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Archive → November, 2011

November 3rd, 2011

Chevette to Corvette No. 29: The 1961-62 Detroit Pistons

Facts

  • Actual record: 37-43
  • Pythagorean record: 36-44
  • Points scored per game: 115.4 (7th of 9)
  • Points allowed per game: 117.1 (3rd of 9)
  • Arena: Cobo Arena
  • Head coach: Dick McGuire

Playoffs

  • Lost NBA Western Division Finals (4-2) vs. Los Angeles Lakers
  • Won NBA Western Division Semifinals (3-1) vs. Cincinnati Royals

Leaders

  • Points per game: Bailey Howell (19.9)
  • Rebounds per game: Bailey Howell (12.6)
  • Assists per game: Gene Shue (5.8)

Top player

Bailey Howell

Although his scoring average dipped some from the previous season, Howell was still Detroit’s top scorer and he also wrested the team rebounding lead from Walter Dukes, who saw his per-game average drop by eight per game from the previous season.

One of Howell’s greatest skills was his ability to get to the line. He averaged 7.7 free throw attempts per game in 61-62, but that was down from more than 10 per game in 60-61 and it cost Howell. Howell’s 19.9 points per game average in 61-62 was the only time in a four year period he dipped below 20 points per game.

Key transaction

Drafted Ray Scott with the fourth pick in the NBA Draft

Scott had a fine NBA career, mostly in Detroit, as a center/forward. He averaged 13.3 points and 11.5 rebounds per game as a rookie, lasted five seasons with the Pistons and would later go on to coach the Pistons and at Eastern Michigan University. And, as Greg Eno reported in 2006, Scott became a lifetime part of the Detroit sports scene:

And Scott made it clear that once Detroit gets in your blood, you can’t get it out. Not that he’d want to, anyway.

“I came here in 1961 and y’all haven’t kicked me out yet,” Scott said with a typically big chortle. “But you (attendees of yesterday’s luncheon) might not know that I’ve been here that long because I played for the Pistons.” Then it was our turn for chortling.

“I am a Detroiter. Emanuel (Steward) and I practically grew up together as kids.”

Trend watch

Improving the defense

Despite scoring less, the Pistons became a more stout defensive team in Dick McGuire’s second year as coach. They went from seventh (of nine) in the league in points allowed to third, and that propelled them to a bit of postseason success.

Why this season ranks No. 29

For the first time in four years, the Pistons won a playoff series, beating Cincinnati in the Western Division semifinals. They stretched the Lakers to six games in the West finals and, at that point, that was the team’s best playoff showing since moving to Detroit in 1957.

Previously

By Patrick Hayes • Posted in Chevette to Corvette, Pistons History • No Comment
November 3rd, 2011

Will the Pistons have another top five rookie this season?

I participated in today’s ESPN 5-on-5 roundtable, which predicted which rookies will have the best seasons once the season finally gets underway. Pistons draftee Brandon Knight didn’t make anyone’s top five list. For me, he was a narrow miss. I just don’t believe, if Rodney Stuckey is back, Knight will play as big a role as some other rookies who will get big minutes right away and the chance to put up flashier statistics. If Stuckey is not back, I think Knight would struggle some but have a shot to be a top five guy by season’s end. But I picked two guys in my top five who were not lottery picks:

Patrick Hayes, PistonPowered: Kawhi Leonard. He won’t have numbers that stand out, but as an athlete who rebounds, can finish and has huge hands, the San Antonio Spurs will get him plenty of shots around the basket and he’ll make an impact with energy and hustle plays.

Patrick Hayes, PistonPowered: Kenneth Faried. Outstanding on the boards and athletic enough to make up for his lack of size, Faried landed in a perfect spot, on a fun Denver team that will run, with point guards who will find him on the break in Ty Lawson and Andre Miller. Faried will be a handful on the offensive glass.

I’m actually really excited to see the element that both of those unique players bring to their new teams. Who are your predictions for the top five rookies?

By Patrick Hayes • Posted in Notes • 13 Comments
November 3rd, 2011

Arron Afflalo fans are about to fall even more deeply in love

Former Piston Arron Afflalo has become a hidden gem in the league since leaving Detroit, particularly among advanced stat lovers for his remarkably productive performance in Denver. Afflalo recently was interviewed by Zack Lowe of Sports Illustrated and he admitted that he’s a follower of advanced stats as well:

SI.com: If there is a knock on your game at this point, it’s that you haven’t proven you can create your own shot consistently at the NBA level — whether it’s in isolation, on pick-and-rolls or whatever. If you look at the numbers, you haven’t used a very high percentage of your team’s possessions.

Afflalo: Yeah, my usage rate has been pretty low.

SI.com: Usage rate? You know the advanced stats, huh?

Afflalo: [Laughing] I’m a student of the game.

Afflalo also talks a lot about the Carmelo Anthony trade. While Afflalo is a favorite of advanced stats crowds, Anthony is frequently pointed at as one of the more overrated players in the league, but Afflalo mentions something that I think often gets lost in the ‘Melo discussions:

Yes, he’s always going to be the focal point of the offense, and he’s a very aggressive player. But at the same time, he draws so much attention, and that opened up a lot of opportunities. I found myself open a lot. But when he left, I found more opportunities with the ball in my hands.

I’ll prepare the countdown for Ben Gulker to refute this in the comments (just kidding Ben!). But the interview is a great read, albeit a depressing one because Afflalo is exactly the type of productive, hard-working, tough young player the Pistons should be building around right now.

By Patrick Hayes • Posted in Notes • 4 Comments
November 3rd, 2011

DaJuan Summers didn’t have a great experience overseas

Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! caught up with Pistons free agent DaJuan Summers. Summers recently left his Italian League team and, according to Spears, didn’t have a great experience in Italy:

On his second day in town, his car was rear-ended as he drove to practice. He was taken to the hospital, and his inability to speak Italian made it difficult for him to get help until someone realized he played for the local basketball team. By then, Summers’ girlfriend had already received a call from a team official alerting her that Summers hadn’t made it to practice. She was happy to eventually learn he had suffered only whiplash in the accident.

“I got hit by a small SUV on my blind side of the passenger side,” Summers said. “When I got hit, I ended up on the other side of the car in the backseat. That’s how hard I got hit. I was just shocked. I never have been in an accident like that.

“People here drive much different. It’s not as organized as back home, driving in-between lines. You got to be more alert.”

Summers averaged about 18 points for Siena in the preseason. But the team was missing four players and its coach (Simone Pianigiani), all of who were involved in the European championships for the respective countries. Once Siena had its full roster together, Summers’ role changes. In his regular-season debut, he scored three points in 12 minutes.

“That was my first red flag,” he said. “In the preseason I was playing close to 30 minutes every game. But when the real games started I was getting 14, 15, 16 minutes. It was weird. I couldn’t understand it.”

In my previous life covering sports for the Flint Journal, I wrote about quite a few Flint area basketball players who are now pros overseas, and they frequently had horror stories about not getting paid or being left to essentially fend for themselves in unfamiliar cultures. They all used to talk about the need to find a place where you can not only play, but a place where you will be taken care of and comfortable. For some, it took a few different stops to do that.

By Patrick Hayes • Posted in Notes • No Comment
November 2nd, 2011

Charlie Villanueva gets a Twitter response from the mysterious NBA Labor account

An interesting new Twitter account appeared on the scene recently called @NBA_Labor. The mission, I gather, is to correct from the league/ownership perspective, perceived misinformation floating around out there about the lockout. One of the account’s targets so far has been Charlie Villanueva. Villanueva tweeted this:

Saw a article on ESPN, the owners r asking for 50/50 spilt, sounds good, but in reality its a 46 or 47/50+ split, hell no, TOGETHER WE STAND

But Mr. @NBA_Labor bot, whoever he/she is, wanted Villanueva (and former Piston Nazr Mohammed, who also tweeted some figures) to know that wasn’t accurate:

@CV31 @NazrMohammed: Owners last proposal was a 50/50 equal split of BRI, the agreed-upon revenue share btw league & players.

I think it’s really weird on the part of the owners/league to respond anonymously like this, and Mohammed raised a great point in his rebuttal:

Don’t tweet me during this lockout! Isn’t that a fine or something lol?!?! #NBALockout That’s hilarious! I can’t workout at our team’s facilities or have contact with coaches but @NBA_Labor & @NBA can harass me on twitter lol SMH

Ben Golliver of CBS Sports has an idea for how players should respond if this account continues tweeting at them:

Correcting the record is one thing and a noble goal, but this feels like a heavy-handed and petty approach from the league, especially when no real negotiations are taking place.

NBA players: there is only one way to respond. Hit that block button and lock out the league from your Twitter feeds. Make this a lockout blockout.

By Patrick Hayes • Posted in Notes • 6 Comments
November 2nd, 2011

Chevette to Corvette No. 30: The 1967-68 Detroit Pistons

Facts

  • Actual record: 40-42
  • Pythagorean record: 36-46
  • Points scored per game: 118.6 (4th of 12)
  • Points allowed per game: 120.6 (10th of 12)
  • Arena: Cobo Arena
  • Head coach: Donnie Butcher

Playoffs

  • Lost in first round to the Boston Celtics, 4-2

Leaders

  • Points per game: Dave Bing (27.1)
  • Rebounds per game: Dave DeBusschere (13.5)
  • Assists per game: Dave Bing (6.4)

Top player

Dave Bing

Bing averaged a career-high 27.1 points per game – on a career-high, by a wide margin, 24.0 shots per game. It wasn’t his best season, but by volume, it was probably his biggest.

Key transaction

Drafted Jimmy Walker with No. 1 pick

Walker had a fine career and made a couple All-Star games, but he never met the hype of a No. 1 pick. Not that the Pistons knew that in 1967-68. Jerry Bembry of ESPN The Magazine:

NBA Hall of Famer Dave Bing, representing Walker’s early professional career, spoke fondly of the rookie he took in as a roommate 40 years ago in Detroit. "I’m 22, Jimmy’s 21 and we feel like we have the NBA’s best backcourt," Bing recalls. "We played together, lived together and enjoyed each other as friends and as teammates. A great guy to be around; Jimmy had a big heart."

Walker is probably best known for fathering, but never meeting, Jalen Rose.

Trend watch

Move to Eastern Division

The Pistons made the playoffs for the first time in five years. In fact, they’d also miss the playoffs the next five seasons.

But it’s difficult not to wonder what could have happened had the Pistons remained in the Western Division. The NBA expanded with the Houston Rockets and Seattle SuperSonics, and consequently, Detroit moved to the much-tougher East.

The Pistons went 15-25 against the East and 25-17 against the West.

Why this season ranks No. 30

This was the second of just two full seasons Dave Bing and Dave DeBusschere played together, and it began with a tense situation. Sports Illustrated:

Like the three monkeys on the log, Donnis Butcher, Dave DeBusschere and Paul Seymour see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil—at least, of each other. It’s just what they’re thinking that has Piston fans curious. The whole Detroit coaching situation has fallen right past curious all the way down to ludicrous. When the Pistons had a shot at a playoff berth last March, Owner Fred Zollner made Player-coach DeBusschere a player and Assistant Coach Butcher a head coach. With DeBusschere concentrating on playing and Butcher on coaching, the Pistons made a sparkling finish, losing six of their last eight games and missing the playoffs. After the season General Manager Ed Coil retained Butcher as head coach and kept DeBusschere as key player. Zollner, however, announced he was hiring Seymour, former head coach at Syracuse and Baltimore, as "assistant coach and head scout." Seymour, normally discreet, did not keep it a secret that Zollner had asked him to coach Detroit a long time ago, saying, "If things go wrong this year, I suppose they’ll be looking around to me." With that stirring vote of confidence, Butcher signed a one-year contract and everyone went skipping off to training camp.

The Pistons went a fairly uneventful 40-42, and Seymour didn’t replace Butcher until the following season.

Detroit even held a 2-1 lead against Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics in the first round in 1967-68. But the Celtics won the next three games, eliminated the Pistons and won the 10th of 11 title in a 13-year-span.

What could have been one of the Pistons’ biggest playoff series ever instead just served as a mediocre ending to a mediocre year. At least the Pistons set a franchise record for attendance in the process.

Previously

By Dan Feldman • Posted in Chevette to Corvette, Pistons History • No Comment
November 2nd, 2011

Drag Race: Greg Monroe vs. DeMarcus Cousins

This is the debut of a new feature called “Drag Race.” Patrick and I pit two players, one Piston and one non, against each other with the question in mind: Which would you rather have on your team? Age, salary, everything count. Scroll past the post, and there’s a poll for you to vote.

Greg Monroe

DeMarcus Cousins still has more upside than Greg Monroe, but it’s shocking how far the gap has closed between the two in just one season. Cousins was the consensus top big in the draft last season, while a handful of scouts were lukewarm on Monroe and didn’t feel like he lived up to his full potential at Georgetown. Here’s an example from DraftExpress in 2010:

“Monroe came into this season very out of shape, and thus took time to shed some of the extra weight he was carrying and get himself into optimal condition. For a player who already struggles with heavy feet and a general lack of athleticism, he cannot afford to give NBA scouts the impression that he’s not working that hard in the summer.”

There were dozens of reports similar to that on Monroe before the 2010 NBA Draft, which is a big reason he slipped to Detroit and lesser, but allegedly harder-working college players like Ekpe Udoh rose.

All of that is a long way of saying that in less than a year, Monroe completely wiped out just about every one of the many negative stereotypes there were about him by working hard, having a good attitude and flashing parts of his game that he didn’t show in college, specifically the fact that he became a much better offensive rebounder as a pro than he was as a college player and became much more efficient finishing at the rim as a pro.

If Cousins develops a work ethic to match his talent, he’ll be one of the game’s best big men. Monroe has already developed it, and that’s enough to sell me on him.

-Patrick Hayes

DeMarcus Cousins

Greg Monroe had a better season than DeMarcus Cousins, and they’re about the same age and make about the same money. Typically, I’d take the better player in that situation.

But Cousins is the rare exception.

Cousins scored more, passed better and rebounded better than Monroe. Unfortunately, Cousins also made more mistakes than Monroe, and that separated them – last year.

A rookie big man who turned the ball over too much, fouled too much and didn’t shoot well enough from the field? Sorry, that’s not a deal breaker. He’ll have plenty of time to polish his game.

Cousins and Monroe actually shot a similar percentage at the rim, despite Cousins being burdened with creating his own shot much more often. Cousins also shot better than Monroe did at every other distance. The difference was Cousins took a higher percentage of his shots from those low-efficiency areas away from the rim.

Part of the blame falls on Cousins for taking bad shots. Some should also go to his teammates, many of whom lack scoring skills. Somebody had to shoot, so why not Cousins? His usage percentage (27.2) dwarfed Monroe’s (15.4), and if they had swapped teams, I’d guess those percentages would look very different – as would their field-goal percentages.

Cousins’ turnovers and fouls were less excusable, other than to point to his age and hope he grows out of the deficiencies.

Cousins will also likely become a better rebounder than Monroe. Monroe was a better offensive rebounder last year (13.0 percent to 10.4 percent), but Cousins was better defensively (24.4 to 20.4) and overall (17.2 to 16.5). Players’ offensive rebounding tends to peak their rookie year, which means Monroe’s advantage on the glass very well could shrink or disappear.

Plus, if Monroe plays more in the high post to take advantage of his passing ability, that would mean fewer offensive rebounds. He can’t have his assists and eat his cake, too. Or something like that.

Cousins has the potential to dominate the league. At some point, Monroe’s lack of athleticism will limit his progress. For that reason, I’d take a chance on the guy who played slightly worse last year.

-Dan Feldman

Vote in our poll

By Dan Feldman • Posted in Analysis • 12 Comments
November 2nd, 2011

Greg Monroe vs. DeMarcus Cousins

poll by twiigs.com

 

By Dan Feldman • Posted in Poll • No Comment
November 1st, 2011

Jonas Jerebko could’ve played ’15-20 games’ last season

Another positive in Jonas Jerebko‘s recover from an Achilles tendon injury that cost him last season is that, apparently, he didn’t think it should’ve cost him the whole season. From HoopsHype’s Jorge Sierra:

What was the lowest moment in those first months of the injury?

JJ: When it started get to 3-4 months and you feel like you could be out there playing, but really you couldn’t. You just want to be there and help out the team, but they won’t let you… It was tough. At the end of the season was pretty tough too. I felt like I could play, like I could help the team win some games and then they kinda held me back, which was probably a good thing. But it was tough.

So you wanted to play at the end of the season?

JJ: Of course, I wanted to play as soon as I felt like I was ready. I felt like I could have played 15 to 20 games, maybe I wouldn’t have been at 100 percent. Sure it was a good choice to not play, but of course I wanted to.

I admire Jerebko’s willingness to come back, but I’m actually glad the Pistons held him up. When the season finally starts, he should definitely be ready. And, according to what he told Sierra, he’s been working on his jump shot and ball-handling, so he sounds like he’s planning to factor into the small forward mix. As long as he continues to crash the offensive boards, I’m OK with him at either the three or four spot, but he’ll probably see minutes at both, especially if the team loses Tayshaun Prince and Tracy McGrady to free agency.

By Patrick Hayes • Posted in Notes • 1 Comment
November 1st, 2011

Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter to reunite, talk Raptors tenure

OK, it’s probably not a big deal to Pistons fans considering Tracy McGrady has only played one season here, but this is HUGE news for Canada. Via RealGM:

Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady will appear on TSN’s ‘Off The Record’ on Thursday to discuss their tenure with the Raptors.

Charles Oakley, who was a teammate with Carter and McGrady, will be in studio with Michael Landsberg.

Carter was a member of the Raptors from 1998 until he was traded to the Nets in 2004.

McGrady was drafted with the ninth overall pick in 1997 and left for the Magic in 2000 in a sign-and-trade deal.

As NBA fans know, Carter and McGrady could’ve formed something special with those early Raptors teams, but McGrady wasn’t content as Carter’s second fiddle and left as a free agent. Then a few seasons later, Carter didn’t part with the Raps on such great terms. First the Bret Hart-Shawn Michaels interview hits stores, now Vince and T-Mac are back together. Big week of closure for Canadians.

By Patrick Hayes • Posted in Notes • 1 Comment
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