The Pistons still continue to be a basketball team of the perestroika period, the total shortage of performance skills and decline are slowly replaced by constructive, but restrained optimism associated with the emergence of a number of young players.
Last year, the Detroit Pistons traded Jerami Grant from Denver, who, with 22 points and 4 rebounds per game, became the first boy in the village and ended the summer as an Olympic champion with Team USA.
In addition, the Detroit Pistons basketball club did a great job in the last draft. Rookies Saddiq Bay, Isaiah Stewart and Killian Hayes all performed well in their rookie season, even if in Hayes’ case, his early NBA career was blurred due to a hip injury. None of them looked like a future star, but together they left the impression of diligent performers, ready to reach the level of medium strong players in the main rotation.
Detroit ended the season 20-52, the second-worst in the league, but not because the team was downright bad. Like any inexperienced basketball team, the Pistons lost in the endings (the result was 1-8 in matches where the final difference was 1 or 2 points), and most importantly, they consciously sought to get the opportunity to get a top pick. And it happened.
The choice of Cade Cunningham was obvious and predictable
Detroit Pistons chief mechanic Dwayne Casey didn’t shy away when he said before the basketball draft that the Pistons currently don’t have the most experienced, but flexible roster that a player of any position can fit into.
This is true, because in the course of progress, the differentiation by role has become an outdated set of templates that are only good for explaining the basic principles of basketball to an ignorant person. More recently, such an exotic definition as a tweener – a person who plays in two positions, or between them, has already come to naught. Now everyone who comes to the NBA, if it is not a narrow-profile player, is more or less able to play the ball.
Therefore, the choice of defender Cunningham with the already existing performers in the back line did not surprise anyone. Cade is capable of playing both with and without the ball, which he demonstrated in the Summer League. And given Casey’s fondness for dribbler-heavy formations, there’s no doubt we’ll see the newcomer both separately from Kylian Hayes and at the same time.
Cunningham may not have the superstar potential of Houston’s Jaylen Green, but building a basketball team around the likes of Cade is always easier. He is calmer, much more versatile, more diligent than Green, and besides, there is nothing to do in Detroit, so the Pistons rookie will have many times less temptations.
All this does not mean that Detroit will deafen the league with their roar next season
But the team has a balanced starting five Hayes – Cunningham Bay – Grant – Stewart, where only 27-year-old Grant can be considered an old man, and the rest did not even reach 25.
Naturally, it is pointless to count on getting into the basketball playoffs with such a line-up, and there is nothing to do with him there. The task of the Pistons in the context of today’s goals of the club is much more important – over the next 2-3 seasons to develop these youth