June 29, 2018

Langston Galloway
PG/SG - 6’2, 200lbs - 26 years old - 4 years of experience

In accordance with a troubling decade-long Pistons tendency to give role players big contracts and then not get as much value from them as the financial commitment necessitated, the Pistons brought Galloway in this season on a $21 million contract, and then barely played him.

As Reggie Jackson went down, they instead turned to Ish Smith (expectedly) and Dwight Buycks (unexpectedly) at point guard. As the shooting guards struggled to make an impact, the Pistons turned to Luke Kennard; this makes sense given that he was the team’s 2017 first-round pick, but given that he and Galloway do the same sort of things at the same positions, it only further begs the questions as to why Galloway was brought in. Does backup Luke Kennard really need his own backup?

When at his best and playing regularly, Galloway is a combo-guard, a term hereby used to mean a man who is not really either type of guard. His point guard turns are occasional and still involve him trying to score; his shooting guard turns involve him gunning up threes off the catch and the dribble, along with some pull-up twos, not dribbling against pressure or turning it over, and never ever ever ever ever ever ever getting to the rim. Defensively, he has fluctuated between good and bad from season to season; let’s say he is enthusiastic, but in need of a mentor.

When not at his best and not playing, though, Galloway is a sporadic bench player whose contract introduces the threat of the luxury tax to a lottery team. The Galloway signing was thus a strange one - Detroit needed shooters on the court, yes, but they then need to play them. If they are unplayable, perhaps they shouldn’t be signed.

Player Plan: Two years and $14,333,333 remaining, no options. This contract represents a problem - he is not playing up to it, probably wouldn’t even if given the minutes to do so, and yet represents a decent chunk of the cap at a time when the cap is dangerously clogged. It might be in attach-asset-to-dump territory, which would be a shame, but new brain trusts have much more cachet to dump incumbent contracts than former ones do to correct their own decisions.

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June 29, 2017

Langston Galloway
PG/SG, 6’2, 200lbs, 25 years old, 3 years of experience

In his time with the Pelicans, Galloway was highly aggressive in looking for his shot offensively, much more so than he perhaps should have been. Nevertheless, he shot 37.7% from three-point range on a high vol-ume of attempts. Coming to the Kings, the volume went down, but the efficiency went up, all the way up to 47.5% from three. That’s very good. What wasn’t very good was the inability to make any shots consistently at the basket, and the effort on defence, which hadn’t been bad in years prior but which completely disappeared this season. It’s fine if Galloway wants to reinvent him as a gunner, even at that height, but pressure defence must come with it if he is not going to be a pick-and-roll playmaker. Galloway opted out of his $5,434,000 contract for next season, but it’s optimistic to think he will get that again.

Player Plan: Has opted out of a decently sized contract presumably with the aspirations of getting more, or at least the same sort of thing for longer. Can’t see it happening, although three years and $10 mllion with an unguaranteed portion in the back end could be feasible, perhaps slightly higher on the assumption of some point guard duties being possible.

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