could we please stop winning

I wonder how this conversation would go on the planet Dagobah............

I still smile at the Avatar...featuring the tank, JD, and Tay......

Where's Darth Tater...............

.....aaand let's look it from lockerroom perspective : it becomes for coaches IMPOSSIBLE to expect respect and leadership expectation from players, by coaching players for losing.

Also. players do not give rat's ass about "GMing" draft, picks and salary cap stuff. As they say "it is not my job to worry about"

You didn't need to stick up for Ralphi...he was doing fine. I think you were posting as administrator in this case.

Whoa, the discussion went in a whole other direction while I wasn't looking. As for tanking, I don't think there's any need for it as the team, despite their recent streaks still lack the talent to consistently compete with the better teams in the league, and it's not really healthy for a player's psyche. They're not as bad as they appeared to be at the start of the season, but they're not ready for a playoff push yet either. We talk about GM and BK going forward, and they're some of the most competitive players I've seen in Pistons uniforms in a while. Remember when Chauncey was still around and they were good, but came with the proverbial off and on switch? I don't think you'll find "switches" anywhere near Greg, JJ or Brandon. And them winning or losing is out of our control anyway; the players and coaches will always try to win. No one wants the dubious distinction of being the worst team in the league.

Do the Pistons have enough young talent to form the basis of a future elite team. To me, that is the question.

This team will win within two years. Monroe (and hopefully Knight and JJ) need time. Are the Pistons going to join the long line of teams who get to .500 and then fall back, again to .500 and fall back? That is the pits in the NBA and such a situation should be avoided if possible.

I have been happy watching games for the first time since 2008 because finally, there is a future. There is a future because the Pistons have a real piece in Monroe. He is, in reality, their top three pick. The Pistons were lucky to get him at the 7th pick and luck is as important as anything. It was lucky rather than smart but luck will due.

The structure of the draft is such that the franchise players are gone in the top three or top five. This has become more obvious now that high school players are out of the mix. Teams are tanking. They do not tank on purpose. They tank by withholding players--letting them stay on an injured list longer. They tank by not going out and trying to win games. It is not blatent.

The Pistons were not tanking earlier. They were plum bad. The team has gotten better (good thing but not so good right now). Winning a few more games here and there is rolling the wrong kind of dice. Dropping from the 4th to the 9th pick could hurt the franchise long term. That is why this is a good thread. There is not much anyone can do except lament. Some of the other teams have players (Lopez (Jersey), Gordon (New Orleans) Bargani (Toronto) that might propel these teams past the Pistons. But the Pistons may be better than these teams without these players.

The winning has been unavoidable for now. What bothers me is that some of the other teams are maybe deeper in young talent because they have had multiple top picks and some of these same teams will again pick before the Pistons it looks like.

How many top five picks have the Pistons had in the last 25 years? Darko was really the Bucks pick as I recall.

There is tanking and then there is tanking. When players go out on the floor, they must give 100% effort and do everything in their power to try to win the game at hand. Tanking can be more of a creative venture, though. Suppose you decide to start giving Vernon Macklin 20 minutes a game. You give the young fella a chance and it gives management a nice look at what they've got. In the end, though, it probably hurts your chances of winning a slight bit.

The Pistons were just as good day one out of the gate. The big difference, now the coach has learned what wins as far as rotations. I believe he learned way too slow, apparently from deeply ingrained stubbornness, but hey, he has learned now. We should see a ton of wins from here out. A couple of teams ahead of us by several games in the playoff hunt lost today. And PS, the coach yet has a lot to learn - this team can be even considerably better than it is today during this 7 of 9 win streak. And you really can't say much bad about 7 of 9.

Detroit News just come out with a story on tanking....further supports the theory that the media reads this forum:

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/...s-should-tank?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Sports

One problem is that if you build too slowly, the Monroes and Knights get out of their rookie contracts and we are forced to pay them market value.

Getting a top 3 pick potentially hurries things up by giving you a lot of talent in one player (as opposed to having to build pretty good players up over a series of drafts).

Bottom line is that it is hard to get to the top. There are 30 other organizations with about 25 competent ones that are doing everything they can to get there themselves. Joe got us there once by making a series of very good moves combined with some really lucky ones.

If you were the house in Vegas and you had to set the over/under for number of years until the next Pistons Championship, what would you set it at?

The average for all teams should be 30 years (some much less and some much more).

The Pistons have a nice franchise history, but there is new ownership now, so that shouldn't play into it. With the new ownership, it is well backed, but there isn't much track record to judge by.

With the GM, I'd say that it shortens the o/u due to Joe's proven success over the last 12 years, adjusting upward for the poor success in the past 4 years.


Ignoring my strong bias as a fan and my wishful thinking, I'd probably have to settle in at 20 years. Whenever it happens, luck will have to play a big role in it- maybe we win the lottery from an unlikely spot, maybe we get another Ben Wallace/ Chauncey Billups through trade or FA (players who bloom late), maybe MackLIN gets unleashed and takes the league by storm, etc.


On the tanking subject- I would love it if we stealth tanked. But if I were running the organization, I wouldn't implement that strategy exactly. What I would do would be to play the crap out of the younger players in order to see what was there and develop them to the fullest extent possible. Macklin would be getting heavy minutes for example and I would have let Prince go in FA.

But, IF you are going to straight out tank as a strategy, the greatest danger is that it gets out or that you develop a reputation of doing it. So, you for sure can't tell the coach to tank b/c that coach is going to reveal it at some future date and will hang it over your head and he will be virtually un-fireable. And along the same logic, you could never tell the players to tank. Even if you did tell the coach or the players, they wouldn't do it, because they all want their stats and their market values to stay high.

The Pistons aren't tanking and won't tank, that is something that I am very sure of. They would have kept Kuester if that was the plan.

I don't think there's a machination on ruminating about tanking. It seems average teams stay average because they can't get superior FAs or picks one through four after which picks 5-60 are average.
I would say until players throw the bball like a baseball at the backboard and not attempt to get the rebound there is no tanking. Just futility.
So let the tanking continue. And top 7 tanking isn't good enough, gotta reach down to get that top 4 pick.
*
And if IRC that avatar with the tank has been here long before tanking was a rumination.
At least I never saw it as such.

Many here are more optimistic than I. After 2008, I saw a 10 year drought before we begin to see a championship contender. Monroe is the real deal. He's a starter on a championship team. Knight may be.....but that's it for now. Stuckey seems to be auditioning to become a solid backup. JJ may develop into one. The rest of our team is really only like bread crumbs in a meat loaf......semi-stable filler to occupy the roster. Certainly a few of these crumbs can be on a championship caliber team, but we have a plethora of these players. I see the need for 2 more quality guys to make a serious playoff run. Add several more non-crumb players to the roster after that, and the championship run is ready.

Young guns now ( that movie!) are obviously enjoying themselves. Why to take away their enthusiasm?

I don't think there is any conspiracy by the organization to tank. As pointed out by other posters, it's hard to imagine a group of professionals not trying to win in a coordinated effort to win a higher draft pick.

I'm one of those guys who is actively rooting for the Pistons to lose games right now.
It's not because I'm cynical, or hate the team, or even that I'm impatient. It's because I fully expect to watch 50 to 60 Pistons games a year, and as a fan, I would rather the organization take it's lumps now, and greatly improve it's chances of picking up quality talent for the future... a future that will be here in 9 months.

Play Macklin, play Daye, play Knight 35+ minutes a game. To me, the opportunity to watch Monroe and Davis together for the next 4 years is much more exciting than beating the past-their-prime Celtics a few times in February.

I agree.....and, yes, when these guys are on the floor, we expect them to give 100% effort in an attempt to win the game. Of course, the coach will do everything in his power to win the game. Players and coaches are never knowingly involved in stealth tanking.

Playing for the future isn't tanking.
Vern needs some experience!

Thank you!

How about when Curry started jacking with the rotation ?