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MONDAY, February 16, 2009
Tobias (Voehringen, Germany): With rumors of Phoenix firing Porter and Alex Acker being dealt to the Clippers, do you think Joe Dumars is on track to get Amare Stoudemire in trade? It makes sense because Amare might be a better option than to sign an aging frontcourt player.
Langlois: The buzz out of Phoenix is that the firing of Porter might have management rethinking a trade of Stoudemire unless the Suns get bowled over by a deal that gives them both cap relief and a bounty of assets in return. I don’t see the Pistons seeing the appeal in a potential trade, given what Phoenix’s demands are. If there is a deal for Acker, it would be strictly related to the luxury tax issue, not a setup for another deal.
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Michael (Canton, Mich.): I am almost baffled why we don’t make a move for Shaq. It seems logical that if we could do the AI-Shaq swap, we would be an immediate contender with him inside, Rasheed spreading the floor and Stuckey running pick and roll with both of them. On top of that, we have Sheed’s contract expiring this summer and Shaq’s next summer. Why can’t we make something like this happen?
Langlois: I’m guessing Phoenix, which is obviously trying to rebuild, would be all for it – but the Pistons would be on the hook for Shaq’s $20 million contract next season and the move would erase their chance to get a building block this summer that they can pair with Stuckey as the core of the team for the next four, five or more seasons. The days of Shaq by himself making a team elite are gone. Look at the cast around him in Phoenix – pretty good, and still the Suns are in danger of missing the playoffs.
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Dwayne (Fair Haven, Mich.): Are the Pistons really trying to go after Amare Stoudemire or is this just another rumor to get the hopes of fans in Detroit raised like the Baron Davis talk? Is this for real or just all talk by Joe Dumars again?
Langlois: Well, let’s start with this: No, it’s not talk by Joe Dumars. He’s not saying a word about it. You generally don’t have GMs or presidents of one team talking openly about players from another. The Stoudemire talk is coming out of Phoenix. The Suns aren’t making much of a secret of the fact they’re shopping him. But if you read my interview with Joe Dumars on Pistons.com, he says – without naming names – he wouldn’t give up the cap space he created via the Iverson trade by making a deal now unless it would get him a difference-maker who he knew would be with the Pistons for several seasons. Stoudemire can opt out after the 2009-10 season, so he doesn’t fit that profile. And the Baron Davis talk was pure baloney that didn’t come from anyone in Detroit.
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Mitchell (Bettendorf, Iowa): I’ve heard rumors Golden State might be looking to unload Andris Biedrins. I can’t see gutting our team for one guy (Stoudemire) and I feel like Wallace and Biedrins would complement each other nicely.
Langlois: There’s been no indication the Warriors are looking to “unload” Biedrins. His name came up in rumors of a deal with Phoenix for Stoudemire. I’m not sure I’d do that deal if I were the Warriors – Biedrins is raw offensively but a premier rebounder and only 22 – but including him in a deal for a 26-year-old All-Star is a little different than trying to dump him. If they were going to talk about dealing him to the Pistons, I’d have to believe they’d want a young potential star – meaning Rodney Stuckey. And that wouldn’t happen from Detroit’s end.
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Boris (Troy, Mich.): Are Michael Curry’s offensive and defensive schemes so radically different that they’re causing Pistons veterans to go backward as the season goes on?
Langlois: I think his offense is different than last year’s, but I don’t really think it’s schemes that’s causing the record to suffer or any individual retrenchment – it’s coping with the loss of the point guard who ran the show and the guy all of them played off of for the last six years, plus the growing pains of a young replacement, on top of the significant challenge of learning how best to play off of a one-man band like Allen Iverson.
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Rick (Seattle): I’ve heard a lot of talk from Iverson and the rest of the team about him trying to fit in. Don’t you think that’s a bit foolish? He’s a franchise player making $20 million-plus a year. The idea should be to structure the offense around him.
Langlois: I understand your point, Rick, but I question whether a diminutive, 33-year-old guard can be the overwhelming focal point of his team’s offense – the way Iverson was for much of his stay in Philadelphia, for instance – if that team is going to be something more than an also-ran. Don’t get me wrong – Iverson can still be an explosive offensive player. But at this point in his career, and given the makeup of the team around him, I don’t think the best formula for success for the Pistons is Iverson taking 25 shots a game and everybody else dividing the remaining 55 or so.
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Bill (Rochester Hills, Mich.): Now that the Iverson trade has removed the Pistons from contention, Joe Dumars is insisting that he did the deal for cap reasons. But at the time he said the cap relief was a bonus and he would have done the deal regardless of the cap implications.
Langlois: You’re parsing, Bill. Dumars said it was a win-win trade because it gave the Pistons a chance to be a better offensive team in the playoffs and it gave the Pistons tremendous cap flexibility. I don’t think he’s deviated from that. He’s admitted that he’s disappointed that the transition has been so challenging, but he had come to the conclusion that the Pistons as constituted were not a threat to win another title. So he rolled the dice that adding Allen Iverson to the equation might make them a more viable playoff team. He gets the chance to see how it plays out – and if it doesn’t work, he gets the chance to remake them.
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Nick (Ann Arbor, Mich.): I’ve worked out a three-way trade for Detroit to get Bosh. Detroit gets Bosh and Barbosa; Toronto gets Stoudemire, Richardson and Amir Johnson; Phoenix gets Rasheed Wallace and Jermaine O’Neal.
Langlois: Nick, you need to send that trade proposal to Steve Kerr and Bryan Colangelo.
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Erik (Rochester, N.Y.): When the season ends, the Pistons should retain Wallace, McDyess, Brown, Bynum and Acker. Then bring Trent Plaisted back from overseas and use their first two draft picks on Earl Clark from Louisville and Manny Harris of Michigan.
Langlois: I know Clark is inconsistent, but I can’t see him slipping out of the lottery. Don’t think the Pistons will get a crack at him. Harris – I just don’t see him declaring for the draft this year. He’s not ready for the NBA.
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Zak (Hamtramck, Mich.): Why don’t we try to get Chris Bosh. He is unhappy in Toronto and I believe the Pistons have the pieces to get him.
Langlois: Toronto GM Bryan Colangelo is holding out hope that he can keep Bosh past 2010. I think the evidence is piling up pretty high that he’s deluding himself. But I also don’t know that now is the best time to trade him. On draft day or once free agency starts, if I were Colangelo, I’d try to make the best of it and move Bosh. But not now – unless something irresistible came up. As for the Pistons, I think Joe D wouldn’t do a deal for him now even if he could somehow work a trade with Toronto that wouldn’t involve Rodney Stuckey. Remember, Bosh could walk away from the Pistons as easily as Toronto in 2010.
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Andrea (Battle Creek, Mich.): I was listening to the guys on NBA TV and Gary Payton said what he said about AI not fitting and trading Chauncey being a huge mistake made sense to me. How can we get Gary Payton or Chris Webber as our GM instead of Joe D?
Langlois: That’s really what you want, Andrea? Joe D – the guy who spotted Ben Wallace and Chauncey Billups as undervalued free agents, traded Jerry Stackhouse for Rip Hamilton, engineered the Rasheed Wallace trade that cost him nothing more than a couple of late first-rounders, drafted Rodney Stuckey in the middle of the first round … and you think Chris Webber or Gary Payton, guys who’ve never scouted a player or exhibited a clear understanding of the complexity of the salary cap, would be better suited to lead a team that – oh, by the way – has been to six straight NBA final fours? Was it Valentine’s Day we just celebrated or April Fool’s? Did Gary Payton go on to explain that if Joe D hadn’t made that deal, the Pistons would be set with the same cast – but a year older – that couldn’t get over the hump the past three seasons with no opportunity after the season to add an elite player to the current mix?
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Joe (East Lansing, Mich.): When a ball is tapped out, who gets credited with the rebound? Also, how hot a commodity is Amir Johnson? Is there a market for him?
Langlois: It’s at the discretion of the official scorer, but usually the rebound would go to the player who taps the ball and keeps it alive for a teammate to gather, not the teammate who winds up with the ball 20 feet from the basket. That’s how LeBron James lost his triple-double – the NBA went back and credited the rebound to Ben Wallace, who tapped the ball out. It was pointed out, though, that the league didn’t change several other Wallace tap-outs that Wally Szczerbiak collected. As for Amir, there were credible rumors that Phoenix called the Pistons and asked for him to be included (among other things, of course) if the Pistons were interested in Amare Stoudemire as the Suns were canvassing the league soliciting offers for Stoudemire.
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Brent (Oxford, Mich.): If the Pistons let Iverson and Wallace go at the end of the year and signed Boozer to a reasonable contract, say one that starts at $13 million a year, and kept the core of Hamilton, Stuckey, Afflalo, Prince and Maxiell together, would they have the dollars left in the summer of 2010 to sign Chris Bosh to a contract similar to Boozer’s?
Langlois: I don’t think so, Brent. I think the most they would have that summer, would be something like $8 million or so, depending on what happens with a few of their other players. Now, it’s possible Joe Dumars could make some other moves that would clear more salary, but I think if they sign a player of Boozer’s caliber this summer, they wouldn’t be players for the top tier of free agents in 2010.
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Josh (Hsinchu, Taiwan): Losing 12 out of the last 17 is brutal. I’m sure Pistons fans from all over are having a really difficult time watching this team drop game after game when we’re used to watching them crush opponents. How can this team get back on the right track?
Langlois: No magic bullet, Josh. They need better play from Amir Johnson and Jason Maxiell. They need Rodney Stuckey to play like a veteran, which is asking too much. They need Rip Hamilton to continue to play like he has for the past two weeks – the first time all season, really, that he’s appeared to be in a rhythm. They need Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess to stay strong. They need Tayshaun Prince to produce numbers even in an offense that, since the Allen Iverson trade, has kind of gone away from featuring him as it was going to do this season. And they need Iverson to be a more efficient scorer. If all of those things happen, watch out. If half of them happen, they’ll be a dangerous playoff team. If one or two only happen, they’ll continue to be inconsistent.
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Violet (East Lansing, Mich.): Is it dumb to think about sitting a few of our guys for two or three games after All-Star weekend just to give them a little longer break? San Antonio just did it for one game and it seemed to work.
Langlois: As Michael Curry said of Gregg Popovich’s decision to sit Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili one night after an overtime game, it’s a “tremendous luxury” to have the standing to make such a move. Beyond the fact Curry doesn’t have Popovich’s stature, the Pistons are scrambling to stay in the playoff hunt and can’t really afford to put two or three wins at risk.
