Rodney Stuckey and Brandon Knight look like Pistons’ backcourt of the future against Nets

Rodney Stuckey and Brandon Knight are changing the conversation.

I haven’t bemoaned losses or celebrated wins much this season, other than acknowledging that a few wins necessary to keep humans from becoming too discouraged.  The Pistons would win some games and lose a lot more. I had become detached from their record, because I didn’t think it mattered much this season.

I haven’t assessed Detroit’s different lineups for the same reason. Too many Pistons wouldn’t be with the team when it next contended, so there was no point worrying about who fit with whom.

But wins can be more than just random occurrences. This team isn’t completely overmatched and is somewhat capable of determining its own fate. The Pistons have won four straight games, their longest win streak since winning five straight December 2009.

Some of the players are meshing together, too. Lineup decisions this season could affects future years.

Stuckey (19 points on 7-of-10 shooting with five assists and three rebounds in 26 minutes) and Knight (13 points on 4-of-7 shooting, including 3-of-3 on 3-pointers, with seven rebounds five assists in a four-foul-limited 17 minutes) didn’t play together much Friday, but they were dynamic when they did. They pushed the pace, shared the ball and shot efficiently. The offense hummed, and the defense, well, was good enough when the offense is churning.

Both also played well with the other on the bench. Knight will have more ups and downs during his rookie year, but hopefully Stuckey is turning the corner – though, haven’t we heard that many times before.

Stuckey played well against the Nets on Wednesday, and played even better tonight. As far as I know, Stuckey doesn’t have any beef with New Jersey. Too often, his good play has been driven by personal grievances. Unless he develops issues with more opponents, that has left Stuckey listless for too many games.

Tonight, he was engaged on and off the court. When Stuckey jumped off the bench to clap for Walker Russell, I swooned.

I’m not ready to declare some great breakthrough for Stuckey. His double-clutch shot led to points tonight, but too often, it leaves him caught in the air without an option.

And I’m by no means ready to declare Stuckey and Knight the Pistons’ backcourt of the future. But Friday, they looked like they could be just that.

And, like dominoes falling, that made everything else go.

Greg Monroe meticulously excels

Greg Monroe will be fine no matter who plays around him. That he could quietly have 18 points on 8-of-9 shooting and 11 rebounds in 30 minutes showed that. His 18 points and 11 rebounds were both his lowest totals in his last four games.

Night in and night, he brings it, and that won’t change.

Jason Maxiell allows Jonas Jerebko to come off the bench

Jonas Jerebko (20 points on 7-of-13 shooting with four rebounds in 25 minutes) was playing at a different speed than everyone else on the court. Coming off the bench suits him, because it prevents him from getting into early foul trouble. Plus, his energy is more noticeable against starters who are a little tired.

Jerebko had been starting at power forward, because the Pistons don’t have a reliable option at the position. For now, though, Jason Maxiell (2-of-2 from the field and 2-of-2 from the line with five rebounds and four blocks in 20 minutes), is filling in just fine. The Pistons need an athletic shot-blocker to pair defensively with Monroe, and 20 pounds lighter, Maxiell can fill that role until the Pistons upgrade the position.

Ben Gordon thriving off the bench

Ben Gordon (14 points on 6-of-10 shooting) appears to be settling into his backup role. The Pistons are asking him to make shots, and nothing more. When he was starting, he was asked to dribble and pass a lot more, and though he delivered some of the Pistons’ best assists of the season, he turned the ball over way too much.

It’s a small sample, so don’t read too much into it, but Gordon is 12-of-17 for 28 points in his two games off the bench.

Ben Wallace attempts first free throws

Ben Wallace attempted two free throws Friday. Of course, he missed both. But entering the game, nobody had played more than Wallace’s 371 minutes without attempting a free throw.

Pistons vs. … are you kidding me? … New Jersey again?

Essentials

• Teams: New Jersey Nets at Detroit Pistons
• Date: Feb. 10, 2012
• Time: 7:30 p.m.
• Television: Fox Sports Detroit Plus

Records

• Pistons: 7-20
• Nets: 8-19

Probable starters

Pistons:

• Brandon Knight
• Rodney Stuckey
• Tayshaun Prince
• Jason Maxiell
• Greg Monroe

Nets:

• Deron Williams
• Anthony Morrow
• Shawne Williams
• Shelden Williams
• Kris Humphries

Las Vegas projection

Spread: Pistons -4

Over/under: 189

Score: Pistons win, 96.5-92.5

What to watch

• Greg Monroe is now officially averaging a double-double, as his rebounding average hit 10.0 per game after Wednesday’s win over NJ
• The Pistons didn’t win four games in a row last year. They won three in a row twice. The Nets at home to win four straight is about as good as you can ask for if your goal is a winning streak. The Pistons last won four straight in December 2009 (they actually won five straight in that streak).
• Via Matt Watson, you might want to buy this t-shirt.
• Um … I think Need4Sheed’s Natalie Sitto might be ready for Star Wars Night.

Read about the Nets

Nets Are Scorching

Poll: Should the Pistons retain Joe Dumars as their general manager?

3-on-3: Judging Joe Dumars

Modeled after ESPN’s 5-on-5, Patrick and I will answer three questions about a Pistons-related topic.

For each 3-on-3, we’ll be joined by a guest contributor. Today, that’s Mike Payne of Detroit Bad Boys.

Please add your responses in the comment.

1. How much responsibility does Joe Dumars bear for the Pistons’ run from 2002-08?

Dan Feldman: Essentially all of it. When Dumars took over, the Pistons had just lost Grant Hill and had to start over. Dumars meticulously added piece after piece until the Pistons were good enough to win a championship. He didn’t get lucky in the lottery, and he didn’t have an owner willing to pay the luxury tax. Dumars built the Pistons through shrewd moves and nothing else.

Patrick Hayes: Dumars gets most of the credit. He built arguably the most cohesive starting five in recent NBA history, he hired two great coaches in Rick Carlisle and Larry Brown and he’s one of only a handful of GMs working today who can claim a title. Can I nitpick and say that he should’ve tweaked the core at some point to try and make another run? Can I complain about never developing a competent bench during that stretch? Sure. But when you have a team that will make boatloads of money every year with guaranteed deep playoff runs, I understand why he got a little gun shy about messing with things too much.

Mike Payne: Nearly all of it. When building the Going to Work Pistons, Joe Dumars flourished under the “do less with more” constraints of Bill Davidson’s ownership philosophy. The Dumars / John Hammond duo shared a chemistry that yielded a greater value than the sum of is parts. Luck factored into the equation as well, but less-so than teams that have built championships with #1 picks. At the end of the day, it was Dumars who built that team from the ground up and he absolutely deserves the credit. If any of that credit is shared, Davidson and Hammond both get an assist on Joe’s amazing four point play.

2. How much responsibility does Joe Dumars bear for the Pistons’ run from 2009-present?

Dan Feldman: If you want to pin responsibility on a specific person, Dumars is the guy. But sometimes circumstance beyond an individual’s control play a part. Years of contending had kept the Pistons out of the lottery, making it more difficult to acquire talent. I obviously wish Dumars had kept Arron Afflalo, Amir Johnson and Carlos Delfino – but without lottery picks and an owner willing to pay the luxury tax, Dumars’ margin of error was slim. Then, Bill Davidson died – another circumstance that limited Dumars further. Giving so much money to Richard Hamilton, Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva was Dumars’ fault, and it hurt him. But circumstance exasperated his problems.

Patrick Hayes: You get the credit, you get the blame. There were certainly complicating factors with the death of William Davidson, but by far the most important factor in the decline had to do with Dumars’ own bad personnel decisions. He handed out abhorrently bad contracts, he whiffed on his top two picks in a deep 2009 draft, he gave up too soon on two solid young players and got little return for Amir Johnson and Arron Afflalo in trades and he hired two terrible coaches. Whether the sale of the team handcuffed his ability to fix those mistakes or not, the Pistons were clearly in the state they were in because Dumars made a series of really indefensibly bad moves.

Mike Payne: Every ounce of it.  The blame game in the mean time has been laughable. First it was Michael Curry’s fault. Then it was the injuries in 2009-10. Last season it was John Kuester and Karen Davidson.  Since late 2008, Joe Dumars has executed a maddening string of bad moves in free agency, trades and the draft, moves that reflect a complete reversal in philosophy (or a total lack thereof). If there has been any saving grace in Detroit since the Billups trade, it was when the Golden State Warriors drafted Ekpe Udoh in 2010. Sure, I know Joe deserves credit for picking Monroe, but the same kind of credit the Denver Nuggets get for drafting Carmelo Anthony in 2003 when Milicic was off the board.

3. Is Joe Dumars capable of fixing the Pistons?

Dan Feldman: I’m not sure, but I’m definitely willing to take the chance that he is.

Patrick Hayes: I dunno. When Tom Gores made the decision to retain Dumars and add a statistical analysis element to his front office staff, I was on board with that. I liked the Lawrence Frank hire. Things were going OK. Then, Dumars re-signed Tayshaun Prince. The Pistons clearly need to bottom out and have a shot at a top of the lottery pick. Bringing back a limited veteran like Prince, for four years no less, is exactly the type of move that ensures the Pistons might not be able to get bad enough to strike it rich with a high lottery pick and get good again. My confidence since that signing has undoubtedly wavered. But Gores had access to all of the mistakes of the past, and he’s paying for all of the bad signings out of his own pocket now. Knowing that, he still made the decision to wipe the slate clean and let Dumars attempt to rebuild this thing, so I think he has to give him at least another year to make significant progress.

Mike Payne: Absolutely, unequivocally not. Even before this season began, the Pistons were a few steps away from rebuilding. To rebuild, you need to first deconstruct the existing foundation. The Pistons were tasked with getting rid of some of the dead weight under Hamilton, Villanueva, Gordon and Maxiell — and when the opportunity finally came to begin that, Dumars took one step forward and two steps back. Gores allows Dumars to buy-out Richard Hamilton, but then Dumars extends a 31-year-old Tayshaun Prince and tosses $24M at Rodney Stuckey when the ~$3M qualifying offer was the price tag. That’s not rebuilding, it’s a further investment in players who are average or worse at their respective positions — not to mention who openly feuded with their coach last season. It’s buffoonery.

Something apparently happened to Joe Dumars after the signing of Antonio McDyess. Since then, his perspective on his own roster, his trades, his free agent signings and most of his drafts have led this team from the top of the Eastern Conference toward its basement. He’s given up solid young talent for nothing. He’s spent millions and millions of dollars on deeply flawed inbound free agents, and he’s spent millions and millions of dollars to extend rapidly aging vets. He’s completely abandoned the value of positionality and the virtue of defense. He’s still doing this today, having shown no awareness of his mistakes.

Is Joe Dumars capable of fixing the Pistons? No. But some fans will still point to an 8-year-old championship to somehow justify him, all the while blaming everyone else for the Pistons woes.

Why the Pistons should keep Joe Dumars

In July 2009, Joe Dumars was in a race. It’s the same race in which every general manager competes – the ultra-marathon to a championship.

Dumars was running by a particularly dangerous stretch of terrain, right on the ridge of Cap Room Canyon, and getting tired. He had tried hitching a ride with Allen Iverson earlier in the race, but Iverson ran out of gas.

Dumars needed help. So, with Richard Hamilton already in tow, Dumars tied a rope around Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, hoping they could pull him further along. It proved to be a huge mistake. Hamilton, Gordon and Villanueva weren’t capable of getting Dumars closer to the finish line.

Maybe Dumars realized that. Maybe he didn’t. If he did, there still might have been time to cut the rope.

But before he could do anything Karen Davidson stumbled along and bumped into Hamilton, Gordon and Villanueva. They fell over the edge and into the canyon.

Tied to those three, Dumars went head over heels and was pulled down with them.

An isolated problem

Dumars’ recent failures crippled the Pistons. Karen Davidson’s sale paralyzed the franchise.

They’re both complicit in the Pistons’ downfall, but only Dumars deserves blame. Davidson never wanted to own the team, and her negative affects on the franchise were just a product of her trying to rectify the situation. Dumars’ errors were a product of him doing his desired job poorly.

Sale or no sale, extending Hamilton was a mistake. Sale or no sale, signing Gordon was a mistake. Sale or no sale, signing Villanueva was a mistake.

But – and this is why I’m willing to give Dumars another chance – the mistakes might have been correctable had the team not been for sale. I just don’t believe Hamilton, Gordon and Villanueva were instantly untradeable the moment Dumars signed them.

I have trouble believing Dumars wanted Gordon and Hamilton to play together in Detroit. Dumars supposedly had planned to trade Hamilton to the Jazz for Carlos Boozer, but Davidson nixed the trade. And if Hamilton had been traded sooner, maybe Gordon would have performed more in line with his contract.

And how can Dumars say this before last season:

KEITH LANGLOIS: I asked at your postseason press conference what you could do in your position to influence toughness. The coaches are in charge of making it a daily point of emphasis, but what you could do. And you said communication, making sure everyone was on the same page. And when I asked if that process had started, you said – immediately. Can you give us a sense of what type of response this communication has gotten.

JOE DUMARS: First of all, it’s been made crystal clear that if you’re not one of those guys that is exhibiting that, that it would be in your interest to start doing so immediately. So I think, first and foremost, that’s the point that’s been made. And if you don’t think that you can exhibit that, if you don’t think you can play that brand of basketball, there’s no sin in raising your hand and letting me know that I can’t play that kind of basketball. Because one way or another, it’s going to come to an end anyway.

…and keep Villanueva? Sometimes Dumars and I don’t see eye-to-eye on personnel, but can he really be the only person following this team who believes Villanueva has shown the requisite toughness? I just don’t buy that.

Dumars had never before been too stuborn to show failure and cut his losses.

• He traded Mateen Cleaves a year after drafting him in the top half of the first round.
• He traded Rodney White a year after drafting him at No. 9.
• He traded Darko Milicic before the final year of his rookie contract began.
• He traded Nazr Mohammed less than a year and a half after giving him a $30 million contract.
• He fired Michael Curry, his hand-chosen and only internally groomed, head coach after only one season.

The pattern is clear. Dumars realized his mistakes and acted quickly. The Kings didn’t know yet Cleaves was a bust, and the Nuggets hadn’t yet figured out the same thing about White. The Magic thought Milicic could still improve drastically, and the Bobcats still saw the Mohammed who helped the Spurs win a title.

Davidson sold the team to Tom Gores last June. But by then, it was too late. Everybody knew Hamilton, Gordon and Villanueva were busts.  The trade market for those three had surely dried up.

Dumars biggest strength during the majority of his tenure – the willingness to quickly identify mistakes and the ability to correct them – had gone wasted. He’s stuck with the $133.2 million he gave those three players, minus whatever Hamilton gave back in his buyout.

Want to blame Dumars for signing Gordon and/or extending Hamilton when he wasn’t absolutely certain he could trade Hamilton? That’s fine. I do, too.

But so what? Dumars will have to deal with a situation like that again.

I don’t want Dumars to be punished for his previous mistakes. I want a general manager capable of building the Pistons into a championship contender.

Joe Dumars’ impressive track record

Joe Dumars built a championship team without help from moving up in the NBA lottery or an owner willing to pay the luxury tax. I’d argue no two forces outside a general manager’s control have greater influence on a team’s success.

• The Mavericks, for years, spent well above the luxury tax to build a powerful and deep roster. Just the Lakers and Magic had higher payrolls than Dallas last season.
• The Lakers were also frequent tax payers, and even when they won before the tax was instituted, their payroll ranked among the top of the league.
• The Celtics were over the luxury tax the year they won the title.
• The Spurs moved up to the No. 1 pick in 1997 to draft Tim Duncan and were only in the lottery because David Robinson suffered a season-ending injury.

Other than the Pistons, in the post-Jordan era,* only the Heat – who are on the verge of doing it again – won their title without benefitting from moving up in the lottery or paying the luxury tax. If the Pistons can get Pat Riley, I’d fire Dumars. They can’t.

*Yes, Michael Jordan played for the Wizards during what I’m calling the post-Jordan era. The era in which he ruled the league still had ended.

Dumars built a championship team from scratch. The only time the Pistons moved up in the lottery, he took Darko Milicic, a non-factor in Detroit’s years of contending. The luxury tax was never an option.

There are viable replacements available, likely including Kevin Pritchard and Mark Warkentien, if the Pistons want to fire Dumars. But no realistic replacement has built a championship team, and few generals managers – available or not – have been more self-reliant assembling a title team.

Building around Dumars, not over him

Firing Dumars would only punish him for his previous mistakes, which admittedly, were disastrous. But the Pistons’ horrid situation is a sunk cost. The next general manager will still have to deal with Gordon’s and Villanueva’s contracts and Hamilton’s buyout. Firing Dumars isn’t necessarily a step toward fixing the Pistons.

I don’t know exactly why Dumars gave so much money to Gordon, Villanueva and Hamilton. Maybe he overvalued offense. Maybe he undervalued statistical analysis. Maybe he feared Karen Davidson would close her wallet soon. I suspect all three factors played a part.

The game has changed – and not the way Dumars thought it would. Defense is still just as important, and statistics should inform decision more than ever before.

Dumars appears to be getting that now. The Pistons have gotten more serious about stats, with Dumars’ support. John Hammond might be gone, but new advisors, including Gores, are challenging Dumars. Dumars has spoken more about defense and toughness lately, too.

Dumars has shown – with the right voices around him, with an eye toward defense, with a committed owner – he can build a championship team. I think he has all that now.

Dumars is not a great enough general manager to go it alone. The last few years certainly proved that.

But Dumars has succeeded with the right pieces around him. A remarkable seven years of proving that should count for something, too.

#JoeDumarsWeek

Monday:

• Intro post
• Joe Dumars’ draft track record is strong
• 3-on-3: Joe Dumars drafting
• Poll: Grade Joe Dumars’ total draft history

Tuesday:

• Joe Dumars shifted to offensive focus – but why?
• 3-on-3: Joe Dumars’ philosophy
• Poll: Will the Pistons’ offense or defense turn around first?

Wednesday:

• The two steps for building a contender, and how Joe Dumars does it backward
• 3-on-3 Player Development
• Poll: Will the Pistons make the playoffs in any of the following three seasons?

Thursday

• For better or worse, Rodney Stuckey and Joe Dumars will forever be linked
• 3-on-3: The Pistons development of Rodney Stuckey
• Poll: Will Rodney Stuckey or Brandon Knight have a better career?

Pistons tickets are really, really, really cheap in secondary online market