Glenn
08-22-2008, 09:22 AM
:langlois:
THURSDAY, August 21, 2008
Johnathan (Orlando): I’m a big-time Pistons fan from Orlando and my question is why won’t Joe Dumars just make a bold move and blow up the roster? The starters just don’t have it any more so wouldn’t it be smarter to just get younger and hopefully have enough money for 2010 and sign a star free agent?
Langlois: I figured there were several people in Orlando who would want the Pistons to blow up their roster, Johnathan, but I figured their names were Dwight, Rashard, Hedo and Stan. Joe Dumars never said he was going to blow up the roster. He said it was his intention to make a significant move, but nothing that made sense has yet to come through his door. You don’t blow up a 59-win team that still has room for improvement within its own roster. And, yes, Joe D is putting faith in Michael Curry’s ability to hold this team to a higher standard. That makes eminent good sense to me – especially when the trade deadline is almost four full months into the regular season. If by early February Dumars feels the young players aren’t coming fast enough or Curry’s firmer hand hasn’t changed the chemistry enough, then he can do a deal that might not look as attractive to him today. Don’t forget, also, that there will be GMs who are a little more motivated to deal at that time than they might be now, before injuries and disappointments strike.
Dave (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.): With a salary of $13 million on an expiring deal, do you think the Pistons will use Rasheed Wallace as trade bait to land a superstar at the trade deadline? I hate to revert back to the Denver deal, but I could see the trade being more viable later in the year when Denver realizes it will never be a contender in the West. With Iverson’s $22 million and Rasheed’s $13 million off the books, Denver could be real players in the free-agent market in ’09. Win-win, if you ask me.
Langlois: Except what kind of team would the Nuggets have to sell to free agents if they trade away Anthony and let Iverson and Wallace leave as free agents? What truly significant free agent is going to want to go to a team with Anthony Carter as its point guard and Linas Kleiza as its No. 1 scoring option? I can envision a scenario in which Denver parts with Anthony. He’ll probably report to camp in a sour mood, knowing a team that barely scraped into the playoffs last year, made no significant off-season additions and dumped Marcus Camby to save money runs the risk of a losing season. If he pouts and public sentiment starts running heavily against him, then management might decide to scrap the season and start over. If it comes to that, Denver will have no shortage of suitors for a 24-year-old with the potential to score 30 every night. And some of them will be more desperate to deal than the Pistons, that’s for sure.
Erges (Tirana, Albania): I read that the Pistons’ young players are in the middle of volunteer workouts. How are they performing? Also, I’ve calculated that the Pistons will have $48 million committed in team salary and $52 million if Kwame Brown stays in 2009. Hamilton can opt out, too. Can the Pistons sign a quality free agent and then re-sign Rip Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace using the Bird exception? Can this exception be used if the team is already over the cap?
Langlois: Several of them have been working out at The Palace practice facility on their own, but they’re closed sessions. I’ve heard from a few of the coaches, though, that they’re all in very good shape. Everybody’s upbeat about all of the young guys, as typified by what new assistant Pat Sullivan told me for a blog post earlier this week (http://truebluepistons.blogspot.com/2008/08/sullivan-they-all-want-to-get-better_18.html). Your cap numbers are roughly correct, but remember that the 2009 cap doesn’t yet include a contract for Cheikh Samb or the likely extension that Jason Maxiell will be offered before he heads into his fifth year – if he plays for the one-year qualifying offer, he’d become an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2010 and the Pistons will work to avoid that. So the $52 million probably will tick up closer to the cap number. This year’s cap is just under $59 million. It might go up slightly, but not enough to put the Pistons in play for a major free agent, in all likelihood. No, the Pistons couldn’t sign a free agent and then re-sign Hamilton after that. A team’s own free agents still count against their cap, based on a complex formula that takes into account their previous salary and level of free-agent status. That’s why Philadelphia had to dump salary to create space to sign Elton Brand – they had to allow for the cap hold for Andre Igoudala as a restricted free agent.
Darius (Miami): How do Kwame Brown’s small hands affect him as a big man?
Langlois: I’ll reserve any conclusive judgments until I get to see a steady dose of him, but it’s tough to take the ball up in traffic and protect it if you can’t wrap your hands around it. Ben Wallace had tremendous difficulty finishing in traffic for that reason. NBA players today are terrific at swiping at the basketball and dislodging it without fouling.
William (Grand Rapids, Mich.): With the new and improved frontcourts in Toronto and Philadelphia and a healthy Arenas in Washington, where do you think the Pistons stack up in the East assuming their lineup stays the same?
Langlois: Boston is going to go off as the favorite in the East (http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/atlantic_080818.html), though how the Celtics handle the role of reigning champion will bear watching. The remarkable thing about Boston last season was that it managed to maintain a high level of intensity from October through June. I thought the East was four deep in potential title contenders a year ago – Boston, Detroit, Orlando and Cleveland. I think you can add Philly and Toronto to the mix. And maybe Washington, though I still think the Wizards are one quality big man short.
Marvin (Richmond, Va.): Since Michael Curry is a first-time coach, how does he come up with a playbook?
Langlois: Good question, Marvin. I talked to Curry about that when we were in Las Vegas for the Summer League. Here’s what he said: “It will depend on what our personnel ends up being, to some degree. You have your basic plays and a lot of it is just ways to get into it. Some of the plays we’ll run are plays we ran in the past and we’ll pick up plays throughout the year. After the All-Star break (last season), I took the teams I thought would be in the playoffs in the East and I had their top eight plays. I watched that a lot after the All-Star break. I went through that tape and, if there were 64 plays, I pulled about 20 offensive sets I liked off of that. We’re going to put that together. We have coaches meetings in August in which we’re going to discuss other teams. We’ve already a breakdown of which teams each coach has to scout during the year. We had that back in June. June and July, they’re breaking down tapes of those teams and developing a database of how we should attack those teams and how those teams usually attack you. And we’re going to go away the first week of September for a coaches retreat. After that, we’ll have our complete playbook and coverages all down pat.” He went on to say he’s going to pick the brains of his assistant coaches and have Darrell Walker show some of the things they ran with Chris Paul in New Orleans, some of the things Pat Sullivan can bring from New Jersey and Harold Ellis from Atlanta.
Jeremy (Kelowna, B.C.): If Chauncey Billups is still the starting point guard when the season starts, which seems the most likely option, what do you think of Stuckey’s chances of beating out the likes of Barbosa and Ginobili for Sixth Man? As long as he gets the playing time, Stuckey will be a bona fide contender for Most Improved, agree?
Langlois: He’s going to get playing time, Jeremy, no doubt about that. He’s worked very hard this summer and will come to camp full of confidence. I think he’ll get close to or more than 30 minutes a night because he’s good enough to deserve them and because he gives the Pistons a different look. I’ve always thought the Sixth Man award needed some tweaking on eligibility – a limit on minutes per game, for instance – because Ginobili has been a sixth man only by the letter of the law, not by the spirit of it, for a very long time. When you get thrown into the game at the four-minute mark and stay out there for every critical possession for the rest of the game, you’re not really a reserve. Stuckey might come close to fitting that description this year, too. So, yeah, he should be a contender for both of those awards, but I think he might not fit the classic definition of Most Improved so much, either, because everybody saw the flashes of ability last season and recognizes that the hand injury and the presence of two All-Stars in front of him were the things limiting his exposure, not ability.
Alex (San Antonio): If the Pistons don’t win the title this season, will they let Stuckey take over or keep Billups until he retires?
Langlois: It’s never that black and white, Alex. If the Pistons win it all this season, it’s safe to assume that both Stuckey and Billups will have played a critical role. If they come up short, that doesn’t mean they’ll come to the conclusion that Billups no longer can be part of a championship team. I don’t think they’d decide they had to move one or the other until after Stuckey’s fourth season, actually, which, coincidentally, is the option year on Billups’ contract. If Stuckey progresses as expected, he’ll be due a big contract – or play out that season as a restricted free agent, which isn’t likely – and then the Pistons would have two highly paid point guards. That probably isn’t practical in the salary-cap era, but until then there is no compelling reason to move either one of them.
Marco (Southfield, Mich.): Oklahoma City is a young team, but could they be a factor in the next three to five years?
Langlois: Three to five years is enough time for any team to turn it around and become a factor, Marco, as Boston proved last year by going from 24 to 66 wins and the NBA title. The most important thing is to make every asset count – exercise your draft picks wisely, trade them sparingly, and, most importantly, allocate your dollars prudently. OKC has three top-five draft picks from the last two drafts – Kevin Durant, Jeff Green and Russell Westbrook – and probably will get a fourth in 2009. They gained three additional No. 1 picks for Kurt Thomas in the last year – two for taking on his salary from Phoenix so the Suns could lessen their tax burden, one from San Antonio at the trade deadline – that will yield either more young talent or be used to pick up useful veterans. Their salary-cap picture is very favorable. If Durant becomes the scoring machine many expect, Green develops into an all-around Scott Pippen-type and Westbrook takes off as a dynamic, athletic point guard, then the foundation for a long, successful run is in place.
Dez (Melbourne, Australia): It’s been said that Joe Dumars hasn’t made a trade because the offers wouldn’t make the team better. But is it realistic to think a team is going to offer its best players and be worse off for doing it?
Langlois: Joe D never expected he’d be taking back a dollar for 50 cents in trade. There are many motivations to deal. Sometimes teams have put themselves in such unfavorable financial straits that they have to move a valuable player just to get rid of a big contract. (Memphis and Pau Gasol, for instance.) Sometimes teams are looking to move a great player because he’s grown restless with mediocrity and his acting out is causing public-relations problems for the team. (Philadelphia and Allen Iverson, for one example.) Sometimes a player who is the face of a franchise that needs to separate from its past is willing to take back lesser talent just to move on. (Indiana and Stephen Jackson, Ron Artest, Al Harrington and Jermaine O’Neal comes to mind.) Every GM has his own unique set of circumstances. The art of trading is studying each of those sets and trying to find a solution that helps you while solving somebody else’s problem.
NPCFM
THURSDAY, August 21, 2008
Johnathan (Orlando): I’m a big-time Pistons fan from Orlando and my question is why won’t Joe Dumars just make a bold move and blow up the roster? The starters just don’t have it any more so wouldn’t it be smarter to just get younger and hopefully have enough money for 2010 and sign a star free agent?
Langlois: I figured there were several people in Orlando who would want the Pistons to blow up their roster, Johnathan, but I figured their names were Dwight, Rashard, Hedo and Stan. Joe Dumars never said he was going to blow up the roster. He said it was his intention to make a significant move, but nothing that made sense has yet to come through his door. You don’t blow up a 59-win team that still has room for improvement within its own roster. And, yes, Joe D is putting faith in Michael Curry’s ability to hold this team to a higher standard. That makes eminent good sense to me – especially when the trade deadline is almost four full months into the regular season. If by early February Dumars feels the young players aren’t coming fast enough or Curry’s firmer hand hasn’t changed the chemistry enough, then he can do a deal that might not look as attractive to him today. Don’t forget, also, that there will be GMs who are a little more motivated to deal at that time than they might be now, before injuries and disappointments strike.
Dave (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.): With a salary of $13 million on an expiring deal, do you think the Pistons will use Rasheed Wallace as trade bait to land a superstar at the trade deadline? I hate to revert back to the Denver deal, but I could see the trade being more viable later in the year when Denver realizes it will never be a contender in the West. With Iverson’s $22 million and Rasheed’s $13 million off the books, Denver could be real players in the free-agent market in ’09. Win-win, if you ask me.
Langlois: Except what kind of team would the Nuggets have to sell to free agents if they trade away Anthony and let Iverson and Wallace leave as free agents? What truly significant free agent is going to want to go to a team with Anthony Carter as its point guard and Linas Kleiza as its No. 1 scoring option? I can envision a scenario in which Denver parts with Anthony. He’ll probably report to camp in a sour mood, knowing a team that barely scraped into the playoffs last year, made no significant off-season additions and dumped Marcus Camby to save money runs the risk of a losing season. If he pouts and public sentiment starts running heavily against him, then management might decide to scrap the season and start over. If it comes to that, Denver will have no shortage of suitors for a 24-year-old with the potential to score 30 every night. And some of them will be more desperate to deal than the Pistons, that’s for sure.
Erges (Tirana, Albania): I read that the Pistons’ young players are in the middle of volunteer workouts. How are they performing? Also, I’ve calculated that the Pistons will have $48 million committed in team salary and $52 million if Kwame Brown stays in 2009. Hamilton can opt out, too. Can the Pistons sign a quality free agent and then re-sign Rip Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace using the Bird exception? Can this exception be used if the team is already over the cap?
Langlois: Several of them have been working out at The Palace practice facility on their own, but they’re closed sessions. I’ve heard from a few of the coaches, though, that they’re all in very good shape. Everybody’s upbeat about all of the young guys, as typified by what new assistant Pat Sullivan told me for a blog post earlier this week (http://truebluepistons.blogspot.com/2008/08/sullivan-they-all-want-to-get-better_18.html). Your cap numbers are roughly correct, but remember that the 2009 cap doesn’t yet include a contract for Cheikh Samb or the likely extension that Jason Maxiell will be offered before he heads into his fifth year – if he plays for the one-year qualifying offer, he’d become an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2010 and the Pistons will work to avoid that. So the $52 million probably will tick up closer to the cap number. This year’s cap is just under $59 million. It might go up slightly, but not enough to put the Pistons in play for a major free agent, in all likelihood. No, the Pistons couldn’t sign a free agent and then re-sign Hamilton after that. A team’s own free agents still count against their cap, based on a complex formula that takes into account their previous salary and level of free-agent status. That’s why Philadelphia had to dump salary to create space to sign Elton Brand – they had to allow for the cap hold for Andre Igoudala as a restricted free agent.
Darius (Miami): How do Kwame Brown’s small hands affect him as a big man?
Langlois: I’ll reserve any conclusive judgments until I get to see a steady dose of him, but it’s tough to take the ball up in traffic and protect it if you can’t wrap your hands around it. Ben Wallace had tremendous difficulty finishing in traffic for that reason. NBA players today are terrific at swiping at the basketball and dislodging it without fouling.
William (Grand Rapids, Mich.): With the new and improved frontcourts in Toronto and Philadelphia and a healthy Arenas in Washington, where do you think the Pistons stack up in the East assuming their lineup stays the same?
Langlois: Boston is going to go off as the favorite in the East (http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/atlantic_080818.html), though how the Celtics handle the role of reigning champion will bear watching. The remarkable thing about Boston last season was that it managed to maintain a high level of intensity from October through June. I thought the East was four deep in potential title contenders a year ago – Boston, Detroit, Orlando and Cleveland. I think you can add Philly and Toronto to the mix. And maybe Washington, though I still think the Wizards are one quality big man short.
Marvin (Richmond, Va.): Since Michael Curry is a first-time coach, how does he come up with a playbook?
Langlois: Good question, Marvin. I talked to Curry about that when we were in Las Vegas for the Summer League. Here’s what he said: “It will depend on what our personnel ends up being, to some degree. You have your basic plays and a lot of it is just ways to get into it. Some of the plays we’ll run are plays we ran in the past and we’ll pick up plays throughout the year. After the All-Star break (last season), I took the teams I thought would be in the playoffs in the East and I had their top eight plays. I watched that a lot after the All-Star break. I went through that tape and, if there were 64 plays, I pulled about 20 offensive sets I liked off of that. We’re going to put that together. We have coaches meetings in August in which we’re going to discuss other teams. We’ve already a breakdown of which teams each coach has to scout during the year. We had that back in June. June and July, they’re breaking down tapes of those teams and developing a database of how we should attack those teams and how those teams usually attack you. And we’re going to go away the first week of September for a coaches retreat. After that, we’ll have our complete playbook and coverages all down pat.” He went on to say he’s going to pick the brains of his assistant coaches and have Darrell Walker show some of the things they ran with Chris Paul in New Orleans, some of the things Pat Sullivan can bring from New Jersey and Harold Ellis from Atlanta.
Jeremy (Kelowna, B.C.): If Chauncey Billups is still the starting point guard when the season starts, which seems the most likely option, what do you think of Stuckey’s chances of beating out the likes of Barbosa and Ginobili for Sixth Man? As long as he gets the playing time, Stuckey will be a bona fide contender for Most Improved, agree?
Langlois: He’s going to get playing time, Jeremy, no doubt about that. He’s worked very hard this summer and will come to camp full of confidence. I think he’ll get close to or more than 30 minutes a night because he’s good enough to deserve them and because he gives the Pistons a different look. I’ve always thought the Sixth Man award needed some tweaking on eligibility – a limit on minutes per game, for instance – because Ginobili has been a sixth man only by the letter of the law, not by the spirit of it, for a very long time. When you get thrown into the game at the four-minute mark and stay out there for every critical possession for the rest of the game, you’re not really a reserve. Stuckey might come close to fitting that description this year, too. So, yeah, he should be a contender for both of those awards, but I think he might not fit the classic definition of Most Improved so much, either, because everybody saw the flashes of ability last season and recognizes that the hand injury and the presence of two All-Stars in front of him were the things limiting his exposure, not ability.
Alex (San Antonio): If the Pistons don’t win the title this season, will they let Stuckey take over or keep Billups until he retires?
Langlois: It’s never that black and white, Alex. If the Pistons win it all this season, it’s safe to assume that both Stuckey and Billups will have played a critical role. If they come up short, that doesn’t mean they’ll come to the conclusion that Billups no longer can be part of a championship team. I don’t think they’d decide they had to move one or the other until after Stuckey’s fourth season, actually, which, coincidentally, is the option year on Billups’ contract. If Stuckey progresses as expected, he’ll be due a big contract – or play out that season as a restricted free agent, which isn’t likely – and then the Pistons would have two highly paid point guards. That probably isn’t practical in the salary-cap era, but until then there is no compelling reason to move either one of them.
Marco (Southfield, Mich.): Oklahoma City is a young team, but could they be a factor in the next three to five years?
Langlois: Three to five years is enough time for any team to turn it around and become a factor, Marco, as Boston proved last year by going from 24 to 66 wins and the NBA title. The most important thing is to make every asset count – exercise your draft picks wisely, trade them sparingly, and, most importantly, allocate your dollars prudently. OKC has three top-five draft picks from the last two drafts – Kevin Durant, Jeff Green and Russell Westbrook – and probably will get a fourth in 2009. They gained three additional No. 1 picks for Kurt Thomas in the last year – two for taking on his salary from Phoenix so the Suns could lessen their tax burden, one from San Antonio at the trade deadline – that will yield either more young talent or be used to pick up useful veterans. Their salary-cap picture is very favorable. If Durant becomes the scoring machine many expect, Green develops into an all-around Scott Pippen-type and Westbrook takes off as a dynamic, athletic point guard, then the foundation for a long, successful run is in place.
Dez (Melbourne, Australia): It’s been said that Joe Dumars hasn’t made a trade because the offers wouldn’t make the team better. But is it realistic to think a team is going to offer its best players and be worse off for doing it?
Langlois: Joe D never expected he’d be taking back a dollar for 50 cents in trade. There are many motivations to deal. Sometimes teams have put themselves in such unfavorable financial straits that they have to move a valuable player just to get rid of a big contract. (Memphis and Pau Gasol, for instance.) Sometimes teams are looking to move a great player because he’s grown restless with mediocrity and his acting out is causing public-relations problems for the team. (Philadelphia and Allen Iverson, for one example.) Sometimes a player who is the face of a franchise that needs to separate from its past is willing to take back lesser talent just to move on. (Indiana and Stephen Jackson, Ron Artest, Al Harrington and Jermaine O’Neal comes to mind.) Every GM has his own unique set of circumstances. The art of trading is studying each of those sets and trying to find a solution that helps you while solving somebody else’s problem.
NPCFM