Tag Archive for 'Arron Afflalo'

That call may not be about what you think it is

Published by Matt Watson on August 26, 2008 in Around the Internets. 20 Comments

There’s a bit of unintentional humor at the end of Part III of Keith Langlois’ interview with Joe Dumars, which took place last week but was published today:

KL: I assume there’s been no news on this, but are you still talking with Lindsey and is he still making up his mind?

JD: We are definitely still talking. My BlackBerry just went off and that was Lindsey’s agent saying can you give me a call. It’s in real time.

Was his agent calling about that 15th roster spot? Or was it a head’s up that his client would soon be in the news? My guess is the latter.

On a serious note, Dumars confirmed that if Hunter passes (although, who knows if that spot is still being saved now), the team will keep that 15th spot open for while.

There’s nothing earth-shattering in the rest of interview, but hey, it’s August and you’re probably starved for any Pistons news, so if read the whole thing and you’ll probably be entertained. Dumars talks a bit about the Zoo Crew: cautiously praising Rodney Stuckey, talking up Amir Johnson, gauging Cheikh Samb’s progress, explaining Will Bynum, predicting what to expect from Walter Sharpe … and heaping praise on Arron Afflalo:

Every guy you draft, acquire, trade for, sign as a free agent, is not going to have superstar potential. That’s now how you put a team together. But you still have to acquire guys who can help you become a great team. Arron Afflalo is one of those guys that all the good teams have to have on your team. Afflalo is just one of those guys that we were just recently talking about James Posey and what he did for Boston and Bruce Bowen and what he’s done for San Antonio over the years. I’ll date myself – Michael Cooper and what he did for the Lakers back in the day. Through the history of basketball, he’s one of those guys that you have to have on your team when you’re considered a really good team because those guys are willing to do whatever it takes to help your team win. It’s never about them individually. They just do whatever is necessary and that’s what he’s shaping up to be in the league. One of those guys that if it calls for defending somebody or face-guarding somebody, he’ll do it. If it calls for trying to score, he’ll do it. If it calls for diving on loose balls all night long, he’ll do it. When you’re putting a team together you’re always looking for guys like that. Guys who’ll do whatever it takes to win.

Stuckey and Afflalo locked up

Published by Matt Watson on August 6, 2008 in Alley-Oops, Contracts and Transactions. 0 Comments

File this under “the least surprising news of the summer”: the Pistons officially exercised their team options on Rodney Stuckey and Arron Afflalo, extending them through 2009-10.

Tuesday’s Summer League Layup Drill

Published by Matt Watson on July 15, 2008 in Around the Internets. 146 Comments

I’m still woefully behind from the extra long weekend, so forgive me if you’ve seen a few of these before …

  • I mentioned last week how Michael Curry seemed to view Rodney Stuckey as the leader of the second unit. Stuckey confirmed that he’s using the offseason to take on a more vocal role among his teammates. From A. Sherrod Blakely:

    But if you look at the way he corrects teammates when they’re not where they’re supposed to be, the way encourages players to try things that might not be according to script, the way he barks instructions — and the way they respond — it’s clear that he came to Las Vegas looking to hone his leadership skills. “That’s one of the main reasons why I’m doing summer league this year,” said Stuckey […] “That’s one of the main things I need to work on, because I know next year, I’m going to have a bigger role than I had this past year.”

  • Stuckey missed the second half of Sunday’s game with a toe injury. Relax, it’s not serious and shouldn’t affect his playing time tonight.
  • Need4Sheed asks, does Stuckey really make Chauncey Billups expendable?
  • Michael Curry said Arron Afflalo will be the backup two-guard, and expects to reward Afflalo with more consistent playing time. From A.S.B.:

    “I’ve always said, when Arron plays consistent minutes, he shoots the ball consistently,” Curry said.

    The numbers don’t lie. Afflalo averaged 3.7 points and shot 41.1 percent from the field during the regular season, but he was better in both of those categories (5.6 points, 42.3 percent shooting) in the 45 games in which he played 10 or more minutes.

    The number don’t lie, but they also don’t say much: 41.1% vs. 42.3% is hardly significant. On the other hand, the fact he shot 20.8% from three-point land versus 46.1% from inside the arc is. If he can learn to stay within his range (or extend it a step or two over the summer), no one will complain about his shooting. He scored 25 against the Clippers on Sunday (boxscore) on 8-10 shooting (9-9 from the stripe) without a single three-point attempt.

  • Afflalo said all the right things after his breakout performance Sunday:

    “It’s not work to me,” Afflalo said. “I love the game of basketball with all my heart. I could stay in here all day. It’s fun, and there’s nothing I’d rather be doing. Although it’s just one Summer League game, it’s big for me because it lets me know this will pay off at some point, and I’m going to push even harder now.”

    A lot of guys just say stuff like that because they know it plays well in the media, but by all accounts is AA is the real deal. Granted, hearing him talk like this is nothing new, but it still makes me smile.

  • Alex Acker, who pulled out of the summer league with a bum knee, still hopes to win a roster spot by impressing Curry and Joe Dumars during voluntary workouts in Auburn Hills in August.
  • Curry talks about his coaching staff with Keith Langlois.

Last but least, I’d like to congratulate Jason and Erin Gurney, the masterminds behind BallHype who announced the sale of their brainchild today.

I happily served on BallHype’s Board of Advisors from the very beginning so I admit I can’t be completely impartial, but the site has become a daily (if not hourly) destination for me. That won’t change now that the company has been sold — it just means that Jason and Erin now have the resources behind them to continue making the site bigger and better while actually getting paid for their efforts. Congrats!

Las Vegas Summer League notes

Published by Matt Watson on June 27, 2008 in 2008 Draft. 8 Comments

Keith Langlois revealed a few interesting names that will be playing for the Pistons on the summer league:

Dee Brown, the former Illinois All-American who played with Utah as a rookie two years ago, will be on the Pistons’ roster. Sammy Mejia, last year’s second-round pick, was going to be but he sprained an ankle recently and won’t make it. Alex Acker will also be on the team and has a shot at sticking with the Pistons next year.

Because the Pistons will have three draft choices on the team – as well as Rodney Stuckey, Arron Afflalo, Cheikh Samb and Amir Johnson – they won’t be filling it up with a bunch of other notable players. That’s an unusual number of players for a Summer League team who have already cinched roster spots or have realistic NBA futures.

In case you missed it, here’s the schedule:

July 11 - Detroit vs. L.A. Lakers, 5:00 p.m. PST on NBA TV
July 13 - Detroit vs. L.A. Clippers, 7:00 p.m. PST
July 15 - Detroit vs. Milwaukee, 3:00 p.m. PST
July 17 - Detroit vs. Dallas, 1:00 p.m. PST on NBA TV
July 18 - Detroit vs. Charlotte, 3:00 p.m. PST

Unless noted, the games won’t be televised. Once upon a time it was possible to purchase some kind of video package to watch games (or at least highlights) online — no word yet if that will be an option again this year. I hope so, because that’s a stacked roster, at least as far as summer league rosters go.

Michael Curry answers questions

Published by Matt Watson on June 13, 2008 in Interviews. 19 Comments

Keith Langlois has a lengthy Q&A with Michael Curry on Pistons.com. Some highlights:

Langlois: You also said the other day you had opportunities to be an assistant coach when you retired yet you decided to go the administrative route with the league office for two years. Just talk about why you decided to go that route if you knew you wanted to be a head coach.

Curry: It’s funny. As you sit around, you prepare and I’ve always thought at times it’s difficult to get to a point unless people really see you in that light. I’ve seen some guys I thought were really good coaches that everyone kind of saw as an assistant coach. I didn’t want to take a job as an assistant just to be an assistant coach. I wanted to be a head coach. I’m a leader, I have a strong personality and I crave leadership positions. So that wasn’t quite the offers that were there when I first came out, once I interviewed with the league office, with what I could do in basketball operations and what I would be able to do within the D-League, it would be the best of both worlds. It would quench my thirst as far as the actual and on-the-court aspect in the D-League and the business side of basketball working in basketball operations.

Langlois: But it was done with the thought of becoming a head coach in mind, not a general manager?

Curry: I’ve always liked that part of basketball as well, being a general manager or being a head coach. Either one of those leadership positions. I knew after my two years in the league office, just talking with guys and GMs around the league and some of the interaction I’ve had with players. A lot of guys outside where I’ve been, they didn’t know me as well. But in that same setting, they knew I possessed the qualities to lead. Halfway through my second year in the league office, I knew that right now I craved being on the court more so than being a general manager. If I was a general manager right now, I’d probably get in my own way – in the way of the coach I hire – because I still see a lot of things I want to do and being on the court actually coaching is one of those things.

One of the things that impresses me the most about Curry is how calmly confident he is. He knew he’d be a head coach but didn’t want to settle for taking the usual path to success. And reading his answer to the quest above, I get the feeling he knows he’ll eventually be a GM some day, as well. It’s rare to see a new coach speak so candidly about his ambition.

His thoughts on holding players accountable:

[Players] want playing time. When you go out here you have 15 players. If you preach certain things to the guys and this is what you are going to hold them accountable for, if you allow two or three guys to do what they want to do, then not only those two or three are gone but you lose the other 10 that are not playing at the time. The best thing to do is make sure you follow what you’re teaching the guys and what you’re saying are your points of emphasis and make sure you keep those other 12 that are doing right and the other two or three, they’ll conform and be the way you want them to be.

I said this before, but I hope he’s serious, and I hope he doesn’t change his mind come playoff time.

His thoughts on some of the team’s young players:

Amir Johnson has to be more consistent every day and I think we have to coach him more consistent. What I mean by that is, he’s not a guy who can take two days away from the gym and come back and still be playing at the same level. As you saw when he played, he played four games in a row and he played really good. If you don’t play him for two games, he doesn’t go all the way back down but he takes a step backward. We have to find a way to make sure we give him consistent minutes and a consistent role so he can grow. Hopefully, once he starts to grow and get that consistency, he’ll realize how valuable he can be for us as a team.

Stuckey can take a big leap. With increased minutes, we want to put things in place to make sure he can stay aggressive when he’s out on the court. The biggest thing for him this year was trying to figure out when to be aggressive and when not to be aggressive. Sometimes he erred on not being aggressive. We want him to err on the side of being aggressive. Be overly aggressive and let us calm you down. That’s sort of our thought process with Stuckey.

Arron is great. He’s one of the few guys that I just thought never had a bad game. The way he prepares every day, he’s going to be a model where he doesn’t stand out so much by the way he prepares – we have to get everyone else preparing that same way every day. The way he prepares, the way he competes every day, every day in practice, he is the poster boy for the way we have to be.

Afflalo definitely gets overlooked when most people talk about Detroit’s young players, but that’s exceptionally high praise. If you’ve been paying attention, though, it’s also not surprising — I’ve heard Dumars and Flip Saunders say as much all year. No matter what your impressions are of Afflalo’s game right now, don’t underestimate him — with that kind of drive, anything is possible.

Stuckey is 2nd Team All-Rookie

Published by Matt Watson on May 13, 2008 in From the news. 12 Comments

The NBA revealed it’s All-Rookie teams today, and Rodney Stuckey earned a spot on the second team, though he did receive five first-place votes. All in all, being included among the league’s top 10 rookies is a pretty nice accomplishment for a guy drafted 15th overall, especially when you consider he played behind a pair of All-Stars, missed 25 games with a broken hand and started only two regular season games.

I’m not surprised (yet still disappointed) to see that Arron Afflalo didn’t receive a single vote. Strictly looking at the numbers I can see why he was overlooked, but he deserves a lot of credit for cracking Detroit’s rotation from Day 1 when a lot of people figured he’d be riding the pine or even spending much of the year in the D-League.

For the record, the first team was Kevin Durant, Al Horford, Al Thornton, Luis Scola and Jeff Green. The rest of the second team included Jamario Moon, Thaddeus Young, Juan Carlos Navarro and Carl Landry.

Rookies vs. Nash

Published by Matt Watson on March 25, 2008 in Alley-Oops. 1 Comment

Nice account from Empty the Bench on how Rodney Stuckey and Arron Afflalo fared against Steve Nash in yesterday’s game against the Suns.

Rasheed may sit tonight

Published by Matt Watson on March 7, 2008 in Injuries. 4 Comments

Krista Jahnke reports that Rasheed Wallace sat out of this morning’s shoot-around in favor of getting treatment — or as Theo Ratliff would say, having Arnie Kander lay his hands on him. Whether the miracle worker gets Wallace in good enough shape to play tonight is still unknown, but Jahnke suggests the Pistons might hold him out in favor of seeing what Theo Ratliff has in the tank, which sounds like a good plan to me. I mean, it’s just the Knicks, right?

Also, this was kind of funny:

Pistons rookie Arron Afflalo missed the bus to the Garden because the departure time had changed and he didn’t get the memo. He had to cab over on his own. Team security guru Jerry Hendon waited by the elevators for Afflalo to appear. When he did, he told him solemnly, “Coach said he doesn’t want you to come in. He said to just go back to the hotel.”

Afflalo looked totally deflated. He asked, “Really, coach Saunders said that?”

“Yup,’ Jerry said, pulling him back toward the elevator. “He said just go on back.”

A few seconds passed before Jerry finally cracked up, letting Afflalo know it was all a joke.

It was quite funny, especially considering Afflalo is the last person you’d expect to get in trouble for missing a bus. He’s typically the first one in the arena on game days and is one of the team’s hardest workers.

On trades and rookies

Published by Matt Watson on February 18, 2008 in Shameless Plugging. 31 Comments

I’ve been busy with HOOPSWORLD lately — I have a Central Division trade deadline analysis up, as well as a progress report on Arron Afflalo and Rodney Stuckey:

Billups has noticed Stuckey’s improvement, as well. “I think the game is slowing down for him,” said Billups last week. “He is able to see different things that are happening before they actually happen. That is the intuition that point guards really need to have and he is able to start seeing that.”

Nothing breeds intuition like familiarity, which Stuckey says he now has with the entire second unit. “I know when I’m on the break and I got Amir and Max running with me, I know not to throw the ball down to their ankles because they can’t catch it there. So I just throw the ball up to the rim,” said Stuckey. “And with Afflalo, when he’s running the break, give him the ball on the wings so he can hit some open shots. I’m pretty comfortable with these guys already; it’s just all about getting more playing time with each other and getting more comfortable.”

Detroit’s Rookie Backcourt Makes Progress [HOOPSWORLD]
Deadline Analysis: Central Division HOOPSWORLD

Afflalo gets passed over

Published by Matt Watson on January 31, 2008 in Around the Internets. 4 Comments

Arron Afflalo did not get invited to the Rookie/Sophomore Challenge. He was a bit of a long shot anyway (and is less of a snub than Al Thornton or Joakim Noah), but I agree with PistonsNation that he should have been considered ahead of Mike Conley:

Mike Conley is a fine young player, but he’s only been in 19 total games because of injury. Arron might only be averaging 3.4 ppg but he’s playing behind Chauncey and Rip. He’s played 42 of the Pistons 45 total games this year. Cracking the line up on this team isn’t all that easy either. Just ask Darko, Amir Johnson, and Jason Maxiell before this year.

Yes, Conley has better stats, but rookies on bad teams always have better stats than rookies on good teams. The fact that Afflalo has been able to force himself into the rotation and push veterans like Lindsey Hunter and Flip Murray to the inactive list really says something, even if he’s still the fifth option when he’s on the floor.

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