The race for the most ping pong balls

WE DON'T REBUILD - WE RELOAD restock!

A "Restock" is something you do with canned goods.
We should be rebuilding.........................................

Buggghaaa!

Just had a vision. We finish the year 4th from the bottom, but get lucky and land the #2 pick in the draft.

Too bad you don't get bonus ping pong balls for blowout losses.

It's not a good sign that we basically beat the Heat without Gordon, Prince, Bynum, Villanueva, and Stuckey (in crunch time). We were basically missing all of our marquee free agent signings and still looked good.

To be in 4th place right now and winning 21% of our games (4-15 record) just shows you how competitive the league is this year in the race for ping pong balls. A 21% winning percentage over the last few years would get you:

2011: 2nd
2010: 3rd
2009: 2nd
2008: 2nd
2007: 1st
2006: 1st
2005: 2nd
2004: 1st

We need to play JJ exclusively at PF except when Jmax and Ben Wallace are in the game together.

The L.A. Clippers had picks like that for decades and they STILL sucked.

Pistons value.........according to Forbes.

Nice profit..........

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mli45gmie/17-detroit-pistons/#content?partner=yahoosports

Yea, but they didn't have Joe Dumars making their picks.......wait, never mind.......

Notice in that picture that there are only about 12-15 blurred fans visable in the background. That is unsustainable. Not sure how they did the calculation, but it is suspect. Do they include income from the Palace?

Question- why are we so much worse than we were last year? .211 winning percentage this year vs. .366 last year.

2011: 107.7 offensive rating, 111.7 defensive rating (we got outscored by 4.0 points per 100 possessions)
2012: 97.8 offensive rating, 108.7 defensive rating (we get outscored by 10.9 points per 100 possessions)

Our offense got 9.9 points worse and our defense got 3.0 points better.

So, our offense is the culprit. But how so?

Shooting in 2012: .426 overall, .360 from deep, .775 from the FT line
Shooting in 2011: .460 overall, .376 from deep, .737 from the FT line

A .034 shooting decrease causes 3.4 less shots to be made every 100 shot attempts. So, call it 2.5 less made shots per 100, which would mean that we are losing about 5.0 points per game due to poor shooting (bad aim, tougher shots, getting blocked more, any or all of these). This is only about half of our decrease though. What causes the other 5 lost points?

13 turnovers per game last year. 17 turnovers per game this year. 4 extra possession means 2 extra made shots, which equals about 4 points.

The other lost point is probably a result of several other factors, both positive and negative. Rounding error.

So, in summary, we get less shot attempts, and we shoot worse on those.

Who is to blame?

2011/ 2012 squad- similarities:
Prince/ Prince (We're paying him more now)
Wallace/ Wallace
Stuckey/ Stuckey (We're paying him more now)
Monroe/ Monroe (better than last year)
Bynum/ Bynum
Charlie/ Charlie (he's sitting out and hasn't been able to contribute)
Daye/ Daye (he's been pretty much benched)
Gordon/ Gordon (with Rip gone, things have opened up for Ben)
Maxiell/ Maxiell
Jerebko/ Jerebko (back from injury)

We lost:
Hamilton (leading scorer for pretty much the last decade)
McGrady (mutineer, but productive with PG-like control on the floor)
Wilcox (True big man with limited powers)
Summers (non factor)
Kuester (clueless coach)
White (he was injured anyways, so no loss)

We gained:
Knight (1st round draft pick who starts a fair amount)
Macklin (non factor)
Russell (recent pickup, non factor)
Wilkins (role player with good D)
L. Frank (coaching upgrade)


Theories:
1) Losing Rip Hamilton and McGrady made us worse. Even though we were bored with them, they didn't turn it over a lot and they were good shooters.
2) Incorporating Knight makes us temporarily worse because of his inexperience and mistake prone game. A 1 to 1 a/to ratio stinks.
3) Ben Wallace is one more year past his prime and we have been forced to play a PF at C and a SF at PF. Ben's minutes are at an all time low and his per minute production is too.
4) Kuester was a genius and got no respect.

It seems like we several random guys missing every game with some sort of injury, personal matter, etc. That doesn't help any. Also, if the clueless coach would play Jerebko at small forward instead of power forward, I'm sure we would have 14 to 15 more wins right now.

Good point. Games missed this year seems to be off the charts.

Groin, ankle, DNP-CD, personal matters, sore face from planking, you name it. Stuckey missing games has affected us negatively I'd suggest as well.

A couple of hours of pre-season in combination with a new coach probably a factor too. Defense is easier to teach in a short period of time than offense.

Rip is a better player than Gordon. He's doing great in Chicago. His departure was necessary for this team to go forward though, so I'll take the dip in production.