Pistons Offseason Grades - Did We Get Better?

The Pistons went into the NBA offseason looking to take The Next Step. After a 1st round playoff sweep at the hands of the eventual champs, the Cavs, it became clear that several areas needed to be addressed. Our bench was atrocious, and had been all year. The position most in need of improvement was backup PG. Steve Blake spent most of the year in that role, and he was the 6th worst PG in the league in Value Added. Post defense also needed a boost, presumably at the PF position, and we needed better outside shooting (especially from the bench).

The first domino to fall was the draft. Henry Ellenson was by all accounts a steal with the 18th pick. He drew a lot of comparisons to Kevin Love - tall, white (following the unwritten "must comp a player of the same race" rule), good shooter, good rebounder, terrible defender - and Stan Van Gundy was ecstatic he had slipped. The 2nd round pick, Michael Gbinije, seemed to be a wing/3rd string PG pick that could end up paying off down the road.

Stan then set up free agency by clearing cap space. Jodie Meeks (he of the 63 total appearances in the last 2 seasons) and his $6.5M salary were shipped out to Orlando for a future 2nd round pick. This cleared enough cap space to make a near-max offer to someone, presumably Al Horford. I considered this extremely unlikely, as we were still short of a full max deal (a trade of Aron Baynes was the likely accompanying move), not as near contention as some of his other suitors, and still needed to spend on a backup PG. Stan reportedly met with Horford and was turned down. So their first "big move" was to offer Ish Smith 3 yrs at $6M/yr. He accepted. I was less than thrilled.


First, let me say that I don't think Ish Smith is a terrible player. He should represent an upgrade over what we got from Blake last year. But... where to begin?

1. He's worn 10 different uniforms in only 6 years! There's only one season there where he played for the same team all year. That's more than a little troubling.
2. Look at those 3P%... ugh. .298 for his career, and even his career best last year, .329, is well below league average (usually around .350 or so). The 2P% is pretty low, too.
3. At 6'0", he's on the smaller side. He does ok getting steals, but his overall defense is not good. I wouldn't mind the poor defense if he made up for it on the other end, but the offense just isn't strong enough.
4. His best games were with Philly. He had decent counting numbers - ppg, assists, etc. - but they were largely inefficient and could've been a product of the good-stats/bad-team phenomenon.

You might presume that Smith is good at SOMETHING, and he is. We think. He's got a good assist/tov ratio, is supposed to be decent at setting teammates up, and is reasonably athletic. The fans and players in Philly seemed to like him. And Nerlens Noel once called him "the first true point-guard" he'd ever played with, although given what has lined up at PG for the 76ers the past few years, that's very much like calling Smith the coolest mathlete ever, or the most attractive garden slug. 

Anyway. All that is to say that I don't particularly DISLIKE Ish Smith and I'll be rooting for him to play well & everything, but... the Pistons had an opportunity to massively upgrade an important position and they didn't do it. I think we'll see Ish in Steve Blake's role next year and it'll be obvious Ish is the better player, but he isn't better by a whole lot. The Pistons had the money to go after somebody like Jordan Clarkson (re-signed w/ LAL for $12.5M/yr), Matthew Dellavedova (signed w/ MIL for $9.6M/yr), Deron Williams (re-signed for 1 yr, $10M w/ DAL), or Jeremy Lin (signed w/ NJN for $12M/yr). Even Brandon Jennings ($5M w/ the Knicks), Jerryd Bayless ($9M/yr w/ Philly), and DJ Augustin ($7.3M/yr for ORL) would've been bigger upgrades. I hope Ish out-plays all those guys, but I really wish Stan had done more here.

The next move was to sign PF Jon Leuer to a 4-yr, $10.5M/yr deal. This one I liked a lot better, although it raise a few more questions... which I'll get to in a minute. Leuer is a classic SVG style stretch 4. Career 3P% .375, rebounds well, moves well, defends... ok. Better than Harris, anyway. And that is a fair contract in this market for that skill set. At this point, I figured we were set, but the rumor was that Stan wanted to add one more big. I didn't see much point, since the Pistons already had 3.5 guys who could play C, but SVG went on and signed Boban Marjanovic from Serbia, by way of San Antonio. Boban is a BIG big, at 7'3", 290 lbs. He had good efficiency numbers last year, but he didn't get a lot of burn, and I don't see how he'll get that much more here unless we dump Baynes.

Now we have a glut at PF and C. Drummond is our starting center, no doubt. Boban and Baynes are both backups, but I'm not sure which is the better option. Jon Leuer also does a decent job at the 5 spot. Then you have PF. Tobias Harris, Leuer, and Ellenson should all get the bulk of their minutes at the 4, although Harris may split time between the 4 and the 3. Harris is the most talented player of the 3, but the Pistons might be better off if Leuer starts and Harris plays as a sort of 6th man - coming off the bench but playing more minutes. Ellenson is the odd man out at this point, but if he develops quickly, Stan will need to figure out how to juggle an overloaded frontcourt.

Not to be lost in the hustle is Andre Drummond's new contract - a max deal that averages out to about $25.4M/yr for 5 years, the 5th year being a player option. This locks him up through 2020. I'm not going to argue whether or not Andre is REALLY a max player or just a near-max player (he's a max player, that's all there is to it), we needed to lock him up. Players of that caliber don't fall into our lap very often. So good move. There's speculation as to whether or not KCP will get his extension before the October deadline. He's not a $20M player to me yet, so I have no problem in letting KCP hang out and try to earn that paycheck. A $20M deal might put us over the luxury tax too, so a better option could be to let him slide

and sign somebody who can actually shoot for a lot cheaper.

Grades
I give the draft an A. Ellenson was a steal, Gbinije was a solid pick as well.
Free Agency gets a C+. We addressed most of our problem areas, acquired mostly good players, and we didn't grossly overpay anybody. But we did the worst job addressing our biggest need, and the Boban signing was unnecessary. I'd have rather that money gone towards a better backup PG. Plus, we now have a glut at the 4 & 5 positions. The Leuer signing was good, but it made less sense after the draft.
Re-signing Drummond gets an A. It needed to happen, and it seemed to happen rather seamlessly. No feathers ruffled, Drummond seems down to business... If you can re-sign your star for what he's worth without pissing him off, that's worth an A to me.

Overall grade: B+. I didn't like the Ish Smith signing or the overall strategy Stan seemed to employ, but I think that despite that, he managed to improve the team without upsetting anything. There's always a danger of doing too much, and the Pistons are a team whose best chance of improvement is through internal development. Messing with that would be bad. Now, they still have KCP's contract situation up in the air, and I think they may trade Baynes away for something at some point between now and the deadline in February, but Stan definitely managed to improve the team.

***

I had high hopes this offseason that the NBA would pass some rule changes that would curtail the Hack-A strategy. They KIND of did. Some of the more ridiculous fouls we saw last year will now be called flagrant, and Drummond is now protected for 8 minutes a game instead of 4. Great.

If they had expanded protection from the Hack-A strategy to cover the entire 48+ minutes in a game, Drummond would still have to work on his FTs because there is no protection if he's involved in the play. But it would have significantly altered the Hack-A strategy, to the benefit of the NBA. The rule changes they passed represent the bare minimum improvement imaginable, and they still do nothing to prevent this: