Yeah, it's a little early to be talking about next season, still believe we will do to Miami what we did to Orlando a few years back. However, this quote from a New York paper (why the Detroit Hacks keep getting scooped by NY papers I'll never know) intrigued me.

From NYDaily News (quoting anonymous Piston's exec):
"They're angry about the way it's ending because they never expected this," the source said before Game5. "But Flip's not getting fired. They know they've got to address some serious roster problems."

Serious roster problems? Are they talking about the bench? The frontcourt? Is Joe getting sick of Ben dissing the coaches? Of all the problems I saw in the playoffs, the roster was the least of them? I'm guessing a total front court overall, and an entirely new bench. Question is how much trade value do Sheed, Delfino, Dice, and Ben have, and who's available in the FA market?

Not to add fuel to the fire. After dumping almost 10 mil in salary after the Orlando trade and minus Bens salary we will be sitting around 39 mil in cap space. Not sure what the cap is but it take it for what it is.

Don't give up on Ben just yet. We still are not sure what he will be asking for and perhaps 5 years or loyal service will outway a few slips of the toungue.

I dont know how much they would be asking for, but two FA kind of stood out to me. You guys and gals tell me if you think they have Piston DNA.

Al Harrington and Speedy Claxton????????

Absolutely not. He's a lazy player, makes no effort on defense, and is a turnover machine. Sure. But I think he's out of the Pistons' price range, especially since they got rid of Arroyo for essentially that reason.

Well folks, we know Delfino is gone. We know Cato is gone. We know Lindsey may retire. If we when the title, Dale Davis will retire.

Our only roster problems are lack of a legitimate post up threat and a pure scorer off the bench. I don't think its likely Dumars trades any of the starting 6. However, they will listen to trade offers for Ben and if they get one too good to pass up, my prediction is both Wallaces will be gone.

Ben and Rasheed are like Ying and Yang. They compliment each other very well. If one has a weakness in his game, the other makes up for it. Ben has no offensive skills... Sheed does. Sheed rarely plays hard...Ben always does. Ben isn't very vocal...Sheed talks too much. etc you get the point. If you take one of those guys away you are practically left with half a player.

If we traded Ben, we would essentially become the old Portland Trailblazer team and end up blowing up from the inside out- we have seen early stages of that already.

I will post a new thread discussing trade possibilities.

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I have nothing to say.

I believe the cap is $49.5 million.

Next year's cap will be around or just over $51 million.

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Nov 13 LW Milan Lucic had an active night. He scored his first goal in eight games since his Oct. 25 hat trick and also pounded Michael Komisarek in a third-period fight. Lucic cut his hand in a fight with Michael Komisarek. "I'll be fine," he said. "(X-rays are) negative, but there's so many broken bones in there from before you can't really tell."

We don't "know" any of that. We can only assume that Cato is gone because we have absolutely no need for him. For the rest of those guys, they really have no value around the league (being on our bench tends to kill your trade value), so I don't see the value in trading them. And Lindsey may or may not retire, but he hasn't made it clear just yet.

GuaranSheed gone: Cato and either Delfino or Mo (my guess is Mo)
Probably: Hunter (retired) and Delk (resigning elsewhere)
Questions: Ben (does he resign), Sheed and Dice (trade bait?)