The Pistons have a future, and his name is Sekou Doumbouya
Beyond the instant-classic dunk, the league's youngest player has done pretty well as a starter for Detroit.
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Let’s basketball.
The first thing to know about Sekou Doumbouya is that he did this to Tristan Thompson on Tuesday night.
Here’s the rest:
Sekou is the youngest player in the NBA this season, having just turned 19 right before Christmas. International players can enter the league at age 18 if they’ll turn 19 before the end of the calendar year the draft falls in. Sekou made it by eight days. Otherwise, he’d be too young for the NBA, by rule.
Sekou is the first Guinea-born player in NBA history, though he grew up in France and is a part of the national team’s potential golden age to come.
Sekou has started the past four games since Detroit took a turn toward the tank (with Andre Drummond in the trade whisper game and Blake Griffin taking season-ending surgery). Doumbouya has scored double figures each of the four starts and has played quite well in the two wins. In the two losses, he guarded Paul George and LeBron James for long stretches. Trial by fire.
He wears the blessed 45 on his jersey.
There is a reason to watch the Detroit Pistons, even after they go into the tank. I’m openly rooting for the thing to happen where the team gets energized by more minutes for Sekou and other young players on the team like Jordan Bone and Christian Wood (Bruce Brown is already getting lots of minutes) and ends up being better than they were focused on Griffin. That’d be interesting.
When you go to rebuild around young players, it’s important to keep a few veterans around to make the offense work at a basic level and to instill some accountability. Of course, it has to be the right veteran: Kevin Love is not exactly the model here. Andre Drummond actually might be the right young-ish veteran as long as he’s on board with losing for a couple more seasons in the service of breaking out of the prison of nowhere eventually.
Oddly, Derrick Rose is a good fit: he’s well-liked by teammates wherever he goes and can obviously run an offense. And he’s cheap (for now). That probably boosts his value to other teams. It’ll be interesting to see how the Pistons approach the trade season: fire sale or thoughtful moves to ensure Detroit doesn’t become an entire embarrassment?
Mailbag Question of the Indeterminate Time Period
Send me questions by a) posting a comment on a newsletter, b) replying to the newsletter (it’ll just go back to me) or c) sending an email to tziller at gmail dot com. I’ll answer them on a basis that fits the newsletter schedule. Here’s the first one!
I am wondering who you believe will win the Most Improved Player award. Not who should win the award, but who will win. Based on betting lines, leading candidates are Luka [Doncic], [Devonte’] Graham in Charlotte, and Bam [Adebayo] in Miami. Fascinated to see if a guy who won Rookie of the Year can also get a Most Mmproved, while ranking top five in MVP voting. — Andrew
This is a fascinating question. We don’t have any recent history of a top-flight MVP candidate (as Luka definitely qualifies as at this point) winning Most Improved. Giannis won MIP in 2016-17 and got a few MVP ballot votes, but didn’t finish top five. I think when you combined Luka’s high draft position, the Rookie of the Year award and the potential top-5 MVP finish, voters will feel okay not giving him the nod here.
Devonte’ Graham feels like the overwhelming favorite at this point thanks to his story and path to now. He went from a fringe player on a disappointing team to the star of a … well, a not-very-good but better-than-expected team. He has the narrative, the big stats jump, the shock factor. I think there’s a case just as strong for Bam Adebayo based on his Pascalian leap for a contender, but I think voters will side with Graham, assuming he keeps this up.
There’s no real model for Most Improved Player in recent years — young guys, older guys, role players, stars have all won it. Of course, some of the role players who win it become stars eventually. And then some are … Aaron Brooks.
Scores
Blazers 101, Raptors 99 — The MASH unit Raptors gave up a lead late, and CARMELO ANTHONY finished the job with a mid-range pull-up. Take that for data.
What a story. Melo forever.
Thunder 111, Nets 103 (OT) — Chris Paul scored 20 in the fourth and overtime. The dude still has it. Best point guard of this century.
Wolves 112, Grizzlies 119 — Memphis is a game and a half out of the No. 8 seed.
Kings 114, Suns 103 — Another higher-pace game, another De’Aaron Fox gem. Weird how that happens.
Schedule
Busy 9-game schedule on Wednesday with the usual ESPN double-header. All times Eastern. Games on League Pass unless otherwise noted.
Spurs at Celtics, 7
Raptors at Hornets, 7
Heat at Pacers, 7
Wizards at Magic, 7
Rockets at Hawks, 7:30
Nuggets at Mavericks, 7:30, ESPN — very exciting match-up!
Bulls at Pelicans, 8
Knicks at Jazz, 9
Bucks at Warriors, 10, ESPN — these persistent showcase national T.V. games really pound home what we’ve lost with the Golden State injuries
Kevin Love is Sorry
Kevin Love has acknowledged he didn’t handle the Cleveland situation in the most productive fashion this weekend (we wrote about all of that on Monday). He also opened up about the criticisms that he took the Cavaliers’ fat contract extension without actually wanting to be in Cleveland, declaring those critiques misplaced.
The actual events back up Love here: the Cavs weren’t expected to be good once LeBron left for Los Angeles in 2018, but it wasn’t as if they immediately went into the tank and turned to the youth movement. Love getting injured with the team 0-4 in 2018-19 is what set Cleveland fully on the path of tactical tanking last season (they were 11-43 when he came back), and that path continued into this season with the (bizarre, in retrospect) hiring of John Beilein and the (smart) decision not to be active in the trade or free agency market.
The Cavaliers haven’t made any major tank moves (Love, Tristan Thompson and even J.R. Smith are still on the roster), just smaller ones on the edges. But they hired a college coach and gave the offense almost fully to Collin Sexton. That’s not what Love signed up for when he signed the extension, so of course it’s reasonable that he now wants out.
Critiquing how he demonstrates that is fair, but let’s not litigate whether he’s right to want out in the first place. He got sold a lemon.
Links
Fantastic piece by Zach Lowe on Ben McLemore, who survived being Kangz’d and is now an important role player for the title-contender Rockets.
Henry Abbott and David Thorpe discuss whether it’s too soon to trade Karl-Anthony Towns. My answer: yes, absolutely. If as a GM you don’t think you can build a winning team around KAT between now and 2023-24 (the last year of KAT’s contract), just quit your job.
Dan Devine on the teams looking to sell approaching the NBA trade deadline.
Michael Pina urges the Pistons to give it up.
The Lakers did their job and offered Anthony Davis a max extension. Anthony Davis did his job and declined it. Nothing to see here.
Jared Dubin on Giannis Antetokounmpo taking full control of the Bucks offense.
Woj and Lowe report that NBA team executives might already be killing the proposal to reseed the top four teams, which was the only no-brainer reform proposal in the league’s package. Nice work, NBA team executives.
Nine Australian NBA players commit $500,000 to bushfire relief. Emily Atkin’s excellent climate newsletter HEATED had an interesting discussion of bushfire relief donations.
Marc Spears profiles potential No. 1 pick Anthony Edwards.
James Herbert on the future of NBA defense as illustrated by the Raptors.
The case for trading Kyle Kuzma.
Jonathan Tjarks asks whether the Pelicans will slot Zion Williamson in as a smallball five.
And finally: Zito Madu on watching Giannis continue to learn and sometimes stumble as he takes the NBA crown.
Thank you as always for your support. Be excellent to each other.
Nice Sekou look, but dang ... sure were a lot of Raptor fans on Twitter whining about the refs. As a Blazers fan I hadn't noticed that about "We the North"