[Sharp ShooterParticipant]

 During the  WAS and DET. game Josh Smith was benched for the whole 2nd half of the game. 

I think its starting to be clear that Josh Smith isn’t in Cheeks favor.

 

But this pistons team really puzzles you. One minute they shown potential by beating Indy, Mia, and almost portland. Then the next game they blow leads and lose to Bobcats, Orlando, WAS. It’s like the old saying "You take one step forward, and two steps back"

 

http://www.pistonpowered.com/2013/12/josh-smith-benched-for-second-half-of-pistons-ugly-loss-to-washington-wizards/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 

 

[i’m jus so offendedParticipant]

 How much better would Lionel Hollins be for this team? I’m not going to place all the blame on either/or as I have no real knowledge of the situation but Mo Cheeks is not cut out to be a head coach. 

[i’m jus so offendedParticipant]

 How much better would Lionel Hollins be for this team? I’m not going to place all the blame on either/or as I have no real knowledge of the situation but Mo Cheeks is not cut out to be a head coach. 

[dacula18Participant]

 Lionell Hollins is a terrefic coach. Its ridiculous that people like Jason Kidd and Mike Woodson are NBA head coaches and Hollins is unemployed. 

[dacula18Participant]

 Lionell Hollins is a terrefic coach. Its ridiculous that people like Jason Kidd and Mike Woodson are NBA head coaches and Hollins is unemployed. 

[FearTheStacheParticipant]

 He just shouldn’t be playing small forward, or at least when the other two big men are the non-shooting Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond. Personally, I think they should trade Monroe for a nice shooting wing, as he is not fit to play next to Drummond, who is untouchable at this point. I think a Dre/Smoove front court would be really effective, especially on the defensive end, as well as in transition. It is becoming more and more clear that Monroe is not the right guy for this team, assuming Drummond has the center spot locked up for years.

[FearTheStacheParticipant]

 He just shouldn’t be playing small forward, or at least when the other two big men are the non-shooting Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond. Personally, I think they should trade Monroe for a nice shooting wing, as he is not fit to play next to Drummond, who is untouchable at this point. I think a Dre/Smoove front court would be really effective, especially on the defensive end, as well as in transition. It is becoming more and more clear that Monroe is not the right guy for this team, assuming Drummond has the center spot locked up for years.

[AmiableBaller34Participant]

 It’s crazy to think they’re paying him $13.5 mil for 4 more years. Do teams even think about the aethetics of basketball before they do something like that. Between Smith’s and Joe Johnson’s contracts you would think the Hawks were an actual contender. 

I still think Smith could become an elite role play, but he needs to stop this dishonesty with himself and realize what he can and can’t do. He’s been in the league for almost a decade now, and is still being stigmatized for the same imperfections that he had as a rookie. Tonight he was 2-7, and he really hasn’t been all that good outside of the paint this year. For real, just look at this shot chart; it’ll tell you everything you need to know about Josh Smith: vorped.com/bball/index.php/player/shotchart/1084-Josh-Smith/season/2012-2013-REG

[AmiableBaller34Participant]

 It’s crazy to think they’re paying him $13.5 mil for 4 more years. Do teams even think about the aethetics of basketball before they do something like that. Between Smith’s and Joe Johnson’s contracts you would think the Hawks were an actual contender. 

I still think Smith could become an elite role play, but he needs to stop this dishonesty with himself and realize what he can and can’t do. He’s been in the league for almost a decade now, and is still being stigmatized for the same imperfections that he had as a rookie. Tonight he was 2-7, and he really hasn’t been all that good outside of the paint this year. For real, just look at this shot chart; it’ll tell you everything you need to know about Josh Smith: vorped.com/bball/index.php/player/shotchart/1084-Josh-Smith/season/2012-2013-REG

[TRC1991Participant]

the problem with Detroit is they have Monroe and Smith occupying the same area on the floor and don’t have enough floor spacing with both of them in there.

[TRC1991Participant]

the problem with Detroit is they have Monroe and Smith occupying the same area on the floor and don’t have enough floor spacing with both of them in there.

[dacula18Participant]

 As a Hawks fan, I was so thankful when Josh went to Detroit. He is not a player I want on my team. He doesn’t want to work in a system that maximizes his enormous talent. He wants to do whatever he wants. Unfortunately the Pistons are letting him do that. He is a TERRIBLE 3 point shooter, yet the Pistons use him to space the floor. He’ll make one and then shoot 6 more because of the confidence boost. 

I know financially it makes sense to trade Monroe at this point, as he will likely leave anyway, but I think Monroe/Drummond would be better than Smith/Drummond in the future simply because of how inept Josh Smith is. 

 

 

 

[dacula18Participant]

 As a Hawks fan, I was so thankful when Josh went to Detroit. He is not a player I want on my team. He doesn’t want to work in a system that maximizes his enormous talent. He wants to do whatever he wants. Unfortunately the Pistons are letting him do that. He is a TERRIBLE 3 point shooter, yet the Pistons use him to space the floor. He’ll make one and then shoot 6 more because of the confidence boost. 

I know financially it makes sense to trade Monroe at this point, as he will likely leave anyway, but I think Monroe/Drummond would be better than Smith/Drummond in the future simply because of how inept Josh Smith is. 

 

 

 

[hawkmanParticipant]

Longtime Hawks fan here. Josh is who he is because the Hawks weren’t really into player development when they first started their rebuild some years back. He was a blank slate when he was drafted by the Hawks but seldom received any discipline over the years he spent here. He worked hard on his game and became a reasonably well rounded player, but also fell in love with the three pointer and long twos. I’m pretty sure the coaching staff let him shoot because he was doing so many other good things on the court. They just took the good with the bad. Now Josh is finally getting benched and disciplined like he should’ve been years ago. I honestly think he means well, but he has to realize what his strengths are and stick to them or he will end up buried on the bench for good.

[hawkmanParticipant]

Longtime Hawks fan here. Josh is who he is because the Hawks weren’t really into player development when they first started their rebuild some years back. He was a blank slate when he was drafted by the Hawks but seldom received any discipline over the years he spent here. He worked hard on his game and became a reasonably well rounded player, but also fell in love with the three pointer and long twos. I’m pretty sure the coaching staff let him shoot because he was doing so many other good things on the court. They just took the good with the bad. Now Josh is finally getting benched and disciplined like he should’ve been years ago. I honestly think he means well, but he has to realize what his strengths are and stick to them or he will end up buried on the bench for good.

[Sharp ShooterParticipant]

 Personally, after watching the WAS and DET I believe that Josh Smith did nothing wrong this time. He took the right shot selections in the paint (and two 3 pt attempts that were in rhytm ).   The WAS wizards just simply played great team defense in the paint against him.  As for him guarding Ariza  he made him work on offense and he didn’t play him any worser than any other game. Usually I’m one of the hardest crtitcs on JSmith, but Cheeks just doesn’t to favor JSmith imo. and he was wrong for benching him. 

It’s funny though, no other pistons have gotten benched more than him. If anything he needs to start benching monroe his defense because he is just havin too many defensive lapse (pnr defense, one on one defense, refuse to attempt a block, and simply team defense and constantly losing his defender in plays).  Drummond should’ve been benched for taking an ill-advised 25  foot jumpshot with 15 seconds left on the clock. However Cheeks left him in.

Josh Smith erratic? yes. Terrible jumpshooter? yes. Victim of being singled out? Possibly.  Cheeks cannot possibly say he hasn’t made any changes to his game because in the last 10 games he’s been avg almost 20 and 8. While taking way less 3 pointers, and more to the basket.  Sometimes teams are going to have a better defensive plan, and that’s what washington has done.  Thats the game of basketball, you just have to adjust. Kudos to them and their dfense

I hope its something more to this benching than what meets the eye because from my standpoint, Josh Smith isn’t playing no worster than any other player on the team and doesn’t deserve to be singled out.  So hopefully there something that we (the viewers) are not seeing.

After the interview he stated in the after game interview his "character is being tested".

 

P.s. It was also nice seeing Ben Wallace come out of hiding at the game.

 

 

[Sharp ShooterParticipant]

 Personally, after watching the WAS and DET I believe that Josh Smith did nothing wrong this time. He took the right shot selections in the paint (and two 3 pt attempts that were in rhytm ).   The WAS wizards just simply played great team defense in the paint against him.  As for him guarding Ariza  he made him work on offense and he didn’t play him any worser than any other game. Usually I’m one of the hardest crtitcs on JSmith, but Cheeks just doesn’t to favor JSmith imo. and he was wrong for benching him. 

It’s funny though, no other pistons have gotten benched more than him. If anything he needs to start benching monroe his defense because he is just havin too many defensive lapse (pnr defense, one on one defense, refuse to attempt a block, and simply team defense and constantly losing his defender in plays).  Drummond should’ve been benched for taking an ill-advised 25  foot jumpshot with 15 seconds left on the clock. However Cheeks left him in.

Josh Smith erratic? yes. Terrible jumpshooter? yes. Victim of being singled out? Possibly.  Cheeks cannot possibly say he hasn’t made any changes to his game because in the last 10 games he’s been avg almost 20 and 8. While taking way less 3 pointers, and more to the basket.  Sometimes teams are going to have a better defensive plan, and that’s what washington has done.  Thats the game of basketball, you just have to adjust. Kudos to them and their dfense

I hope its something more to this benching than what meets the eye because from my standpoint, Josh Smith isn’t playing no worster than any other player on the team and doesn’t deserve to be singled out.  So hopefully there something that we (the viewers) are not seeing.

After the interview he stated in the after game interview his "character is being tested".

 

P.s. It was also nice seeing Ben Wallace come out of hiding at the game.

 

 

[Jester87Participant]

I don’t think Cheeks is the one to be blamed and I also don’t think Hollins would change much. He might even be a better coach, but it’s not a matter of coaching here, just as it isn’t in New York. Woodson is the same coach that lead the Knicks to that spectacular first half last year, during which they played really well. I don’t think he became an idiot all of a sudden. Just blame the execs who build team just stockpiling talent without any logic. That’s mostly NY’s case, at least Detroit has some flexibility if the experiment doesn’t work.

By the way, anybody with little basketball knowledge could see this Pistons team had many potential issues and it was going to be very hard to make things work, even for the best coach in the world. On offense they have two very inefficient players (Smith and Jennings) with terrible shot selections and a tendency to stop the ball too much. They also have a pick and roll only big (Drummond) who’s not a threat beyond 3 feet to pair with another big who likes to work inside and at the elbow, something very unlikely to result in decent spacings, both for perimeter players when they want to drive (because they would find the lane clogged) and for said two bigs themselves because the pick and roll is going to be played in narrow spaces, with an easier task for the defense to help and rotate; and at the same time, Monroe is going to find a lot of traffic when he posts up and opponents can double up him easily, without having to cover much space to get back to their man. To make things even worse, none of those 4 is a reliable shooter (maybe Jennings) and both Jennings and Smith never move without the ball, so their offense is totally stagnant and the defense has a really easy life. The only players moving without the ball for them are KCP, Singler and Datome. Considering all these things I’m surprised that 4 man lineup managed to reach a nonetheless mediocre 99.4 points per 100 possessions, with 49.6 TS%.

And it’s not like things are better on D. Monroe is a slow feet human turnstile, whose limits are exposed when he’s involved in pick and roll situations, showing he cannot contain ball handlers. Drummond has better physical tools, but he lacks experience and makes many mistakes, he’s often late or out of position, jumps out of fakes. Him and Josh Smith relies mostly on their athletic gifts, but none of them has a decent grasp of basic defensive schemes, and help defense is basically non existent in Detroit. It doesn’t help the fact that Jennings is very lazy and his effort and focus are questionable, he gets beat off the dribble very often, leaving no time to rotate for his teammates, thus exposing even more their limits. And even Smith, who’s a good one on one defender, has some troubles against quicker 3s (or when opponents goes small with 3 guards lineups). That 4 man lineup allows 109.7 points per 100 possessions, a number that would rank dead last in the league. But with all the blame you can put on the coach, it doesn’t surprise me at all that a lineup made of so many young, unexperienced players, 3 of whom haven’t spent a single minute in college, shows lack of awareness on D and has problems handling very basic concepts of team defense. Those things have a lot to do with experience (and sometimes experience is not enough).

I think it’s pretty normal for Cheeks to try other lineups and make experiments to see if he can make things work somehow. I think he probably knew that big frontline wasn’t going to work from the very start, but that’s how things go: when you pay big money for a free agent and you have some talented young players, the ownership and the fanbase demands you to play them together, even if it’s going to be bad. I guess he has to try that 3 man unit and try some lineups with Smith as their 4 and others with a stretch 4 like Datome or Villanueva spreading the floor for Drummond’s pick and roll (actually lineups with Datome have worked really well on offense, but it’s a very small sample). They were very good last year when they did that and it wasn’t a coincidence the fact that Lawrence Frank rarely played Monroe and Drummond together. By the way the Pistons should also start thinking about trading one between Smith and Monroe, with the latter being the most likely. If Drummond is their future (and that seems undisputed), Monroe is redundant. I also don’t expect major improvements from him and he’s going to be free agent and ask a lot of money soon; he still has a good trade value. Not to mention, as Kirk Goldsberry brilliantly pointed out on twitter, Toronto recently showed a lesson that needs to be learned: sometimes you could have addition by subtraction.

[Jester87Participant]

I don’t think Cheeks is the one to be blamed and I also don’t think Hollins would change much. He might even be a better coach, but it’s not a matter of coaching here, just as it isn’t in New York. Woodson is the same coach that lead the Knicks to that spectacular first half last year, during which they played really well. I don’t think he became an idiot all of a sudden. Just blame the execs who build team just stockpiling talent without any logic. That’s mostly NY’s case, at least Detroit has some flexibility if the experiment doesn’t work.

By the way, anybody with little basketball knowledge could see this Pistons team had many potential issues and it was going to be very hard to make things work, even for the best coach in the world. On offense they have two very inefficient players (Smith and Jennings) with terrible shot selections and a tendency to stop the ball too much. They also have a pick and roll only big (Drummond) who’s not a threat beyond 3 feet to pair with another big who likes to work inside and at the elbow, something very unlikely to result in decent spacings, both for perimeter players when they want to drive (because they would find the lane clogged) and for said two bigs themselves because the pick and roll is going to be played in narrow spaces, with an easier task for the defense to help and rotate; and at the same time, Monroe is going to find a lot of traffic when he posts up and opponents can double up him easily, without having to cover much space to get back to their man. To make things even worse, none of those 4 is a reliable shooter (maybe Jennings) and both Jennings and Smith never move without the ball, so their offense is totally stagnant and the defense has a really easy life. The only players moving without the ball for them are KCP, Singler and Datome. Considering all these things I’m surprised that 4 man lineup managed to reach a nonetheless mediocre 99.4 points per 100 possessions, with 49.6 TS%.

And it’s not like things are better on D. Monroe is a slow feet human turnstile, whose limits are exposed when he’s involved in pick and roll situations, showing he cannot contain ball handlers. Drummond has better physical tools, but he lacks experience and makes many mistakes, he’s often late or out of position, jumps out of fakes. Him and Josh Smith relies mostly on their athletic gifts, but none of them has a decent grasp of basic defensive schemes, and help defense is basically non existent in Detroit. It doesn’t help the fact that Jennings is very lazy and his effort and focus are questionable, he gets beat off the dribble very often, leaving no time to rotate for his teammates, thus exposing even more their limits. And even Smith, who’s a good one on one defender, has some troubles against quicker 3s (or when opponents goes small with 3 guards lineups). That 4 man lineup allows 109.7 points per 100 possessions, a number that would rank dead last in the league. But with all the blame you can put on the coach, it doesn’t surprise me at all that a lineup made of so many young, unexperienced players, 3 of whom haven’t spent a single minute in college, shows lack of awareness on D and has problems handling very basic concepts of team defense. Those things have a lot to do with experience (and sometimes experience is not enough).

I think it’s pretty normal for Cheeks to try other lineups and make experiments to see if he can make things work somehow. I think he probably knew that big frontline wasn’t going to work from the very start, but that’s how things go: when you pay big money for a free agent and you have some talented young players, the ownership and the fanbase demands you to play them together, even if it’s going to be bad. I guess he has to try that 3 man unit and try some lineups with Smith as their 4 and others with a stretch 4 like Datome or Villanueva spreading the floor for Drummond’s pick and roll (actually lineups with Datome have worked really well on offense, but it’s a very small sample). They were very good last year when they did that and it wasn’t a coincidence the fact that Lawrence Frank rarely played Monroe and Drummond together. By the way the Pistons should also start thinking about trading one between Smith and Monroe, with the latter being the most likely. If Drummond is their future (and that seems undisputed), Monroe is redundant. I also don’t expect major improvements from him and he’s going to be free agent and ask a lot of money soon; he still has a good trade value. Not to mention, as Kirk Goldsberry brilliantly pointed out on twitter, Toronto recently showed a lesson that needs to be learned: sometimes you could have addition by subtraction.

[anthony_DavIS23Participant]

 He was benched because coach finally found out he was a krypt.

[anthony_DavIS23Participant]

 He was benched because coach finally found out he was a krypt.

[Author]

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