It’s beginning to look a lot like the NBA regular season is effectively over. Rather than sit around and wait for basketball to come back into our lives, let’s reflect on what the season has dished up to this point.
We’ll take a look at each and every NBA team over the coming weeks, assessing what went right, what didn’t go to plan, and where their journey took them as well as where the team hoped it would take them.
Today, we’ll examine three teams that had expectations that far outweighed their eventual production: the Atlanta Hawks, Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks.
Detroit Pistons
Record: 20-46 (13th in Western Conference)
82 game pace: 25-57
Expectations
The Pistons are like Pinky and the Brain, except their goals are far more humble: try to scrape into the playoffs.
In fairness, that was a realistic goal for the veteran laden team. Markeiff Morris and the rejuvenated Derrick Rose joined Andre Drummond, Blake Griffin and Reggie Jackson to form a solid if uninspiring nucleus: luckily for Pistons fans ‘solid if uninspiring’ is a recipe for a 7th seed in the East.
Detroit also had some young talent in Luke Kennard, Bruce Brown, Khyri Thomas and Sekou Doumbouya to supplement the vets.
What went right
Rose continued his resurrection, with 18.1 points and 5.6 assists per night. Importantly, he appeared in fifty games. Kennard looked great until an injury in late December finished his season.
The big positive for Detroit was the emergence of Christian Wood. The much travelled big man finally found a home in the Motor City, growing into a solid back up through the early part of the campaign. His ascension allowed the team to cut bait with Andre Drummond and once Wood stepped in as the starting centre he flourished: 22.6 points, 10.7 boards, 1.1 blocks and 1.7 makes from range. He’s still fragile on defense (he’s painfully thin) but is active and springy, partially making up for that lack of brute strength.
What went wrong
As the old saying goes: if you aim for the moon and miss, you’ll still land amongst the stars. The Pistons aimed for the 8th seed and missed. They did not land amongst the stars.
The most obvious thing to go wrong for Detroit was the veterans. Griffin’s revival last season was lovely, but his body just couldn’t get going this time around. He missed the first 10 games off the season, and looked stilted in the 18 games he did play. Just after Christmas, he was shut down. Jackson missed 42 straight games at one point, before being bought out after the trade deadline. Morris was also bought out. He was a solid contributor but didn’t set the world ablaze in Michigan. All of those buyouts were of course set in motion by the salary dump of franchise centrepiece Drummond to Cleveland for a six pack of light beer and a bag of pretzels. Drummond continues to put up some wonderful rebounding and steal numbers, but the idea of him being a good teams #1 option has long passed.
The outcome
It looks like Detroit has finally – belatedly – embraced the concept of a rebuild. Some good young pieces are already in place in Wood, Kennard and Brown. They’ll have some juicy picks over the coming years, you would expect. Rose is a steady hand to guide the youngsters. As is Griffin, if he ever gets healthy.
You’ll see a lot of chatter about how the team needs to trade Blake’s contract, but it’s hard to envision a scenario where that happens. The team would have to attach so much capital to shed Griffin’s deal that it wouldn’t be worth it for a rebuilding side. The Pistons will have to swallow their medicine on this one. Not that it matters in the long run. By the time Detroit is ready to make some noise, that contract will be expiring.
