Comments on: Andre Drummond shows potential, Kyle Singler shows ability in Detroit Pistons’ summer-league win over Utah Jazz

By: William Anderson

William Anderson — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 09:59:29 +0000

Terrico White was a great pick and we really missed out and if he was here last season he would have helped us out be time … We got to rebuild the Pistons with young guys like White and Monroe. I been hearing alot of good things about white and his workouts in FL … Lets Bring Terrico White as SG. @TerricoWhite5 please come home back to detriot …

By: frankie d

frankie d — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 20:00:45 +0000

regarding what or who defines “the best prospect”, that is somewhat irrelevant.
one prospect might be great for one team and simply redundant for another. and if he is redundant on that particular team, he may never get a chance to show how good he is. which is exactly what happened with white and it was entirely predictable. as just about every draft analyst or pistons’ fan noted at the time he was drafted. yes, he was considered someone with first round talent, but so what. it is the job of a GM to know what he is drafting, and if you draft a guy who flames out after one year, without touching the court and other players taken after that guy suceed, you screwed up. that is why they get paid the big bucks. they aren’t some schmoe out there with a draft blog. they are supposed to make their living judging and evaluating talent. who cares what chad ford or draftexpress or draftnet say. its not their job or reputation on the line. joe dumars gets paid to get those decisions right and he obviously didn’t get that second round choice right.
and you can go back and analyze why something didn’t work out till the cows come home. bottom line: it didn’t work. someone is responsible for the pick. that person is joe d.
i guess a quarter century of watching young players go over to the euro leagues and play and develop and come back to the nba as more accomplished players means nothing. it means nothing for a young 17 year old playuer to spend 3 years playing professional BB agains men who are 5 and 10 years older and more experienced. it does nothing to make them better prepared for the nba. what everyone believes and what appears to happen is just an illusion.
good to know you’ve set everyone straight.
i guess JJ is just deluded in thinking – as he has specifically stated – that his european experience helped him immensely. who woulda thunk he was so crazy!

By: tarsier

tarsier — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 23:38:33 +0000

hahahaha

I can’t believe you busted out Webster’s on me. Just because a dictionary defines a word in a particular way doe snot mean that is the usage. Let’s just say that I have a been prospective employee for a lot of jobs. “under the circumstances that existed, [I] was an extraordinarily unlikely candidate for any [of those jobs].”

Also, I love how you start out with “stating something in a categorical, unequivocal way doesn’t make it true” right before saying “fact: …”

I also gave supporting evidence. Maybe I didn’t cite specific mock drafts or pre-draft ranking or draft boards or whatever, but on most of them, White was easily the highest guy left. If you don’t remember/believe me, I can go look some up for you.

How is the McGrady siging relevant? He wasn’t there when White was drafted. What two SFs drafted the previous year would spend time in the backcourt? They were all considered combo forwards. Many Pistons fans longed for Daye to spend minutes at SG but if he did any there, not many. And to the best of my knowledge, Summers and Jerebko were never affiliated with the SG position. I don’t even know which you are referring to as that second guy. That leaves Stuckey, Bynum, and Gordon. While White was a long shot to outplay Bynum, he wasn’t an extreme long shot. Bynum has a very low ceiling. White kinda looked like more of a Terrence Williams type.

Obviously JJ is a very different situation. Virtually any two players are in very different situations. But for the parameters you specified, they were a match. And whether they played professionally before or not, both were NBA rookies. If you think playing professionally in Europe first prevent players from the failings common to rookies, I can rattle off a bunch of counter examples for you on that count too.

“i always laugh when i see fans retrospectively defend decisions, even when those decisions have turned out horribly. i guess the idea is that the theory had some merit…someway, somehow, and therefore it was sound.
i am more impressed with results.”

Of course, we all want results. And it is much more common to retroactively criticize a move that didn’t work out. But there is a lot of randomness in the business. All you can really expect of a decision maker is that his moves play the odds well. Some will still flop but you may as well criticize a shooter every time he takes and misses a good shot. It happens… a lot. But it is still smart to take those shots. Likewise, you get trades like the Gasol deal that worked out well for Memphis, but it was still inane.

By: BIGMARV

BIGMARV — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:16:51 +0000

Yeah kanter is talented but you can tell drummond is in another class, his presence alone players wasnt getting to the hole easy yesterday he will surpass Kanter real soon

By: Ray

Ray — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:40:55 +0000

http://www.proexposure.com/stories/0706c.cfm
Dwight – 37 mins 1-13 shooting 7 pts 5-6 fts, 11rebs, 4blks 1stl 5 fouls
Drummond 27 mins 4-6 shooting 0-3 fts , 5 rebs 2blks 4stls 4fouls
Dwight that summer averaged 12ppg 10rebs 3blks but shot 35% but 71% for FT’s….

By: frankie d

frankie d — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:54:06 +0000

stating something in a categorical, unequivocal way doesn’t make it true.
fact: white has not played a game in the nba since being drafted.
fact:15 of the 24 players selected after him have played in the nba. several, especially landry fields, have played significant minutes.
fact: the pistons had will bynum, rodney stuckey, ben gordon, rip hamilton already on their roster. they signed tracy mcgrady shortly after the draft. they had drafted two other “3′s” who would spend time in the backcourt the year previous to selecting white. absent an injury to several of those players, it was extremely unlikely that there would ever be space for another combo guard.
webster’s definition of “prospect”: “a likely candidate for a job or position” .
under the circumstances that existed, white was an extraordinarily unlikely candidate for any job on the detroit pistons that year.
sorry that you keep trying to change history and facts. what happened happened. your refusal or unwillingness to accept what happened is novel, but just that, novel.
and bringing up players like drummond and JJ is just as novel.
was drummond the best prospect?
possibly, but only time will tell. we will be able to determine that in a few years.
but what is not in dispute is that detroit needed a big guy this year and therefore, even taking a gamble on a talented big guy who could come in and play – if your gamble worked – makes all the sense in the world.
if “drummond” had been a harrison barnes-like small forward, that would have been an entirely different story. gambling on another small forward with tay and singler and magette and daye and jj already here would have been as dumb – or even dumber – than drafting white.
JJ? totally different situation. white was a college player without a position, a guy drafted solely on his athleticism and potential. the team was even trying to take a college shooting guard with abysmal assist/TO numbers and turn him into a point guard. that experiment was a summer league disaster.
JJ was an experienced professional by the time he came into the nba as a rookie. he’d been playing professional basketball in europe since 2007. while he certainly wasn’t a finished product, he was definitely much more advanced. he was well-prepared to compete professionally, because he’d been doing it for years, already.
ridiculous to compare a raw prospect, no matter how talented with a young player who has played in a professional league, against seasoned pros, for several years before coming into the nba. no comparison whatsoever.
that european experience can make or break a young player, which is why teams farm guys over there and why a guy like singler comes back ready to contribute right away.
and part of player evaluation and drafting is figuring out whether a guy you draft is going to “fit” your team, whatever your team’s circumstances are, at a particular time. you have to know if a young guy is prepared to deal with what is going to confront him. and it was obvious that white was not prepared to come in and do what he needed to do.
i always laugh when i see fans retrospectively defend decisions, even when those decisions have turned out horribly. i guess the idea is that the theory had some merit…someway, somehow, and therefore it was sound.
i am more impressed with results.
but, imho, there is a level of cognitive dissonance that is stunning.

By: Scott Free

Scott Free — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 14:46:51 +0000

I imagine we’ll see a Bynum, Magette, Singler, Jerebko, Drummond lineup coming in for the starters of last season (depending on foul situations)

By: craig

craig — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 14:46:33 +0000

I was very pleased by the play of Kyle Singler. I believe the year over seas has really improved his all around game. Should be a great addition to the team.
Drummond is a real raw talent I like his quickness and hands. With great passers he should get a lot of easy baskets

By: Anthony

Anthony — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 13:40:11 +0000

Don’t like the fact that magette will be taking minutes from the new guys. I would love to see (by the end of the season) this group of starters, and producing well:
Knight
Stuckey
Prince
Monroe
Drummond
Then off the bench:
Singler
Jonas
Slava (???) (the Ukrainian center)
And English getting some time as an off the bench scoring spark.
I’m not a fan of daye or Middleton. Never was a fan of magette, and thought Jason Maxiell wasnt good enough. Although last year he sparked their great run, I just don’t like his game.
If that lineup comes to fruition by the end of the year and were producing well, I will be a happy pistons fan and I think well have a great outlook on the future.

By: Derek

Derek — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 11:23:53 +0000

Knight: looked stronger. He absorbed the contact off the dribble and kept the dribble alive. He was able to get to the basket leave his feet and maintain his composure against the contact. I loved that he tried to dunk on his first drive.

English: very poised. He has really good team defense instincts. I loved the charges he took. I loved that he was able to body his man and keep him out of the lane. His stroke is smooth and his first step drives to the basket were under control. I see him as a reliable rotation player. He won’t play a ton of minutes but I think he will give the team positive minutes.

Singler: seasoned. His time over seas really helped him. He was a capable player coming out of Duke, but now he looks like the game moves slow around him. He scored in a variety of ways and played a strong two way game.

Drummond: is a promising project. He left the floor a lot but in doing so he proved to be a quick repeat jumper. Rodman and Larry Johnson used to be really good at repeat jumping for rebounds in particular. I like that he has quick hands to compliment his leaping ability. Also I remember Kanter as something of a bull last year. He manhandled a lot of prospects in the 2011 pre-draft workouts. He didn’t seem to be able to do that to Drummond. The fadeway looked good, but locking into a couple of moves and powering up over Kanter would have been better.

Daye: contributed really well. He had a quiet 12 pts to go with a couple of 50/50 rebounds (loose ones). I liked his hustle, but I sadly see no maturation in his body or his game. The small forward crop is going to push him out of the rotation. I see nothing that suggests he is capable of surviving the rigours of playing the four.

Macklin: meh. He usually looks hungry, but that wasn’t the case yesterday. I think he’ll show more today and as the week goes on.

Middleton: looking for more out of him too.