Grading the Pistons 2015 Draft Class: Stanley Johnson

The bold Detroit Pistons’ forward Stanley Johnson clashed with LeBron, earned an earful from Stan Van Gundy, and tasted the big stage in his rookie year. How should we evaluate his first season in Pistons blue?

Stanley Johnson’s statistics in a March 11 blowout defeat to Charlotte don’t look impressive: just three points in nine minutes. But if you were watching that game closely, you saw a shift in the Pistons’ dynamic when he entered the game. Suddenly the Hornets, who had been moving the ball with embarrassing ease, has a little less space. Bodies collided. The ball started popping loose, just off the Pistons’ fingertips. The players still made defensive mistakes, but those mistakes came not from laziness, the lack of defensive effort that seemed to doom the team in so many defeats this season, but from too much effort, over-exertion. Though Johnson wasn’t credited with any blocks or steals, he led the Pistons in defensive rating. Detroit still lost, but for a few short minutes, a rookie’s exuberance made them look alive.

It’s hard to be disappointed with Stanley Johnson’s rookie season if you’re a Pistons fan. It wasn’t completely surprising to see the 6-foot-7 swingman from Arizona left off the All-Rookie teams, but he certainly played well enough in spurts this season to at least make fans scroll down the list slowly, watching for his name.

First, the numbers. It doesn’t make much sense to judge Stanley against the Rookie of the Year, Karl-Anthony Towns, nor the sensational runner-up, Kristaps Porzingis. Instead, let’s look at the comparison with the much-lauded Justise Winslow, who Detroit passed over to select Johnson at number eight in the 2015 draft.

Neither 19-year-old is a marksman, exactly—per Basketball-reference.com, Winslow shot an abysmal 27.6 percent at the 3-point line, while Johnson only fared a few points better at 30.7 percent, a number that would be significantly lower if you subtracted shots taken from the right corner, his favorite (and best) spot on the floor.

Johnson averaged 8.1 points over 73 games, while Winslow averaged 6.4 points over 78 games. Both rookies finished the season with middling PERs, though Winslow was more efficient overall, taking fewer shots for a higher percentage, with 20 fewer turnovers in five more games.

Of course, context matters for stats like these. Winslow was put in a position to succeed in Miami; though he played more minutes per game than Johnson (28.6 to 23.1), he was asked to do less on a veteran team firmly encamped in the top half of the Eastern Conference—and if all that wasn’t enough of an advantage, he had two future Hall of Famers to mentor him, as well.

Johnson, on the other hand, was the youngest, most raw player on a young, raw team—one that was significantly shaken up at the trade deadline. This doesn’t mean we can throw stats out completely, but it’s at least worth remembering the context: Johnson was thrown into an exciting but unstable environment. Detroit’s stagnant bench unit relied on him more than was healthy at times, and only a few of his minutes on the court weren’t also spent fielding criticism and instruction from SVG.

Both Johnson and Winslow were lauded for being NBA-ready on the defensive end, and after one season, both look the part of future lock-down defenders. Winslow was a key contributor to one of the best defenses in the NBA, and Johnson, despite his struggles with team defense that Stan Van Gundy recently alluded to on J.J. Redick’s podcast, showed tremendous promise in one-on-one matchups. Whatever you want to say about the kid, you can’t say he doesn’t have the physical tools to succeed, especially as a defensive stopper.

The eye test goes both ways. There were times, like that March 11 game in Charlotte, when Johnson’s relentless energy gave the Pistons’ listless defense a charge. Moments like these, and like the many steals he took coast to coast throughout the season, offer a glimpse of Johnson’s tremendously promising future—not just a 3 & D guy, but a defensive ace who’s also a versatile threat in transition, an extremely athletic tweener built to thrive in today’s NBA.

But, frankly, for most of the season, Johnson looked like an out-of-control freight train on the offensive end. He was a loose cannon with shaky ball handling skills—earning a whopping 18 traveling calls, per NBAsavant.com—and decision making that was questionable at best. He played at full speed, and his full speed was usually too fast. The worst thing I can say about Stanley Johnson is that my reaction to him pushing the ball up court is strikingly similar to my reaction to Dion Waiters doing the same for OKC. (It goes something like this: No, Stanley, NO, slowslowslow, wait—ah, dang it.) He seemed to settle down a bit later in the year, especially when he played with Tobias Harris, who added some ballhandling to a team that badly needed it (and still needs it now), but I suspect we’re just going to have to give the kid some time. One would hope that, in addition to improving his team defense, Johnson will spend some time in the offseason honing his offensive game.

Unlike lots of other fans and stodgy analysts, I didn’t cringe when the rookie poked the bear (LeBron James) in the playoffs. I was happy to see a larger audience get introduced to what made Johnson so much fun to watch in his rookie season: his brashness, his energy, the talent and focus to back up his talk.

Am I sold on Stanley Johnson as an NBA superstar? A perennial All-Star? Not quite. But I’m high on his potential (and USA Basketball is, too). He’s done more than enough in his first season to make me comfortable envisioning him playing a key role in a Pistons team that looks poised to be competitive for years to come.