Next Season's Roster After The Summer of Lebron

Arenas is all about numbers. He's not a competitor, not interested in winning and massively overpaid to boot.

Adding Arenas makes us an 8-10th seed as a best case scenario. Great.

I agree with a great number of points about Stuckey too.

His field goal shooting is the same as it was when he was a rookie, about 40%. As a rookie he shot half of shots at the rim, while now he only shoots about 1/3 of shots at the rim, so broadening his area of shooting while maintaining his Field Goal Percentage is evidence of improvement, or at least making an effort to improve.

The message I would impart on Stuckey if I were in Saunders, Curry, or Kuester's shoes would be to not shoot. He didn't need a coach to help him pick which player to throw his shoulder into, he needs a coach to say "don't do that, get the ball to someone else."

His Usage numbers are indefensibly high. He is behind only Rose among point guards in the percentage of posessions that end in either a FG, FT, or TO. He is 19th in the league overall in this category, Hamilton is 10th in the league. This means Hamilton dominates the ball more than Stuckey, however he shoots a better percentage (Gordon and CV have high numbers here too, perhaps this is explains some ball movement problems). The person who's responsibility it is to make plays for his teammates Stuckey, so it is understandable that he catches a lot of the blame.

The future of course is what this is all about, I think the idea that we are resigned to a future of Rodney Stuckey helming the point position for the next 50 years is why people are so set on trashing him. We could always trade him, even if we do sign him, or he could just sit the bench.

In the mean time he is serving his role as a point guard well enough that I think we can focus on other things, like upgrading the roster at various other positions. Stuckey's play so far could make him a valuable trade piece this february, and who knows what we might get in return. It will also be very hard to get a team to let go of a point guard that is better than him. He is also doing very well given we got him at 15 and some players taken higher than that in the draft don't ever do anything. coughrodneywhitecough.

IMO, it's unfair to fully judge Stuckey until he gets to play on a cohesive team whose players knows their roles and who stay healthy. Right now we've got a team with no low post threat of any note, and with Gordon, Rip, Tay, Daye, and Tay and Bynum and JJ and Summers and Stuckey himself as candidates in any particular game to be the primary scorers. It's almost impossible for a team to be a well-oiled machine that a PG can even run when his team hasn't begun to sort out any consistent pecking order for who the offense is designed for.

That dynamic is only going to get worse with the addition of our 2010 #1 pick, and any rotation FA's we pick up.

The problem is that hardly anyone has any patience to see this one through. Stuckey is going to be running the team next season (most likely) and even then, very little of a coherent pecking order will be established. It might be two years or three years down the line before that is complete. During that transition period, I don't know how well Stuckey will have a legimate opportunity to prove his worth. If he doesn't take this team by the balls and be the leader, this could remain a big mess, and many of our player assets might unecessarily fall by the wayside.

And again, that dynamic might get even worse with the addition of our 2011 #1 pick.

What a mess.

On this point, I will give him a break. We had most of our weapons out this year (Rip, Tay, Ben, and CV). Stuck was our best option one on five.

Not the same as the Darko argument. Darko was a number 2 pick playing for an excellent team with arguably the best coach in the league. Stuckey (and no, I don't think he is a superstar) is playing on a team that has no cohesiveness and very little talent. Playing on a great team can make average players excellent. Playing alongside superstars can make average players seem excellent. Playing on a team with average talent, injuries, rookie coaches, and no cohesion can make average talent seem lousy. I think that is where Rodney is at. He's an average talent. Not great, but not bad either. He looks like garbage on this garbage team.

I'm really trying to stay out of this argument because folks have heard enough of my crap on this point, but, this argument is driving me bananas!!! Playing on a bad, injury ridden, lottery team should have translated into great stats for this kid. Young players, in this league, who have legit talent-but play on bad teams, put up huge numbers, because they're playing for their next contract and who can blame them. Steph Curry played on the absolute most dyfunctional team in the league this year, and was darn near ROY, Stuckey came in 6th again!

2 seasons ago Stuckey was the starting PG on a team that was 1 year removed from winning 59 games and playing in the conference finals.

Yes, but those players that are playing on bad teams tend to have "control" over their respective teams. This is a bad team, but a team with veterans that are championship holdovers. How many of those guys that are putting up great numbers on bad teams are in THAT situation...?

No one in their right mind thinks that this is "Stuckey's team". This is Hamilton and Prince's team because they are the veterans that have won... even though that isn't how it should be. Stuckey is too passive and clearly takes a backseat to both when they are in the games.

People like to pretend that Stuckey "chucked" all of last year, but he really didn't. He took a lot of shots early in the year when our main guys went down. Once we fielded a healthy team, Stuckey often became the third or 4th option on the floor. He actually deferred to a fault IMO.

two dinosauruses from the past - rip and tay run the show in pistons, and people here blame stuckey for it.

I have nothing, absolutely nothing against of those two but their time here is over.

Rip and Tay were out for a big part of the season.

Stuckey was also putting up about 20 points per game in their absence.

I'm not going to sit here and argue that he was great, but he did put up his best scoring numbers when those two weren't on the floor. It's simple... he had a lot more control when those two weren't playing. When they were, he took a backseat.

And those are the facts.

Not the mental attitude I want from a PG or even a modified tweener that starts. A PG takes a back seat to no-one and you screw around with his oversight (if he has some) and those of attitude get fewer touches and find themselves outside the flow. A PG like the Celtics Robinson would chew some hearts out.

Understand this...Stuckey can score, but he can't lead.

in short - I have YET to see plays designated for CV, BG and RS - it was comical to observe how BG tries to run through the screens a la rip.

plays for rip and tay try to use their strenghts and hinder their weaknesses, "plays" for beforementioned trio are mostly individual efforts and therefore "plays" not plays for them.

and with rip and tay stuckey is forced to play slow paced game, very slow - definitely offers no advantages for him and BG and probably to CV.

that's why I'm saying that rip-tay has no place in pistons anymore.

from rookie coach perspective it is undersandable - rip and tay play package is proven and trustworthy - use it as much as you can.

on the other hand - coach Q still is learning what he can or cant get from certain trio.

99 out of 100 times when the Pistons gave an outlet pass to Stuckey he would turn and walk the ball upcourt. Blaming Rip and Tay for this leaves out the fact that Stuckey tires more quickly than any of the other rotational players.

Nate Robinson? Nate is even less of a point guard than Stuckey.

Perhaps you meant Rondo (and I'd definitely agree on Rondo). He wasn't leading the Celtics during their championship season of 2008, but he is now and they are just two wins away from another title.

I totally agree with this post.

This team demanded/required that Stuckey play quite a few different roles at different points of the season. I thought he was really good.

That all said, no question he needs to improve in quite a few areas. But I see no reason that he won't.

Hornets May Make Collison Available




Jun 12, 2010 9:48 AM EST
The Hornets are back in luxury tax territory heading into the 2010-11 season and Marc Stein of ESPN.com writes that they will likely be active on the trade market.
Rival teams will try to convince New Orleans to trade Chris Paul, but it's much more likely that they'll part with promising backup point guard Darren Collison.
Stein writes that the Hornets will likely ask any team interested in Collison to also take one of their cap-clogging contracts -- Emeka Okafor, James Posey or Peja Stojakovic.



Read more: RealGM: Basketball Wiretap Archives: Hornets May Make Collison Available

Here we have one legit trade scenario for pistons and hornets.
We can get okafor very bad contract and collison and give Prince,maxiel and bynum(sign and trade ?). May be necessary one aditional player form new orleans but i will like this trade.
I will keep our 7 seven pick,we get bad contract giving T Prince.
I think is one trade logical for both teams.
We get bad player in okaffor(points/rebounds vs salary) but collison is complementary with Rodney,we only need part ways with hamilton.