I wrote a fake account of a fake conversation with a fake person. Only the Detroit Pistons problems are real.
“What a load of malarkey!” I screamed like a two-bit 30s gangster. “Thirty-seven and a half wins!”
The Vegas over-under lines for each NBA team’s win total had just dropped and the gambling gurus weren’t particularly high on the boys in Piston blue.
This is a team returning a Third Team All-NBAer in Blake Griffin, a still improving Andre Drummond and the semblance of a young core in Luke Kennard, Thon Maker, Bruce Brown, Sekou Doumbouya et.al.
“Are they out of their minds?!” I protested to no one in particular.
But then, like Alonzo Mourning in that gif, I took a voyage through the gamut of emotions before settling upon numb acceptance. This is also a team, after all, that hasn’t won a playoff game in over a decade. A team that, over the last five years, has been firmly entrenched in that not really rebuilding but not actually contending dead zone (their average win total over that span: 38.6 games).
Eventually, Pistons Senior Advisor Ed Stefanski, the man saddled with the unenviable task of navigating these choppy, post-Van Gundy waters, must choose between acquiescing to an owner hellbent on winning now and the realities of team building in a mid-market, free agent non-destination. And with Drummond mostly likely opting out of the last year of his deal to secure a longer term commitment at the end of this season, the time to settle upon a direction may be nigh.
To get an inkling of what Stefanski might do going forward, I parsed through every decision he’d made since his appointment last May. Needless to say, the exercise left me with more questions than answers. To get resolution, I knew I’d have to speak with the man himself.
My first dozen or so attempts to garner a sit-down were largely fruitless. Each usually ended with an incredulous voice on the other line saying “who from what dot com?” before they’d hang up.
Just as I was about to give up, I finally encountered a more receptive ear. The faceless employee assured me that Ed would meet me on a Sunday, 5PM in utility closet B3 located on the basement level of Little Caesars Arena. If the peculiarity of the meeting location alone didn’t arouse my suspicion that something was amiss, her snickering as she hung up the phone sure as hell should have. Nonetheless, like a gullible Happy Gilmore on the ninth hole at 9PM, I pushed on in dogged pursuit of understanding.
So there I was on that Sunday, my knuckles tap-tap-tapping on the cold steel of utility closet B3’s door. After several seconds of inactivity I finally heard some unintelligible grumbling come from the other side. I tested the knob and found it to be unlocked.
When I swung it open, the first thing I noticed was the smell. It was a stifling blend of detergents, cleansers and solvents, each I assume to be deleterious to human health when inhaled on their own much less in aggregate.
The second thing I noticed was a man who seemed to be either impervious or indifferent to the smell. He was in his mid-fifties, white with blotchy sun-damaged skin on his ever expanding forehead. A mess of follicles roosted up top and a growing shadow circled his jawline.
He was decidedly not Ed Stefanski.
“Hello?” I said.
“Hi, there. What can I do you for?” he said jovially as he measured me through his thick, smudgy specs.
“I was supposed to meet…”
I paused, uninterested in exposing my naiveté .
“Ed Stefanski?” the man said.
“How’d you…”
He approached me, arm extended.
“The name’s Ned. Ned Sczymanski.”
It took me a second.
“Ahh…funny,” I said, shaking his calloused hand. I was annoyed yet somehow still appreciative of the ruse.
“Yeah…” he said, with an empathetic chuckle. “Sometimes the boys upstairs like to pull a fast one with some of these blogger types.”
“It was a woman.”
“Oh, that’s Denise,” he said, clapping me mirthfully on my back. “She’s quite the pill.”
“I’m sure,” I said, sheepishly backing out of the doorway.
“Off so soon?”
“Umm…yeah. I obviously won’t be speaking with Ed and I don’t want to bother you while you work.”
“Oh, it’s no bother,” he said, absently fiddling with the rag hanging from the back pocket of his heavily worn slacks. “Let’s have a chat. I don’t mind the company. Don’t get too many visitors down here, you know.”
Feeling a twinge of pity and really having no good excuse to leave, I figured I’d humor the man.
“Sure. Why not?”
“Great!” he said, with another booming clap on my back. “Anyways, ain’t nobody knows more about what goes on here than ol’ Ned.”
“What do you mean?” I said, my interest peaked.
“You see these keys?” he said, gesturing to a mighty ring affixed to his belt loop. “That means I can get in and out of darn near any room in the place. I buzz in and do my thing, empty the trash, wipe the windows, what have you, then I buzz out like a regular ol’ housefly. Nobody even looks my way. They just carry about their business sayin’ and doin’ whatever they was doin’ before I got there. Been that way since the Silverdome days. I just about seen and heard it all.”
“Really?”
He nodded with an earned pridefulness that seemed at odds with his shabby dress.
“In fact, I can tell you who Joe Dumars was talking to in that famous photo of him with the two phones.”
“This I gotta hear!”
“Well, then. Let’s walk.”
He closed the door to utility room B3 and we headed down the sterile, white corridor. Each of our steps fell with an echo. We were the only ones there.
“What’d you wanna see Ed for anyway?”
“I’ve been a fan of this team since the tail end of the Bad Boys years when I was just a kid and, for the life of me, I cannot remember a stretch where they felt so rudderless,” I said with an unintentionally audible sigh. “And I guess I hoped that speaking with Ed might give me a sense that they have some direction, some North Star they’re following to lead the team out of this cycle of mediocrity.”
“You don’t think he has a plan?”
“He may. It’s just that after going over each and every move he’s made since his arrival, it’s hard to see if that plan is in service of contention or rebuilding.”
“Well, let’s go over the moves and maybe I can provide some insight.”
“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “Why don’t we start with his title? Last May, after parting ways with Stan Van Gundy, they brought him on as Senior Advisor yet he, for all intents and purposes, is the General Manager. Why the semantics game?”
“Maybe he likes the sound of Senior Advisor better. General Manager just comes off kinda…general.”
“Perhaps, but then shouldn’t Malik Rose and the since-departed Sachin Gupta been called Junior Advisors instead of Assistant GMs.”
“Assistants to the GM.”
“Pardon?”
“You know. Like Dwight Shrute. I’m a big fan of The Office.”
“Focus, Ned. We’ve got a lot to go over.”
“Sorry.”
“GM. Senior Advisor. Regardless of title, his first move was to nab Dwane Casey to serve as Head Coach.”
“I remember the presser. I was over in the corner mopping up some spilled coffee. Ed said something along the lines that Dwane brought the experience and respect necessary to take our talented core built around a big three of Griffin, Andre and Reggie Jackson to the next level.”
“Precisely. A win now move.”
“Of course…the scuttlebutt is that he was also brought in to accelerate the growth of some of the younger guys.”
“So…more of a future-based move?”
“Can’t it be both?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t think it can.”
He stopped dead in his tracks in front of a large poster of Dennis Rodman.
“What is it?” I inquired.
He scrunched up his face and squinted at the rebounding God, slowly unsheathing the rag from his back pocket.
“Spider,” he said.
“Don’t you mean Worm?”
He lunged forward with an unexpected agility and slammed the rag against Rodman’s left calf. He then pulled it back to examine it before thrusting it in front of my face.
“No. Spider. See?”
The remnants of a daddy long-legs were smeared into the fibers. I pushed it aside.
“Lovely. Can I continue?”
“Please do,” he said, returning the rag to his pocket.
“The Draft came next and since their first rounder was sent off in the Blake deal, they only had two second rounders which they used to select Bruce Brown and Khyri Thomas.”
“And Bruce had a helluva season.”
“Ned, you gotta get out of that closet some more. I think the fumes are getting to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bruce had a nice season…for a 42nd pick.”
“Fair enough. But imagine how much better he’ll be as he continues to develop under Coach Casey.”
“That’s the key word there. Develop. It seems like he started so much because Ed and Dwane were focused on the future.”
“I remember hearing on a number of occasions some of the higher ups preaching about how Bruce gave the team the best chance to win.”
“Actually, of lineups that logged at least seventy-five minutes together last year and included Blake, Dre and Reggie the one with the highest net rating had Langston Galloway and Reggie Bullock on the wings. They gave up a couple more points without Bruce’s defense but they also scored over four more points per one hundred possessions.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do say. So, let’s put starting Bruce in the rebuilding column. But during free agency he signed Zaza Pachulia, Glenn Robinson III and Jose Calderon. Those signings screamed win now.”
“I’d have to agree.”
“The problem was that those three contributed very little to winning. Their respective VORP numbers were-“
“VORP?”
“Value over replacement player.”
“Ahh.”
“Anyways, as I was saying, their numbers were .5, -.3 and -.5 respectively.”
“Not great, Bob!” he said, chortling.
“Excuse me?”
“You know. Like Pete Campbell. I’m a big fan of Mad Men.”
I was going to admonish him but he seemed so damned amused with himself that I let it go.
“You’re right. Not great, indeed.”
“Who really believes in this VORP anyway.”
“Many people. In your comings and goings, did you get any sense that this front office shares your disdain for advanced analytics?”
“Can’t say for sure. They did bring that fella in from Philadelphia who was supposed to be up on all that new-fangled jargon.”
“Yes, the aforementioned Gupta. He was considered by many the driving force behind many of Sam Hinkie’s trades while Philly executed the most blatant example of tankery in NBA history. Didn’t his addition suggest a teardown was imminent?”
“I remember Ed saying that Sachin was brought in because he is a bright guy with a great handle on the analytical side of the operation.”
“That’s the consensus. He’s off to some high up front office position with Minnesota now but the moves made while he was here suggest more a rebuilding mindset. For example, why trade Reggie Bullock if not for that express purpose? He was worth 2.4 Win Shares while with the squad last year and gave the team shooting and length at the wing.”
“He was a free agent we were unlikely to re-sign. Ed was able to get a young piece in Svi Mykhailiuk as well as replenish the coffers with a second rounder.”
“True, but Reggie would have given them a better chance in the playoffs last year than Svi and a future second rounder did.”
“No doubt, but how many wins was Wayne Ellington worth? He essentially replaced Reggie in the rotation.”
“1.6, but there’s no way Ed knew Wayne would fall into his lap.”
“I suppose not.”
“And the Stanley Johnson trade was most definitely made looking beyond the 2018-19 season. I mean, it left the team completely bereft of wing defenders.”
“I think they liked the idea of getting more cap-friendly while getting a developmental piece like Thon Maker.”
“Future based moves! During a so-called playoff push!”
“Also, I think Ed was just out on Stanley.”
“A guy that he apparently thought had star potential just six months prior!”
“Ok, ok. Don’t get yourself all worked up now,” Ned said, putting a consoling arm around my shoulder.
“All I’m saying is if you’re gonna go for it, go for it! Mike Conley was out there. So was Marc Gasol. You see how much he helped that Raptors squad? And if you’re rebuilding, own it! What do these half-measures get you? Huh? An eight seed and an absolute pantsing by the Bucks. That’s what.”
“Ain’t nothin’ good gonna come from dwelling on that playoff series. Why don’t we move on to this season?”
“Sure! You mean the one where we drafted the youngest player in the league?”
“I like the look of Sekou Doumbouya. Don’t you? Kinda like a Pascal Siakam type.”
“Yeah, I guess. I mean…who knows? He’s eighteen! He’s unlikely to meaningfully contribute for at least a couple years.”
“Who’d you have taken?” he asked.
I pondered this for a second as I looked up at a thirty year old photo featuring a grinning and champagne-drenched Jack McCloskey. The Pistons old GM was shoulder-to-shoulder with Coach Daly in the winning locker room celebrating the first of back-to-back NBA Championships.
“If I’m rebuilding, I probably take Sekou. If I’m not, and I plan on adding veterans like Derrick Rose, Tim Frazier and Markieff Morris in free agency, then I probably go with someone like Nickeil Alexander-Walker or Brandon Clarke. I think either of them would have been more likely to contribute to wins this year.”
“Oh, really?” Ned said, quizzically.
“You disagree?” I said, turning to him. He was looking down at his phone.
“What is it?” I asked.
He scoffed. “Well, uh…it seems ol’ Ed just went ahead and signed Michael Beasley.”
My legs gave out beneath me and I fell to my knees.
“Trader Jack!” I pleaded to the man on the wall with my arms spread out wide. “We Pistons fans have suffered enough! What are we to expect from this team!? Will Stefanski extend Dre? Is Kennard going to get a bigger role in the offense? Will Reggie be moved at the deadline for a young player or pick? Rebuild or contend?! This constant hedging is driving us mad!”
“All right, now. Up you go,” Ned said, lifting me from the floor. “Trader Jack can’t help you. He’s been gone a couple years now.”
“No, Ned! He can’t! But you can! You said you know things. You’re the eyes and ears of this place. What can we expect?”
“You really want to know what you should expect?”
“Yes! For the love of God! Yes!”
“Ok, then.”
He paused with an air of deadly seriousness about him.
“You should expect about thirty-seven and a half wins,” he said, bursting into such boisterous laughter that it seemed to travel the length of the corridor to encircle the building and hit me from both sides.
With another booming clap on my back, he was off to whatever custodial duties awaited him leaving me to note the irony of how much time I’d spent spinning my wheels, discussing a team that seems to do much of the same.
“Hey!” I shouted to him, wanting to at least gain something from the experience. “You said you’d tell me who Joe was talking to in that photo!”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, “I almost forgot. On one line he was brokering the Josh Smith signing.”
I shuddered. “And on the other?”
“Ordering some take-out ribs from Ginopolis.”
Cover art: Janitor, Duane Hanson. Christopher Paulin. Modified from original. Its use in no way suggests licensor endorses fishkorn.com. Original obtained at https://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinandchris/3263799227/in/photostream/ under creative commons license 2.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/. Blue, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Blue_%28film%29.jpg. Arena, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Little_Caesars_Arena_panorama.jpg.