This is a completely different team with Jose Calderon!

I agree. One more good draft pick and a couple of free agents this summer and we are back in the playoff picture come next spring.

The draft is a LOTTERY.
For the most part, the Pistons have picked where they were expected to over the last few years.
THIS is the year that the magic ping pong ball bounces our way and we end up with a top-3 pick.

Somebody is going to be sorry for passing on Victor, I pray that we are not that somebody. That kid is Ben Wallace at the guard position, he has PLAYED his way into the lottery. If we had a 20ppg PG and 20ppg SF he'd be perfect at the SG slot. OKC would be the most ideal place for him to play and they have that Toronto (lottery) pick........stay tuned.

OKC has a lotto pick ? How'd they get that ? I bet they play him game one.
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All we've needed is a coach and a PG the last 4 years.

They got Kevin Martin, Lamb and Torontos lotter pick (top3 protected IIRC) in the James Harden trade.

And Houston was in possession of Toronto's pick as a result of the deal that sent Kyle Lowry from Houston to Toronto.

Why trade a guy for a first round pick when they could have just re-signed him for 5 years and 45 million?

The Rockets look to be setting up nicely to have the best record of all the lottery teams again.

I like the fact that he plays his best games against the best teams. I've only watched him 3-4 times, so I don't really have a handle on his game. I can tell you that he's a fantastic athlete, and that he looks like he has a SF's game in a SG's body. It will be interesting to see how he measures up at the combine. If he can hit that 6'6 number, in shoes, then he'll probably go in the top half of the lottery. With a big tourney, he could go #1.

He's 6'3" at best. If he was a legit six-four/six-five.......top 5 pick easily, he's a much-much better version of MKG.

Wikipedia says he's 6'5". I get all my info from there. It's always right. He looks tall here:

Forbes says he's 6' 2 and one-half inches.

This lame duck team is NOT winning ten games. This, as in what we saw the last few nights, is the sorriest collection of talent I have ever seen on the Pistons. Injuries are bad luck, but I guess Drummond's injury was a complete inevitability given the spike in minutes he's gotten just two years fresh out of HS. He'll be fine. Knight will be fine too. But right now we are terrible, and there is no urgency from the Corch to even play the best players we have on the team.

Oladipo is EXACTLY what two teams need. One is the Bulls with Derrick Rose, and the other is the Pistons. This guy is a freaking pro.

Ahhh no. 25 minutes of playing isn't going to cause a stress fracture in the lower back. Powerlifting will. Which is exactly what Dre would be doing to be able to bang with NBA players without getting really hurt. I'd guess he would be lifting 3+ times a week as well as everything else.

But it will help in the long run

Me and KGREG don't agree on too many things, but I do agree with him on this - we need scoring threats. Oladipo looks to me like a good defender (awesome) and a slasher. Because his jumper isn't great. We don't need another Stuckey mold player. We need a Kyle Korver. If he falls to 9th, I reckon that we trade him for a scoring threat.

With Porter, Muhammed and McClemore off the board it would be EXTREMELY difficult to pass on Oladipo, I think CJ McCollum may this years Damian Lilliard.

Porter and Muhammed may be on the board when the Pistons draft. The Pistons have the potential for a top 4 or 5 pick the way they are playing.

FINALLY! A good old fashioned TANK!

McCollum could be this year's Lillard... or this year's Stuckey. All three are high scoring combo guards from small schools. I really wish that I could see some of McCollum's games. The word is that McCollum is not much of an athlete. It will be interesting to see how he does in workouts against top talent.

Unathletic comboguard? Sounds just like a Piston pick.

This is why the test drive is important. Before we commit to him, we get to see how he plays with various combinations of players. If we don't like what we see, then he's just an expiring contract.

There are certain parts of Knight's game as a PG that I like better (when he's having one of his good games). But the problem is that those seem to occur randomly. I can't prove it, but I have the feeling that when Calderon gets 10 assists, it is because he passed the ball 50 times whereas when Knight gets 10 assists, it is because he passed it 25 times. Calderon is a much better passer of course and has a much better handle, but he doesn't seem to penetrate very much and doesn't dish out that many pure bunnies. He gets a lot of assists the way that Billups used to- safe passes to open guys who shoot the ball when they catch it.

I guess what I'm thinking of are a few potential stats that would be interesting to see if they were tracked:
- percentage of time that a pass from the PG results in a shot attempt.
- eFG of the shot attempts after a pass from the PG. This one would let us know how effective the feeds are. i.e. are they passing to Maxiell 15' out, or alley ooping to Drum, or dumping the ball out to Stuckey at the 3-point line with 1 second left on the shot clock?
- assist attempt to pass ratio (this differentiates between feeds and passes/ moving the ball).

I also liked Calderon better when he was shooting 70% from 3-point land! I'm really looking forward to seeing our potential future starting lineup play together though: Calderon/ Knight/ (Singler)/ Monroe/ Drummond