2016-17 NBA Preview: Detroit Pistons

The Detroit Pistons return with their young core intact, led by a respected coach in a weak conference. There’s an opening for another elite team in the east, and a few people are assuming they’ll take the slot. What’s holding them back? How will they be different from last season? As much as I’d like to be an optimistic, I think the differences will be slim and what they need simply is talent.

“Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky

2015-16 in review

The Detroit Pistons, under their second year with Stan Van Gundy, made the playoffs for the first time this decade. They were near average on offense and defense. They were a monstrous rebounding team though, making up for their issues with shooting and forcing turnovers. This identity was shaped by Andre Drummond, who made his first All-Star team. It was their first year with Marcus Morris and Tobias Harris, and their first full one with Reggie Jackson. The direction of the team was more apparent, but regrettably they snagged only the eighth seed and were swept by the Cavaliers.

Rotation players in: Ish Smith, Boban Marjanovic, Jon Leuer

Rotation players out: Ersan Ilyasova, Anthony Tolliver

The team is going into the season largely unchanged, for better or worse. Ish Smith is their major addition; it will be his tenth team. With Reggie Jackson’s injury, he’ll be thrust into a larger role for the first weeks of the season. They lost Anthony Tolliver, and they traded Ersan Ilyasova midseason — both are stretch 4’s. Marcus Morris has the job there. Boban is an insurance policy for their backup center Aron Baynes, who can opt out a year from now. At the very least, I can’t imagine how opposing centers will feel when they finally get Andre Drummond out of the game only so they can face the gigantic Boban Marjanovic.

2016-17 Projected

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Since Detroit is returning virtually the same roster, I think people can understand that they should be roughly the same team in terms of strength. They won 44 games last season with a point differential that suggested 43 wins, and with a slight improvement due to their young age you can bump that up by two or three wins. With Reggie Jackson injured that knocks off a win or so, and it could be worse — they have one backup with considerable NBA experience in Ish Smith, and he won’t light up the court.

What the Pistons need is internal development, and I’m not certain they’ll have enough to push into the 50-win range. They do have a few college-aged kids though: there’s Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, an excellent wing defender; Stanley Johnson, who just turned 20; Tobias Harris, a combo forward; and of course Andre Drummond. Drummond is the one guy with superstar potential, but he’s too awkward on offense — few passing and ball-handling skills, free-throw issues, and a rough post-up game — and he hasn’t shown much of an impact on defense. He doesn’t stay in position, instead reaching and jumping early to net steals, blocks, and rebounds instead of defending. He’s their best hope, but he hasn’t fixed his problems.

Andre Drummond (and the fans watching him) suffered through one of the worst free-throw shooting seasons ever among players with enough attempts. At this point, it’s hurting his development too. He’s so bad that even shooting 60 percent would be a huge boost for his game. In fact, if he had shot 60 percent from the line last season, he would have scored 150 more points, causing his TS% to rise about 5.5 points — in other words, his free-throw shooting alone kept him from being above average on efficiency and left him significantly below average. Of course, if he were a better shooter, he’d have a different foul rate (e.g. fewer intentional fouls), but it would help his game in other ways.

Since the middle of the Eastern Conference is weaker, Detroit could actually climb in the standings without much of a change in win-percentage. That’s the good news, because without drastic improvement from someone else they’ll be largely the same. Right now only Cleveland, Boston, and Toronto are clearly better, and after that it’s Detroit and a huge glut of teams projected around 37 to 43 wins. They could get homecourt advantage without getting better.

Quick graph

I suppose it’s a bit excessive to focus on Andre Drummond so much in the preview, but he’s the key to their season and their future. People drew parallels between him and Stan Van Gundy’s last big man, Dwight Howard; but Drummond does not look like an MVP candidate yet. What’s tempting, however, is that some of his traditional stats are historically elite. For instance, he had one of the better defensive rebounding seasons, well, ever. I have to point out here that Detroit actually rebounded better without him on the court, and while those numbers are unadjusted for a few factors it’s not a good sign and it’s not the first time there’s been evidence his rebounding is overrated.

His steal rate is also surprisingly high. Looking at the graph below, he’s at the frontier edge of steals and defensive rebounds, which are adjusted for league averages because defensive rebounding percentages have changed so much over the years. It’s in the same group as players like Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard, and Marcus Camby. Steals are an important stat in determining player value, so one would think a high rebounding center would rate high overall with a great steal rate. But his projected rating across a wealth of metrics is quite disappointing anyway.

2017-preview-det-drb-stls /

Summary

The Detroit Pistons have their core group of players, and the team makes sense with Reggie Jackson running a pick-and-roll with Andre Drummond, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope playing the 3-and-D part, and some combo/stretch forwards in Marcus Morris and Tobias Harris that Stan Van Gundy seems to prefer. But they still have a major talent deficit in comparison with the elite teams in the league, and without the assets to bring someone in they’re banking on a star, or superstar, growing among them. We can all hope for that to happen, but I’m not going to bet on it.

Win predictions:

Mine: 45.0. A blend of several metrics, including Dredge, with a few other factors considered, like coaching.

Andrew Johnson’s: 41. A combination of PT-PM (a SportVU player tracking metric) blended with RAPM. Two-time reigning champion of the APBRmetrics board predictions contest.

Nick Restifo’s: 37. A simulation using BPM and RPM for player value, which includes game effects like altitude and rest.

Kevin Ferrigan’s: 42. A player projection system with inputs from RAPM, BPM, height, and age.

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