The Whiteboard: Jerami Grant bet on himself, and that bet is paying off

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The Detroit Pistons bet on Jerami Grant in the offseason with a three-year, $60 million contract, but in a realer sense, it was Grant who was gambling on himself.

The Pistons and new general manager Troy Weaver were always going to have to pony up to attract real talent to one of the worst — and, more importantly, least interesting — teams in the Eastern Conference. Grant, however, was leaving a very stable situation where he played a notable role on Denver Nuggets squad that went to the Western Conference Finals and brazenly charging into the unknown. He was an unsung hero in the Mile High City, only with everyone singing his praises.

But Jerami Grant saw more for himself than a complementary role, and despite 99.9 percent of the basketball world questioning his belief that he was ready to be “the guy” on any team, let alone a winning one, he disembarked for the Motor City … and has been proving everyone but the remaining 0.1 percent wrong ever since.

Through 24 games, Grant is the frontrunner for the NBA’s Most Improved Player award. While guys like Jaylen Brown, Julius Randle, Collin Sexton and the now-injured Christian Wood have also been in that conversation, no one has seen their role change so drastically and so successfully over the course of one offseason.

Jerami Grant is the MIP frontrunner so far

So far, Grant is averaging 24.3 points, 5.5 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 1.2 blocks per game — all of which are career highs except for blocks. He’s shooting 45.3 percent from the field and 39.5 percent from 3-point range, which is slightly up from last year’s mark of 38.9 percent. The only difference is he’s nearly doubled his long-range attempts from 3.5 per game last year to 6.5 a night this year.

If you need a referendum on how reliable he’s been from beyond the arc, as Omari Sankofa of the Detroit Free Press pointed out Tuesday night, Grant has now hit at least two 3-pointers in 23 straight games, giving him the franchise record and making him only the 10th player in NBA history to do so.

The 26-year-old swingman was ridiculed for his decision to leave a cushy situation in Denver for a bottom-of-the-barrel team out East, and for the most part, that particular point of criticism has held up; the Nuggets are in position to be a dangerous playoff team in the loaded West, while the Pistons are dead-last in the entire NBA with a 6-18 record and a minus-4.5 point differential.

But even if Grant, the ghost of Blake Griffin and the rest of this unattractive supporting cast make up a horrible team, Grant isn’t just posting inflated numbers in a losing situation. He’s thriving as Detroit’s primary option on offense, and with a lack of weapons around him, that honestly might be more impressive. Defenses know Jerami Grant is the biggest threat on the Pistons, and he’s still doing this night in and night out anyway.

The most notable change has been his usage as an isolation scorer. Last year in 71 games with the Nuggets, Grant only logged 31 iso possessions. Heading into Tuesday’s tilt with the Brooklyn Nets, Grant had logged 59 such possessions, per NBA.com. In fact, he’s on pace for 185 isos this season, which would nearly match his total number of isolation plays through the first five years of his career (211) … and that production would come over the course of a shorter, 72-game schedule.

He’s been efficient with this boost in responsibility, averaging a career-best 1.09 points per possession on isos, which ranked in the league’s 78th percentile before Tuesday night’s game, when he tied a career high with 32 points. His ball-handling isn’t exactly advanced, but given Grant’s 3-point prowess forcing defenders to play up on him, that’s hardly necessary; all it takes is one or two confident dribbles for him to burst from the perimeter to the basket, using his athleticism and length to blow by defenders who aren’t fully prepared to stop his drives to the rim.

Grant has been league-average finishing around the basket (57.1 percent), but he’s getting to the foul line a career-high 6.5 times per game, and just as importantly, he’s making a career-high 87.1 percent of his freebies after hovering just under 70 percent for his career.

The end result is a much more complete scorer than he ever got to show in Denver as an off-ball cutter, energetic dunker and straight-line driver. He has the ball in his hands more than ever, and the Pistons’ offense craters from scoring 110.4 points per 100 possessions to 97.7 when he sits.

Similarly, the team’s defensive rating jumps from an already-bad 110.2 when Grant’s long limbs are wreaking havoc on the court to a dismal 112.1 when he’s out. All in all, Detroit’s plus-0.3 Net Rating with him on the court — compared to its minus-14.4 mark without him — tells the full story of how good he’s been despite the completely underwhelming roster surrounding him.

Will Grant win Most Improved Player votes if his torrid run continues on the worst team in the NBA? Only time will tell. But the Pistons’ situation would be a lot worse right now if Grant hadn’t bet on himself … and if that bet wasn’t fully paying off the way it has so far.

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