Monty Williams has sent to the NBA film of the foul in the Hornets’ game against Detroit that sent forward Jason Smith to the injured list.

Williams believes Pistons center Greg Monroe, a New Orleans native, should be suspended for flagrantly tossing Smith into another player, giving the Hornets’ energetic forward a concussion in the process.

“I believe the NBA needs to look at that play and maybe suspend Monroe because it was a violent play that should have been penalized and the refs didn’t catch it,” Williams said. “I think that’s one of the things they have to look at on film because that can’t happen.  Those kinds of plays can cause fights in the game.”

Modeled after ESPN’s 5-on-5, Patrick and I will answer three questions about a Pistons-related topic.

For each 3-on-3, we’ll be joined by a guest contributor. Today, that’s Matt Moore of CBSSports.com. Hardwood Paroxysm and NBC Sports’ ProBasketballTalk.com.

1. Who was Joe Dumars’ best draft pick?

Dan Feldman: Tayshaun Prince. Picking Prince 23rd in any draft would have been a steal, but 23rd in the 2002 draft is special. None of the 12 players picked before him ever amounted to much in the NBA. To find a near All-Star in that barren wasteland is special.

Patrick Hayes: Mehmet Okur. Since 1990, Okur is one of just 17 players who weren’t first round picks to make an All-Star team. Dumars’ strength in drafts has been finding talent late, and although Okur had his best years after leaving Detroit as a free agent, finding an All-Star big man in the second round is probably the best value pick Dumars has made.

Matt Moore: Tayshaun Prince. Greg Monroe is my first answer, because I hate obvious answers. But come on. Prince will have his jersey in the rafters. Total production, championship ring, highlight reel play (The Block).

2. Who was Joe Dumars’ worst draft pick?

Dan Feldman: Darko. I’m convinced nearly every other would have drafted Darko with the No. 2 pick in 2003, but that doesn’t completely absolve Dumars. The next three picks – Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade – became stars, and even the No. 6 pick, Chris Kaman, made an All-Star game. Dumars could have picked a name out of a hat and done better.

Patrick Hayes: The entire 2009 draft. Taking Austin Daye at No. 15 over Ty Lawson, Jrue Holiday, Darren Collison, Jeff Teague and Eric Maynor will always be the high-profile miss from this draft, but taking DaJuan Summers in the second round at No. 35 when DeJuan Blair was still on the board was worse. Add giving away a pretty solid player in Chase Budinger to Houston, and not even finding Jonas Jerebko at No. 39 can salvage this mess of a draft.

Matt Moore: /desperately searches for a way around the Darko pick. /still searching. /seriously, gotta find one. /it’s here somewhere, I know it. / Nope. Darko.

3. How do you rate Joe Dumars’ total draft record?

Dan Feldman: Excellent. Darko, Rodney White and Mateen Cleaves were high-profile busts, but even with them included, Dumars has done a quality job. He’s been hurt in the draft by the Pistons’ extended run of success – even good picks in the 20s probably aren’t game changers – but with more high picks coming, I’m convinced the draft will be a reliable source of talent for the rebuilding Pistons.

Patrick Hayes: More good than bad. He’s missed on a couple of high profile picks, but he’s consistently found legitimate rotation players all over the draft – Okur, Brian Cardinal, Tayshaun Prince, Amir Johnson, Arron Afflalo, Rodney Stuckey, Jason Maxiell, Jerebko, Carlos Delfino and Greg Monroe give him enough quality over the years to make a case that he knows how to identify talent in the draft. Whether he knows how to develop it is another discussion.

Matt Moore: Really well, actually. Darko busted but still starts in this league all these years later. Jerebko, steal. Afflalo, steal. Knight, quality. Monroe, future All-Star. Delfino, capable player. Dumars can draft. He just never puts himself in a position to draft multiple picks to reform the team.

What do you think? Share your answers in the comments.

He chose Darko, so he’s terrible! He found Tayshaun Prince in a weak draft, so he’s great!

That sort of analysis is unhelpful. Dumars has made some great draft picks. He’s also made some terrible picks. That’s true of anyone whose been a general manager as long as he has.

To truly gauge Dumars’ drafting ability, we should look at the entire body of work. Thankfully, Justin Kubatko of Basketball-Reference.com developed a system to do just that.

Kubatko created a chart of win shares a player should earn during his first four seasons, based on draft position. Using just the first four years – the length of rookie scale contracts – most fairly links a draftees’ play with the executive who picked him, rather than skewing the numbers with the player’s production long after he’s drafted.

The drawback to this method is just the draft classes that have spent four years in the NBA can be assessed. That means Austin Daye (likely a bad pick), DaJuan Summers (likely a bad pick), Jonas Jerebko (already earned more win shares than expected), Greg Monroe (certainly a good pick), Terrico White (almost certainly a bad pick), Brandon Knight (tossup), Kyle Singler (tossup) and Vernon Macklin (tossup) can’t be evaluated yet.

I think that’s fair. If we truly want to grade Dumars’ drafting, there’s no point declaring someone like Knight a success or failure at this very moment.

I also think it’s fair to include his 2008 draft picks, even though they’re not four seasons removed from being drafted. Two – Trent Plaisted and Deron Washington – never played in the NBA and likely never will, and the one who did – Walter Sharpe – might be even less likely to join an NBA team in the future.

Here’s Dumars’ draft history, from 2000-08, with each player’s expected and actual win shares through the first four seasons of his career:

A +16.5 in win shares is significant. That’s enough leeway to for all of Dumars’ picks through Monroe to retire today and still have Dumars come out ahead. Put another way, you could add a No. 5 pick who never played a minute in the NBA to the ledger, and Dumars would still have a positive draft record.

Granted, maybe Dumars shouldn’t get too much credit for a couple of his late picks drastically over-performing when he missed (12) more picks than he hit (8).* But most of Dumars’ misses came between picks 51 and 60, a range where the difference between a hit and a player never making a roster is minimal.

*Remember, this is based on historical production by pick, not the common over-hyped perception of draft picks. So the league average of hits is 50 percent (give or take).

In many ways, the draft presents a perfect setup for outside evaluation of a general manager.

We don’t know which trades Dumars has turned down and proposed. We don’t know which free agents would and wouldn’t consider Detroit, and of those who would, how much money they’d want to sign here.

But we know which players Dumars can draft, because the players have little to no choice in the matter.

Sure, win shares aren’t a perfect measure, though I don’t see a player on the above list that they misrepresent. And some drafts are stronger than others, but given how long Dumars has run the Pistons, I think that evens out.

My conclusion isn’t an approval of Dumars’ reign as GM. The Pistons have obviously struggled to develop too many of their draft picks, and that’s certainly an indictment of Dumars. But that point is moot unless he drafts good players.

He’s shown, over the long run, he does that better than most.

One of the greatest players in franchise history, Dumars became the Pistons’ general manager in 2000. Since then, he’s been rated as the league’s best GM and it’s worst. No doubt, he fits somewhere between, but where?

This week, in addition to our normal coverage, we’re going to present a series of posts on Dumars – a referendum on his tenure as Pistons president, and ultimately, whether it should continue.

Ladies and Gentleman, Joe Dumars Week begins.

Barnes was subbed out of the game and is now cursing/gesturing towards one of the Lakers’ assistants. I think Q. Chuck is peacemaker.

Barnes is a bit of a loose cannon, so this isn’t necessarily a redux of John Kuester’s Pistons tenure. Plus, it appears they made up. Kevin Ding of The Orange County Register:

Matt Barnes was visibly upset after getting taken out of the game early in the fourth quarter Saturday night, cursing toward the Lakers’ assistant coaches. Lakers assistant coach Chuck Person tried to calm Barnes down at the time, and Barnes said in the locker room afterward to reporters that he didn’t want to discuss anything but what happened between the lines.

“If you want to talk about the game, we can talk about the game,” said Barnes, who had positive interaction with Lakers lead assistant John Kuester in the postgame locker room.

• Teams: New Orleans Hornets at Detroit Pistons
• Date: Feb. 4, 2012
• Time: 7:30 p.m.
• Television: Fox Sports Detroit

Records

• Pistons: 5-20
• Hornets: 4-19

Probable starters

Pistons:

• Brandon Knight
• Rodney Stuckey
• Tayshaun Prince
• Jason Maxiell
• Greg Monroe

Hornets:

• Jarrett Jack
• Trevor Ariza
• DaJuan Summers
• Jason Smith
• Emeka Okafor

Las Vegas projection

Spread: Pistons +1

Over/under: 176

Score: Hornets win, 88.5-87.5

Read about the Hornets

Hornets247

• Teams: Milwaukee Bucks at Detroit Pistons
• Date: Feb. 3, 2012
• Time: 7:30 p.m.
• Television: Fox Sports Detroit

Records

• Pistons: 4-20
• Bucks: 10-11

Probable starters

Pistons:

• Brandon Knight
• Rodney Stuckey
• Tayshaun Prince
• Ben Wallace
• Greg Monroe

Bucks:

• Brandon Jennings
• Shaun Livingston
• Carlos Delfino
• Luc Mbah a Moute
• Drew Gooden

Las Vegas projection

Spread: Pistons +4.5

Over/under: 182.5

Score: Bucks win, 93.5-89

Read about the Bucks

Bucksketball.com

Game notes

• Lawrence Frank said Will Bynum is day-to-day, but Bynum said he’s about a week, according to David Mayo of MLive.com.
• Ben Gordon participated in today’s shootaround, but he’s out tonight, according to Keith Langlois of Pistons.com.
• Charlie Villanueva still cares. But he’s also out again, according to Eric Lacy of The Detroit News.

CENTER: Greg Monroe. Detroit’s Monrobocop has been the conference’s second best center, no matter how bad the Pistons have looked. He’s averaging 16 points and almost 10 rebounds a game on 51 percent shooting while picking up more assists than turnovers. He edges Roy Hibbert, who plays for a much better team. But you can’t pick your teammates, unless you’re LeBron James or Stephen Jackson.

Earlier in the season, Patrick made the case that Monroe should be an All-Star. I’m not so sure. Since Patrick’s post, Monroe has tailed off a little and Joakim Noah has improved. It could come down to the wire.

Regardless, I doubt Monroe will make the All-Star Game. Still, it’s a credit to him that he’s in the discussion of who deserves to make the All-Star Game.

2. Greg Monroe, Pistons
How good has Monroe been this year? Not good enough to get Detroit out of the bottom five of the league, unfortunately, but I’ll tell you this: If Detroit was a better team, then Blake Griffin would have some competition for "best of class."

Monroe is top 12 in the NBA in PER and offensive rebound rate and top 20 in overall rebound rate. And while Detroit is an awful defensive team, only Ben Wallace is playing better defense than Monroe, who has to carry an offensive burden far more than Wallace does.

There are still questions about how Monroe would perform on a better team, or if he’s good enough to be a top-three player on a good team. But all things considered, no one in this class besides Griffin can touch Monroe right now.

Thorpe also ranked Jonas Jerebko fairly high:

14. Jonas Jerebko, Pistons (missed last year due to injury)
Jerebko is proof that tall guys who compete really hard can find their way on an NBA roster and even get playing time on bad teams. JJ hustles everywhere, even when he shouldn’t sometimes, like when he catches in space and tries to dribble attack. As a decent midrange shooter and an adequate defender, his energy is what ultimately gets him on the court.