The Pistons Need More Firepower to Leap from 'Good' to 'Great'

The Detroit Pistons have had a decent 6-5 start to the season, but they have struggled to generate offense without starting point guard Reggie Jackson, who's nursing tendinitis in his left knee. According to Basketball-Reference, the Pistons' adjusted net rating (a.k.a. point differential that accounts for who they've played) ranks 12th out of 30 teams. They've lost to the Brooklyn Nets and the Phoenix Suns, and two of their wins are against the Denver Nuggets. This, so far, is an average team.

That's understandable. Jackson is Detroit's best (and maybe only) shot creator and a solid floor general who allows everyone else to thrive within the roles they were meant to fill. But his return won't spring Detroit atop the Eastern Conference. In his absence, let's step back, take a look at this roster, and try to answer the sobering big-picture question every organization has to confront at one time or another: What path exists for this team to actually win a championship?

Like an onion, that question can be peeled back to reveal another: Can the Pistons go down that path with Andre Drummond as their centerpiece? Stan Van Gundy, Detroit's trustworthy head coach and steady front-office presence, seems to think so: Detroit signed him to a five-year, $130 million contract this summer.

People love to use Van Gundy's successful Orlando Magic teams as a template for how he built these Pistons, both in terms of playing style and personnel, and every comparison is founded around the men in the middle: Drummond and Dwight Howard.

Howard was by far the best center in basketball throughout Orlando's run. A shoe-in for First-Team All-NBA in his mid-20s, he won three Defensive Player of the Year trophies and finished second for MVP in 2011. Howard allowed the Magic to defend pick-and-rolls with two defenders, which kept help defenders home to fortify the three-point line.

Building off his ability to anchor the defense, Orlando surrounded Howard with three-point shooters like Ryan Anderson, Hedo Turkoglu, Rashard Lewis, and J.J. Redick. They blasted opponents out of the water, and made several deep playoff runs that probably should've ended in at least one title. The first time Howard led Orlando to the Finals, he was 23 years old—the same age Drummond is now.

As for Drummond, he might be the best rebounder alive—but that also might be the only thing he has going for him. In the first 11 games of 2016-17, he has yet to make a significant leap forward on either end of the floor. His pick-and-roll defense is a leaky faucet and his post moves remain early-Westworld robotic. In between the occasional up-and-under or drop step is a flood of predictable baby hooks that typically don't go in. At times, he's been outplayed by Alex Len and 36-year-old Pau Gasol.

Here's a look at what happens when he doesn't force ball-handlers to the sideline, and instead lets them go middle. The aftermath is devastating.

Defensively, the Pistons surrender 11.7 more points per 100 possessions when Drummond is on the floor. Some of that's due to a small sample size and the fact that opponents are shooting 37 percent on above-the-break threes, and some of it can be explained by bad habits that have dogged Drummond over the past few years. He jumps passing lanes whenever he's outside the paint, gambling for steals and unnecessarily removing himself from a proper position. He also routinely leaves his man to rotate over, jump up, and try to block a shot when boxing out is the safer play.

None of this should be read as an indictment on Van Gundy's decision to max out Drummond. At the time, there was no rational argument against doing so. Yes, he had worrisome flaws (like free-throw shooting), but Drummond's combination of youth, size, and athleticism signaled the potential for growth into the mightiest of building blocks.

Instead, Howard, at 30, might still be a better player than Drummond, but that's less relevant to Detroit's future than how their would-be savior stacks up against the NBA's incoming generation of seven-footers. A recent proliferation of big men with more varied skill sets are on the verge of taking over, and the likelihood of Drummond ascending to the top of his position, and then sustaining that authority over the next four or five years, would defy the league's gravitation towards multi-skilled players. (Drummond is a more willing passer than his numbers suggest, but big men who are not threats from the elbows or behind the three-point line are increasingly less valuable than those who are.)

Double-doubles are wonderful (Drummond has seven so far), as is elite rebounding, but there's a solid chance Drummond is eclipsed sooner than later by the likes of Karl-Anthony Towns, Joel Embiid, Myles Turner, Kristaps Porzingis, Nikola Jokic—in some cases, he already has been. So, how do you win a title if your most important player isn't even one of the five best players at his own position?

Detroit's sudden abandonment of the three-point and free-throw lines this season is cause for mild concern. Outside of Tobias Harris and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope cracking some light into the room with their catch-and-shoot attempts, things look dark for Detroit. The only team averaging fewer three-point tries this year is the Washington Wizards. The only two teams with a lower free-throw rate are the Dallas Mavericks and the Philadelphia 76ers.

Things should normalize when Jackson's drive-and-kick game is inserted back into the lineup, but even with a healthy Jackson, the Pistons won't have enough offensive firepower to win big. How they might acquire it is unclear.

Van Gundy has so far prioritized continuity above everything else, and he's seemingly content with Caldwell-Pope, Harris, Stanley Johnson, and Jackson as members of his core. Meanwhile, a few relatively inessential pieces are also under contract through (at least) 2019: Marcus Morris leads the team in shots and should probably dial back from the adventurous hero ball experiment he's giddily conducting; in the biggest role of his career, Jon Leuer is fine but making less than 30 percent of his threes; and Ish Smith will do better in a backup role.

If Caldwell-Pope is retained this summer, Drummond's supporting cast is cemented for the next four years. The team's path to a championship is reliant on his individual growth; sharp development from Johnson, Caldwell-Pope, Harris, and Henry Ellenson; and, in an age of heavy player movement, the idea that the cohesiveness of Detroit's core would provide an unquantifiable advantage over their opponent.

It's quite the gamble. The Pistons are too good to land a high draft pick and don't have enough cap space to overpay a specialist, let alone afford a max contract. The sum of Detroit's whole will be greater than its individual parts, and they could be a pretty good playoff team for the next decade. A couple breaks here or there and maybe they crack an Eastern Conference Finals or two. But the journey from "good" to "great"—and, in turn, to winning a title—might already be out of the question.

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