20234-24 14-68. Now what? (The 2024 Offseason thread)

[buddha]

wait, is troy weaver still running this team?

step 1) draft an uber athlete who cant shoot;

step 2) sign a Friend of Troy;

step 3) pick 5th in next year's draft.

[Deleterious]

Cade should demand a trade.  He can force his way out this summer and sign his extension with his new team.

[Deleterious]

😁

 

[Deleterious]

 

[Hongbit]

I don’t get the love for Quentin Grimes.  

He’s a young player that probably has some value with a stronger established roster where he can be asked to play a complementary role around better players.   I don’t see how he would excel with this Pistons team that would probably ask him to do way too much.  

[NYLion]

Harris is the most meh signing I can think of. If you look up average in the dictionary, you see Tobias Harris's picture but average would be an upgrade so it's....something. The team is going to live or die with its youth, these THJ and Harris additions are merely background noise like the Burks and Bogey additions.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

Why did Stan Van Langdon bother to sign Harris? Does he think he'll be able to meaningfully compete with Harris out there on the floor or does he think this will get them to 30 wins next year? Honestly, I'd rather suck/continue tanking yet again and have a shot at a top (well 5th) lottery pick then bring in Harris and get this team to 25 or 30 wins. That feels like we're going right back to the SVG days. 

All lame jokes and SVG comparisons aside, it's only a 2 year deal, so how bad can it be for our long-term plans and player development?

Edited July 2, 2024 by Mr.TaterSalad

[Mr.TaterSalad]

Why aren't we taking on a bad contract like an Andrew Wiggins or equivalent and trying to get multiple picks out of such a deal? That to me seems like the strategy Trajan ought to be taking, bad contracts for draft capital. With signing Harris, it seems that takes away much of the cap space needed to pull off that type of deal. 

[Deleterious]

You don't want Wiggins for 3 years.  But Golden State lost any interest in moving Wiggins when they lost Klay.  

The whole bad deals for picks is a bit overblown.  Teams with large stockpiles of picks did not build that via bad contracts for picks.  They built it by dismantling their team and selling it off.  Problem for Detroit is, we haven't had anything worth selling in 15 years.  

[RatkoVarda]

8 hours ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

Why did Stan Van Langdon bother to sign Harris? Does he think he'll be able to meaningfully compete with Harris out there on the floor or does he think this will get them to 30 wins next year? Honestly, I'd rather suck/continue tanking yet again and have a shot at a top (well 5th) lottery pick then bring in Harris and get this team to 25 or 30 wins. That feels like we're going right back to the SVG days. 

All lame jokes and SVG comparisons aside, it's only a 2 year deal, so how bad can it be for our long-term plans and player development?

I think they are hoping that the humiliation ends sooner rather than later; Harris could help move them from historically incompetent to really bad.

[gehringer_2]

1 minute ago, RatkoVarda said:

I think they are hoping that the humiliation ends sooner rather than later; Harris could help move them from historically incompetent to really bad.

So much to look forward to. 

[buddha]

whomever the coach is the team will win more games because monty was ao spectacularly bad last year.

of course, i said the same thing about dwayne casey...

[Hongbit]

2 hours ago, RatkoVarda said:

I think they are hoping that the humiliation ends sooner rather than later; Harris could help move them from historically incompetent to really bad.

Exactly this.

They also can’t shoot the fewest 3’s in the league again.   He and THJ should help in that category. 

[Deleterious]

Never seen a fan base so excited to add two below average shooters.  

[casimir]

12 hours ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

Honestly, I'd rather suck/continue tanking yet again and have a shot at a top (well 5th) lottery pick then bring in Harris and get this team to 25 or 30 wins.

But the beauty is that they can bring Harris in and still suck enough to pick 5th.

[casimir]

1 hour ago, Deleterious said:

Never seen a fan base so excited to add two below average shooters.  

But the new shooting coach….

[buddha]

1 hour ago, Deleterious said:

Never seen a fan base so excited to add two below average shooters.  

someone is excited about this?

[Hongbit]

38 minutes ago, buddha said:

someone is excited about this?

I absolutely am.   My goal next season is 25 games.  They need to jack up more 3’s to do it.  These guys can help.  I expect a few more meh signings coming that Del and yourself will hate.

Edited July 2, 2024 by Hongbit

[Betrayer]

Were people expecting us to attract All-Stars in free agency? Trade our empty asset cupboards for them? We have to put out the dumpster fire before anyone is coming here. We also have to see what we have in the youth movement before locking in to players like Ingram for the next 5 years.

I hate to be the positive one, but everything they've done so far tracks pretty well with what we should have expected after hearing Trajan's vision.

These are all things he talked about at the presser:

• Raise the floor
• Build a better culture/organization
• Develop/evaluate the young players
• Get NBA players who will actually play
• Acquire future assets
• Improve shooting
• Improve the defense
• Reduce turnovers

Tobias - Actual NBA starter and floor raiser. Durable. Low turnovers. Floor spacer. Good locker room guy. Short contract to remain flexible.

THJ - NBA rotation player (25+ mpg game on a good team = better than 70% of the guys we rolled out last year). Pretty durable. Floor spacer. Low turnovers. Added draft capital. Short contract.

Bickerstaff - Floor raiser. His teams in Memphis and Cleveland were near the top of the league in defense and low turnovers.

Vinson - Development. Improve shooting. Improve the organization.

The deals have to be there for them to absorb contracts, so who knows how much of that will happen. And they still have 25M in cap space, so there's plenty of money to do stupid things, but if they bring in someone like Gary Trent Jr and maybe absorb Capella, they've really raised the floor, easily double the win total, and changed the narrative around the team while developing youth without being locked in long term. You also still have a shot at a good pick in 2025 as well.

If Cade takes an SGA or Haliburton leap and another youngster pans out, you can start making bigger swings. You might even have a free agent look at you. If not, then you aren't committed long term and you can keep drafting.

We can't forget that although we may have endured 15+ years of Piston's trash basketball, Trajan hasn't. I'm sure he expects to come in here and be given a few years to build it the way he sees fit without "skipping steps".

Edited July 2, 2024 by Betrayer

[buddha]

3 hours ago, Hongbit said:

I absolutely am.   My goal next season is 25 games.  They need to jack up more 3’s to do it.  These guys can help.  I expect a few more meh signings coming that Del and yourself will hate.

i stand corrected.

[buddha]

i didnt expect them to come in and sign a bunch of all stars, i hoped they would come in and sign some wing role players who could play d and shoot 3s, maybe take a swing on a real rim protector, pick up a contract with a frp attached to it, hire a coach considered a "good basketball mind" or a guy who can develop players.

i dont think they've done any of that yet.  but its still early and they have cap space available to play with.

maybe if you squint you can see tobias harris as a 3 and d player.  thj is a black hole on offense who i fear will have all the irrational confidence of zach lavine without any of the actual ability.  and all we got for him was 3 seconds and the right to get rid of quentin grimes.  not that grimes was the be all end all, but he was a better bet than thj (unless he really wanted out).

bickerstaff i see as a nothing burger (did that just for hongbit) who is an upgrade on a guy who just coached one of the worst seasons of all time.  small steps, i suppose.  but my uneducated basketball mind really wanted borrego or chris quinn or kenny atkinson...not the guy kenny atkinson was hired to replace.

i'm underwhelmed and worried that arn tellum still has a lot of say in what's going on.  hopefully not.  i am moderately intrigued with ron holland, so there's that.

[Deleterious]

Harris was not a Langdon guy. Maybe he signed off on Harris, but the rumors about Detroit and Tobias were whispered long before Langdon was here.

[NYLion]

The Pistons are a mess steeped deep in **** and not just players but also from the executive level on down. It's going to take a long time to clear out the stink, moves like THJ and Harris are nothingburger stopgaps like Bogey and Burks, probably the same with Bickerstaff as well fine for this stage of the rebuild but likely won't be here when the team is competing.

Like I said before, the fate of the future of this franchise will largely lie at the feet of the young core. Who that young core will be going forward will be fleshed out over the next few years but as of now the roster is a bunch of **** being thrown against the wall seeing what sticks. Nothing they could have reasonably done this offseason would have changed that.

[Betrayer]

7 hours ago, Deleterious said:

Harris was not a Langdon guy. Maybe he signed off on Harris, but the rumors about Detroit and Tobias were whispered long before Langdon was here.

There have been Tobias rumors for a long time because he has ties to Michigan. His wife went to Michigan State and they met while he played for the Pistons. Apparently, they come back often and he's actually one of the few people who wants to play here.

[Deleterious]

4 hours ago, Betrayer said:

There have been Tobias rumors for a long time because he has ties to Michigan. His wife went to Michigan State and they met while he played for the Pistons. Apparently, they come back often and he's actually one of the few people who wants to play here.

That will give me great comfort when a career journeyman is roasting him for 40 in February.