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True Blue Pistons
Award-winning journalist Keith Langlois, most recently lead sports columnist at The Oakland Press, joined Pistons.com as the web site editor on October 2, 2006. Langlois, who brings over 27 years of professional sports journalism experience to Palace Sports & Entertainment, serves as Pistons.com's official beat writer and covers the team on a daily basis.
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“That’s good,” Bynum said about the fact that most analysts peg them outside the playoff field for the coming season. “I like that we’re not talked about like that – everything we do will be that much more shocking to them once we do it. I think we have a great team right now. I’m sure we’re not finished – there’s a long way before the season starts. But we’ve got a great chance. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem at all to make the playoffs this season.”
He said that while dabbing at his arm, where he’d just been poked by a needle for blood work as part of the physical examination required before formalizing the contract agreement Bynum and the Pistons reached on Wednesday that binds them for three more years.
He’s used to being poked at. Just as the Pistons have been written off before the season begins, so has Bynum been fighting skepticism about his place in the NBA since going undrafted out of Georgia Tech in 2005. He’s faced doubters so long – too small, too much of a scorer and not enough of a playmaker – he’s not sure what to make of the new-found sense of calm the security of his three-year deal affords him.
Posted Wednesday, July 28, 2010
They got extended looks at Austin Daye, too, and even frequent glimpses of DaJuan Summers as injuries hammered the Pistons from wire to wire.
They might not see as much of any of them next season, which can only be good news on the health and depth fronts.
That creates conditions ripe for frustration, disappointment and discouragement setting in for the three second-year players. It’s one thing to occupy spots on the inactive list or play only in garbage time as rookies, but when you’ve gotten a taste and come back to a potentially lesser role in your second season … well, it’s a situation that bears monitoring all around.
Posted Monday, July 26, 2010
Villanueva, 13 pounds lighter and applying the lessons learned from weeks of work under Pistons strength coach Arnie Kander, led the Dominican to a 4-0 record in pool play and a semifinal win before losing to Puerto Rico in the gold medal game. Charlie V was second in scoring (20.6 points per game) for the tournament and an all-tournament selection, and when the Dominican really needed him to score, he turned it on in the title game and put up 36 points and 11 boards as the undermanned Dominicans lost 89-80 to Puerto Rico.
“I was the only NBA guy going against Carlos Arroyo, J.J. Barea, Renaldo Balkman and Peter Ramos, who played in the NBA back in the day,” Villanueva said Monday after another workout with Kander on a day a handful of teammates – including Tayshaun Prince, Ben Gordon and Greg Monroe – buzzed about the practice facility.
Kander is working with Villanueva this summer to improve his running stride and give him a more explosive first step.
Posted Friday, July 23, 2010
The rumblings took form when Chris Paul supposedly toasted Carmelo Anthony at his wedding by suggesting they join forces with Amare Stoudemire in New York at their first opportunity.
And then Paul, or so it appears, decided to speed up the timetable and loudly suggest to New Orleans management that it avoid getting jilted a la Cleveland and trade him now for a tangible return.
Welcome to New Orleans, Monty Williams and Dell Demps.
Posted Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Every Summer League story should come with the obligatory “take what you see in Summer League with several grains of salt” warning. Donte Greene scored 40 points in his Summer League debut two years ago and is still showing up for Summer League with Sacramento, struggling to land a role as he heads into his third season.
But that didn’t stop a rush to judgment when the Pistons played Sacramento and Cousins had 14 points and 10 rebounds as the Kings won while Monroe put up seven and seven. The snapshot at that moment was that Cousins was the front-runner for Rookie of the Year and Monroe was relegated to a pedestrian career – or at least to an unremarkable rookie season.
Posted Monday, July 19, 2010
For all the noise generated so far this summer, it’s been concentrated among a relatively small pool of NBA teams. None of that activity has involved the Pistons, which makes fans of a team coming off a 27-win season anxious, angry or discouraged.
But pick through the details and a clear impression emerges: Many teams still have much more work to do in order to field a team that doesn’t have obvious flaws. That goes for teams from all strata – title hopefuls to fringe playoff teams to lottery tenants.
And that goes double for the East, where the Pistons are one of the very few teams who could line up today and not have depth issues or worse at any position. Translation: There is still plenty of time and many possibilities out there for Joe Dumars to find a trade partner who has something intriguing to offer.
Posted Friday, July 16, 2010
He visited, it felt right and Monroe – ranked at various times as the No. 1 prospect in the high school class of 2008 – told John Thompson III that he wanted to join up. Courted by virtually every nationally prominent program, Monroe narrowed his list to five. After taking his first visit to nearby LSU, Monroe next visited Georgetown.
And that’s as far as he took it. Scheduled visits to powerhouses Duke, UConn and Texas were canceled.
Posted Tuesday, July 13, 2010
All along, this summer was going to be driven by free agency. There’s been a fairly amazing amount of flesh-swapping since Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron James fell into Pat Riley’s lap last week, almost all of it spinoffs from those decisions – teams that didn’t land a premier free agent using their cap space to make deals, teams that lost free agents using trade exceptions gained by negotiating sign-and-trade deals for their exiting stars, teams looking to dump salary and finding partners in those teams with either cap space or trade exceptions.
The Pistons certainly don’t fall into the first two categories and aren’t eager to fall into the third. Joe D won’t rule out trading a player for some combination of cap relief or draft picks, but it’s not his first choice. If it were, he had a deal proposed to him in that three-hour window on Wednesday that would have achieved such an objective.
“Sometimes, there’s a time to be patient,” he said. “For us right now, instead of making a move just to say we made a move, I’m going to be patient and make sure whatever we do is the right move for us. If it’s not the right move, if we don’t think it’s somebody that can come in and help us or if we don’t get a trade proposal we think is really good for us, we’re going to be patient. We’re not going to do anything off the cuff just to say we made a move. It’s not going to happen.”
Posted Monday, July 12, 2010
As invaluable as Jonas Jerebko proved to be for the Pistons during his rookie season, he’s apparently indispensable to their 2010 Summer League lineup. With Jerebko sitting one out, the Pistons were heavy-legged and error-prone in losing to a Sacramento Kings team playing its first Summer League game while the Pistons were grinding through their third game in four days.
It was the Summer League equivalent of the regular season’s dog days and the Pistons got bit, falling behind by nine points after one quarter, by 17 at halftime and eventually losing 97-68.
Posted Monday, July 12, 2010
But in the basketball hotbed of the mid-South, White eventually chose to focus on basketball and merely dabble in other sports where he showed every bit the potential to graduate to the professional level as basketball eventually provided him.
“I started playing basketball and baseball when I was 3,” he said after Sunday’s practice in Las Vegas, where the Pistons prepared for their third game of Summer League, Monday against Sacramento. “Then I started playing football when I was 8 or 9. After that, I started playing all three year round.”
White has been hailed as perhaps the best athlete in the June NBA draft for his 40-inch vertical jump, his three-quarter-court sprint time and his ridiculously low 3.7 percent body fat. But the second-round pick, who is getting a long look at point guard in Las Vegas and showing the poise and ballhandling to make it a realistic fit, takes the “best athlete” label to another level when his multisport exploits are considered.
Posted Sunday, July 11, 2010
Daye was the dazzler a year later, scoring 20 points to highlight a stuffed statistical line, and he might have added 10 more points with a little better luck and more typical foul shooting. Daye got inside many times for easy looks only to have shots roll off the rim. Still, he was the game’s dominant offensive player as the Pistons overcame a sluggish start and a nine-point deficit to crush Golden State 89-69 and run their Las Vegas record to 2-0.
Daye knocked down two 3-point shots, scored off post moves and put the ball on the floor to get inside with great effect while adding five rebounds, four assists and three blocked shots.
Posted Saturday, July 10, 2010
The Pistons got a good glimpse of heart, at least, in an 89-84 Summer League opening win over the Los Angeles Lakers that saw them come back from 11 down in the fourth quarter and close the game on a 20-4 run sparked by second-year forwards Austin Daye, Jonas Jerebko and DaJuan Summers and punctuated by rookies Terrico White and Greg Monroe.
Nobody exemplified it more than Jerebko, who struggled with his shot and tough defensive assignments against bigger and more physical players yet found a way, the same trait he exhibited in rising from the 39th pick of the 2009 draft to indispensable part as a rookie.
Posted Thursday, July 8, 2010
Nope.
“I have never been a guard,” he said in his deep baritone after Thursday’s final practice before the Pistons open Summer League play on Friday. “Never been a point guard, never been any type of guard. I’ve always been a big man.”
But in three days of practice with the Pistons in Las Vegas, Monroe has wowed everyone with his ability to spot open teammates in any number of ways. With his back to the basket in the post, hitting cutters behind him. In transition, where he seems perfectly comfortable handling the ball in the middle of the floor. And off the boards, when he fired a perfectly placed outlet pass to a streaking DaJuan Summers three-quarters of the floor away for a dunk on Thursday.
Posted Thursday, July 8, 2010
“That’s what I’m going to have to do,” Stuckey said. “That’s what I want to do, so I’m going to be doing it a lot more. You guys will be hearing me a lot more on the court, telling people where to go. It’s going to be a lot different next year. I’ve just got to be that guy. It’s going to happen. You guys will see.”
Stuckey has donned his workout gear and been semi-participating in practices as the Pistons prepare for their Friday NBA Summer League opener, but he’s also been acting as a quasi-coach, helping run drills and reinforcing the messages being delivered by the coaching staff. Assistant Pat Sullivan is running practices and will coach the team’s five games in Las Vegas with John Kuester and assistant Darrell Walker observing and chiming in when they see fit, but they haven’t had to say much so far.
Posted Tuesday, July 6, 2010
A few ex-Pistons, Darko Milicic ($20 million, four years) and Amir Johnson ($34 million, five years) got jaw-dropping contracts. Milwaukee, the epitome of an NBA small-market team saddled with an arena and lease arrangement that makes financial survival a grind, spent $72 million on Drew Gooden and John Salmons.
“Overspending in free agency” is a redundancy. It’s true in the NBA, just as it is in the NFL, NHL and baseball. In the NBA, teams rarely have cap space to go shopping for free agents above the mid-level exception threshold. It’s the time they’re able to add talent without sacrificing talent – and there’s a premium to be paid for the privilege: overspending.
Posted Thursday, July 1, 2010
Here are the three situations that most closely bear watching...
Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Many teams head to Summer League with no more than one or two players who figure to crack their NBA roster in the season ahead and set up the rest of their Las Vegas roster, and their game plans, to accommodate those players.
But the Pistons’ entire starting five will consist of players they fully expect to be on their 2010-11 NBA roster, so the same principles they will apply in October and beyond will be in effect starting next Tuesday when Pat Sullivan, who’ll run the team while Kuester observes along with Joe Dumars and his staff, gathers them for their first practice.
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