Andre Drummond, who is playing like if a lovechild between Shaquille O’Neal and Steve Nash existed, can shoot free throws now. To celebrate, we’ll have an article every week whose length is based on Andre’s free throw percentage. For example, 0.500 from the line calls for a 500 word article, 0.700 is a 700 word article, and so on. So here we go. Andre Drummond is shooting 0.627 from the free throw line, so here are 627 words on the Pistons’ week.
 
This week was a good week. The holiday season is fully upon us, the time of year we get to spend with friends and family. This is great. Don’t get me wrong. But, the Pistons are winning again. So this was a really good week. The Pistons beat the Hawks, Pacers, and Magic this week. None of the three teams are truly talented or scary teams. The Hawks have been repulsive all season. The Pacers are decent, in the same way that an artificial Christmas tree is decent. The Magic’s season has been similar to a restaurant that brings you an amazing and delicious spinach and artichoke dip appetizer. You get your hopes up. The night is off to a nice start. This should be a filling, maybe respectable, meal. You order your entrée. Then your waiter/waitress brings you what looks like a catastrophic soup of broth and thawed vegetables around a piece of meat when in actuality you were expecting a nicely prepared 9 ounce sirloin with crisp potatoes and asparagus. Or maybe, in the Magic’s case, you actually expected the tragic meat soup to come out of the kitchen. Maybe you didn’t have any expectations, and you were only there for the 2 for $20 deal. I don’t know. The Pistons nearly blew two huge leads to the Magic and Pacers, but were able to hold on for four and six point victories, respectively. But a win is a win, and the Pistons need as many as they can muster, especially following the disastrous and nearly cataclysmic 7 game losing streak preceding this mini winning streak.
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It hasn’t been all good news for the Pistons. Avery Bradley, indisputably a top two most important player on the roster, has missed the last two games due to a groin strain. It was announced yesterday that he will continue to sit out, and be reevaluated in a week’s time. Although the upcoming schedule continues to look favorable (with games against the Mavericks tonight, then Knicks, Pacers, and Magic), the Pistons can’t afford to miss Bradley for much longer. Luke Kennard has started the two games, but Stanley Johnson has played starter minutes in spite of starting the game on the bench.
Now to the good news. First, and it’s surreal that I’m typing this, Reggie Bullock is playing good basketball. The initial decision to start him over Stanley was puzzling to some, including me, but it now appears Bullock has become comfortable and is playing some of his best basketball. Averaging 15 points per game over the last three games, including a team-leading 20 points against the Magic, Bullock has proved very useful on offense. Coupled with Stanley playing better coming off the bench, Stan Van appears to have made the right decision for now. We’re yet to see how the team does with the lineup change against a larger sample size including more capable teams, but it doesn’t look dire and desperate like it did last week at this time.

One thing the team needs to improve on is how they finish games. This is a polar opposite compared to games early in the season, when the Pistons dug themselves huge holes early in games and then forced themselves to try to come back. Recently though, the Pistons have built up large leads against lesser teams, have let up, and allowed the opposition to climb back into the game and make it close and competitive. The team should be able to take the Pacers and Magic games as lessons and be able to close out games ruthlessly. Each of the next four games are winnable, even without Avery Bradley, and hopefully the Pistons can cancel out their 7 game losing streak with a 7 game winning streak.

​Andre Drummond, who is playing like if a lovechild between Shaquille O’Neal and Steve Nash existed, can shoot free throws now. To celebrate, we’ll have an article every week whose length is based on Andre’s free throw percentage. For example, 0.500 from the line calls for a 500 word article, 0.700 is a 700 word article, and so on. So here we go. Andre Drummond is shooting 0.612 from the free throw line, so here are 612 words on the Pistons’ week.

A few weeks ago, we agreed the Detroit Pistons were a good team. The Pistons today are a different team. The Pistons today are an objectively bad team. The Pistons today are to basketball as Taco Bell is to Mexican food. This, as you may have guessed, is not a compliment. The Pistons today have lost seven games in a row, and look holistically lost. The argument that this stretch of games has been difficult is tired. With losses this past week to the Bucks, Warriors, Celtics, and Nuggets, the Pistons now sit 14-13. The Pistons are staring mediocrity in the face. Losses to the Bucks, Warriors, and Celtics doesn’t necessarily tend to throw teams into panic mode. However, the overall attitude and apparent lack of heart exhibited is frightening. Everything was encapsulated in an Oh My God Is This Actually Happening 104-83 loss to the Nuggets at home last night. Andre Drummond failed to score in double digits for the third game in a row, Avery Bradley shot 2-12 as Tobias Harris failed to make any of his seven shot attempts, and Reggie Jackson looked tentative and sluggish while making decisions on offense. Compounding the mess, Stan Van Gundy does not seem to know how to steer the team back to its winning ways.

Last night, SVG benched Stanley Johnson in favor of Reggie Bullock. This move was, at the least, intriguing. At the most, it was irresponsible. Not only because SVG saw it fit to start Bullock, who is regularly the 11th or 12th man, but that Stanley did not receive any meaningful minutes with the second unit until Denver had already ran away with the game. It’s an unfair move to Stanley, as he is not a main reason the Pistons have struggled and the move seems to indirectly (or even directly) pin blame on him. This may or may not be true, and we will see what SVG decides to do tomorrow against the Atlanta Hawks. Unless the team starts to put together wins, Van Gundy may start to lose his grip on the locker room.

The schedule does “lighten up”, with upcoming games against the aforementioned Hawks, Pacers, Magic, and Mavericks. However, none of the games seem as easily conquerable for these Pistons, who suddenly find themselves in a 4-way tie spanning the sixth through ninth seeds in the Eastern Conference. If the team is going to start to win games for the first time in two weeks, they must display a will to win. Of course, the offense has been absolutely and positively atrocious, with the Pistons averaging under 93 points per game during their skid. But, as always, this team thrives on itself when each player is playing with hunger and heart. The defense has been decent enough, but there has noticeably been less transition opportunities taken advantage of off missed shots and turnovers. The half-court offense has simply been subpar, which may be a result of the team being their own worst enemy and not believing in themselves, or the rest of the league finally having enough film on the new motion offense orbiting around Andre. If it’s the latter, the Pistons may have a larger, more permanent problem on their hands, but it does not appear we are at that stage yet. The Pistons have to start attacking the basket with more ferociousness and frequency, opening shots up for guys like Tobias and Avery, and hoping they can get back to their previously sweet stroking ways. And it begins tomorrow, with what feels like as much of a must win game as a matchup in December can feel like against the 6-21 Hawks.

49ers win again, which begs the question: Is Jimmy Garoppolo the best QB in the history of NFL?

The San Francisco 49ers have won their last two games.  Jimmy Garoppolo has started for the 49ers their last two games.  Coincidence? I think not.  What I do think, however, is that he is the best quarterback in the history of the NFL.  What did Tom Brady do Sunday? Nothing.  Jimmy G? Won by ten and picked apart the Texans defense throwing for over 300 yards, all while being the handsomest quarterback in the NFL.  James Garoppolo has thrown for over 600 yards in two weeks and has a winning percentage of 1.000.  The bum also known as Tom Brady hasn’t even cracked 500 yards his last two outings, and although he has won both, his opponents were the Dolphins and Bills.  Not to mention Jimmy has never lost a Superbowl while Terrific Tom has lost two, to Eli Manning for crying out loud. Handsome James G has faced the daunting defensive duo of the Bears and Texans and hasn’t shown any rust.  The dude flies cross country and gets thrown into a new system and boom, #winningonly.  I think it’s safe to say that NFL fans have been graced with the presence of the best quarterback in NFL history, so sit back and enjoy James Richard Garoppolo tear apart NFL defenses for years to come. ​

by Evan Oesterle

I want to be clear before I get into this. I have been a Michigan fan since I could walk. I knew I was coming to this school since I knew what college was. The pictures on my walls, the jerseys in my closet, and the license plate on my car all bear the block M. I will always be proud to be a Michigan Wolverine. That doesn’t mean I can’t be critical of the football program at the University of Michigan. So I am going to do just that.

While I've been alive, Michigan and Ohio State have played 20 times in football. Michigan is 5-15. Michigan won 3 of the first 5 meetings before I could read or ride a bike, but the Buckeyes have won 15 of the last 17. Currently, Ohio State has their second win streak of at least 6 games in the series in the that same time span. (Actually, the two streaks were sandwiched between Michigan’s only win in the last 14 years, when Luke Fickell was the interim head coach and the Buckeyes were in the midst of their tattoo scandal. I only count this as a win in the series out of respect for the players who played their hearts out on that field, to eek out a single digit win over the worst Buckeye team of this century.)

Michigan and Michigan State have also played 20 football games in my life. The series is currently 10-10. After Michigan won 8 of the first 11 before I could do algebra, MSU has won 7 of the last 9, some in humiliating fashion, some in heartbreaking fashion. Losing to rivals hurts at any school. But at a school that starts every football game by hearing, “We are the greatest University in the world” from the tantalizing voice of James Earl Jones, at a school that has won the most football games in the history of the sport, at a school that has the biggest football stadium in the country, at a school that pays its head coach nearly $10 million per season, at a school that claims to be the Leaders and the Best, it is especially difficult.

So now what? Harbaugh is about to be in year 4, with a team made up of 95%+ of his own recruits. The team returns 17 of 22 starters, and could be getting a huge boost from Ole Miss transfers Shea Patterson (QB) and Deontay Anderson (Safety). The schedule is difficult (@ND, @MSU, @OSU, vs PSU, vs Wisconsin) but there are no excuses left. Tim Drevno needs to be fired. The offensive coaching staff, or more specifically, the play calling, wasted this season. If the offensive line and quarterback issues aren’t solved over the offseason, I will call Harbaugh’s Michigan tenure a disappointment. I won’t say he should be fired or is a bad coach, those statements are both lies. But I can say that I’ll be disappointed without a conference championship and wins against OSU and MSU. Actually, I'll be devastated. It would take a decade of dominance to offset my entire memory of Michigan football, which starts right around the 2006 game against Ohio State (a 42-39 loss). It would take that same decade of dominance for me to start to have confidence going into games against Michigan State and Ohio State. It hurts knowing that all of those alumni who came before me recognize this as the worst decade of their Michigan fan hood, while that same decade is all I know of Michigan football.

I am proud to be a Michigan Wolverine. In fact, it is great to be a Michigan Wolverine. We are the leaders and the best. My kids will go to this school, and hopefully their kids will after them. Go Blue forever, but I’m sick of losing. 

-Evan Oesterle
Opinions are my own
Feel free to leave a comment below, or tweet me @E____money