The young core of the Pistons – Cade Cunningham, Saddiq Bey, Isaiah Stewart, Jalen Duren, Jaden Ivey, Isaiah Livers, Killian Hayes – are all on the docket in this week’s edition of Pistons Mailbag with the regular season less than a week from tipping off.

Darrell (Detroit): I was so glad the Pistons decided to avoid tanking by trading for Bojan Bogdanovic. However, after having watched Victor Wembanyama play twice, I’m reconsidering my position. Imagine next season’s Pistons with Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Jalen Duren, Saddiq Bey, Victor Wembanyama and $65 million in cap space. I’d never pray for a season-ending injury to Cade, which in turn made the Pistons trade their veterans for draft capital, which in turn costs the team a few wins. But I’m not going to pray against that happening, either. Does that make me a bad person?

Langlois: The Wembanyama games in Las Vegas last week were fascinating and will serve to amplify the hype that already existed around the 7-foot-4 French teen who is Ralph Sampson if he had Kevin Durant’s perimeter skills. But even a team that finishes with one of the three worst records will have no more than a 14 percent chance to land the No. 1 pick, so there’s a law of diminishing returns as far as incentivized losing no matter how enticing the prospective No. 1 pick might be. The Pistons have made it clear they want to be competitive this season and I take that to mean they want to establish themselves as an opponent that makes other teams earn everything they get, not necessarily that they’re declaring themselves a playoff-worthy team in year three of a bottom-up rebuilding project. It’s really early to make any sweeping conclusions about the quality of the top of the draft or its depth, but the first impressions of the 2023 class are very favorable. My hunch is that Troy Weaver already has his eyes on a player or two or thee who’ll be available anywhere in the top 10 or later in the lottery that he ranks higher than the consensus. If the Pistons get another player who fits as snugly into their foundation as Cunningham, Ivey, Duren, Bey and Isaiah Stewart already do, they’ll augment an already impressive young core. Weaver, by the way, was at the second Wembanyama game in Las Vegas and the Pistons front office was well-represented. I’m told they had multiple sets of eyes there over the course of the week to see Wembanyama and the G League Ignite team led by Scoot Henderson, the presumptive No. 2 pick.

@djdodalu/IG: Have you seen enough to feel confident that Killian Hayes makes a leap this season?

Langlois: The opener at New York and certainly Tuesday’s game with Oklahoma City are very encouraging, but it’s not so much what we’ve seen in games as what we’re hearing from his teammates and coaches who have worked with him all summer, in voluntary team workouts last month and in two-plus weeks of training camp. Troy Weaver said something interesting last season about Hayes and knowing when he drafted him that he would need time to get acclimated to the NBA after being steeped in European basketball which is coached and played in a different manner. It’s why Dwane Casey and Weaver urged Hayes to play as much pickup basketball over the summer as he could. Yeah, I feel confident based on the eye test and feedback from teammates and coaches that it’s real.

Langlois: The Marvin Bagley III news was not as bad as feared. Let’s not diminish a bone bruise and a sprained MCL – bone bruises, especially, can be massively painful and lingering – but the outcome here, even if it takes longer than the projected three to four weeks for the effects of the bone bruise to dissipate, is not nearly as grave as the prospect of missing the season and potentially diminishing one’s career. I don’t know that the Pistons would have felt compelled to make a move even had the news been worse – they’d still have three big men with the expectation that Nerlens Noel should return soon to augment the Isaiah Stewart-Jalen Duren tandem – but they especially don’t figure to be motivated to trade now with Bagley on track to return in weeks as opposed to several months or not until next season.

@steven_welling: If Bagley is out an extended period of time, will the Pistons need to make a trade or sign another big man for their frontcourt?

Langlois: The Pistons have 15 standard contracts now, so they would have to create a roster opening one way or another – outright release a player with a guaranteed contract or make a trade – to accommodate signing any other player. Fortunately, the Bagley injury news was about as best-case scenario as could have been reasonably expected given the circumstances of Tuesday’s incident.

@fatimaelmoukahal/IG: Will Isaiah Livers start?

Langlois: I thought there was a reasonable chance he might before the trade to bring Bojan Bogdanovic to the Pistons. Livers or Marvin Bagley III seemed the likeliest options. Right now, Livers is dealing with a hip issue that isn’t expected to keep him idled for long but makes it unlikely he’ll be in the mix to start when the regular season opens next week. But the bigger picture is how quickly and firmly Livers has established himself as part of the core. He was impressive as a rookie despite missing nearly 80 percent of the season while recovering from foot surgery and he had as strong a summer as anyone on the roster. From a physical standpoint, he’s a much improved player over his college days and Dwane Casey has already remarked twice about how explosive he’s looked defensively, including challenging shots at the rim. If Livers can get and stay healthy, he’s got a chance to carve out a prominent role very quickly. Internally, the Pistons are very high on Livers.

@duncanevert/IG: How much playing time will Jalen Duren get this season?

Langlois: To be determined, but it’s safe to say he’s going to get more than I imagined when the Pistons picked him up on draft night. He’s the youngest player in the league and the Pistons have three veteran big men, though it stretches the meaning of “veteran” when you include Isaiah Stewart, 21, among the mix. But I’m banking on Duren being part of the rotation come opening night the way it looks now and getting regular minutes should only accelerate his growth rate.

@wataman66: With the Pistons struggling to defend anyone or putting forth the effort, what does Casey plan on doing to emphasize more defensive pressure? Plus, how much longer before Noel gets a chance to provide rim protection now that Bagley is out?

Langlois: When Dwane Casey addressed the crowd at the Pistons open practice at Little Caesars Arena on Oct. 2, he told them that his message to the team this season was to become known as a defense-first unit. It’s a point of emphasis already. But you don’t snap your fingers and have it happen. It takes time for the cake to bake, especially with a roster this young. As for Noel, he first has to be fully cleared. He’s been a limited participant in practices as he recovers from a case of plantar fasciitis, but he appears to be close to a return. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s ready for the season opener next week, though his conditioning might lag until he has another week or two to get up to speed. Noel’s defensive prowess is at least a nice security blanket for Casey. An accomplished defensive center who can serve as the quarterback of team defense covers up a lot of warts. The Pistons are obviously deeply invested in Isaiah Stewart and Jalen Duren and Duren has shown enough that the Pistons are likely going to give him every opportunity to stay in the rotation, but if things get out of kilter Casey would have ample motivation to turn to Noel to right the ship.

@Godardfan: Very concerned about team defense based on these preseason games.

Langlois: Defense in today’s NBA probably requires more continuity and familiarity among teammates to function properly than offense. If you find a pick-and-roll combination with decent chemistry, you can build a functional offense around a two-man tandem. Defense requires five players to be on the same page in an endless number of scenarios that change game to game based on opponent. You can probably count on one hand the number of coaches across the NBA at this juncture who are comfortable with where their teams are at defensively and, almost certainly, those are veteran teams folding in relatively few newcomers and even fewer young players. The Pistons remain one of the NBA’s youngest teams with a starting lineup in Tuesday’s game of 23, 23, 21, 21 and 20. Dwane Casey’s roots are on defense going back to his days as a Kentucky captain and throughout his days as an NBA assistant. He’s on the record as saying he wants this year’s team to establish itself as foremost a defensive force, but he’s aware that no matter how much he makes it a point of emphasis it’s going to require repetitions that can only be accrued as games mount. It’s a journey. The Pistons have the composite physical attributes now – size at every position and big men in Isaiah Stewart, Marvin Bagley III and Jalen Duren with the agility to enable the switching scheme Casey wants to employ – that eventually should translate to the coalescence of a formidable defense. But “eventually” is the operative word.

@trevor_newman3/IG: I think Stew and Bagley should play together on the bench for better spacing. Thoughts?

Langlois: There’s an argument to be made that Stewart and Bagley should play together – and it’s more likely to be with the starters than the bench – so that Bagley doesn’t play his minutes next to Jalen Duren, where spacing would be an obvious concern. It’s hard for me to envision at this juncture, given how important Stewart is to the Pistons and their desire to be known as a physical, defense-first team, a starting lineup that doesn’t include him. Stewart’s versatility – if you believe, as the Pistons do, that he’ll prove himself an effective 3-point shooter – gives Dwane Casey the flexibility to play in a number of different ways against big or small lineups. He can play effectively at center, as he’s shown in his first two years, and he’s got the defensive versatility to play effectively at power forward. So the 3-point shot is really the last hurdle to clear for him to be able to split time over both frontcourt spots. It would be a little tougher for Casey to pair Bagley and Duren. It’ll take some time before we learn how Casey will deploy Bagley as he recovers from Tuesday’s knee injury. In the meantime, we’ll probably see less of the two-big lineups, but if Nerlens Noel is nearing his return then I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of Stewart and Duren together.

@ck2art/IG: Whose team is this? Will everyone eventually defer to Ivey?

Langlois: That has to be something that happens organically and this team is still too amorphous for that to have happened just yet. I suspect that Cade Cunningham is going to be the straw that stirs the drink on the floor at the offensive end. In the locker room and as far as establishing a team mentality, the guys who set the tone are probably Isaiah Stewart and Saddiq Bey with Cunningham a willing advocate. They are extremely focused and dedicated not only to their personal development but to establishing the Pistons as a widely and deeply respected team. Ivey has two things – a work ethic and electric athleticism – that give him a gaping opportunity to carve out a wide niche among the acknowledged core of the team.

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