The former lottery selection of the Detroit Pistons – Stanley Johnson. Where has his career gone after his time in Detroit?
Stanley Johnson has been one of the more divisive roster acquisitions of the last decade for the Detroit Pistons. Johnson, who was picked eighth overall in the 2013 draft, spent four years with the Pistons before they traded him in 2019 to the New Orleans Pelicans. Since then, Johnson has signed a deal to play with the reigning NBA-Champions, the Toronto Raptors. Though, at this moment, he hasn’t been on the court much at all.
Getting drafted before players like Devin Booker, Justise Winslow, Myles Turner, Kelly Oubre Jr, and Bobby Portis isn’t the fault of Stanley Johnson but the fault of the front office. Johnson never quite achieved what was expected of him and he was eventually traded.
Johnson appeared in 267 games for the Pistons. Scoring on average 7.1 points per contest on .37/.29/.76 splits. He was at least an average defender with some above-average tendencies, it just seems that the front office and the fan base had higher expectations.
Since the trade, Johnson played 19 games with the Pelicans. He played 13 minutes per game and averaged 5.3 points per game. After his disappointing 2018-2019 season, Johnson signed a two-year, $7.5 million contract with a player option for the second season which looks like he will be exercising. I say that because as a member of the Raptors, Johnson has played in two games so far this season, playing in less than 10 minutes total. He had a +/- of -8 in his second appearance of the season in 4:45 minutes of play in a game that was eventually a 24 point victory for the Raptors.
The playing time isn’t there for Johnson, who spent the previous four years playing around 20 minutes per contest. However, that shouldn’t come as a shock as the week before the season started, Raptors head coach Nick Nurse put both Johnson and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (a player I really wanted the Pistons to go after) on notice.
I asked Nick Nurse about how the new guys are fitting in, namely Stanley Johnson and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. This was not exactly a ringing endorsement: pic.twitter.com/GqAsHTCISc
— Josh Lewenberg (@JLew1050) October 16, 2019
After being publicly eviscerated by Nurse, it’s surprising that Johnson has even seen the floor at all. Kudos to Nurse for being direct and not sugarcoating criticism with coach-speak, but also still slightly believing in him. As mentioned, Johnson was a sound defender at times during his tenure with the Pistons. But it doesn’t seem like the effort he’s given has impressed his coach all that much. Hollis-Jefferson has only played in one game, knocking out four minutes and scoring a single point.
There is hope yet for the five-year veteran, who is still only 23 years old. With the unfortunate injury of Patrick McCaw, who had surgery on his knee and will be re-evaluated in one month, Johnson has the chance to see the court more frequently than in recent games. The three-time NBA champion McCaw, who only appeared in two games this year due to his knee injury, was averaging 20 minutes per game.
That being said, I wouldn’t go around holding my breath for Johnson to see an expanded role. Our friends over at RaptorsRapture wrote about how McCaw’s injury impacts the team and didn’t mention Johnson as much of a replacement. And even with McCaw missing four of the team’s six games, Johnson still wasn’t seeing much of the court.
So to answer the question: Where is Stanley Johnson now? The short end of Nick Nurse’s leash with quite a long way to go.