As the free agency dust settles in August, the Pistons are left with a familiar kind of tension: real progress on one hand, and a sense that the biggest swing still hasn’t come on the other.
Detroit’s 60-22 season and No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference gave the franchise one of its best regular seasons in recent memory, but the run ended in the second round against the Cleveland Cavaliers. That backdrop made this offseason matter even more. The Pistons had a chance to push harder toward contention, and the way Trajan Langdon handled the summer has drawn mixed reactions from fans.
One area Detroit clearly targeted was shooting. The Pistons were one of the league’s weakest three-point teams last season, and that flaw loomed large when they fell short of a real championship push.
To address it, the front office added more perimeter help, starting with Oklahoma City guard Isaiah Joe. He averaged 11.1 points, 2.5 rebounds, and 1.3 assists in the regular season while shooting 42.3 percent from three.
Joe wasn’t the only move aimed at fixing that problem. Former Los Angeles Clippers forward John Collins, Milwaukee Bucks forward Taurean Prince, and guard Gary Harris also joined the Pistons, and all three shot above 40 percent from three-point range last season. Detroit clearly wanted to raise the floor around Cade Cunningham and make life easier from the outside.
But even with those additions, the bigger frustration for a lot of Pistons fans is what didn’t happen. Langdon was not as aggressive as many hoped, and Detroit still has not landed the co-star Cunningham supporters have been waiting for. The moves made so far do not look like the kind that instantly put the Pistons in position to win an NBA championship next season.
There is still time for that kind of move to show up at the trade deadline, but standing pat now carries risk. The Eastern Conference is expected to be stronger, and Detroit may find that repeating as the No. 1 seed is a much tougher climb than it was a year ago.
The conference landscape has already shifted in a major way. The Philadelphia 76ers added LeBron James and Jaylen Brown in a blockbuster deal with the Boston Celtics, while the Miami Heat landed former Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo in another huge trade. Those moves change the picture for Detroit in a big way and make the path to an Eastern Conference title look even steeper.
Then there’s the Jalen Duren situation, which has become its own exhausting subplot. The debate over whether the Pistons will extend him to a max contract has dragged on through the offseason, and the longer it goes, the messier it feels. Duren believes he deserves more than the team should be willing to pay, and if this keeps stretching out, a qualifying offer starts to look like a real possibility.
His upside is obvious, but the source of the concern is just as clear: he is not yet a max player, and his playoff performance backed that up. If Detroit misreads that situation, it could create major consequences for the roster moving forward.
In Other News...
These Pistons Breakouts Could Change Everything About Detroits Quiet Offseason
Detroits quiet offseason has left the spotlight on internal growth, and that makes the next step for a few young Pistons especially important. Ausar Thompson, Ron Holland II, Paul Reed, Daniss Jenkins, and rookie Ebuka Okorie all sit in different places on the roster, but each has a path to matter if the development curve bends the right way. For a team trying to sharpen its depth without making a splashy move, those kinds of gains can end up being the difference between a stable rotation and another year of searching for answers.
Thompsons offensive growth is the most intriguing swing piece, while Hollands shooting will go a long way toward determining whether he can be trusted when the games tighten up. Reed also has a real opening to claim more minutes behind the frontcourt, and Jenkins is in position to handle the backup point guard job if he takes the next step. Even Isaiah Joe fits into that larger picture as a possible early bench piece with a wider role if the roster shifts again, which is why so much of Detroits next phase may come down to players who are already in the building. [Read more 🡒]
An Old Pistons Draft Wound Just Got Painfully Relevant Again
Mario Hezonja is getting another NBA look, this time with Cleveland after eight seasons in Europe with Real Madrid, and for Pistons fans it brings back one of those draft-night what-ifs that never really went away. Hezonja was the kind of wing Detroit could have used then and could still use now, a player who left the league young, rebuilt his value overseas and now gets a chance to see whether that growth translates back across the Atlantic.
The painful part in Detroit is how closely his name is tied to the 2015 draft, when the Pistons went a different direction and took Stanley Johnson instead. Hezonja has long been viewed as the sort of swingman Stan Van Gundy liked, and even if his NBA return is still just a chance, the comparison is hard to avoid for a franchise still searching for more size and shooting on the wing. [Read more 🡒]