Detroit Pistons: Marcus Morris season in review and grade

Marcus Morris had a season to forget, like most of the Detroit Pistons starters. He had a solid month of February, but there were problems aplenty.

Marcus Morris grew as a leader for the Detroit Pistons in 2016-17, but his play didn’t follow suit for much of the season. In spite of a strong 20-game stretch in January and February in which he averaged 17.6 points per game, shooting 45 percent from the floor and 35 percent from long range, over the course of the season he averaged 14 points and shot 41.8 percent from the floor and 33.1 percent from three.

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Morris set a career high in field goal attempts at 12.7 per game, and he matched that with the second-worst true shooting rate of his career at just 50.8 percent. Only Ish Smith‘s 47.7 percent and Stanley Johnson‘s 44.4 percent were worse true shooting rates among all rotational Pistons. While Morris was stout defensively, he was detrimental to the Pistons’ offense.

He also did virtually nothing on the boards. The only player who played even close to half of their minutes at forward with a lower rebounding rate than Morris’ 7.8 percent was Stanley Johnson with 7.5 percent, and he played half his minutes at shooting guard.

While Morris was a drag on the offense and a virtual zero on the boards, he did find his voice in the locker room and on the bench. When called upon by Stan Van Gundy to step up as a leader, he put the fear of God (metaphorically speaking) into his teammates in a game against the Cleveland Cavaliers at the Palace of Auburn Hills in early March. Morris energized his fellow Pistons and they charged to an inspirational win in perhaps the last happy memory Pistons fans will have of the Palace.

He was also the leading voice in an ill-fated players-only meeting in December. The meeting was called by Aron Baynes, but Morris did most of the talking as the team was called to attention for lack of ball movement and defensive effort. These sound like good things, but by all accounts Reggie Jackson took the brunt of the attacks just a couple of weeks after returning from knee tendinitis. Not great.

Marcus Morris is entrenched as a starting forward on this team right now, but that’s due largely to the inability of anybody behind him to usurp the role. It would behoove the Pistons to be able to move him to a sixth or seventh man role and replace him with somebody who can score at a higher level.

Grade: C-

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