Detroit Pistons Finally Rebuilding with a Plan

The Detroit Pistons have been a mess the last few seasons. This is obviously not a news flash. What's more is that the fans saw this train wreck coming a mile away.

It's like when you are walking down the street and you see a car turning into on coming traffic and there is another car in their blind spot. You as the pedestrian are helpless to their plight, you just have to brace yourself and hope for the best.

That is exactly the way Pistons fans have been watching this team. The new things were not going to end well with the team that they had assembled, but we were helpless to intervene. We just had to brace ourselves and hope for the best.

The biggest problem with this team is that there has not been a coherent plan. Team president Joe Dumars did a masterful job of crafting one of the great Pistons teams of all-time in the group that dominated the Lakers in the 2004 NBA Finals. He did so by building the team around a bunch of castoffs, supposed malcontents and busts.

But they all shared the desire to win, and outwork the other guy. They were a cohesive unit that played stellar defense and shared the ball on offense. Dumars built a winner despite never having a player on the team that would be considered in the top 10 in the league.

After that team had run it's course, Dumars attempted to rebuild on the fly. He hoped to avoid the playoff drought that came after the "Bad Boys" had moved on, and so he took a proactive approach.

This is a good idea in theory, but Dumars did not execute well. He dealt Chauncey Billups, who was the soul of the team and still had a ton left in the tank, for Allen Iverson's expiring deal. He then inexplicably gave Rip Hamilton a huge extension.

So the plan was to retool the team around Hamilton? But you are also bringing in a superstar that plays his position? These moves made zero sense, but more importantly, they were not part of a solid plan.

Then, Dumars decided to bring in two free agents that were terrible defenders, and yes, one of them also played Hamilton's position. So the rebuilding around Hamilton plan was now out?

Well, kind of, but Hamilton would still start ahead of Ben Gordon, making Gordon one exceptionally-paid sixth man.

The biggest problem with the Charlie Villanueva and Gordon signings was that they did not fit a true plan. Dumars essentially said that he wanted a bunch of versatile offensive players that could play a bunch of different positions. He wanted a bunch of swing men that could score.

So now the plan is to bring in a bunch of guys without set positions that are all about the same size and just throw them together and hope to out score the opponents on the nightly basis?

When ownership had their own little train wreck, Dumars was then helpless to step in and make a move. But what exactly would he have done? He did not have a coherent plan of action, so who was he going to bring in? And who would he be able to trade?

As you can see, this team was a mess before the ownership debacle and the oft-mentioned tying of the hands of Dumars.

Okay, enough of the (recent) past. On to the present and more importantly, the future.

What has the Pistons Nation chattering these days is a return to the basics of Detroit basketball. Dumars, and more importantly team owner Tom Gores, are saying all the right things. They will have accountability, hard work, defense and character on this team. There will never again be a team that was put together for last year, and subsequently played very un-Pistons-like.

They have begun to put the pieces together.

They mercifully fired coach John Kuester and based on the candidates that are being discussed, will replace him with a more forceful personality.

They drafted Kentucky point guard Brandon Knight, a creative offensive player who more importantly is a hard worker with a good head on his shoulders.

They also drafted Duke forward Kyle Singler, who had by far the best college career of anyone in the draft from a team perspective. Singler also is a high-character guy who has shown a knack for doing anything and everything for his team.

Singler is limited at this level, but he is a winner (Singler also was a winner at Medford High School in Oregon, battling with Kevin Love's Lake Oswego team for state championships).

There is still a lot of work to be done. They have a huge logjam at shooting guard that will need to be settled, they still need some size up front, and they will need to figure out what exactly they have on their roster and who fits their new plan.

But for Pistons fans, there is finally a sense of guarded optimism because there finally is a plan. That is a great first step. The next step is to execute that plan, and that will determine how successful this team will be moving forward.