Defense and Bench is the difference , you hit the nail on the head.

We are trash defensively even though we play defense oriented lineups most of this season. This is part coaching problem part GM problem.

We have a trash bench even though our starters take up a miniscule amount of cap space. This is majority a GM problem, and a small bit injury / coaching problem.

If Killian defended and forced turnovers like Jalen Suggs we would be having a completely different conversation, weirdly enough. I didn’t know a guard defender could actually be the head of the snake in that way. Like , other than Isaac and Suggs, wouldn’t ausar thompson be the Magics best defender ?

all reasonable points. yeah Pistons are in a tough spot because draft chips didn’t fall our way. Cade for all intents and purposes the last two years has been our #1

like this team is definitely screwed if Cades offensive ceiling is Kemba (and super screwed if it’s Jrue or Lonzo). I know that’s not what you are arguing, just flagging it.

In terms of 3p% i have faith that Cades can rise to league average even while being the #1, he just needs to share more ball handling duties. Even Luka has poor stretches shooting the 3 when they all have to be self created

Foul drawing is weird I also think he’ll figure it out but the signs are not promising right now minus one or two games.

Like I genuinely think Cade can get to 56%+ TS as the number one option next season. I don’t think that’s like some amazing team but could be a 35+ win team with him as the fulcrum. It just feels shitty because fans thought that leap would be this year, and even though not much of our failure and losing streak is Cades fault, he’s definitely not helping us elevate out of it

kevin durant is averaging 37 minutes a game this year after having actually torn his achilles, being the same age, and having a much higher usage role. I don’t think you have a clue what you are talking about

yes the first game he comes back he probably shouldn’t be playing 32 min but if you think that an NBA basketball player is unable to play 32 minutes a game you have a pretty pathetic interpretation of their abilities. I think 32 is a pretty low to average number for a starter.

As a (at this moment very sad / unfortunate) diehard Pistons fan, I will say I’m way less concerned about the field goal stat

The TS stat is way more concerning. He is like if Demar Derozan didn’t know how to draw free throws or something. It’s insane, especially coupled with his turnover rate.

dude i asked about defense. Orlando’s offense sucks ass too, and it’s not like Paolo is the reason their defense is singing.

If you replaced Cade with Paolo offensively the Magic would be just as they are now

this is basically a non answer

mostly think it’s because the spurs have been on a big losing streak. something weird happened w nba media and fandom the last couple of years where we decided the best rookies needed to be on pretty good teams (see: scottie barnes, evan mobley roy race), that the fact that wemby’s team sucks is now a slight against wemby

i appreciate seeing a sliver of a silver lining amongst the idiocy that has been this season so far

until mid december I will keep looking out for those small things . and then I expect we will have closer to a full lineup and we start playing some catch up. maybe we don’t get to 30 wins this season but we absolutely need to show progress to 25+ wins

or maybe the long term silver lining is we don’t get to 25 wins and so Weaver is fired before absolutely taking a dump with our cap space . i don’t know what I prefer - I’m very nervous about Troy’s decision making, but would rather see the team as-is click as I think we are pretty fucked otherwise regardless of who our GM is

this is the dumbest take lol

sure but like it’s also the sub 50% true shooting, let’s not get it too twisted …. he could be fucking duncan robinson and never get to the rim and we would be way happier with his offensive production

omg a high 2nd?!? sign us up. I feel like even Weaver will make that trade (or maybe Arn can intercept the call and make it happen 😬)

The only thing I wish, and this is quite a minor one, is that Ivey was allowed to play crunch time after Cade fouled out. I feel like his performance more than justified it over Killian in this game.