1. Develop Their Young Players
The Pistons are not stacked with an abundance of young talent, but they do have some young players who have not been given the greatest opportunity to develop thus far in their careers.
Stanley Johnson has gotten playing time to develop, but he has not been put in the best roles to utilize his skillset. He should be attacking the basket and handling the ball, but instead, he has spent a lot of his time camped out in the corners for 3-pointers that he is not very good at.
As for Henry Ellenson, he has not gotten much of an opportunity to play since being drafted with the 18th pick in the 2016 draft. He has spent a lot of time on the Pistons roster not playing instead of getting minutes with the Pistons’ G-League team the Grand Rapids Drive. He still has a long way to go, especially after struggling in Summer Leaguthird-yearrd year player.
Finally, Luke Kennard showed that he could play last season, but Stan Van Gundy still left the reigns on him and didn’t give him a lot of opportunities to just play and learn from mistakes. Out of these three Pistons prospects, Kennard is the one in the least need of proper development.
However, they all could go for some development and they have the right coach to do that. You may be thinking that this goal kind of counter-acts the first goal of making the playoffs. In a lot of cases, teams will sacrifice wins in order to develop young players. However, in the Pistons’ case, their young players are going to be relied on for a decent amount of minutes, especially in the case of Kennard and Johnson.
They are both still young with room to grow, but the Pistons don’t have the luxury of having a ton of depth behind them. These young guys are going to need to be given opportunities to play to their strengths and the team will have to overcome some of their growing pains while still remaining competitive.
Kennard and Johnson have shown that they can handle more minutes, but in the case of Johnson, those minutes have not been the most productive minutes. It is make-or-break time for him and hopefully, Dwane Casey can put him in a position to use play to his strengths and finally start to resemble the player that they hoped they were getting when they drafted him with the 8th pick in 2015.
The Pistons have two more developmental prospects in Bruce Brown Jr. and Khyri Thomas, who they selected in the 2nd round of the 2018 draft. Those two guys will likely spend a lot of time in Grand Rapids, but their development is just as important to the future of the Pistons as the three players listed above.
The Pistons are going to be cap strapped for the foreseeable future and having their young guys develop into solid rotation players will be the easiest way to get players to fill out their roster around the Griffin, Jackson, Drummond core.
Making the playoffs remains the biggest priority for the Pistons this season. However, it is important that they do not hinder the development of their young players in a mindless pursuit of making the playoffs.
