I’ll kick this off. It’s been 12 games of this lineup, a lineup which (regardless of whether it’s Bagley or Duren starting at center):
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Has far too little shooting. Modern NBA offenses are built around generating open threes and converting them at a good percentage, neither of which this lineup can do. It has not a single reliable, high-volume shooter at all, let alone one who can reliably get open off the ball. The lineup persistently runs with at least two non-shooters. Killian can barely be considered a shooter, if at all; he’s not reliable and he passes up shots. Stewart is the most reliable but the least able to get open and has a propensity to pass up shots. Modern NBA offenses avoid non-shooting perimeter players like the plague. This lineup fields three of them, or four if you count the currently-struggling Cade.
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Has far too little spacing. This is not merely a symptom of the lack of shooting; it’s also a function of the general lack of mobility. This lineup has no hope of wrongfooting defenses by beating defenders off the ball. Stewart is the only one who can reliably shoot, but even he is a questionable spacer; he’s far too slow to beat a defender, and so only gets open if he’s left open by the defense.
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Has far too little athleticism. This relates to the previous point. Cade isn’t fast, though that’s less of an issue when he’s on the ball so much. Killian is slow. Stewart is very slow by the standards of his position. Ausar is quick on cuts, but getting open on the perimeter is, for obvious reasons, not of great value to him. This lineup has an extremely limited ability to get open or to create holes in defenses.
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Has far too little creation. Only Cade applies. The spacing is one reason why he’s getting swarmed. The poor off-ball movement is another. This is a third, and not a minor one.
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Has no hope of keeping up on offense against respectable opponents. This is key. The combination of the above irredeemably gimps the offense in the starting lineup. This is the most common lineup the Pistons play.
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Has similar weaknesses no matter if Duren is in the lineup or not. Duren provides more passing, but he, too, cannot shoot.
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Was unnecessary from game one, regardless of injuries. Even if one considers Ivey’s current situation to be merited, Burks could have started on opening night. Sasser could’ve started with Burks out. Burks could start now. Stewart could start at center instead of Bagley to provide proper spacing. The lineup persists.
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Should never have seen the light of day in today’s NBA at all, let alone for 12 games. This is a lineup that utterly disregards the necessities of the modern NBA and lacks anything like the assets to have any hope of coming anywhere near to breaking even in today’s NBA, let alone winning its minutes.
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Was virtually guaranteed to fail on offense, at the very least.
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Has been an unequivocal failure from minute one of the season.
Monty’s no fool. He no doubt knows all of the above. So what’s the point of this lineup? What benefit could it be providing at this stage? If it’s meant to prove some point, then when is enough enough? What sort of “culture” will be built by actively reducing the team’s chances of winning over an extended period?
One thing is for sure: the claim that the Pistons would be prioritizing winning this season wasn’t true. This lineup is proof positive enough of that. It’s actively lowering the team’s capacity to win, not to mention putting key players in position to struggle rather than succeed.
What do you think? When will we see meaningful changes in the starting lineup? Why haven’t they been made already? Why was this starting lineup conceived of in the first place?
Edit: To those of you who have already downvoted this thread, consider participating in the discussion rather than anonymously trying to bury it.
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3 of the bottom 10 players in True Shooting % are all starting for the Pistons (Ausar, Cade, and Killian).
I do not understand what the fuck Monty is doing. It fails the eye test, fails every advanced metric, and fails the trust of people who buy tickets to go watch this team
I can’t explain it. Offenses can function with two non-shooters in today’s league, but it demands incredible passing and 3pt volume from your perimeter players. It works in Golden State because Green and Looney benefit from the greatest shooter who has ever lived running off of their constant screens off and on the ball. It “works” for Cleveland because Mitchell and Garland are both threats to score from each level and are talented enough passers to work difficult passes in to Mobley or Allen in the slot without the high turnover rate that poorer passers (i.e., Cade and most of the league) suffer for making that a steady habit. It makes things more difficult, but not impossible - and there is generally a benefit to doing so for these teams. Green and Mobley provide incredible defensive value in exchange for their offensive shortcomings.
We saw it last game where the opposing team simply stuck their big on Ausar and, when Ausar wasn’t actively handling the ball or screening, his man stood just outside the key in a one-man zone. If Ausar cannot hit threes at a 33%+ clip when left wide open, he is going to need a really strange lineup around him to not drag the offense down until that part of his game (hopefully) develops. Duren is not the kind of center to allow Ausar to be a functioning piece of an offense.
Killian is his own problem. He’s good at a lot of things, but generally very bad at the things demanded of a guard. His midrange shooting is good, but it’s still not something to be relied on outside of late shot-clock situations when a shot needs to go up and go up quickly.
It feels like Monty making the best of a bad roster construction. Stacking good defenders in a lineup has a exponentially increasing reward. We already see premier perimeter talent (Lillard, Lavine especially in the last game against Chicago) start to shy away from isolating against Ausar. They screen him to force a switch and then attack Cade or Killian. Our starting lineup has three players I would classify as average or better defensively. Killian is average. Stewart is decent. Ausar is amazing. But Cade has been very, very bad this year. Duren is totally lost when he’s not playing drop coverage and is generally applauded for his counting stats when his game on defense is very shoddy.
It’s inexplicable unless there’s a directive from the FO that this season is for tanking. No sane coach runs this lineup. The only lineups that truly work if we want to run Ausar and Duren at the same time would require incredible volume and efficiency from the rest of the starters. Burks fits the bill. Cade most definitely does not. Jaden isn’t really that kind of player. Bojan is. Stewart is an effective but strangely hesitant shooter from below the break when he’s not completely wide open.
Like you said, Monty is trying and failing to utilize this awkward, poor roster construction. Weaver deserves a bulk of the blame, because regardless of who got hired as the new coach, they were walking into a trainwreck. However, Monty’s insistence on starting Killian reeks of something else going on behind the scenes. Even someone with an untrained eye can see how bad Killian is for the starting lineup.
My less pessimistic theory is maybe he didn’t anticipate some of our guys being out so long, and wanted to keep Ivey on the bench to acclimate him into his long term role once Monte is back. But that’s a really expensive decision when the alternative is Killian Hayes, and we’re 2-9 now to start the season.
This is the 4th year straight of watching Killian drag down the productivity of our starting lineup, and our other 2 lottery pick guards.
I can’t help but think Killian has dirt on Weaver being at the capital on Jan 6th.
It is odd to me that effectively all of our defensive players are in the starting lineup, and our second unit is nothing but spacers / offensive weapons. I just think Killian is redundant with Cade and Ausar, meanwhile he would make perfect sense almost as a “Chris Paul” role; playing steady with the second unit, and offering much-needed defense when guys like Ausar are sitting.
Monty knows 1000x more about basketball than any of us, so I don’t buy that he’s a “bad” coach. But I do wish he was a bit more liberal in switching lineups up, especially as he’s just getting a feel for the team. As another said, Burks and Ivey in the closing lineup yesterday is somewhat reassuring that Monty realizes they have better synergy with Cade. Still, when it’s all said and done, November is very early in the season. Nothing’s life-or-death at this point.
The best summary I’ve seen of this extremely frustrating situation. The only three reasons I can think of for this lineup having been conceived to begin with are:
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They want to set the tone on defense early. This worked for all of 3 games before opponents just realized they could foul-bait all game and generate easy points off of turnovers. I’m sure there are other things opponents started doing to beat our aggressiveness on D that smarter folks than myself noticed
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Killian is a bit of a coach’s pet because he does things like play “team basketball” and is generally smart and conservative on both offense and defense. He doesn’t make mistakes because he doesn’t put himself in position to, but that also makes him a non-factor on offense. When has Killian ever driven into the lane in a half court set this year? Ivey, on the other hand, is a total loose cannon but he has the ability to make it work. It still must be frustrating from a coach’s perspective, but he has to see how massive the talent gap is.
Stew and Ausar are also in a similar boat as Killian, but they’re much better from a talent perspective so it’s less frustrating. Still not worth it to have all 3 of them on the floor unless you have a stretch 5, and even then it’s suspect.
- Maybe they wanted to transition Cade into an off-ball role at first—that happened for the first half of the Heat game iirc, then it mostly stopped happening, making this baffling
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The most telling thing to me about our offense is the lack of drives. I looked at drives per game and to make it a little less to sift through, just looked at the central division. Cade leads the division in drives per game but as we’ve all seen, they are not the most effective drives since he’s often walled off by 3 or even 4 help defenders. After that our next highest is killian with 6.8. That is such a steep drop off. Every other team have either multiple guys in double digits or Indiana for example have 5 players with more drives than our 2nd highest. Part of this as mentioned has to be due to lack of spacing. I have to believe that we would be able to have more drives from Ausar for example if the floor was more spaced out as he is good at driving on one defender once getting downhill but there is rarely only one defender near the paint. Second, is the lack of players who are explosive enough to just get by their guy. Ivey is probably the only player who can consistently get by defenders without a screen due to his speed, threat of a shot, and competent enough handle. This shows with his driving numbers being close to killians with 10 fewer minutes. As mentioned in the post, a lot of our shooters don’t get open themselves and when that’s the case, the way to get them open is to collapse the defense which is impossible to do with how our lineups are currently constructed. I know a frequent argument for Hayes has been his defense, which is fine, it has its moments that shine. Others have also mentioned his lack of mistakes is needed next to Cade who is, to put it kindly, a little prone to making mistakes. The problem though is that it compounds the lack of quickness on the floor. I would like to see what it looks like with just ivey in for hayes, as I love our front court (I’ve firmly planted my flag as stew being a competent starting 4), but I also would understand if we need to further adjust that lineup to having someone who can both space and create such as bogey when healthy or can’t believe I’m saying this but Knox right now(?).
The thing is
Duren is not a very good defense player yet
It’s malpractice to keep starting this same lineup night in and night out. Basketball terrorism some might even say.
Should have include “is far too young”
The fix for that is pretty simple; long term patience and healthy vets