Detroit Pistons head coach Dwane Casey recently moved Stanley Johnson to the bench. He’s made the most of his minutes with the reserve group.
Stanley Johnson has seemingly been looking for a place on the Detroit Pistons roster since he was selected with the eighth overall pick in the 2015 NBA draft.
He was in the starting lineup and he came off the bench for former head coach and president of basketball operations, Stan Van Gundy. Neither seemed to work for Johnson under the past regime.
He’s now done both under new head coach Dwane Casey.
Being with the starting unit was not working out for him. He had just become too much of a liability on offense.
While with that group, Johnson was shooting just 35 percent from the field and 25 percent from the three-point line. He was also turning the ball over almost three times per game.
Glenn Robinson III is now in the starting lineup. Now that Johnson is coming off the bench, he looks like a completely different player.
In the five games that he’s come off the bench, his offensive numbers have boosted significantly. He’s shooting 44 percent from the field and 37 percent from three-point range.
In last week’s game against the Atlanta Hawks, Johnson scored 22 points in just 24 minutes of action while shooting 50 percent from the field.
Their last game against the Toronto Raptors might have been his best all-around game as a member of the Detroit Pistons.
He hit big time shots when his team needed it the most and was able to lock down one of the best players in the game, Kawhi Leonard.
The pivotal turnover in that game happened where Leonard managed to dribble the ball off his foot out of bounds. The Pistons then got the ball with two seconds left to go in the game and hit the winning shot at the buzzer.
It was obvious he was very frustrated and at that point Stanley Johnson had established real estate in his head. I’m kidding of course.
However, Johnson came in and did his job perfectly. I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t matched up with Leonard earlier in the game after he scored 11 points in the first quarter.
How has Johnson been able to make more of an impact off of the bench?
It seems like he’s just simplified his game. Offensively, he’s doing more of what makes him a versatile player on that end of the floor.
Johnson’s strong, athletic build (6-7, 245 lbs) has always given him an advantage at attacking the rim when the opportunity presents itself.
Here’s a perfect example of that. Johnson gives himself more of an advantage by trailing the play a bit and then catching the pass from Ish Smith going at full speed to the rim.
Here’s another example of that same set up.
Johnson has always played with his emotions on his sleeve. When he’s frustrated, it’s clear. It happens to be one of his downfalls as a player and it’s something he will have to work on as matures.
On the other hand, it’s easy to tell when he’s playing with a ton of confidence. After getting some good looks and capitalizing on them against the Raptors, he went a step further.
Stanley Johnson is not a good three-point shooter. This is a highly contested shot. However, this is what confidence can do to a player.
His defense and offensive output made this his best game of the season and possibly the best game of his career to this point.
Can he consistently have these types of nights? These are the types of flashes we’ve seen from Johnson in the past.
A quick example would be his 26-point performance against the Cleveland Cavaliers last season.
However, those types of nights mean nothing if you follow it up with four points in 20-plus minutes of action and have zero impact on the court.
This will be something to watch as the season progresses. For now, Stanley Johnson continues to excel coming off the bench for the Detroit Pistons.