This is what happens when I have some time on my hands, I grade our Pistons.
Rip Hamilton
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His didn’t get consistent playing time because of injury, but Rip still has game left in him. He’s a shooter that sometimes has very bad judgment when it comes to shot selection. I blame some of that on the fact that he doesn’t have a “Billups like” point guard looking for him as he’s coming off screens. He can put up 35 on any given night, but he can also go 2-for-17 another night. He can’t create his own shot and I wish he would stop trying.
I have to give him credit for getting his teammates involved lately, but that’s not enough to give him a passing grade just yet this season.
Tayshaun Prince
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As much as Pistons fans love Tayshaun Prince, he’s been fading for the past couple of seasons. You can’t help but blame this seasons shortcomings on injury, and you can’t blame his past seasons on anything but inconsistency. Rookie or not, Jonas Jerbko is outplaying and out hustling Tayshaun Prince this season and looking at what he’s done for Detroit this year, J.J. even outshines what Tay did all of last season for the Detroit. And yes, the Pistons are 1-10 when Tayshaun has played this year.
Rodney Stuckey
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Stuckey is making strides, big ones, but is he the guy to build a team around? The jury is out on that one, but as this point the Pistons don’t have much choice in the matter, he’s their guy. He has those shining moments that make you take notice. He can take over a game and put his team in the position to win.
He needs to work on getting his teammates more involved at times, but he seems to be working on that. His jumpshot has improved and he’s getting more calls. Like it or not, he turns the ball over….a lot.
He’s improved each season but, not as fast as Pistons fans would like. Mark my words, he’ll be an All Star soon, but how soon is good enough?
Grade – Potential to be a solid Stucktacular.
Charlie Villanueva
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Oh Charlie, I had such high hopes for you. It’s either a huge game or a huge flop, nothing in between. And the similarities between Charlie V. and Sheed are too close for comfort. He’s one of the Pistons only scoring big men, we don’t need him to stand around the perimeter and jack up threes. He hasn’t impressed me at all on court yet.
We were told he was soft and allergic to defense and grabbing boards, and I think he’s really trying to do better in that department, but he’s not solid yet.
Great guy off court, but until I see more consistency I have to be honest.
Grade – No post playing Un-Sheedtastic
Ben Wallace
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When Dumars signed Ben Wallace I didn’t think he had anything at all left in his tank. I mean did you see him play in Chicago and Cleveland? It was quite sad. However I was fine with the signing, who can you really get for the price of an extra value meal now days anyway?
Ben has been reborn. As soon as he tiptoed back to the Palace, he turned into the 2003-05 Ben Wallace that we all remember. He’s leading the team on court and showing the only presence on the defensive end that Detroit has to offer. The flow of the games usually depends on Ben’s game. If Ben is on, so are the Pistons.
Of course he still has a miserable foul shot, but who cares. The no fro’ed Wallace is the only consistent part of the team all season. He’s above and beyond what anyone could have ever dreamed.
Grade – A Benified Sheedtastic
Ben Gordon
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If Gordon didn’t get injured I’m almost positive this grade would go different. Ben was tearing it up in the beginning of the season. His best games came when Rip was out and he was inserted in the starting lineup. Pistons fans saw the Gordon that Joe Dumars and the rest of the league loved, but once he turned his ankle things just haven’t been the same.
He may have come back a bit too early and re injured himself, but his shot has been nothing but streaky when he’s been out there.
Jason Maxiell
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I went from being a huge Maxiell fan to constantly doubting myself wannabe Maxiell fan. So what happened to the man I once called the Putback King? Didn’t he have some spectacular blocks that gave us so much hope?
Maxiell went from being a zero to a hero then right back to a zero again. He shows flashes of the player we thought he would be….but they have never amounted into anything other than a flash here or there.
If he doesn’t come through soon, I’m going to have to give up on Maxiell and his horrible contract. Sorry Maxi, please prove me wrong.
Grade – A non Baby Eating Un-Sheedtastic
Will Bynum
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Bynumite is not his name, it an adjective used when he’s well….Bynumite. He’s surprised a lot of people this season and last, but we haven’t had enough of his this season for his game to be useful to the team. He’s a spark plug when he’s on court, he gets the ball where it needs to be, and yes he sometimes is guilty of trying to do things himself, but do you blame him when he’s got the explosiveness to fly by just about anyone facing him and then dunk on a 7 footer?
The Pistons need Bynum healthy.
Jonas Jerebko
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Who would of thought that this Jonas brother like Jonas would do more than have the young ladies swooning. I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only on who said….Dumars just drafted a Swedish guy nobody heard of.
Boy what a pleasant surprise.
The injuries opened the door for Jerebko and he made sure it’s not going to close any time soon. He’ll hustle, scrap, scrape, steal, rebound, tip and dunk his way up and down the court every minute he’s standing on it. He’s been asked to guard the leagues best and he’s been up to the challenge.
Does he make rookie mistakes? Sometimes, but his heart and hustle make up for them.
Throw in his very gelled, never a hair out of place look and he makes the grade.
Austin Daye
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The very tall, very thin, very Tayshaun like Austin Day hasn’t had a ton of time on court this season, but he done well when he’s called upon. He’s not afraid to take the big shot, and he’s been known to make a three here and there. He can play 4 positions on the floor and at 6’11 is the second tallest player on the team, tallest if you don’t count Kwame.
He’s had his moments, and in fact I would like to see more of him.
Chris Wilcox
I was hoping this Chris Wilcox would be the Chris Wilcox that used to wear yellow and green for Seattle. Remember that guy, he used to be a Piston killer. Instead we got the Chris that mainly rides the pine and has a killer quarter or two when he finally gets on court.
Chucky Atkins
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A little more PG Chucky and a little less taking shot Chucky. Yes he’s made a few big shots this season, and he did come up huge when the Pistons were on that winning streak early in the season, but I would rather he him deferring to the guys on court that don’t need Just for Men.
Kwame Brown
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Bless his heart he tries, but the hands will never catch up to the pass. Great guy, but he’ll never be more than what he is.
DaJuan Summers
What happened to the rookie that was touted as the one that was truly NBA ready? DaJuan can’t get playing time and when he does, he’s unable to keep it. I see potential, but I’m not willing to watch him play through his mistakes right now. Have we not suffered enough this season?
John Kuester
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The only coach that would have us, has done a admirable job. Yes we went through a miserable 13 game losing streak, but I don’t blame that purely him. Heck, he had this team winning with Chucky Atkins at starting point guard and three all stars sitting with injuries.
When he can get this bunch to play a full 48, he’ll be a winner in my book.
Grade – Record Don’t Lie Un-Sheedtastic
Special recognition goes to Mike Abdenaur and Arnie Kandor, who have to be as overworked as ever infusing the fountain of youth serum to Ben Wallace while trying to heal ankles with voodoo.
this season has been very unsheedtastic so far but if the team can pull it together they still have a chance to get in the playoffs at the 7 or 8 spot. so lets not give up on them yet and hope for the best from this point on
Brilliant work…
Natalie you have the pulse of pistons nation, or at least mine, I pretty much agree with ever grade, although Chucky I think deserves a sheedtastic, and ben gordon should be a ship him out of town un-sheedtastic
And the frowny face sheed is the best thing ever lol
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Maxzilla the putback king is dang LOL))) what a pic)))
I agree that Chucky deserves a 1/2 sheedtastic, cuz I thought he won’t be on the court or he will play in garbage time only. But he played some nice games for us, he even was a starter and Pistons are moving the ball with him on the court.
Ben Gordon really deserves a ship-him-outta-town-unsheedtastic because he is so so so inconsistent! They are both with CV.
And when Maxiell misses all night or Chucky – I’m ok with that. Because he takes 6-8 shots max. And BG or CV can take 8-10 shots from 3pt line, 8-10 two point shots, make 3or4 of all of them and be ok with that, then they finish the next game with the same result! And it goes on all season long! Yes, they both had 25-30pts games, but still they both struggle offensively and this is supposed to be their strenght, because of their zero D.
trade for amare.
pg-stuck/bynum/chucky
sg-rip/bg
sf-jj/daye
pf-amare/cv31/jmax
c-big ben/wilcox
that means we give up tay,summers, (possibly kwame if anyone will take him) and a 1st round pick great frontcourt then jj, amare, and ben we have o d and hustlethen u bring in backups and we have a long, running team with bynum bg daye cv31 and wilcox. i like this trade alot what you guys think? GO PISTONS
Naw, I think we’d have to give up Stuckey and others for Amare. Suns would probably want a point guard-ish player for their future after Nash retires. Idk, maybe they would want Will Bynum and some of our other higher caliber players instead of my first scenario.
GO JOE D
I agree with you on most of your comments Nat, I’ll just leave a couple of comments on each player:
Rip-Still is a brilliant scorer, but his turnover troubles recently have taken away a bit of his shine.
Tay-No one has seen enough of him to give him any proper grade. I still think Tay has a few good years left, but with 3 rookies who play his position, I can’t see the logic in having him stay around too much longer.
Stuckey-Ok, he’s not a pure point guard, but along with Big Ben, Stuck is the MVP so far this season. He keeps learning and will definitely be an all-star eventually.
CV31-Arguably the most frustrating player this year. He has those games where he catches fire from downtown and plays solid D, but then the very next game he’ll be in foul trouble or 0-10 shooting. Get some consistency Chuck.
Big Ben-Enough said. He is BIG Ben.
BG7- Before the injuries, he was playing great. After the injuries and in the sporadic games he has played, people say move him?! Get healthy, and play like you were at the beginning. We need his three point shooting.
J-Max-I won’t cry if he is as spare parts in a trade.
Bynumite- GET HEALTHY! He keeps the scoring ticking over while giving the starters a break.
JJ- Hustle, heart, defence. Great draft pick, Joe D.
Daye-SO MUCH POTENTIAL! He could be making a serious push for more PT next season.
Wilcox-Disappointment.
Atkins-Stop shooting so much. Has played really well when we need him.
Kwame-Once a Kwame always a Kwame. His problems that have always haunted him still haunt him. Wouldn’t mind seeing some more PT though.
Summers-I’m with you, Nat, thought I would see so much more of him. Good prospect, but don’t know if we can justify so many perimeter players with obvious deficiencies in the post.
Q- Has done a great job as a rookie coach amongst so much adversity.
Final word-Get healthy and get consistent.
I agree with all of your grades except on Chucky – I think he gets a B – not sure how that tranlates to a Sheed grade. Otherwise right on! Oh yea – teams for sale generally reduce payroll so get ready for a new level of sucktatude.
You know you guys are right, I really wanted to grade Chucky differently, but I was looking at the full season. If you put together those five games that he led us to victory in early December he’d get a Retro Old School – Sheedtastic. I upgraded him to Almost-tastic to take that into account.
Someone asked me why I didn’t do traditional letter grades, my answer “do I ever do anything the right way?”
You know what is funny (actually sad) is that nobody on the team who is making $4mill or more got a Sheedtastic (which I agree with). All of our productive players are on rookie scale contracts or vet minimum deals….. yuck.
Yeah, I’ve noticed this too. That’s sad…
My mistake, $3 mill or more…. I forgot about Wilcox.
Awesome post, Natalie. Beats reading letter grades, that’s for sure!
This season is already in the tank.
We need to build our younger stars like jonas,daye and dajuan..
hopefully we get a good lottery pick ..number 1 if we’re dam lucky, we get to pick up john wall.. stuckey can play shooting guard
trade tay and rip for a big man.. kaman/boozer/bosh…
j.wall/c.atkins
stuckey/gordon
jonas/austin
c.v/jonas
Kaman/wallace
u forgot bynum
Good work Nat!
I think Chucky should get a more favorable grade, he’s the third string point guard and was the last guy to make the cut…. what do we really expect out of him? The fact that he has made contributions to wins at all this season means (to me at least) that he has surpassed expectations for the season…. Especially when you consider what his salary is.
I disagree about Rip and Stuckey.
Rip can create a his own shot when his back is to the basket against a gaurd. And like you said he comes off screens and runs around he needs a point gaurd that is an ACTUAL point guard.
Stuckey in my opinion is the worst excuse for a point guard in the league. Don’t get me wrong if he was playing the 2 spot and only was expected to get to the rim then he’s a good player, not great, good. However we are using him as our point, and he is horrible in that position. He is not a floor leader, has no vision and cant pass for the life of him.
josh you shouldnt pick on stuckey. Lets list the problems with this team: 1) Defense, Charlie V, Kwame, Daye, chuckie atkins, tay, be gordon none of them can defend, either from injuries or atheleticism. 2) 3 point shooting, charlie V is our 3 point shooter and he shoots the 3) worse than ‘sheed ever did, we have zero outside ball, no way to stretch the floor, 4) no inside post scorer, Charlie V, Kwame, Wilcox, Ben Wallace, none of them can score from the post. Our best post up player is Stuckey. Jonas Jerebko is good inside but not a real post player, he seems to play facing the basket. 5) Stuckey is a combo guard not a point guard.
#5 is the least of our worries. Quit hating on the stuckey he’ll be a great player one day, and the problems with this team lie much deeper than his floor vision.
Have you ever seen Stuckey pass the ball to the post, have our man wait for the double, and then return the ball to Stuckey? Me neither!
We dont have spread offense because we have on three shot, we have no ability to draw a double on the inside, is it any wonder that teams find us easy to defend against?
I dont think we can solve our scoring problems overnight. Our young players will eventually develop better outside range (it always happens). What we can do right now is fix our defense. If we fix our defense, we’ll get fast break opportunities and easy scores, our team is young and can run.
Great summary, i agree
Our defense isn’t really that bad, I think we allow the 11th lowest points per game, not great, but not unbearable either.
A friend of mine out on the west coast sent me this link saying the Pistons were one of the teams interested in Stoudemire. I wonder if there is talk going on?
http://www.csnbayarea.com/01/25/10/Are-Warriors-Interested-in-Suns-Stoudemi/landing.html?blockID=168535&feedID=2539
This would save our day…look at the ESPN mock draft
http://tinypic.com/r/eaqck2/6
jesse that’s a terrible stat. you gotta look at percentage field goals scored against.
New Jersey is lowest at 49%. We are nearly as bad as New Jersey at 47%.
A good defense team will allow between 44% and 45%, teams like cleveland, oklahoma, lakers, orlando, chicago, boston, charlotte dallas, miami, indiana, utah, and san antonio
We are just sitting there and letting people blow by us. If we didnt have Ben Wallace we would have worse defense than the nets.
It’s hard to overstate just how horrible our defense has been all year. We got some UNSHEEDTASTIC slackers in there. Just watching while our opponents drive to the hoop.
I think the points per game says more about the pace of the game than anything. Fast paced teams let the opponents score more, because both teams score a lot. Slow teams that plod down the floor dont score much but their opponents dont either because it takes them so long to bring the ball up the court.
for example, phoenix suns allow 108 points per game, but allow 46% shooting, now 46 is weak but not as weak as detroit. Using points per game detroit allows only 97 points.
Now phoenix is actually better at defense than detroit, even though they allow 10 more points per game, because the plain fact is detroit is injured, lazy, and has no defense.
Defense used to be the pride of the D so it has taken me quite a few months to wrap my head around the fact that this team is so bad in it.
I agree with pretty much everything you just said, but I still think offense is a bigger problem. I maintain that if the team’s offense were to improve, then the D would too… I really think the team would vastly improve all around if they played at a faster pace. This topic really just sticks in my craw because every year it seems like we are lied to and told that they will play faster and the never ever do… This year I really believed it too after the BG and CV signings.
I just have no idea how you actually fix just the D….. we don’t have very many good individual defenders, were small in the front court, we don’t really have a shutdown on-the-ball defender anywhere on the roster, we mostly have guys that just don’t try hard on that side of the ball… Seriously, short of a trade, what can you do?
I hate to say it, but we can tank it….forget ’bout anything good for some seasons…
or pray that Joe will make a genius move
I guess because of all that we lost on the defensive side of the ball last summer: Sheed, Dyess, Afflalo and to a lesser extent Amir- and when you replace that with CV, BG, Wilcox and 35 year-old Ben, I really didn’t expect much….. frankly, I thought Joe gave up on D. That might explain why I’m not really worried about it. I just never imagined that we would so inefficient, so stagnant and so slow on offense… we are at the bottom of almost every offensive category:
25th in offensive efficiency
28th in fg%
29th in true shooting %
26th in points per shot
and we play at the 2nd slowest pace
I just don’t know if I can stand another season of this slowed-down almost pure iso offense… no matter who the coach is, or who is on the floor, it’s always the same thing…. one guy has the ball, and 3 or 4 guys stand around the 3 point line and watch. It’s just a stupid way to go about scoring, especially if you don’t have an elite go-to guy.
Natalie, I just saw the Piston Powered site and they have a composite graph of Piston grades. Yours are by far the most creative. You gotta see it! At the end of the article the author says that he misplaced his Sheed-to-GPA conversion chart!
making the playoffs at this point could be disastrous for the long term, we will already miss out on the top and maybe even 2nd tier free agents, no need to miss on the lottery right? Forget John Wall. Start researching some college bigs cause John Wall is getting served to the nets on a silver platter. The Nets are moving to a new market, the nba will bolster ticket sales by announcing the Brooklyn Nets have received the number 1 overall pick.
By NBA I mean David Stern who is the embodiment of the NBA. Can’t wait to see a new commissioner for this league, one that’s more concerned with the purity and fairness of the game than trying to build and placate superstar prima donnas. The Refs are Sterns hitmen! I said it fine me! fine me!!
Amare’s staying put.
I like the grading system but it should be reversed being sheedtastic should be bad cause he sucks and all, and you should include a grade for the fans too, which I will say have been very impatient and unsupportive despite all the great things this team has accomplished over the years
Calling Brooklyn a new market for the Nets would be like calling Pontiac a new market for the Pistons.
very good read 🙂
its hard to watch pistons basketball without BG and Will etc.
As a pistons fan it hurts to see injuries, because we haven’t seen that many over the last five years, otehr than minor injuries to CB during playoff time in the ECF’s.
I want a solid PG to our team. And a frontcourt player who can play a lil D. And I kno how to do it:
RIP or Tay goes to Raptors for
Jose Calderon plus Rasho Nesterovic.
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I luv Calderon – this is a man who had 1 turnover in 6or7 games in a row with at least 6or7assists these games last season. He can be a huge factor and I don’t kno how he was eliminated from ASG last season, it was a huge disappointment for me.
He plays true pg, can pass it, shoots open 3 with high percentage, Stuckey or BG could both shine playing with him. Jose is a very underrated player.
Rasho can give us a post presence, his contract is expiring this summer, he’s a big man.
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Raptors gain versatility and depth with RIP or Tay because Hedo can play 3 positions, DeRozan is inconsistent. And if Bosh will leave them, at least they have ex-allstar player in addition to Hedo and growing Bargnani
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I dunno, but it seems fine to me, I would love to see Jose in Detroit
I totally agree with everything you put down Natalie, very good observations on the court and with what people have noticed:)
do what you can do!