Delon Wright’s Versatility Will Shine with the Detroit Pistons

The Detroit Pistons acquired Delon Wright via trade this offseason and Wright looks poised to take on the largest role of his career. His versatility will shine with his new team.

Before coming to the Detroit Pistons, Delon Wright has had an interesting career. Drafted 20th overall by the Raptors, Wright spent his first two seasons effectively as an understudy on the team and appeared in less than 60 games over those two seasons.

For his third season, Corey Joseph left town and Wright took his place coming off the bench. He was solid in 20 minutes per game.

Wright would end up being traded to Memphis as part of the Marc Gasol trade and briefly be used as a featured player there before going to Dallas last season back into his old backup role.

Detroit will give Wright a second chance to do more and he looks like he should thrive in it.

First off, Wright is a player that should benefit from Dwane Casey’s brand of coaching. When a player takes a bigger role most coaches would design plays and actions to get them more shots. Casey, however, just tells them to shoot more.

Wright has become a decent shooter but he hasn’t developed a quick trigger. Casey imploring him to shoot when he is open should allow Wright to be seen as a real shooting threat.

His ball-handling should also be in a comfortable spot. Wright has often struggled a bit as a lead ball-handler. He isn’t a big scoring threat and while he does a good job of avoiding turnovers, he doesn’t create a lot of great looks for teammates either.

In Detroit Wright won’t ever have to worry about lead-ball handling.

With Derrick Rose, Killian Hayes, and Blake Griffin in town Wright can keep his ball handling duties mostly to quick hitting actions coming off of a scrambling defense, and his ability to avoid turnovers is more valuable since he won’t force what isn’t there and be comfortable resetting and allowing more capable players to try and force things.

Defensively Wright should be a perfect fit and form a formidable perimeter defense for the Pistons.

More from PistonPowered

• Which Detroit Pistons could save Team USA in the Olympics?
• Detroit Pistons could have major roster churn after 2023-24 season
• The best Detroit Pistons to wear each uniform number
• Full Detroit Pistons NBA 2K24 ratings
• Detroit Pistons: Who will sign the remaining NBA free agents?

Wright is long, tough, and has a good motor. He’s spent a lot of his career defending wing players so there should be no problems there. His length combined with the length of Hayes and Grant in the starting lineup should be a menace on defense.

Many of their gains on the perimeter will be lost by what should be a very soft interior, but it will be fun to watch them terrorize ball handlers.

The Wright/Grant combo as starting wings should make for the most competent defensive combo the Pistons have had there since… I honestly don’t know.

This Pistons team will have plenty of frustrating flaws, but after so many years of being eaten alive by every good wing scorer it will be a nice change of pace.

The only issue is that two of the Pistons main ball-handlers in Rose and Griffin are likely to spend at least some portion of the season in street clothes. It will be interesting to see on those nights how Wright does when asked to take a bigger creation role.

And by interesting I mean painful.

There is also some concern about how consistent a shooter he can be on higher volume.

Overall Wright is a good player who should be a great fit on this roster. Troy Weaver did not have a great offseason but getting Wright was a good move. Wright should be able to shine with more minutes and will have a good chance to become a real trade asset.