Cade Cunningham/Monty Williams and the Pistons in general
Cade Cunningham seems like a nice kid, but he’s been a very bad basketball player to start his career. He missed most of last season and is only 22, but he’s been awful early this year. He’s shooting 40.2% from the floor and turning the ball over 5 times a game. His usage is over 30% and his PER (player efficiency rating) is 10.1.
I know there are even better statistical methods to measure player efficiency and other metrics but I suck at math and PER is still a decent rough indicator of how someone is performing offensively. A league average PER is calculated at 15, he’s not close to sniffing that.
I haven’t seen any stories really detailing his struggles, but if he keeps this up they are coming. He seems like a generally good kid so I am rooting for him, but all signs point to him being more like a 2 guard with some shot creating ability, not Luka Doncic.
Not done with The Stones (what Pistons fans refer to the Pistons as) yet. It was a total head scratcher when they signed Monty Williams to a 6 year 78 million dollar contract this offseason. He’s the highest paid coach in NBA history and makes 1.5 million more a year than the second highest paid coach, Greg Popovich. Monty is 369-346 a 51.2% career winning percentage. He had a stacked Suns team the past few years and the past two years they had embarrassing playoff exits which lead to him getting canned.
The Pistons are off to a 2-10 start to the year and he’s making super odd coaching decisions like playing Killian Hays over Jaden Ivey. I watched the Hawks squad squeak out a win against the Pistons on Wednesday in Detroit and down by 30 with roughly 30 seconds left they fouled DeJounte Murray while the Hawks were in the bonus.
Just a dumb undisciplined foul and to me that screams awful coaching. DJM calmly hit the free throws and the game was essentially over. I was super confused when he got the contract this offseason and I think my skepticism was warranted. Again, another good guy by all accounts and I hope they can turn it around.
Shai-Gilgeous Alexander be lookin like D’Angelo in his Skims commercial
So Shai-Gilgeous Alexander is a total beast on the court and the OKC Thunder are just a fun team to watch and probably a top 6 team in the West already. All of that is great, but he also looks like D’Angelo from his Voodoo era in his new SKIMS commercial.
Skims seems to be some type of form fitting boxer briefs or something. I personally wear boxers from Old Navy that my wife periodically purchases for me after the ones I have start to look raggedy.
I didn’t seek out this material, they showed the SKIMS commercial like 800 times last night during the OKC/Warriors game, I just connected the dots. Which leads me to the next topic…
Draymond Green/Andrew Wiggins
So, I’m sure everyone has seen the video of Draymond Green putting Rudy Gobert in a chokehold by now. He only got a 5 game suspension from the league, which seems ultra-light to me at least. Part of the reasoning for the length of the suspension was his past history of doing stupid shit in games, like hitting LeBron in the nuts, stomping on Domantas Sabonis and ton of other egregious shit he’s done. This line of reasoning doesn’t make any sense to me. I feel like the chokehold warranted at least 10 games as a stand alone incident. If you take all of his past transgressions into account, maybe a 20-25 game suspension would have been more appropriate.
None of this makes sense to me at all. The league hands out flagrant one fouls that would have been laughable as actual fouls back in the 90’s. But when another dude tries to choke out someone on the court they act like there’s nothing to see here? Anyway, I can’t stand Draymond or the Warriors in general really and I think this suspension would have been way steeper if it even a random NBA player would have done it.
Speaking of the Warriors, they are now 6-7 and look old and slow after their good start to the season. Also they signed Andrew Wiggins to a 4 year 109 million dollar contract this offseason and his play this year makes Cade Cunningham look like an all NBA player. His PER is 6! He’s 28 years old and has never lived up to the hype.
He was billed as a can’t miss generational player who could have been the next coming of LeBron James. He was the most hyped player since LeBron when he came out in 2014. He’s been a starter level player, maybe a 4th option on a championship team, third option on a middling team. Which is exactly what happened when the Warriors won the championship two years ago. He was 4th option or so that year but he played great during their run and they won it all. He was about the 2nd or 3rd option for the Wolves and they never did anything when he was there.
I’m predicting the Warriors finally fall from grace this year, I’m thinking like 8-10 and a play-in exit. We will see if I’m correct?
Editor’s Note: Hardwood is a double entendre, of sorts