The Detroit Pistons are keeping guard Walker Russell, agent Giovanni Funiciello tells HoopsHype.

HoopsHype also noted that Russell is Detroit’s first D-League call-up, although they have sent a handful of players to their D-League affiliate over the years (hat-tip Packey).

Meanwhile, former Piston DaJuan Summers was among the players cut as the Hornets decided against guaranteeing his contract. Condolences can be offered to Frankie D in the comments. Also, Scott Schroeder of SB Nation has a handy tracker of all the non-guaranteed contracts that were either guaranteed or waived today. One intriguing name: Derrick Caracter of the Lakers. The Pistons do have a roster spot … wouldn’t mind seeing them give him a 10-day contract.

The common thinking in the Pistons’ fall from contender to bottom feeder in the last few years has been that Joe Dumars has ‘lost his touch’ or that he’s had no vision. In fact, the opposite is true. The current version of the Pistons exists precisely because Dumars had a vision.

After the Pistons lost to Boston in the 2008 Conference Finals, Dumars gave in to increasing pressure to shake up the old core and traded Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson shortly after the 2008-09 season started. But today’s post isn’t going to once again delve into whether or not that was a smart move. I’m going to look at the new era of rhetoric that was ushered in starting with that trade. The Pistons won a title and became one of the steadiest teams in the league for nearly a decade based on, first and foremost, physical defense. Starting with the Billups trade, Dumars began to target players that didn’t fit a specific traditional position and who didn’t necessarily have strong defensive reputations, and that was no accident.

Iverson was the world’s smallest shooting guard (or was until Nate Robinson showed up). Charlie Villanueva wants desperately to be the world’s tallest shooting guard. Rodney Stuckey, at best a combo guard and more likely a shooting guard in college and as a rookie, became a full-time point guard. Ben Gordon was primarily a bench player in Chicago because he was too small to be a starting shooting guard and didn’t have the skillset to be a passable point guard. DaJuan Summers was a hybrid forward at Georgetown with the build of a prototypical SF and the skillset of a low-skilled PF. Austin Daye was a lifetime post player with no chance in hell at playing in the post full-time in the NBA (just don’t tell John Kuester that). Jonas Jerebko, although a good player, isn’t perfectly suited to either of the forward positions. Kyle Singler is yet to play a game for the Pistons, but he’s probably not strong enough to play his natural power forward position in the NBA, and he might not be skilled enough to be a full-time small forward. Brandon Knight is technically a point guard, but he plays more like a shooting guard right now. Will Bynum is the size of a point guard, but he’s a scorer in every sense of the word.

I could ask readers what the best position for most of those players is and it would start heated debates in the comments. And in fact, that was by design. Dumars began talking a lot about his belief that traditional positions were becoming obsolete. He wanted to put a team of five versatile guys who could score on the floor at all times. Below are some examples.

Dumars in a 2010 interview:

Dumars later says he doesn’t look at backcourts in terms of having a point guard and a shooting guard. He looks for two players who can play well together. So, if he used that line to dodge the question, ask, “For a player who you think would be ideal next to Stuckey, would other teams consider him a point guard or a shooting guard?”

Dumars in a 2010 interview:

Asked if the Pistons need a “pure point guard,” he said, “When people say that now, I think we still hold on to what a true point guard was 20, 25 years ago. A lot of the young point guards you see now that are having success are also combo guards. I saw some during the playoffs, kids who barely played point guard in college, played two-guard all of college, and now they’re running teams.”

Dumars in 2009:

If you don’t have the strong, low-post, traditional four man that can score, if you don’t have one of those top guys, you certainly better have one of those guys we call a stretch four – that can stretch the defense, that’s versatile, that’s inside-out. You have to get one or the other. If you’re not going to get a traditional four guy, then today’s game requires you to have more versatile four men.

Dumars also clearly believed that the NBA had changed into a less physical league where having an abundance of offensive-minded players was more vital than it had been in the past. From an interview with Keith Langlois in 2009:

We also recognize that we have to be able to score the ball more. I think our acquisitions reflect that. Kuester will decide at what pace we pay, but what I wanted to do was give him weapons to put us in a position to be able to score the ball more. How he chooses to do that will be up to him, but I did not want to put him in position where we didn’t have enough weapons to step on the floor and score like you need to be able to score now to have success in this league.

It’s not that Dumars ever publicly said defense wasn’t important. His comments just started to treat defense as kind of an afterthought, something that could be picked up later. Here’s an example:

I don’t think you can ever lose the mentality that for us to win, you have to stop people. You have to play good defense. You can’t be a poor defensive team and expect to win. So the fact that we’ve acquired more guys who can score the basketball doesn’t change the mind-set that you have to stop people. All we’re doing is saying we recognize that we have to score more. To recognize that doesn’t mean that you’re abandoning the mind-set that we have to stop people. You don’t have to choose, either-or. Lest people forget, Chauncey and Rip didn’t come here as these great defenders. They came here as offensive players. Chauncey was talented offensively, Rip was a scorer. They won a championship because they made a commitment to try to defend people. Just because you address the need to score more, doesn’t change your mind-set to have to stop people.

Dumars, in fact, had a pretty clearly articulated plan. It just wasn’t a good one. Now, I obviously cherry-picked some comments from the past to highlight that point, but these are some common themes that I think it’s fair to take away from Dumars’ change in philosophy: 1. He didn’t believe his veteran core of physical, halfcourt veteran players could continue competing at a high level in a league seeing more wide open offenses and stricter officiating; 2. He feared that his core would age overnight, similar to what he experienced as a player when the key players on the Bad Boys pretty rapidly declined; 3. He believed that he needed both more offensive firepower and players who could create for themselves and score in iso situations; 4. He believed defense was important, but that talented players who were poor defenders elsewhere could be taught to be good defenders.

As for that last point about defense, I’ll let Ben Wallace handle the refutation. From Terry Foster of The Detroit News:

Wallace said it’s possible that the Pistons can become a good defensive team and that some of these players can become good defenders. But it’s doubtful they will turn into all-NBA defenders.

“You are born with it; you can’t teach that,” Wallace said. “It’s tough to get to the league and not be a great defender and turn into one. You can be a great team defender. But as far as taking control of the game, it’s one of those things where you are born with that intensity or with what we call that ‘dog’ in you.”

Thanks Ben. As for the rest of the points, I don’t think Dumars’ philosophy has been entirely wrong — traditional positions have become somewhat obsolete, pure point guards are a rarity nowadays and, since he clearly believed a player with Stuckey’s skillset could be an offensive centerpiece, he was right to think surrounding Stuckey with perimeter threats like Gordon, Villanueva and, to a lesser extent, Daye, should’ve helped Stuckey excel. I think he certainly miscalculated on the players he chose to fill those roles and I think he clearly paid way too much for them while casting aside cheaper, more talented options. But again, that’s not the debate here today. My question is simply, why the drastic change in philosophy? Why reinvent the wheel?

Although it’s true the game has changed some over the last four or five seasons, it hasn’t been some sort of seismic shift. The Spurs, Celtics, Lakers and Mavs all won titles over the last five years by being really good defensive teams. The Bulls became an elite team last year built around a smothering defense, and for all of the hand-wringing about the Heat, they’re actually one of the better defensive teams in recent NBA history. Defense hasn’t changed that much, even if officiating does disallow some of the more physical stuff the 2004 Pistons did. That team wasn’t some relic of a lost era. The Pistons of the last decade were talented enough that they would’ve adjusted to today’s tighter officiating (although it probably would’ve taken about 1,000 Rasheed Wallace technicals to make that adjustment).

There is certainly more positional ambiguity today than there was 20 or so years ago, but Chris Paul would like to tell you that pure point guards still exist. Heck, Walker Russell is proof that even traditional point guards with limited talent can make valuable contributions in today’s NBA. Things have evolved, as they always do in sports, but Dumars seemed to be preparing for an offensive revolution that he perceived to be much greater than what was actually happening.

He clearly changed philosophies. This is the first year that the organization has uttered the phrase ‘rebuilding.’ There’s a reason they’ve been hesitant to do that — ‘rebuilding’ suggests that what you’ve been doing has been a failure. But they’re now at the point where it’s impossible to classify the last three seasons as anything but failure. Via Justin Rogers at MLive, here are some comments from Dumars after this year’s draft:

“When we’ve been at our best, it’s because we knew we were putting guys on the floor who would give there (sic) all and do things the right way. We all know we had some slippage in that department over the last year or two. This is a direct effort to reaffirm who we’ve been and why we have these banners in this building.”

‘Reaffirming who we’ve been’ suggests that decisions that preceded this year’s draft were not ‘who the Pistons have been.’ It’s an indirect admission that mistakes were made, that the drastic philosophical shift towards offensive players wasn’t necessary and that the old way was better.

Why did Dumars change? Unless one of the handful of interviews he gives out each year is to the guy who once built a game recap around around what Austin Daye ate for dinner, I will probably never get an answer for that question. As a fan though, it still haunts me. It’s just so strange.

Dumars became a prodigy among GMs. The ‘genius’ tag was tossed around pretty frequently at one time. Other than Jerry West, at one time, you could’ve made a case that Dumars was the most successful star-player-turned-executive ever. Most people who have that kind of success become so married to their philosophy that they never change, occasionally to their detriment. Dumars was the opposite. He stubbornly and rapidly changed course, as if he’d become convinced that the philosophies that delivered his great successes – fiscal responsibility, identifying under-valued talent, toughness, work ethic and defense as core organizational values, etc. – were untenable, and he couldn’t be convinced otherwise. There have certainly been several forces at work that have made the Pistons what they are today, but chief among them was a mysterious, largely unexplained change in how Dumars believed he needed to go about building a successful basketball team. There isn’t a rational explanation for why that happened.

#JoeDumarsWeek

Monday:

• Intro post
• Joe Dumars’ draft track record is strong
• 3-on-3: Joe Dumars drafting
• Poll: Grade Joe Dumars’ total draft history

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.

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.

Desiring to shake up his lineup until injured starter Trevor Ariza returns, New Orleans Hornets Coach Monty Williams gave forward DaJuan Summers his first start Friday against the Minnesota Timberwolves in place of Al-Farouq Aminu. Summers, 6 feet 8, 240 pounds, has been efficient since returning after missing the first eight games with a hyperextended right knee.

Summers played well in that start, scoring 11 points on 5-for-8 shooting. It was his second straight game in double figures for the Hornets. Summers isn’t exactly turning into a Arron Afflalo-like ghost out there haunting the Pistons for giving up on him too soon. Summers followed up those two strong performances with an 0-for-5 shooting night in his second start and, like he showed with the Pistons, he doesn’t do much else other than shoot. He’s averaging just 2 rebounds and 1 assist per game in those four games. And it is only four games anyway, so who knows if Summers even shows he’s able to stay in that NOLA rotation all season.

But he does bring up a common criticism of the team: too often over the past decade, young players have played little with the Pistons, shown little in those inconsistent minutes, left the team and turned into competent or better players elsewhere. Afflalo has turned into one of the best defensive guards in the league and has a rapidly evolving offensive game for Denver. Amir Johnson has been a defending, rebounding, shot blocking ball of energy for Toronto. Carlos Delfino is a useful and versatile rotation player in Milwaukee. Darko Milicic …. well, he still sucks, but he sucks less than we thought he did at one time.

I don’t know that Summers will develop into anything close to what those other players mentioned above have. But that’s the point. When last season ended, Feldman wrote this:

Does Detroit have a reliable idea what it has in Summers? He enters free agency this summer without many NBA minutes under his belt and the Pistons unlikely to retain him.

With a renewed emphasis on high-character players, shouldn’t Summer get an extended look?

I don’t believe Summers is a complete unknown to the Pistons. They saw him in practice, and there must have been a reason he didn’t play ahead of Prince, Austin Daye and the other Pistons who saw time at small forward (Tracy McGrady and Richard Hamilton). It’s not like Detroit just randomly kept Summers on the bench.

But without seeing him play more meaningful minutes, the Pistons can’t completely evaluate Summers.

The Pistons went nowhere the last two seasons, and they did so while playing veteran players with no future here like Hamilton and McGrady (and this year, Damien Wilkins) extended minutes at the expense of unknowns like Daye and Summers. We’re seeing the painful results of Daye’s lack of development right now — the Pistons still have no clue what they have in him. If Summers continues to at least contribute, even on a bad NBA bench, it will show the Pistons had no idea what they had in him either. It’s not like he’s going to develop into some All-Star caliber player, but it will just be one more low cost, young player that could be stocked on the Pistons roster as they rebuild who will experience his best days as a pro elsewhere.

Good for Summers, who was by all reports a professional, good guy in an often toxic locker room last season. He played briefly overseas, but didn’t have a good experience in Italy. He didn’t play in the Hornets’ first game, but might get a shot some time this season as that team finds its post-Chris Paul identity.

White, on the other hand, was among those cut in Hornets camp. His athletic skills have never been a question, but White is trapped in a point guard’s body and couldn’t even be described as a true point guard in college. He could still develop some needed refinement overseas or in the D-League. If he was going to make a NBA roster, the Hornets would’ve been among his best bets. Currently, there point guard options behind Jarrett Jack are less than stellar post-Paul.

Georgetown has framed NBA jerseys hanging on the wall behind a basket at McDonough Arena, where it’s men’s team practices and plays a occasionally – a very cool display.

With four jerseys, the Pistons have at least twice as many as any other team:

Don Reid

Jerome Williams

DaJuan Summers

Greg Monroe

Terrico White and DaJuan Summers in camp with Hornets. #pistonscamp #hornetscamp

On the one hand you’ve got Siena, fresh off a Euroleague Final Four appearance as well an Italian Championship, their sixth in as many years. On the other, DaJuan Summers, a 23-year-old whose physical gifts far outweigh any sprinkling of success he’s seen in an uneventful two years with the Detroit Pistons.

However, with the departure of Malik Hairston, Montepaschi needed a scorer; and with the departure of the NBA, DaJuan needed a job. So they ignored the blaring sirens of incompatibility, covered their ears and partnered up.

But when you’re an elite team whose only real need is a shot maker on the perimeter, your big acquisition is supposed to make shots on the perimeter. Instead of encouragement (“You’ll hit the next one, DaJuan!”), it’s an ultimatum (“You better hit the next one, DaJuan.”).

There’s no room for slumps or mental lapses on a club that views losing as a sickness. Once the staff identifies the cause of the infection, they’ll cut it out. Out of the starting lineup, out of the rotation, or out of the team’s plans altogether.

Gibson hints that culture shock and adjusting to situations where players could be forced into limited minutes or roles are things that agents should prepare clients for before choosing a team overseas.

Gibson also provides updates on two other Pistons playing overseas, Kyle Singler and Austin Daye. On Singler, who is playing in Spain:

Kyle Singler, the man Detroit selected to be DaJuan Summers’ replacement, has cooled down after an alarmingly white hot start in the Spanish League. He’s still among the ACB’s scoring leaders (16.4, 7^th), however, and Lucentum Alicante is 4-1 and off to one of their best starts in years.

And on Daye, who is playing in Russia:

Daye’s putting up 5.5 points in nine minutes per game behind names like Sergey Monya (Trailblazers and Kings in 2005-06), Zoran Planinic (Nets from 2003-06) and the Denver Nuggets’ Timofey Mozgov, who is thriving in his return to Mother Russia.

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.