Before you get too excited …

That post is certainly sobering.

You know, I was working my way through the Detroit News’ Pistons articles during lunch today and I started noticing a common theme. 5 separate stories, 5 encouraging quotes:

1)“I will tell you this, Ben has been phenomenal,” Kuester said. “He’s very important to us for what we want to do. He knows he’s very important and that’s why I listen to what he has to say. You can’t always do it all the time, but he knows we have a tremendous amount of faith in what he does and says.”

2)“I’ve done it before,” said Villanueva, who has both started and come off the bench in Milwaukee and Toronto. “It makes no difference. I just want to win some games. If the coach feels that it’s the lineup he wants to go with, I’m all for it.”

3)“I trust a lot of these young guys,” Kuester said. “I have no problem at all with them coming in and giving us quality minutes.”

4)Brown credits Kuester as a key factor behind his fine start. Kuester’s low-key teaching personality has clicked. “He’s no nonsense and very positive,” Brown said. “He lets you play.”

5)“He’s made a great impact,” Richard Hamilton said. “Especially for young guys. All the stuff we had to go through last season, and actually doing it the right way, teaching the game the right way, knowing where guys need to be and coaching us what the NBA is supposed to be. He’s not just allowing us to do what we want, but he’s coaching us.”

I will note that the Detroit News has juggled it’s sports writers. Last season’s stories pulled by Feldman were nearly all written by Chris McCosky. Most people know that I have great distaste for McCosky because he was lazy and largely served a Langlois like role as puppet controlled by Dumars. Everything written by McCosky should be taken with a boulder sized grain of salt. I’m willing to give this new guy from the News a little bit of leeway, but chances are he went to the McCosky school of “write whatever Dumars tells you to”.

Apparently, so far, the Pistons are number one in the NBA preseason for field goal percentage and number three for opponent’s field goal percentage. Let’s see that translate to the season guys…

I think pistons.com need less Keith Langlois and more Erin Nicole.

Thats Funny!!! I see his point but the players have never said anything bad about any coach.. well not to the media!!!

I knew Curry was going to fail before the first regular season game, before the big trade, before they actually failed. It was written all over the transcript of the press conference where he was announced head coach. My only question is did Dumars know too?

Listening to the radio broadcast. First quarter thoughts:

Rip started off hot.

Stuckey started off cold.

Arenas was the best offensive player out there.

Kwame had 5 rebounds and scored on a post up.

Wilcox and Jerebko gave good minutes and although Maxiell hit a 15 footer, I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up being the 6th big in the rotation.

stream hasn’t buffered for me yet: http://rajangan.nettemplate_live.php?ida-56

sorry here it is : http://www.rajangan.net/template_live.php?ida=56
still not buffering, maybe it will work for one of you.

and there is this also… http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/gamechannel

You know, I had an idea where he was going with this unto the third quote. I would argue that Kuester’s resume is significantly better than Curry’s.

Whatever chance Curry had of making it as a head coach was scuttled when Chauncey was traded. Curry had to adapt and improvise, and although in his defense, was given a difficult set of circumstances, he reacted miserably.

Like I said in the other thread, we’ll have a better idea where we’re at after 20 games. It’s very rare in the preseason, when everyone is optimistic, that you have any true picture of where you’re at in the NBA pecking order. Realistically, this team is better than the press would like to give it credit for, but it’s at least a couple of years away from being considered “elite” again.

Second Quarter thoughts:

The guards did a better job of getting the bigs involved something they didn’t do in the first quarter (Bynum and being the main culprits).

Is this the official boxscore refresh party?

Good sign that we’re down just 1 when the Big 4 are 7-25 shooting?

FPR “Roscoe” W: 18 and 7 in the 3rd quarter

FPD “Serbian Gangsta” M: 2 and 1 in 8:22

2 and 1 is Darky Darks career average, right?

Whoa! I stopped paying attention when the ‘Stons were down a dozen; now they’re up 1. What happened? Matriach-Fondler WB?

annnnd we got the lead back.

oops, Matriarch

by the way, Jerebko FTW. I had no idea I’d like dude so much. He’s been the most impressive this preseason, IMO.

can anyone watching the game tell me if our perimeter defense is really good or the wiz are just shooting awful from behind the long line?

Yikes, Stuckey and Gordon are a combined 6 for 25.

Awesome work on that turnover and game-ending foul, Ben Gordon.

“Before we get too excited…” about going 3-0, we’re now 3-1.

the one before that one.

Second half thoughts:

Tay had a cut on his toe and didn’t play the second half.

Q ran the three guard offense for the whole third quarter (rip/stuckey/gordon, then rip/stuckey/bynum). It didn’t sound like they were in rhythm.

I was hope Daye would get more time with Tay out. He paid immediate dividends when he came in with a 3 and a drive and dunk.

Kwame was the best player for the Pistons for the game and when he came in with Daye the Pistons made a run (probably helped that Arenas was on the bench too).

JaVale McGee is a real defensive presence and rebounder. Sounded like he disrupted a lot of shots down the stretch and was probably the main reason that the Wizards won.

Guys my yahoo boxscore for the game freezes, whats the update?

update: night of failure

It really sucks that nobody’s broadcasting these games ,I look forward to the preseason every year ,so I can see the rookies get some playing time.I’m tire of looking at box scores ,can’t wait for the regular season.

ive been thinking all day about how the guard situation is going to work out this season and im beginning to think that perhaps stuckey wont be the point guard of the future. is it crazy to think that perhaps gordon and bynum will be running the point more this year than stuckey and perhaps rip and stuckey will be the scoring guards? also if we go to a three guard line-up that we will see stuckey at the three more than rip(which kinda makes sense seeing as stuckey is a little more built for it though he gives up a few inches). just bouncing this around with my boss all day, seems possible. any thoughts?

I don’t think the Pistons will have a traditional PG. They will have so many ball handlers on the court at all times that they can get the ball up quickly and will have multiple players that can initiate the offense based on whatever mismatches they have.

This is me bored up late on trade machine, feel free to ignore:
http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=yg9737t

Stuckey/Bynum
Gordon/Washington/Stackhouse (sign as insurance)
Prince/Daye/Summers
Boozer/Villanueva/Jerebko
Okafor/Wallace/Wilcox

Bynum could get his 20-25 off the bench and would play his mostly with Stuckey at 2-guard to rest Gordon. Washington could play as needed for defense. CV gets 25mpg as 6th/7th man, Wallace fills in for defensive purposes, Jerebko gets spot minutes for hustle/energy and big man insurance. Wilcox would be traded for a solid back-up SG (Rasual Butler or someone along those lines.)

do you think that means that the jod is taking a step back in regards to stuckey being the point guard of the future, at least in a traditional sense?

Attention Pistons Fans:
Relax about Rodney Stuckey. Seriously. Relax. Get ahold of yourself.

Three of four starting PGs in the top 4 teams in the East last season tallied the same or less assists than Stuckey did.

If you’re looking at assist totals in preseason games to draw your conclusions, you should avoid touching that little “submit” button in the bottom right of the white box below

perhaps i should clarify, i only meant that instead of forcing stuckey to play as a true distributing point guard this year that the offense is going to be opened up in terms of who iniates the offense and that we will see stuckey in more of a scorers role and less of a setup man.

@dandresden:
“true distributing point guard’s” are not a championship ingredient. In the last decade, Rajon Rondo is the closest thing to a “true distributing point guard” in terms of assists-to-field-goal-attempts.

That guy we won with? Had a 33% assist to field goal attempt rate the year before our championship. Stuckey last season? 42%.

A “scorer’s role” is not mutually exclusive of a point role. I think it’s far too soon to suggest we might be “forcing” Rodney Stuckey into anything. Let’s let a month or two of the regular season play out before we start worrying, yeah?

Assist to turnover ratio is deceptive. A low ratio with a low actual # of turnovers is preferable to a high ratio with a high actual number of turnovers. An offensive possession either ends with a turnover or a shot so if you are somehow able to shoot a high FG% and limit the number of turnovers it doesn’t matter how many assists you get, you have a good offense.

@jjj:
Not sure if you were referring to my comment or not— if so, note that I was focusing on assist-to-field-goal-attempt, not a/t ratio. I used this to illustrate the distribution vs. shot rate of point guards.

Mike Payne – Thanks, I misread your comment. That’s a new stat to me, I guess it’s useful to see if a PG has issues passing vs. gunning.

You know, I hadn’t really seen it referenced before, but I thought about it early this summer as a decent way to illustrate the style of point play. Do they prefer to distribute or to shoot? I played around with it quite a bit and found some pretty interesting stuff.

Example: in the Celtics championship season, Rajon Rondo recorded an assist-to-field-goal-attempt percentage of 54%. Last season, he jumped up to an amazing 86%. That’s higher than anything even Chris Paul has put up. Without scratching my own back (I’m sure others have compared the two stats before), I think it is an excellent way to illustrate the style of point play of a PG, from pure pass first PG all the way to scoring combo guard.

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies …