After trading away Stanley Johnson, Devin Booker reminded the Detroit Pistons of an inevitable problem; their incapability to guard any competent wings.
The Detroit Pistons are coming off of a 118-98 win against the Phoenix Suns on Thursday. The teams starters, outside of Wayne Ellington, struggled from the floor shooting a combined 17-46.
The Pistons were down two at halftime, but were able to pull away down the stretch thanks to the play of their bench.
However, even though the Pistons won this game, there is something seriously concerning that should be taken away from this game.
Well, I on the other hand, have been worried and concerned about this since the morning of February 6th.
What’s that date you may ask?
Oh, that’s the morning the Detroit Pistons shipped off Stanley Johnson to the Milwaukee Bucks for Thon Maker. Everyone knows the writer of this article is Johnson’s Brian Windhorst, and I understand you guys reading may think this is just bias.
Nope.
It’s not.
See, the problem is Johnson was an elite defender for the Pistons on the wing. If you want any kind of evidence of that, watch him save the Pistons against the Raptors in their first match-up by putting Kawhi Leonard on lock and key.
Johnson, with all of his offensive struggles, played a key role for the Pistons that literally NO ONE else on the roster could play. But, since he couldn’t shoot he was shipped off for Maker, who has been fine for the Pistons by the way.
The problem that now arises from that trade is the Pistons have literally not one player that can guard even a competent offensive wing player. Devin Booker just so happened to remind everyone of this problem on Thursday.
Booker was torching the Detroit Pistons and was the reason the Pistons were in a close game against one of the worst teams in the league. The Pistons ended up holding Booker and the Suns back down the stretch, but Booker still finished with 26 points on 8-17 shooting.
The Suns are not a good team, therefore even with an offensive explosion from their star, they’d still likely lose the game.
That is certainly not the case against the Milwaukee Bucks.
Or the Toronto Raptors.
Or the Boston Celtics.
Or the Philadelphia 76ers.
One of these four teams will be the Pistons match-up come playoff time.
Whether it’s Jimmy Butler, Jayson Tatum, Ben Simmons, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, Leonard, Pascal Siakam, or Tobias Harris, anyone with reasonable size to their game is going to cause the Detroit Pistons major problems.
So yeah, the Detroit Pistons will win enough games to make the playoffs. And yeah, they can beat a bad team with a great wing simply because his teammates aren’t that good.
But, just as Leonard (33 points 11-21 shooting) showed in their last match-up against the injured Raptors, an elite player with size is going to have its way with the Pistons.
And the player coach Dwane Casey called the best defender to guard LeBron James was traded off of Detroit’s roster.
Everyone’s all happy about it now, and reasonably so; the Pistons have won 13 of their last 18 games since the trade.
But, we’ll be reminded of this problem again in a month.
This time, it’ll be when it really counts.
And the Detroit Pistons wont have any answer for it.