Salsa comes in all sorts of flavors, but right now we’re not concerned with Black Bean and Corn versus Picante Poblano Power Drill or whatever. Today our concern is the spice index. You see, salsas typically comes down to Mild, Medium, and Hot tiers. Certain hipster salsa brands can get into a different sort of scaling system or maybe break it down into a 1-10 rating for marketing purposes, but more often than not you’re going to see some version of Mild, Medium, or Hot emblazoned on the outside of the salsa container.
Because there are no rules about doing this kind of thing, you can break NBA teams into the Hot, Medium, and Mild categories. For people who like spicy things, the Warriors and Rockets would be in the Hot range. If you want to be generous you can say there are a total of 10 teams up in that domain. Your Kings and Suns would be in the Mild area. Let’s say there are another 10 teams in that realm.
That leaves us about 10 (+/- .04) teams in the Medium range. Their most identifiable trait is that they’re not Hot or Mild. They’re defined by what they’re not. Not bad enough to be funny, not good enough to contend. They’re either outside interesting lottery picks or about to be run off the court by a high-seed playoff team.
The Pistons have been some form of Medium these last few years. If you want to get exact, they’ve been something like Extremely Medium, or Disappointingly Medium, or Medium as Hell in each. They’re a total of three games under .500 for the past three seasons. They’ve made the playoffs once. On the other end, they’ve picked in the lottery once. The two ostensible most important players have been their starting point guard and center, and they’ve been the same these last three years. The coach and GM were the same person the last three years as well, like actually the same person.
The only big move they’ve done in that time was trading Bobi, Tobi, and Bradley to get Blake Griffin, a trade which had a middling effect on their team’s record. They were 22-26 before acquiring Griffin. They went 17-17 after acquiring him, which is about as Medium as it gets.
This year looks to be another edition of Medium. The big roster moves involved losing Anthony Tolliver (who was quite awesome) and Eric Moreland (who wasn’t) and gaining Jose Calderon (who is old), Zaza Pachulia (who is old) and Glenn Robinson III (whose name is old as it goes back three generations). Not a ton to get excited about there either.
So this season’s hope is the same as the hope the last few years: maybe this year they’ll put it all together! !!! (!!!!!!!!) I added some exclamation points for dramatic effect. The all-together-putters this year are a bit different than last year, though. Stan Van Gundy has been removed from his position, and taking a ride on the coaching unicycle this year is last year’s Coach of the Year in Dwane Casey.
Yay! Improvement in all likelihood I think maybe! Despite adding old people this past summer, a lot of the Pistons’ hope for the future rests with younger people in Henry Ellenson, Stanley Johnson, and Luke Kennard. Casey turned a bunch of unproven young dudes into a damn fine bench in Toronto. If he can get that kind of progress out of any (or maybe all! (!!!! [!!!!!!!!!]) of these young dudes, the Pistons become more of a Pleasantly Medium as opposed to Mediumly Medium. In the world of Medium, that’s the best you can hope for.
Medium is the Pistons’ world. It’s hard for them to be Hot, and there just aren’t enough advantages to them fading into Mild territory with their current roster and salary makeup. It’s all so much the same as it was last year, and the year before, and the year before that.
But there are some things worth looking forward to:
- How will Blake look with an entire summer of working in the Pistons’ system?
- Where is Blake’s ceiling these days?
- Maybe this is the year Reggie Jackson is healthy and stays healthy.
- Can Andre Drummond continue building off his high post success from last year?
- Remember Jon Leuer? He exists again this year! Hooray!
- Luke Kennard isn’t Donovan Mitchell, but he’s not Malik Monk either. Can he take a step forward?
- Will more people show up to Pistons games so that this year isn’t quite as embarrassing with all the bright red seats?
Improvement in the margins is still improvement, though! That can happen! And generally, salsa is pretty tasty just like basketball is generally pretty fun to watch! Hooray for all of that! I think as long as expectations are reasonable, this Pistons season could be an enjoyable thing to watch. Medium enjoyable, anyway.
And to play us out, here’s Incubus with “Medium.”
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