Detroit Pistons Season Review: Dwight Buycks

Dwight Buycks started the season as a fringe player with a two-way contract in the G-League but may have ended it by finally cementing himself as an NBA player with the Detroit Pistons, five years after first breaking into the league.

Before signing with the Detroit Pistons on September 7, 2017, Dwight Buycks had appeared in just 20 NBA games for a total of around just 262 minutes.

He hadn’t been seen on an NBA court since April 12, 2015.

For almost three years, Buycks hustled in the Chinese Basketball Association for Fujian Sturgeons and in the G-League for the Oklahoma City Blue.

However, when he finally got his chance to return to the top basketball league in the world with the Detroit Pistons he took the opportunity and ran with it.

It’s very likely that if Reggie Jackson doesn’t go down with an injury Dwight Buycks never sees the court in a Pistons jersey, however, Jackson did go down with injury and Buycks proved to be a decent stop-gap solution at times.

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His first two appearances were tiny features at the end of a couple of blowouts, but his next seven games are what won him a cult following among fans.

Across this period he averaged 12.7 points and 3.2 assists in 20.1 minutes per game while shooting 46.7 percent from three and 48.3 percent from the field.

It’s this stretch that resulted in a Dwight Buycks fanbase cropping up overnight.

This stretch is also the reason why when Ish Smith started to really struggle as a starter some called for Buycks to become a starter and allow Smith to burst off the bench.

Unfortunately, Buycks couldn’t quite maintain the standard he set during this hot start to his time in Detroit, finishing the season averaging 7.1 points and 2.0 assists per game.

His inferno levels of shooting also dropped back to earth as he shot 41.4 percent from the field and 33.3 percent from the three-point line across his 29 games.

Despite not being able to continue his level of form, Buycks was still a solid contributor off the bench a lot of the time.

He managed to reach double-digits in scoring 12 times, which is rather impressive for a player who was in his position coming into the season.

The Pistons’ have been notoriously bad at scoring off the bench in recent years, so having a guy who could generate some offence and hit outside shots was a welcome and unexpected development.

Buycks’ magnum opus for the season came on March 15 against the Denver Nuggets.

On that night he dropped 22 points (8 of 15 shooting), 4 assists and 2 steals.

In fact, Buycks was one of the few bright spots during that game, as shown by him finishing with an equal team-high plus/minus of 4.

His 22 points were a career high while the 15 shots he took were the most he’d ever attempted in a single game for his career.

Not a bad night for someone who came off the bench and played 23 minutes.

Buycks’ other top performance is likely to be remembered much more fondly by Pistons fans.

This one came in the Pistons’ 34-point win over the Brooklyn Nets on January 10.

As usual, Buycks came off the bench, this time putting up 17 points (6 of 10 from the field, 2 of 2 from three), 3 assists and a steal in 23 minutes.

Just like his game against the Nuggets, Buycks finished the night as the equal leader in plus/minus (+24).

Just two days after this performance he was singing on the dotted line to become a permanent part of the Detroit Pistons’ main roster.

While Buycks didn’t completely dominate or reinvigorate the Pistons’ bench unit this season and had his fair share of poor games when you consider where he started the season it’s hard to see his year as anything other than a success.

He worked his way into a two-way contract, played hard for the Grand Rapids Drive, got the call up to the main roster and then performed so well that Stan Van Gundy had no choice but to offer him a full contract.

When you take that all into account, Buycks has had a heck of a season and is a shining example of what can happen if you keep working hard.

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Dwight Buycks 2017-18 Season Grade: B