Detroit Pistons: Why Cory Joseph should not be re-signed

During the offseason, the Detroit Pistons will have the chance to pick up the $12.5 million contract option on Cory Joseph to retain him on the roster. The Pistons should absolutely not do that.

In terms of basic stats like points per game, assists, and rebounds, Joseph is playing perhaps the best stretch of basketball in his entire career right now in Detroit.

Unfortunately, his production is a bad thing.

Joseph is averaging 26 minutes over the 18 games he has played in the Motor City, which means he is taking away minutes from players who are not quite as productive, but show promise. Hamidou Diallo, Dennis Smith Jr, and Killian Hayes all come to mind as players who could have a future lengthy role on this team and should be ahead of Joseph in the rotation.

Despite Joseph playing basketball at a seemingly high level, a career journeyman should not be taking minutes away from potential franchise cornerstones.

Detroit Pistons: Why Cory Jospeh will not be back

With his increased role in Detroit, Joseph is proving to be too wild with the ball. He is averaging the most turnovers in his career. I understand the Pistons are a heavily flawed team that, frankly, is not very good, but younger players should be the ones making the mistakes, not a 29-year-old NBA veteran with a championship ring.

While Joseph is playing some of the better basketball he has ever played, at first glance, he is actually detrimental to the Pistons’ success and is projected to get even worse.

The site FiveThirtyEight used their CARMELO (Career-Arc Regression Model Estimator with Local Optimization) stat and predicted that Joseph’s win shares would be cut in half from 2019 to 2021.

This was a bold claim, and it turns out they were wrong.

Joseph’s win shares dropped by even more than that.

CARMELO takes comparable historic NBA players and uses their numbers to predict how poorly, or how well, a player will play over a certain period of time. Often a depressing indicator of future success, even the statisticians at FiveThirtyEight could not have predicted the lack of productivity Joseph would show during this stage of his career.

Joseph’s advanced stats, including VORP, win shares, and box plus/minus are all comparable to an average player, and there are reasons to believe he will regress in the near future.

If the Pistons do indeed make a playoff push next year, and actually get competitive, then a 30-year-old average player is not the man you want running the offense, at any point. Young guys need playing time to improve, and Joseph doesn’t offer anything the team doesn’t already have.

Detroit will also most likely have a high draft pick this year.

The consensus top five players in the 2021 NBA Draft are Cade Cunningham, Jalen Suggs, Evan Mobley, Jalen Green, and Johnathan Kuminga. With the exception of Mobley and Kuminga (who Detroit fans seem to want to avoid for some reason), all of the top players are guards who would be already competing with Hayes, Diallo, and Smith for minutes next year. Joseph does not need to be thrown into the mix.

I’m not convinced even Smith needs to be included in there, despite my initial faith in him.

Now, Joseph is not a bad player, but his career arc shows little room for improvement, and the young guys, who will improve, and be vital pieces to future success don’t need someone standing in the way.