Welcome onto a Sunday night edition of the dunked on basketball NBA podcast 15 and 60 on the Eastern Conference and Liam is gonna start us off here with the free falling Detroit Pistons.

Sure, so the Pistons 2 and 5 since the last 15 and 60 30 and 36 overall there 21st in that rating 22nd and offensive rating and 14th and defensive rating and right now their projected wins are 37 wins which would make them 9th in the east and their playoff odds are practically you know zero at this point.

So I'll just start with the big news from the owner who came out in the media and said that there I'll read the quote there's no playoffs or else ultimatum but he wants to win it's about what happened this year what we're going to do about the future stand is a team player and we're going to discuss it we're not winning enough so we have to talk about that and so I'll propose the question to you guys so if you were a stan van Gundy would you fight all or nothing to keep your coach or GM you know title of you know as both of them or you know would you.

Allow the Pistons to come in and pick a GM to work over you in the system because it sounds like there might be some changes from that comment from the owner the dreaded vote of confidence but I wanted to see what you guys thought about that.

Yeah well a lot of people are saying the idea that Stan is a team player implies that he could lose front office responsibilities.

Our entelm of course has been there he was instrumental in getting them into that little Caesar's arena in downtown Detroit but now tell him doesn't apparently have anything to do so the obvious potential replacement as well as the fact that things have not really worked out for van Gundy they made this trade for play Griffin that is not work to get them in the playoffs sure they've been missing Reggie Jackson but Griffin has not played well in a piston uniform as we're going to get to I am sure so I mean fight for all another means under contract for some of the

$35 million for next year he signed that five year thirty five million dollar deal so I would imagine you just have to deal with it because I don't see anyone else paying him seven million dollars for next year either and the problem of course is that no matter who they bring in now is the GM especially because this Griffin trade has locked them into him for so long you know I'm not sure there's much immediate surgery that can be done and as says it is to say for Pistons fans four years after then Gundy's tenure started they're really not any better off.

Then they were when it began well what I would say on the all or nothing element of it is whether stan van Gundy really wants to coach this team next year because they're going to pay him no matter what and if he basically says I want both things where I want neither thing it's in a weird way it's kind of like a nicer version of what Jason kid in Brooklyn what he didn't Brooklyn where he tried to get more with the idea being that if he failed he could just fall out of it and stan van could do something else because I don't think coaching the pistons next year is really going to build his brand new

band I believe he's 58 right now so he has enough time if he wants another job to get another job so if he doesn't want to coach this team necessarily next year I might make be less amenable to seating that part of power and just lining taking next year off and then lining up the next gig.

Yeah good. Sorry. Yeah. The only thing I would say is if I remember correctly I think the reason that he took the pistons job in the first place over the golden state job was that they gave him this power and that he'd been burned in the past with the you know the front

office you know firing him when maybe he felt you know he didn't deserve it or maybe some personnel moves that he wasn't happy with but I just figured that he wouldn't be willing to see that power but I don't know I guess it's a possibility at this point.

Yeah it's just a question of what other options does he have I mean to not see it I mean you can just say you're not the GM GM anymore he still has a contract to coach and maybe they'll work that out but I think the biggest reason why he wanted that power is to not get fired the way he did in Orlando and you know with this contract nearly up you know you just I'm not going to do it.

I don't think he really has the leverage maybe they'll work out a parting but you know seven million bucks is not bad to coach a team and maybe he can be a better coach for them but let's talk to Liam about why it is that things that have not worked so well for them and where do you want to start it on that score?

Sure so. Not muting your microphone when you call.

Well not my best moment but so since the Blake Griffin trade their net rating overall is 22nd in the league their offense is 25th and the defensive their defensive rating is 13th and offensively I think you can panel out of the their problems down to some of their shot selection and just their struggle in the mid range their 10th in the league and percentage of shots taken from the mid range and their 28th and percent from the mid range so they really struck in that area.

So when let me know for quickly when you say shot selection do you mean they're just taking bad shots or just that they can't get better shots I think that's an important distinction sometimes.

Well I think that it's probably that they're not they can't get better shots right now and that part of that has to do with the Reggie Jackson injury and Reggie Jackson hasn't been great but he is another guy that can create on ball because right now they're asking Blake Griffin to do just a thumb with the ball and then even when he's off the floor the white bikes is you know they're making creator so they definitely are lacking creators right now.

And maybe Reggie Jackson helps some with that but I think I want to you know push back a little bit on you saying that Blake Griffin's struggled in Detroit and not that he's played great and I just think a lot of the circumstances haven't allowed him to you know play as well as you would think so just watching like the calves game I felt like they isolate him for like 20 possessions in a row which I know is an acuity but it just felt that way the way their offense was flowing and they'll start out each game with some nice movement and then it just throughout the game it'll just regress to Griffin trying to create everything you know.

For the team himself so in 17 games he's averaging 20 points a game seven rebounds and six assists and he's got a ridiculous 30% assist percentage of for their big which is like a hundredth percentile he's you know really distributing and they like to stick him in out of the low post of the high post and as Dylan Murphy is pointed out in the past when you get a guy that can create the high post is so double it's so hard to double team in that area because everybody's just one pass away and he's been actually pretty effective on post ups 22% of his possessions he's going to do it.

So even though they don't always look you know pretty the he is actually decently efficient down there and he ran some four or five picking roles and he got some good stuff out of that I'd like to see them run that a little bit more and he's just still a really big mismatch for a lot of guys as far as you know as perimeter scales as handle and just the strength in the post and I think part of his jump shooting struggles he's been terrible from mid range and I think some of that's just yes to create a lot which I'll get into a little bit more later but as three point struggles he's actually he's shooting 32% from three.

On over five attempts at games with the pistons but he's actually 36% on catching shoot threes and he's taking about two of those a game and the problem is that he's taking three pull up threes a game at 20.

That's absolutely insane that he has to take that many pull up threes a minute that that is probably the biggest stat to me that he is just like overburdened from a creations standpoint right now.

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