Another week, another Mailbag with topics ranging from next summer’s draft to free agency to Saben Lee’s sizzling start with the Motor City Cruise
Phil (Auburn Hills, Mich.): Does Casey’s offense call for heavy iso and perimeter shooting? I don’t understand why a team struggling with shooting doesn’t try to attack the basket more.
Langlois: Dwane Casey’s offense is not designed for heavy isolation plays and the stats back that up. The Pistons lead the league in passes per game. Casey was asked if it was possible the Pistons were, in fact, passing too much on Tuesday. His answer addresses your question. “I would rather overpass than underpass,” he said, “but with our skill set, we have to be a passing team. But we have to be on time, on target. We have to create angles and openings with our passing more so than the skill set of going one on one and blowing by somebody. We have to rely on the pass a little more than usual. If we had someone with the speed and quickness to create off the dribble, we probably wouldn’t have to pass as much. Our thing is on-time, on-target passes.” The basis of Casey’s offense is to create the opportunity for penetration by various means to force the defense to react and free open shooters. It isn’t designed for isolation. But when you’ve only got 24 seconds to get that done, there are going to be possessions that break down and require somebody to try to make a one-on-one play late in the clock. And maybe that happens a little more often – no, it definitely happens more often – when you’re as young and experienced as the Pistons are. That’s not isolation by design but isolation by circumstance.
Langlois: The Pistons have never been resistant to spend beyond the salary cap since Tom Gores bought the team in 2021 and Gores has been clear that he’s more than willing to pay luxury tax if the situation warrants it. I wouldn’t focus on free agency with the cap space the Pistons figure to have next July, necessarily, since a lot of the players who appeared to be the plums have signed extensions and taken themselves off of the market. But whether it’s funneled into free agency or used to acquire players via trade, the Pistons are going to make full use of their space next summer. (And they’ve already used some of it, an indication that they, too, see a less robust market than typical, when they took on De’Andre Jordan’s contract in exchange for four future second-round draft picks.) I wouldn’t expect them to be targeting players that don’t fit the timeline of their young core – and by that I mean they’re going to be looking for players, even if they’ve been in the NBA for four, five or six years, who still have their prime years ahead of them. All of that said, I’m sure we’re going to hear Troy Weaver and Dwane Casey say when this season ends that the surest way to improvement for next season will be the maturation and development of the young players already under contract – Cade Cunningham, Killian Hayes, Isaiah Stewart, Saddiq Bey, Saben Lee, Isaiah Livers, Luka Garza, Jamorko Pickett, Chris Smith, et al.
@viotto.ilustra/IG: Why is Cory Joseph getting more minutes than Saben Lee. Shouldn’t we be investing in our young player?
Langlois: A rotation can only stretch so far. And given Cory Joseph’s track record – both in the NBA and for Dwane Casey – the Pistons were never going to pull the plug on Joseph as a rotation piece this early in the season. The notion of giving Saben Lee minutes as the primary ballhandler with the G League’s Motor City Cruise is a sound one for the time being. Let him soak up a few hundred minutes as his team’s full-time point guard in the G League and then re-evaluate. Making Lee the backup point guard isn’t a decision to be made lightly. The scoring – Lee had two 40-point games last week with the Cruise – is very encouraging, but Casey wants to see Lee mature as a facilitator and grow in his command of the offense even more than he wants to see the scoring. The Pistons are thrilled with Lee and love his potential. But there’s nearly five months left in the season. They’ve already got the ball in the hands of two 20-year-olds, Killian Hayes and Cade Cunningham, a ton. You’ve got an entire roster and the future of the organization to consider. A veteran point guard like Joseph can help with the development of all the young players on the roster by his ability to adhere to Casey’s vision and help put teammates in the right positions to succeed.
Faith Gungor (@fgungor1): Should Detroit pull the trigger on a Marvin Bagley deal?
Langlois: There’s speculation that the Pistons have been one of the NBA teams interested in Marvin Bagley III and it’s pretty clear that Sacramento and Bagley are not in a long-term relationship. So it behooves any team – and especially one like the Pistons, still in a mode where the acquisition of talent with potential for more is paramount – to kick the tires on what it would take to bring him on. Sacramento has some motivation to hold out for the best deal simply because it’s a bad look to not get much back for a guy taken No. 2 – ahead of Luka Doncic and Trae Young – just three years ago, but the management team in place now wasn’t the one that made the Bagley pick and he’ll be a restricted free agent at season’s end, anyway, so I suspect a willingness to bargain is around the corner. Dec. 15 is the day when most players signed as free agents over the off-season can first be traded, so the Kings are probably willing to hold on until then when deals could come from a much wider pool. The Pistons could use another big man now with Kelly Olynyk out a minimum of six weeks. That means, in the best case, he could return by late December or early January. So by Dec. 15, the urgency to add a big man won’t be quite as pronounced as it could be at the moment.
@Jombo75/IG: How many years do we have to go through this pain?
Langlois: By any name you choose – rebuilding, restoring, whatever – the act of starting over and building from the ground up is arduous and uncertain. The Pistons are in the first weeks of their second season since embarking on the process. Look around the NBA. There are teams on second and third rebuilds this decade. The encouraging thing is that Troy Weaver appears to have hit on his major decisions so far, the cap sheet is in excellent shape and the Pistons have all of their first-round picks going forward. Good decisions, stacked one atop the other, is the surest way to shorten the duration of experiencing pain.
Kurt (@Silverlion23): The Pistons need a shooter like Bogdan Bogdanovic. Is there a player in the draft with similar abilities?
Langlois: A little early to say with any certainty. The college season is just getting started and the freshmen who arrived considered good shooters are going to need to prove it at that level before anyone is ready to project them as profiling as elite shooters at the NBA level. Among players considered top-10 potential picks at this point, the wings who are probably the best shooters – I don’t know that anyone’s calling them elite quite yet – are probably Michigan’s Caleb Houstan and Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Patrick Baldwin Jr. And Houstan had a dud of a game on Tuesday night, shooting 1 of 9 and going 0 of 4 from three.
Mental Anguish (@PTP_99): I know it’s early for draft stuff, but would a guy like Patrick Baldwin Jr. be on the radar for this team that needs more dynamic scoring options?
Langlois: Anyone projected as anything close to a lottery prospect certainly will be on the radar of every NBA team. And Baldwin is all of that. So it’s fair to say there’s already a thick dossier on Baldwin in the front office of every NBA team. But other than making a top 100 board or a watch list, no one is anywhere near compiling an ordered list of the top prospects yet. At this time last year, there were players some might have considered potential top-10 picks who went undrafted. Daishen Nix, the point guard who played for the G League Ignite, comes to mind. There is a ton of evaluation that remains before we can say with any degree of confidence that the vast majority of freshmen who’ve played maybe two or three games has cemented their status as a top-10 pick.
@thosefrog_things_fromff7/IG: Say the Pistons get a top-10 pick in the upcoming draft. Who do you think we should draft?
Langlois: See above. Way too early to say. If it’s a top-two pick, the two players who appear to have separated themselves so far are Duke’s Paolo Banchero and Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren. The strength of the top of the draft appears to be big men with Banchero and Holmgren leading the way. There’s a sprinkling of combo guards and a few wings worth monitoring, but I think it’s fair to say that the top of this draft is less defined at this point than it was a year ago when there was already a focus on players like Cade Cunningham, Jalen Green, Evan Mobley, Jonathan Kuminga and Jalen Suggs – and all wound up going in the top eight. I think there’s probably someone out there now considered a fringe first-round prospect who winds up going in the top 10 and I’m confident there are players now considered top-10 picks who fall into the 20s or worse. By the time conference play gets going for real in January, things will start to sort themselves out. As for the Pistons specifically, I think they’re still in the mode where they’re going to be taking the best player available regardless of position. Even after spending the last two lottery picks on Killian Hayes and Cade Cunningham, if there’s the right playmaker available, go for it. The Pistons could use more size on the roster, though, and the intersection of Troy Weaver’s affinity for big men and the presence of guys like Banchero, Holmgren, Jalen Duren, Jabari Smith and Yannick Nzosa could steer them that way.
Ian (Westland, Mich.): I think Dwane Casey should start calling plays for Killian Hayes. If he is really going to help our team, he needs to get his assists and scoring up.
Langlois: Hayes has the ball in his hands a ton, even when he’s splitting playmaking duties with Cade Cunningham. For where he is on the experience continuum – keep in mind, he’s played a whopping total of 38 games, less than half of a full season – I don’t know that you’re doing him any favors by heaping more on his plate. Let him share primary playmaking duties with Cunningham and find his footing that way. Once he looks like he’s ready for more, by all means, give him more.
Abrom (Detroit): I know this probably doesn’t mean anything, but I think it would be a good fit to bring Andre Drummond back in the middle of all the young players on the Pistons roster.
Langlois: Never say never, I suppose. Drummond has reached that stage of his career, even though he’ll play all of the 2021-22 season as a 28-year-old, where he might have to play on a series of one-year deals. He’s made a nice chunk of money already, so maybe the chance to play for winning teams will appeal to him and he’s content taking one-year, minimum (or near) deals from contenders until somebody comes along with a more lucrative offer. The Pistons are fully invested in Isaiah Stewart as their big man and at the stage they’re at now, I’m not sure a Drummond reunion makes the most sense for either side. But another year or two? Maybe.
Martel (Detroit): The Pistons need to sign or trade for a big man and use a roster spot currently occupied by one of the guards.
Langlois: That was probably the most vulnerable part of the roster before last week’s injury that will keep Kelly Olynyk sidelined a minimum of six weeks. On a depth chart, the backup center is now Luka Garza, who was the 52nd pick in the July draft – not an area where you expect instant rotation contributors. In reality, the Pistons are using Trey Lyles more as Isaiah Stewart’s backup, but there will be nights they’re going to need more size. I think we’ll probably see Saddiq Bey playing more minutes at power forward during the upcoming stretch without Olynyk to save Lyles for minutes at center some. But, yeah, to your point, if there’s a trade out there that makes sense, adding another big man could be in the cards. I don’t think you’re going to see a trade that involves future assets or a young player the Pistons highly value – unless what comes back in trade is someone who’ll be more than a stopgap to get the Pistons through the Olynyk absence.