I just want to point out 2 trends:

1) We are the 3rd oldest team in the NBA with an average age of 28.3
We are probably going to resign CBill. Lindsay is coming back for another season. We'll still have Dyess. Sheed isn't gonna be traded. Are we soon going to be the oldest team? When is the breaking point?

2) We are 1 of 6 teams in the NBA to only have one international player. The others are Boston, Minnesota, New Orleans, Philly, and Washington. With the exception of Wash and us, these teams are either not very good or have fallen from grace.

The contenders have loaded up with foreigners... or those teams that loaded up with foreigners are now contenders-
San Antonio- 6
Toronto- 6
Phoenix- 6
Dallas- 5
Chicago- 5
Utah- 4

If you rank teams by # of foreign players, there seems to be a high correlation with their place in the standings. Is this a coincidence? Also, the West has 47 and the East has 36.

Here are all of the teams with 2 or less foreigners:
Sac, Por, LAC, Ind, Cha, Atl, Wash, Phi, Nok, Min, Det. Maybe we should sign up Ming Ming just to get out of this grouping.

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You can never have perfect introspection: because if you could, then you could determine what you were going to do ten seconds from now, and then do something else.

The foreign bit I think is a little misleading, but as for age it is definetily a problem. I always call the Pistons bench the AARP of NBA big men. Vets are good and all, but it has become something of a joke how we automatically assume experience outweighs youth and athletiscm.

I heard something interesting on a Pistons telecast last week.

It was understood that Lindsey's new deal included an option to move to the front office when it was done, but George Blaha said that the option to move into the front office was for next season.

I assume that LH would be given a reasonable wage to move up front in return for a retirement buyout.

So it's not a lock that he will be back.

Interesting indeed... if we can pull his salary off the books next year... I thought he would go the route of player/coach to get his feet wet... maybe he's in training to replace Hammond who is always sought after.

Not foreign enough?... I dunno man... The Heat did alright last year... and we did pretty good the previous two years without much foreign impact in the playoffs.

I'm just sort of wondering why the West has all of the good foreign players:

Duncan, Nash, Ginobili, Bell, Parker, Nene, Yao Ming, Diaw, Kirilenko, Gasol, Okur, Magloire, Mutumbo, etc.

Who does the East have?
Nocioni, Bogut, Deng, Dalembert, Krstic, Turkoglu

It's out of whack I tell ya.

If you took all those foreign players out of the West, they would not be the dominant conference.

What about Darko, who's so much more advanced than All-Star Howard?

If you took the better U.S. players out of the West, the same would apply.

As for age, we'll see how much better the Pistons are next year when Amir Johnson takes DD's place off the bench. The Pistons lack athleticism at the 1, 3, and 5 just in the starting lineup, and some nights at the 4, but that's not necessarily something an injection of youth would fix.

I was trying to leave him out of this so that everyone could think clearly.

Of course the West would stink if you took out all of the American players. They would only be left with 3.1 players per team.

I'm just pointing out that they have the monopoly on foreign all-stars by a wide margin. Why the imbalance?

Maybe foreign players aren't better, but are cheaper at the same skill level. Maybe it is a good way to save money, so that you have more to use on American free agents.

I don't know if the Pistons have overreacted now that they feel like made a mistake drafting an international player. Are we as good good at scouting over there as other teams?

Not only have we not picked up any good international players, but we sent some of our own discovered talent over to Europe- Acker. We are doing it backwards.

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You can never have perfect introspection: because if you could, then you could determine what you were going to do ten seconds from now, and then do something else.

It's a good discussion Tayshawn... it could go in several different directions...
Another branch would be the value of drafting Foreign players...
We've seen the effects of a very green Serb having to deal with language and system diffences... but a more seasoned player like Nocioni blended right in... the message should be clear... keep the unexperienced Euros (just a term for foreign) where they are until they have been a major player on their team on a high level league.

The clear advantage is to stash them overseas until you have the salary and roster flexibility.... they can get further cultural training in the D-League if needed (hopefully our own team) where they are not immediately banished at the end of the bench with little ability to communicate.

If someone felt inclined they could research success % of Euros drafted vs high schoolers & college players... that would be interesting if we could agree on what constitutes success.

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Big or Bust

Let's keep the "fulcrom points" out of this discussion too.

Do you remember every post? Amazing.