The dominance of Christian Wood for the Detroit Pistons has carried over into yet another game, this time against the Utah Jazz.
It’s become a reoccurring theme over these last few weeks that the sheer brilliance of Christian Wood‘s play has become indescribable. There’s only so much you can think to say about a guy who continuously tops his previous performance. Despite the Detroit Pistons losing, he’s been remarkable.
After posting a career high 29 points against Oklahoma City in the Pistons previous game, Wood bullied his way to a new personal record tonight against the Jazz.
Scoring 30 points and grabbing 11 rebounds, he’s consistently been one of, if not the best scorer for Detroit over the last month of play.
Wood opened the game shooting just 2 for 7 from the field, and it began to feel as if he would be rendered ineffective against Rudy Gobert, the reining two-time defensive player of the year.
However, he was able to turn things around and provided multiple thunderous dunks throughout the course of his team-high 38 minutes played. He ended the game having made 13 of his 24 attempted shots (54 percent).
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He was getting hit off good looks from Bruce Brown on pick and rolls late in the fourth when the Pistons were attempting to climb back into the game. Despite a strong effort, Detroit came up short.
However, it was thanks to Wood that it was even close, as he scored 13 of his 30 points in the third quarter alone.
He wasn’t hitting his three-point attempts tonight, and for the most part it was because they were coming off of bad looks. He ended the night 0 of 5 from downtown. This is coming off the heels of his 5 of 6 performance from deep against Oklahoma City.
As soon as Andre Drummond was traded to Cleveland at the deadline, we had assumed that it would be Wood’s time to shine, and he hasn’t disappointed. We’ve seen an iteration of himself that had not yet been unlocked.
Since that trade happened on February 6th, Wood entered tonight averaging 21.2 points and 10.3 rebounds per game on 53.2 percent shooting, and 42.9 percent from three-point range.
The way that he’s been able to use his size to get to the basket on offense, and use his length to protect to rim on defense has been outstanding.
To this day it’s still baffling that so many teams have passed on him throughout his short career. Detroit is undoubtedly lucky to have landed his services, and they’ll certainly be paying him this summer.