The playoffs are here and we should all be soaking up every minute of that. However, there are 14 unlucky franchises that are missing out on the fun and already looking forward to next year. With them (and their fans) in mind, this series will take a look ahead and help lay out the priorities for this offseason.
Today, we’re going to studying a team that spent $115 million dollars with the only result a place in the lottery. Yikes. Looks like we’ll have our work count out for us with the:
Is Andre Drummond the player Detroit should build around?
DETROIT PISTONS
I imagine many NBA fans agreed with my sentiment when the Pistons handed over their franchise to Stan Van Gundy. It’s a home run! The guy is a top 5 coach in the NBA, capable of squeezing the most out of his players. He’ll have this team back in the playoffs in no time at all…
Well um.. huh. Not quite. He did make the playoffs last year and had the team on the verge of a breakout, but they backslid this past season to a 37-45 record.
It’s hard to dole out the fair share of blame to SVG the coach and SVG the executive, but neither has done a great job so far. The team had a few solid bargains (Ish Smith and Marcus Morris‘ make a combined $11 million) but more duds than that (Jon Leuer, Boban Marjanovic, and Aron Baynes combined to make $23 million this season.)
All those contracts have left the team cash-strapped, with $95 committed for next season and $88 million already in 2018/19. In a way, that’s appropriate. Stan Gundy’s 5 year deal will expire in 2019, when some of that money comes off the books (they’ll go down to $55 million guaranteed). That establishes a clear timeline: SVG will have two years to prove his worth, after which a new leadership can take over with a cleaner slate. But because I still like Stan Van, let’s try to see if we can help him keep his job with these moves:
(1) Double down with KCP
Given all those salary cap issues that I just described, it’s difficult to stomach the thought of another big contract. However, that’s exactly what restricted free agent Kentavious Caldwell-Pope will generate this offseason. $20 million a year isn’t out of the question; it should be expected.
Based on the raw stats and even the advanced stats, you can make the argument that KCP doesn’t deserve that kind of money. But based on the eye test, I still think he’s a quality player. He can defend, he can shoot, and he’s only 24. You don’t let players like that leave, even if the cost is exorbitant. I’d try to indicate to potential suitors (like the team has) that you plan to match any offer, which may scare teams away. Hopefully, the team can lock him up on a reasonable offer, but they don’t have much of a choice. Their salary cap will balloon, but it’s high already; you’re effectively “doubling down” on your Stan Van Gundy bet.
Why? Because the risk of paying KCP is smaller than the risk of not paying KCP. If you take him off this team, you set the franchise back another step, with no tangible way to replace his minutes on the roster. Losing KCP effectively dooms the Stan Van Gundy era. If our goal is to save Stan’s job, we can’t allow that. Suck it up, take out a loan, and pay the man.
(2) Splice together highlights of other team’s stars
It may have been the obvious and lazy comparison, but we all expected Stan Van Gundy to turn Andre Drummond into his new version of peak Dwight Howard. So far, it hasn’t gone according to plan. Drummond’s simply not as effective or efficient of a scorer to be a team’s #1 option on offense. The team has realized that and dialed back his post touches, but there are still too many in my mind. Drummond shot 53.0% from the field last season, which is quite low compared to his peers.
Rather than try to emulate MVP-candidate Dwight Howard, the Pistons should cut together videos of modern big men like DeAndre Jordan and Rudy Gobert. They don’t get fed the ball much on offense, but that helps them keep up marvelous FG%s on putbacks and lobs. More importantly, it allows them to focus their talents on the defensive end. If Drummond is going to solidify his place as an elite NBA center, he needs to be a dominant defender. He has the physical traits for that, but he hasn’t embraced that role fully. He needs to.
Meanwhile, second year GF Stanley Johnson has underwhelmed in a much more substantial way. The team had high hopes for their #8 pick, but he’s barely playable right now. I wouldn’t give up on Stanley Johnson yet, but I’d experiment with other ways to utilize him.
With that in mind, I’d cut together some highlights of Golden State’s Draymond Green. He’s not an exact match for Johnson, but there are some similarities there. Johnson came out of college with less skills and more intangibles as an X-factor and a “winner.” Right now, the Pistons have Johnson playing the wing, but I believe there’s a case to be made that he can play stretches as a smallball 4. Johnson doesn’t have the rebounding or rim-protecting abilities of Draymond in the paint, but he’s quite strong for his age and has comparable wingspans (6’11” vs. 7’0″ for Draymond.) I believe Stanley Johnson could be able to hold his own with bigger players on defense.
Offensively, it could help him quite a bit. Playing against bigger players would open up the court more, and may enable Johnson to slip around and shoot more wide-open threes. He’s never going to be a knockdown shooter, but if he can shoot threes at a 33-35% clip like Draymond Green, you can live with that.
Again, I’m not saying Stanley Johnson can be Draymond Green, exactly, but he can be more like Draymond Green and utilize some of the same lessons that enabled Green to become an effective player. And let’s not forget: that took awhile. Green played four years in college and only broke out in the NBA in 2014 — at the age of 25. Stanley Johnson is only 20. Let’s give him some time before we write him off.
(3) Splice together highlights of your team’s star
While I still have some flickering hope for Stanley Johnson, I’m running out of patience for the lights to turn on for star guard Reggie Jackson.
Jackson dealt with injuries this season, so let’s not entirely blame this diagnoses on this past year. But in general, I’m still not sold on Jackson as a cornerstone #1 or #2 option for a contending team. He’s shown some flashes of being a playmaker/distributor (his initial run in DET), but he’s never been a consistent one. He’s a scorer, but he doesn’t get to the line enough to be efficient at that. He’s a long-armed athlete, but he hasn’t developed into a lockdown defender, either. So what is he, exactly? He is … what he is. A starting caliber PG, but not a top 15 one. He’s 27 now, so there may not be much more upside left in the tank
On the bright side, Reggie Jackson is definitely a tradable piece. He’s under contract for three more years at a reasonable rate — $16 million + $17 + $18. So when I say “splice together highlights of your team’s star,” I mean to send to a potential trade partner.
There are a handful of teams that would potentially be interested in trading for Reggie Jackson. I’d include CHI, DAL, DEN, IND, MIL, NYK, PHI, and SAC in that mix. I’d try to call them all up and see if you can score a deal. If Indiana feels like they’re going to lose Paul George, would they trade him for Reggie Jackson and Tobias Harris? No? Okay, what if we throw in the #12 pick, and take back Monta Ellis‘ corpse? Still a no? Oh well. (Damn. I failed in my own hypothetical mind.) But I’d be making calls like that to all those teams mentioned.
If they can flip Jackson for another legitimate asset (preferably a rangy small forward like George), I’d do it. The dropoff at PG to Ish Smith isn’t great, in my mind. Of course, if the Pistons don’t find a good offer for Reggie Jackson, they can certainly keep him in-house. This team, as is, can probably fight for that 8th seed again next year, even if it costs $120 million to do it. If you have other ideas or paths forward, please respond down below, because Stan and I could really use the help with this.
