Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey. Now, here’s Mike Sykes
Happy Friday, folks! Welcome back to Layup Lines. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you’ve had a more exciting week than the trade deadline did. Talk about a nothingburger.
Enough about that, though. I want to take a second to show some love to the Detroit Pistons, man.
It wasn’t that long ago that we were all making fun of this team for, well, to be bluntly honest, being the worst basketball team we’ve ever seen. The Pistons were so bad they even made the Process-Era 76ers look decent and that team was trying to be bad. It got to the point where we were scraping the schedule to find wins for Detroit. That’s what 28 straight losses will do for you.
If you watch today’s Pistons, those days feel like centuries ago. This is a completely different team. It might…it might even be a good one?
Ok. No. This team is still pretty bad. I got caught up in the hype a bit there. But it’s undoubtedly a much better outfit than it was before. Detroit is 4-4 in its last eight games with wins over Charlotte, Oklahoma City, Sacramento and Portland. Two of those are playoff teams! In the West!
But wait, there’s more! Detroit has a positive point differential in its last eight games. It’s just 0.2, but it’s still positive! Its offensive rating in that span is 10th overall.
Where’s this bump coming from? Well, some of it is addition by subtraction. Players like Isaiah Livers and Killian Hayes who hurt Detroit offensively have been removed from the rotation via roster transactions.
But, most of it is this: Jaden Ivey has been awesome. Over his last eight games he’s averaging 20.1 points per game while shooting 49 percent from the field and 59.5 percent from 3-point range (!!!!). Is this going to last? Absolutely not. Those are outrageous shooting splits. But it’s very clear that Ivey is a pretty good NBA player and it also makes you wonder why his coach kept him on the bench for so long.
Cade Cunningham has returned from injury, too, and has continued to play pretty well without needing to be the absolute bell-cow on offense for Detroit. You add all that together and you get a pretty competent team. That’s an encouraging sign for Detroit.
Did Detroit have to sacrifice a Lions’ trip to the Super Bowl for this to happen? Maybe. But that doesn’t matter, Detroit. The bottom line is we’re here. Enjoy it.
Leave the GOAT alone
Iowa fans picking a fight with Sheryl Swoopes feels like a pretty big mistake. That’s turned into a fight with the entire fandom of women’s basketball at this point.
Folks are roasting Iowa fans for wearing “Don’t be a Sheryl” t-shirts after Swoopes issued a fair critique on Caitlin Clark.
The critique isn’t what triggered this, though. Instead, it Swoopes getting some numbers wrong on Clark’s career. It was an honest mistake but one that probably should’ve been corrected. Instead of allowing room for that, though, Iowa fans got a bit disrespectful. And now the backlash is here.
Meghan Hall’s take here is spot on:
“Sheryl Swoopes is a Hall of Fame WNBA player. She’s accomplished so much in her career (four WNBA championships, three MVP Awards and six All-Star selections, among other accolades) that she’s considered one of the best to ever do it. Understandably, her thoughts on the game are very different than most people.”
Look, man. Sheryl Swoopes is free to critique who she wants. It’s one thing to say she’s wrong. It’s another thing to come out and disrespect her the way Iowa fans did.
Swoopes is one of the greatest players women’s basketball has ever seen. We should all want to be as good at literally anything as Sheryl Swoopes is at basketball.
Iowa fans, y’all need to go back to the drawing board. This ain’t it.
Shootaround
— Here are our latest NBA power rankings. The Celtics are still at the top, as expected. That team is so good.
— The Timberwolves broadcast team showed Thanasis Antetokounmpo no mercy. Bryan Kalbrosky has more.
— Nikola Jokic has eyes in the back of his head. But you already knew that. Here’s Bryan with more again.
— Gilbert Arenas and Lexie Brown’s wild comments about the WNBA are a reminder that the league still needs more inclusive stories to be told. Here’s Meghan Hall with more.
That’s all, folks! Enjoy your weekend. It’s almost All-Star time! Let’s get it. We out. Peace.
-Sykes ✌️