Welcome back to Small Ball with Kenny Beecham on today's episode.

We got to get love to the Detroit Pistons.

I always say this as a meme because it's been quite some times.

It's been true, but it might be true nowadays.

The NBA runs through the Central Division.

The Bulls are not awful.

I mean, they may not be great, but they're not awful.

The Pistons are one of the top seas.

The Bucs still look pretty good. The calves are like the favorite to win the conference. The NBA runs through the century. Don't think about the Pacers. This ain't the year. Last year was their year. The NBA runs through the Central. So I want to go through the pistons because we are not that far removed away from them losing 26, 27 straight games in a row.

For them to be this good, this fast since then, without any, like, super major changes is a recipe for, from good coaching to star power to people buying into roles.

We want to talk about all of that.

I know we have talked about it since the start of the season, but I still have so much to say about the Dallas Mavericks. It's not really about the own core product right now. It's more about in front office stuff. And then after that, we're going to jump around the league. And then lastly, we will do your favorite segment, my favorite segment, ask KB, why I answer your question. It should be a beggar. All right, let's start off with this Detroit Pistons team because, honestly speaking, I was a little fearful for them going into the season. This offseason wasn't the perfect one for them, right? Malik Beasley being gone, then the shooter being gone. They lost some key pieces. Now, you can say that they replaced it with Duncan Robinson.

They were placed it with J. Naivey, who is also injured right now.

So I was a little bit of a skeptic when it came to the Detroit Pissons going to the

season.

I'll be the first one to say it.

You know, the year after the jump is always harder than the jump year because now

people recognize like, khanan ham is the all-in-a player if they weren't recognizing that before they lay late to the party but it's cool uh we recognize this team as a playoff team so we need to get up for these games opposed to last year when the pisses came to town you just kind of felt like you was going to win by 30 and be like oh no this team is better than we expected there is no surprise in the opponent so i thought that this year not that was going to be a bad year. I didn't think they were going to be outside of the playoffs, but I definitely didn't look at them and say, hey, they could be one of the top two seeds in the conference. Now, we're talking about 10 games in. We're also talking about them not having a super difficult schedule. I recognize all of that, but I do want to give them their flowers. words do, I'm starting off with Jalen Duren because Jalen Duren was one of those guys that, you know, the front office decided to elect to see him go into restrictive free agency, which tells you a lot and a little at the same time. His market would have just been weird based on his last couple seasons because sometimes he looks amazing and sometimes he feels like he doesn't really know what he's doing as far as the defensive side of the ball, but he has all the tools to be a really good defensive player. So it was a lot of this, a lot of that. And last year, the question was like who was the second best play on his team? And people had arguments, whether it be on a Pistons Twitter or outsiders like me looking in. And some people say, hey, our second best player was Malik Beasley last year. You asked that exact same question, 10 games to the season. There is no question who is the second best player on the Detroit Pistons because Jalen Duren is in the midst of a peak. One of the stats, I think, is one of the more telling ways to show that a center player is hitting the next spot.

He is holding opponents to a career best 47% at the rim.

With last year, he allowed teams to shoot 63% at the rim.

So that is a huge change between last year to this year.

Him and Isaiah Stewart, who we're going to talk about in a little second,

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