it. This has got to stop. This is unacceptable.”
The Clippers scored a dozen more points than the Pistons had allowed in any previous game in regulation this season – they also scored three more than Atlanta managed in double overtime in December – and they did it with six minutes to spare. It was a parade of uncontested dunks and unguarded 3-pointers as the Clippers shot more than 60 percent in every quarter except the third, when they shot 58 percent.
Posted Saturday, March 9, 2013
No one is more central to the future of the Pistons than Andre Drummond. They hope Jose Calderon becomes a part of that future, as well. But Calderon hits free agency when the season ends and there’s no guarantee that one component critical to his evaluation process – how he meshes with Andre Drummond – will have entered anything into evidence for him when he weighs all factors.
“It would be great, for sure,” Calderon told me before the Pistons headed out on a weeklong Western Conference road swing. “It was great, the way he was playing and the way he was playing the pick and roll – and that’s what I do. I’d love to have time to play with him, for sure. It could be fun, but the more important thing is for him to get fully healthy and ready. When he’s ready, he’ll be back. If it’s 10 games, good. If it’s three, good. Whatever it is will be is OK.”
Drummond has missed the last 14 games with a stress fracture in the fifth lumbar vertabra. The initial timetable given for his return was four to six weeks. There have been no setbacks in his recovery, but logic dictates that the Pistons are going to err on the side of caution twice over where Drummond is concerned. The worst case would be to come back too soon and suffer a setback that wipes out a good chunk of Drummond’s off-season program, a time when the Pistons hope they can really accelerate his growth.
Posted Friday, March 8, 2013
Before Brian Hill pulled a lineup out of the hat and Friday night turned sideways, it looked like you could cross out the names of Raymond Felton, J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert and substitute Mike James, O.J. Mayo and Vince Carter. It looked, in other words, as if the story of Friday’s loss to Dallas was going to basically steal its plot line from Wednesday’s loss to New York: a flurry of 3-pointers doing in the Pistons once again.
The Pistons were hanging around, as they’d done with the Knicks, when three triples on three possessions turned a tie into a runaway. Against the Mavs, a five-point hole after three quarters became a 15-point canyon in the course of just 137 seconds as ex-Piston Mike James and ex-superstar Vince Carter each drained a pair of triples over the span of six Dallas possessions.
A 24-8 run later, the Pistons most improbably led 97-96, the comeback spurred by two players who didn’t play in the loss to New York. Rookie Khris Middleton scored a career-high 14 points, 10 of them in the fourth quarter, and Charlie Villaneuva added 12, all in the final period after not entering the game until very late in the third quarter.
Posted Thursday, March 7, 2013
Brian Hill isn’t sure how long he’ll keep Lawrence Frank’s seat warm while the Pistons coach is home in New Jersey as his wife deals with an illness, but it didn’t take him long to adjust to sliding over 12 inches on the bench.
Make that “readjust.” Hill isn’t exactly an NBA head coaching novice. Over nine seasons – two stops in Orlando sandwiched around a stint with the expansion Vancouver Grizzlies – he coached 613 NBA games. And his 298-315 record would look a lot better if not for the two-plus seasons nursing the baby Grizzlies along to a 31-123 record.
“It didn’t really feel a whole lot different,” Hill said the day after the shorthanded Pistons – playing without not only Andre Drummond but Greg Monroe and Charlie Villanueva – rallied to take a 10-point lead over the Knicks but ran out of gas in an 87-77 loss. “Probably the hardest part was the opponent in that New York is one of the more difficult teams to play against when you’re making an adjustment like this from one coach to another because they’re a much different team defensively than any other team that we play. But as far as reading defensive situations and making offensive adjustments, it’s basically the same. I don’t know that you lose anything just because you’re one seat removed.”
Hill’s primary role during games at Frank’s side is to be his eyes and ears defensively, just as John Loyer takes the lead on the offensive side. Dee Brown moves into that role while Hill stands in for Frank.
Posted Wednesday, March 6, 2013
The Pistons ran out of big guys, ran out of gas and ran out of runs. Against a team that had thumped them in their first three meetings, it didn’t help that the Pistons were without Greg Monroe and Charlie Villanueva on top of Andre Drummond, meaning three-quarters of the frontcourt rotation employed for the bulk of the season’s first 50 games watched the game in street clothes.
Yet there they were, sprinting out of the halftime locker room on an 18-4 tear to eventually stretch their lead to 10 points with less than three minutes left in the third quarter.
And all that against the Knicks, who’d won the season’s first three games by a combined 50 points and led at halftime by an average of 18.7 points. They eventually won by double digits again, though barely at 87-77, but how they got there was … well, weird.
Posted Tuesday, March 5, 2013
If the Pistons needed any motivation beyond erasing the sting of the season’s worst defeat – Sunday’s 39-point loss at San Antonio – to rivet attention for their next game, the New York Knicks ought to do it.
Struggling defensively over the past month, no opponent figures to perk up their ears quite like the Knicks, who have averaged 107.3 points against the Pistons in three easy wins.
The most competitive of the three – which have finished with margins of 21, 15 and 14 points – was the January game in London, when the Pistons recovered from an early 18-4 hole to climb within four points late in the third quarter. The other two games were both at Madison Square Garden. Their average deficit after one quarter against the Knicks has been 12.3 points and the average halftime margin has been 18.7 points.
Posted Monday, March 4, 2013
After enduring the season’s most thorough thrashing Sunday at San Antonio – a team armed with motivation on many fronts – Lawrence Frank laid bare the challenge now facing the Pistons. With the playoffs all but officially out of reach, the driving motivational force on a collective level is pride.
Taken a step beyond, many Pistons have ample reason to play out the season to the fullest extent of their capacity – and the front office and coaching staffs will focus their full attention on evaluation with a critical off-season a few short months off.
Posted Sunday, March 3, 2013
SAN ANTONIO – If San Antonio’s hottest pursuers in the West believe the Spurs vulnerable without Tony Parker over the next month, they might want to avoid watching the tape of their Sunday dismantling of the Pistons.
“It was a clinic tape,” Lawrence Frank said after the 114-75 hurting the Spurs applied. “You know what’s coming but we couldn’t stop it. We could have done a whole lot more to put more into the game to give ourselves a chance, but we didn’t. That’s a credit to the champs. That’s the blueprint. That’s what it looks like.”
Nobody has faced a worse confluence of factors here since 100 brave Texans tried to defend the Alamo.
Posted Saturday, March 2, 2013
NEW ORLEANS – Jose Calderon’s assists-to-turnover ratio is almost perfectly aligned with his games-to-practices ratio with the Pistons. Both are running at slightly better than four to one.
When the Pistons practiced on the campus of Georgetown University between the Washington and New Orleans legs of their three-game road trek that concludes Sunday at San Antonio, it was Calderon’s third practice with the Pistons since coming in trade in late January but needing to wait five days for visa issues to be resolved.
Six hours after government hurdles were cleared, Calderon was in the starting lineup at Madison Square Garden. A game-heavy schedule and the All-Star break further limited Calderon’s opportunity to practice, which means game days – from the hour-long morning shootarounds to the games themselves – have been used for on-the-fly acclimation: Calderon to his teammates and them to him.
Posted Friday, March 1, 2013
When the NBA schedule comes out, players trace their fingers down the list of road games looking for the dates that bring them back to familiar haunts. For Greg Monroe, the NBA dropped him in his two most meaningful cities for consecutive games.
Monroe and the Pistons beat Washington at the Verizon Center, where Georgetown plays its home games, on Wednesday night. On Thursday, the Pistons practiced at McDonough Gymnasium, where he not only spent his practice days during two seasons with the Hoyas but returns in the summer to continue refining his game. And then it was on to New Orleans, where Monroe spent his first 18 years and led Helen Cox High to the 2008 Louisiana state title.
“I’ve got to thank the NBA for this trip,” Monroe said after Friday’s shootaround at New Orleans Arena in preparation for tonight’s game with the Hornets. “Got to see some friends in DC, got all my family down here. So, thank you. Shoutout to the NBA.”





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