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.

Brown will serve his suspension Monday when the Lakers play the Philadelphia 76ers at Wells Fargo Center.

If everyone shows up for him this time, that’s half the battle.

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.

Hopefully, the injury doesn’t cause him to miss a lot of time — he’ll probably join a long line of famous masked Pistons like Bill Laimbeer, Antonio McDyess, Rip Hamilton and Charlie Villanueva. In the meantime, though, Knight’s absence allowed another rookie to show what he can do as a team’s primary lead guard.

Walker Russell‘s circumstances are quite different from Knight’s. Knight is a prized, highly hyped lottery pick who will be given ample opportunities to turn himself into a good NBA player. Russell has no such guarantees. He’s playing without a guaranteed contract. If not for a long list of injuries, the Pistons would’ve never signed him even to that non-guaranteed deal. He’ll be 30-years-old later this year. And when the Pistons regulars do return, there’s no guarantee, despite his solid play, that he’ll even hang around on the roster.

Saturday’s audition was big for Russell, and he made the most of it. He showed for an extended stretch what he has shown in the brief flashes of playing time the Pistons have given him: he can run a NBA offense, he always looks to make plays for others, he competes hard on defense and he takes care of the basketball. He scored nine points with four assists, two turnovers and two steals. If the Pistons can’t keep him, he might not be a difference maker, but he will give competent minutes off of most benches in a league that overall doesn’t have an abundance of unselfish, smart point guards.

But Russell’s performance didn’t just do him some favors if he finds himself in need of a new team soon. Subbing the minutes of a shoot-first player in Knight (he’s been getting incrementally better as a passer, but his first inclination his entire life has been to score the ball) for a pass-first (and maybe pass-second) player in Russell allowed the Pistons other shot-loving rotation players the chance to play more freely. Ignoring last night’s performance by Knight for a minute, when he’s been in the lineup, the Pistons offense hasn’t looked good. That’s not all Knight’s fault, but because he’s a shoot-first guy and because Rodney Stuckey and Tayshaun Prince are shoot-first guys, they all kind of struggle for power at times. All three guys possess some ability to create for others and all three possess some ability to create shots for themselves. What is usually missing is an understanding of who is supposed to do what. Sometimes all three are too assertive, sometimes none of them are. What has resulted has been a mess of an offense with no true facilitator and three guys who all seem to want that job, but none of the three showing he can do it full-time. Oh, and complicating things, the one guy who is a natural facilitator, who should have the offense running through him, Greg Monroe, plays center, so he relies on others to get him the ball. As we’ve seen all season, there are many games Monroe doesn’t touch it enough as a result.

Subbing Russell for Knight makes that problem less complex. When Russell’s in the game, he brings the ball up, he starts the offense and Prince and Stuckey didn’t have to worry about figuring out when they were supposed to take turns as playmakers and when they were supposed to simply take the shots that came to them.

Monroe also was heavily involved. He finished with 24 points and 16 rebounds, and he also got 17 shots, the most he’s had in the last four games.

I was looking forward to seeing how Knight followed up that first really good performance of his career. It’s disappointing he didn’t get a chance at it tonight, but the game wasn’t a total waste, either. Hopefully, he’s learning how to have command of an offense and run it efficiently when he gets to watch Russell out there.

Big plays by veterans

Stuckey and Prince didn’t have good games overall, but both helped put the game away late with key plays and big shots.

Prince made a nice pass to Jason Maxiell for a dunk to the the Pistons up five with 2:31 left. Stuckey hit a contested 18-footer off the dribble to put the Pistons up seven with less than two minutes left. Maxiell snuck in for an offensive rebound/dunk to put the Pistons up five with less than a minute to go.

Stuckey had a poor shooting night (5-for-13), but he got more aggressive in the second half and started getting to the free throw line by driving inside more. He was passive in the first half, didn’t get a couple of calls, and settled for jumpers after that. It was good to see him come out more aggressive, particularly late in the third quarter and in the fourth.

Prince also shot poorly, and he and a few others got torched by Trevor Ariza for 17 first half points. Prince did a little better job on him in the second half.

Maxiell had another fantastic game. Last night, I mentioned Maxiell’s previous struggles as a starter. He had a good game as a starter against Milwaukee, but due to injuries, the Bucks were starting their typical backup frontcourt guys. Tonight, Maxiell finished with 10 points, 5 rebounds and a block against a big frontline of Emeka Okafor and Jason Smith. Those guys certainly aren’t All-Stars, but Maxiell has often had problems getting shots off inside against taller players. He was active and delivered another encouraging performance in what has been a nice bounce-back season for him so far.

Jerebko impresses again

After a rough stretch of games where Jonas Jerebko wasn’t his energetic self, his activity has come back nicely over the last three games. He scored 11 points and had five rebounds against the Hornets.

More importantly, though, he’s stayed out of foul trouble the last three games. When Jerebko picks up quick fouls, he becomes much less aggressive. A non-aggressive Jerebko is a non-effective Jerebko. He’s a huge asset with his constant motion and activity when he can stay on the court.

• 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

That confidence showed the night before during the Piston’s game against the New Jersey Nets. Late in the fourth quarter, Russell came off the bench to try to help secure the win. Unfortunately, the Piston’s lost 99-96; however, Walker contributed a career-high 12 points, along with 6 rebounds and 2 assists.

When asked about putting up those types of numbers in the NBA, Russell said, “It feels great. What’s even greater is that I was in during crunch time. I appreciate the confidence that the coaches have in me and I just keep on learning from these experiences.”

Walker spent part of the last five years in the D-League working to get an opportunity to play in the NBA. He only had positive things to say about how the NBA D-League prepared him to play at the highest level.

“The NBA is a lot faster and the guys are bigger. Besides that, the D-League does a good job of preparing guys. I feel like I was well-prepared, and people are saying that it looks like I’ve already adapted to the NBA and now I’m playing solid minutes,” Russell said.

Dave Mayo of MLive reports the Pistons will have to make a decision on Russell soon:

At issue is next week’s Feb. 10 deadline for NBA teams to release players with non-guaranteed contracts, like Russell, or guarantee their contracts for the rest of the season …

Will Bynum is close to coming back from a foot strain, but he’s already on the active roster anyway. Charlie Villanueva isn’t close to coming back, is the only Piston on the inactive list, and it’s his spot that Russell took anyway, so that helps Russell’s chances of sticking. Ben Gordon remains out with a shoulder strain, too. And even with Russell, the Pistons are only carrying 14 players, one fewer than the maximum.

I think most Pistons fans would like to see Russell stick around. He’s a great story, seems like a great teammate and his passing has been fun to watch.