The NBA season is past the midway point of the regular season, so I think it’s a fair time to assess the Detroit Pistons. Drum-roll... They are a very mediocre offensively one-dimensional (Blake Griffin) team that cannot shoot the three ball (even though they take a ton). The defense is average and the team has been forced to play rookies Bruce Brown and Kyhri Thomas to help get stops. There was some real hope coming into the 2018 season. Pistons fans were thinking that by having a healthy core of Reggie Jackson, Andre Drummond, and Blake Griffin along with some improvements from the youngsters such as Stanley Johnson & Luke Kennard and hiring the reigning NBA Coach of the Year (who coached a different, much better team in Toronto), this team would not only make the playoffs, but possibly contend for home court in the first round. 4-0 start. “Here we go!” 5 straight losses. “Hmmm, maybe we aren’t good.” Win 9 of the next 11 including wins over the Raptors, Rockets, and Warriors. 13-7 record. “The Pistons are legit this year.” Proceed to lose 18 out of the next 25 games… 45 games in. 20-25 record. 9th place in Eastern Conference. So, what do we have here? What’s gone wrong? What’s gone right? Let’s start with the positive. Blake Griffin. There were some doubters in the Pistons fan community about bringing him in last year via trade with such a huge contract on the books (five-years, $171 million). The yearly cap hit for this contract will continue to go up each year. Year Base Salary 2017-18: $29,512,900 2018-19: $31,873,932 2019-20: $34,234,96 2020-21: $36,595,996 2021-22: $38,957,028 (player option) With that much money tied up in one player and by already having some big contracts tied up with Andre Drummond (5 year / $127 million) and Reggie Jackson (5 years / $80 million) along with horrible contracts (thanks SVG) for players such as Jon Leur (4 years / 42 million) and Langston Galloway (3 years / 21 million), there’s no room left to add any more pieces. And the Pistons definitely need some help. Blake’s (we're on a first name basis) contract concerns were mainly due to fears that his high-flying dunking days were behind him and he wasn’t a top tier player in the NBA anymore. He’s shown this year that he’s worth every penny. 26 PPG, 8 RPG, 5 AST while shooting 48%. Griffin has been carrying this team. He often plays Point Forward, initiates the offense, and has shown the ability to consistently hit the 3 (averages 2.3 makes per game). Blake is the only isolation threat we have on offense. He’s an All Star this year. Other positives. Andre Drummond: He still lacks some skills on the offensive end but overall, he’s still one of the better centers in the league. Reggie Bullock: I don’t love that he’s our starting SG but for what his contract is (2.5 million), he’s at least providing an outside threat most nights. Shifting gears to the negative. As mentioned above, Blake seems to be the only player who can make plays for himself. Reggie Jackson hasn’t been the same player since injuries hit him the past couple of seasons. He looks like a backup PG. The team’s three-point shooting has been ugly. Coach Casey likes his teams to shoot and they haven’t been shy, taking over 33 per game (top 7 in NBA). The problem is they’re only making about 11 of them per game (33% / 2nd worst in NBA). The youngsters we hoped to see improvements from have shown them in flashes but not enough consistently. Stanley Johnson and Luke Kennard are putting up nearly identical #’s as they did last year. Injuries have had an effect on this team at times but overall, they’ve been pretty healthy. The biggest impact has been from Ish Smith’s 20 game absence. The team just seems to move better on offense when he’s in charge. He came back last week for a couple of games and while he looked a little rusty, the bench unit looked much sharper with him in there instead of Jose Calderon who is clearly washed up. Ish is now hurt again (groin) and will miss today's game. There are still 37 games to go and the Pistons are just 1.5 games back from the final playoff spot. A lot can change between now and April. I don’t really see it happening though. My prediction is we continue to see an inconsistent team that trades a few wins for a few losses. I think they finish around .500 and sneak into a lower playoff seed followed by a first round loss, but I do think Detroit will get their first playoff victory in over 11 years. So, I guess you could call that progress? Until this team makes a move or two to bring in some play-makers, we’ll continue to watch Blake Griffin carry this team through mediocrity. Let’s just hope this era of average basketball in Detroit doesn’t lead to another uniform/team colors change like in the mid 90’s.
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