Detroit Pistons player profile: Reggie Bullock

As the NBA season nears, we will take a deeper look at each player on the Detroit Pistons and what their role will be this season. There may not be many minutes available for Reggie Bullock, but he was also Detroit’s most consistent deep threat down the stretch last season.

Reggie Bullock, 25, played a role in helping the Detroit Pistons make it back to the postseason for the first time in six years last season.

Stanley Johnson strained his right shoulder on February 22nd and missed the next seven games. At the time of his injury, the Pistons were 28-29 and sitting in ninth place in the Eastern Conference.

Bullock, despite the fact that he had not seen consistent action since November, was called upon to fill Johnson’s spot in the rotation. At that critical juncture of the season, he really stepped up.

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During Johnson’s absence, Bullock scored nine points per game and hit 58 percent of his three pointers in 23.9 minutes per game. The Pistons went 5-2 during that stretch and moved up to eighth in the standings. The 6’7” former first round pick was able to keep a small role for the rest of the season and into the playoffs even after Johnson returned.

Bullock was Detroit’s best perimeter shooter last season. Post All-Star break, he made 21 of 43 three pointers (48.8 percent) in 19 appearances. For the season, he finished shooting 41.5 percent from deep, best on the team outside of Jodie Meeks (who played in three games) and Justin Harper (who played in five). Small sample size, to be sure, but still an impressive rate.

This is what got Bullock on the team in the first place. The former 2013 first round pick was no guarantee to make the roster last fall, but an impressive preseason — where he shot 52 percent from three — made it a no-brainer. In fact, it was a good enough showing for the Pistons to pick up his fourth-year team option for 2016-2017 prior to the start of last season.

Despite faltering early on, Bullock ended up proving that decision to be a worthwhile one.

By the end of the season, he had set career highs in points, rebounds, assists, field goals made, field goal percentage, three-point field goal percentage and free throw percentage. He also played sound defense and made good decisions with the ball in his 11.6 minutes per game.

The only problem is that little has changed between last year and this. Bullock got what little 10th-man minutes there were last season, and that appears to be the situation heading into this one.

Bullock is behind Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Marcus Morris, and Johnson in the wing pecking order — we may even see Tobias Harris log some minutes at the three if the Pistons go big. Any leftover minutes will fall to Bullock or Darrun Hilliard, but the roster is so versatile that there won’t be many of those to go around.

It’s simple math, as Keith Langlois of Pistons.com pointed out in a recent article. KCP averaged 36.7 minutes per game last season. Morris, 35.7 and Johnson, 23.1. That’s 95.5 of the 96 minutes a game available for wing players.

Surely Stan Van Gundy wants to play both Morris and KCP fewer minutes this season, but Johnson is the player that is more likely to benefit from such a change. Van Gundy’s on record saying that a rotation that goes past nine doesn’t leave enough minutes for the best players.

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All of that being said, Bullock hit nearly 50 percent of his three pointers down the stretch last season. The Pistons need a sharpshooter like that, and Van Gundy will have to find ways to fit him into the rotation if he keeps it up.

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