They have the Pistons ranked #24 in the Power Rankings. Worse teams: #25. Toronto #26. Golden State #27. Cleveland #28. Houston #29. Orlando #30. Charlotte NBA Power Rankings: Post-Olympics Edition | Bleacher Report
One thing about being a young team is we should be more injury-free than a lot of teams (knock on wood). If we can stay healthy, then the core guys should develop some good chemistry this season. I see most of the minutes (35+) going to Stuck, Knight, Monroe and Tay (unfortunate). That means it will be the other guys scrapping for minutes. I think Frank will let the players decide who his rotation will be in the first 10-15 games and go from there. ie. you gotta earn your way back in if you don't make the initial rotation (see CV late last season). There will be some injuries of course and I see the main opportunities appearing at SF. Tay and Maggette are both likely to be banged up for multiple games at some point. I'm pretty excited about Krav and Drummond splitting the C minutes evenly. They'll both be in foul trouble one assumes so makes sense for a twin-tower combo. I don't see Middleton making much impact (D-league), but the good thing about English is he won't need many minutes to make a contribution. Same with Singler. Ditto Jerebko. Those guys are pretty much the anti-Max squad. That said, we may see a last hurrah from Max in what is a contract year. At least he will be a rather large roadblock to any CV minutes.
Most of the stats will be driven by playing time. If a guy is 5% more deserving than another, he will get 50% more playing time (as he should). So, it makes it tough to predict when we have a lineup that is so wide open. Maxiell started a bunch of games last year after all. Many here think that he'll get minor minutes this year... and he may. To me, it makes it much more fascinating than when the order was etched in stone already.
You're right. Maxiell is going to start. ...and Maxiell starting contributes absolutely nothing toward the long term goal of getting this young team back to elite status. There should be no short term goals. Frank should have the following marching orders: "Every decision that you make this year should be preceded by the question: 'Does this make us a better team NEXT year?' If the answer isn't a solid 'yes', ...do the opposite."
Toronto - toss-up Golden State - toss-up Cleveland - will be better than the Pistons Houston - will be better than the Pistons Orlando -nope Charlotte - duh
While I don't necessarily agree with the exact placement of each team in these rankings, I don't think that any of the teams ranked higher than the Pistons will be worse than the Pistons. However, it's entirely possible that one or two teams that actually have a better roster could slip below Detroit due to the "no tanking" policy with the Pistons. We'll be picking somwhere between 5 and 10 in the 2013 draft.
I do not agree with that. I think there is something to be gained from watching Max do his Maxey things. His physicality can be quite an example to guys like Monroe, Drummond and the Russian guy.
Add a couple free agents to that piece once Turd, Max, Magette & Rip's contract are off the books. I'm looking forward to seeing how this thing comes together over the next 2 or 3 seasons.
I agree with what you're saying but we could save $5mil off of the cap and achieve the same thing by having those guys watch BoT in practice and instruct them to do the opposite of what he does.
He has been steaming for a while now. I don't want him to get a single minute. If the team sucks on O, so be it. But I want to see serious effort on defense.
It might be a better strategy when he's in the game to just leave him on the offensive end of the court and force the other team to drop a man back to avoid the cherry picking. That's something that Don Nelson might experiment with.
