Detroit Pistons: 5 most overrated Pistons of all time

NBA fans tend to overrate their own guys and fans of the Detroit Pistons are no exception.

This generally happens when a team is bad, as fans are desperate to find some reason to be hopeful, so cling onto a guy and heap more adoration upon him than he probably deserves.

Sometimes it’s because a player was overly hyped and fans kept trying to overlook major flaws in favor of their rose colored glasses.

At times a player is overrated because he wasn’t playing that much and the hope of the unknown was more appealing than the reality.

This isn’t the fault of the player, and some of these Pistons were really good, but they just weren’t as good as the fans thought. This is especially true of players from the past, as we tend to print the myth instead of the truth.

Here are five former Detroit Pistons who fans continue to overrate for various reasons. Sorry if you see one of your favorites here and feel free to argue your case in the comments.

Most overrated Detroit Pistons #5- Jason Maxiell

This one hurts, as Maxiell was one of my favorite players from his era and a guy who very much embodied Detroit basketball.

He was a fan favorite because of his motor and hustle and was a very good role player for some quality teams.

But he was never as good as fans made him out to be, as I remember Pistons’ fans saying he should have been 6th man of the year, or that he should start, neither of which was true.

When Maxiell did start for the Pistons from 2009-2013 (he started all but one game in the 2012-13 season) they were absolutely horrible. Those were some of the worst teams in team history.

Maxiell never averaged even eight points per game. He never hit six rebounds per game. He only had two seasons where he had at least one block per game and this is a guy fans now pretend was a prolific shot blocker.

His shooting percentages are abysmal even though he never shot outside of three feet from the rim. Maxiell’s ceiling was to be a decent role player on a good team, and that’s what he was, but as soon as he was asked to be more, he was exposed.

Again, this isn’t a knock on Maxiell, but fans always made him out to be more than he really was.

Most overrated Detroit Pistons #4- Brandon Jennings

Brandon Jennings was one of the biggest mistakes of the modern era for the Detroit Pistons.

Detroit inexplicably traded both Brandon Knight and Khris Middleton to the Bucks in exchange for Jennings, whose time with the team was short lived and riddled with injuries.

He did have some electric games for some terrible Pistons teams and fans tend to remember those but forget the rest.

Jennings would have a monster game where he’d put up 35 points and 12 assists and look like an All-Star, then he’d back it up with a 0-11 shooting night where he scored one point.

Take a look at his 2014-15 game log if you don’t believe me, as he started the season strong but then had a stretch where he put up point totals of 1, 8, 6, 1, 8, 3, 6, 13, 22, 8, 14, 25 and 5.

That was pretty much Jennings in a nutshell. He was completely hit or miss and that was before he got hurt.

The hindsight narrative around Jennings was that he was a star who would have been great had he just been able to stay healthy, but the truth is that he was an undersized, shoot first guard who was wildly inconsistent and inefficient.

Most overrated Detroit Pistons #3- Larry Brown

The first coach to make the list!

Larry Brown took the Detroit Pistons to a title in 2004, so it’s hard to say he was overrated, but he was.

Brown was great for that year and I’ll always be grateful for helping to get the Pistons another ring, but are we sure they wouldn’t have gotten one without him? The narrative has always been that Rick Carlisle was good enough for the regular season, but not a “championship” coach.

Carlisle has since put that notion to rest, and I truly believe the Pistons would have won that year anyway, as the title was more about the addition of Rasheed Wallace than it was about a different coach.

Carlisle had the Pistons 2nd, and 1st in the Eastern Conference the two years before Brown came on board and had already won coach of the year before being inexplicably fired by the impatient Joe Dumars.

Brown was also a huge distraction in the 2004-5 season, as he refused to squash all of the rumors about him leaving and this was DURING A TITLE DEFENSE.

Not only would he not kill the rumors, but he actively added to them, which was one of the hallmarks of his career.

Even though the Pistons didn’t win another title after he left, Flip Saunders (RIP) had a higher winning percentage and set the team record for wins the next season before ultimately losing in the Eastern Conference Finals to Dwyane Wade and the Heat.

Brown is obviously a good coach (and is still at it as an assistant with Rasheed in Memphis) but I think he gets a little too much credit for just being in the right place at the right time.

Brown bounced around the NBA before and after the Pistons and never sniffed another title. Carlisle is still coaching and is considered one of the best in the game.

Most overrated Detroit Pistons #2- Greg Monroe

Monroe is another guy who gets the hindsight treatment, as fans love to make excuses as to why he is not still in the league even though he is only 31-years-old.

The most common narrative is that “the rules changed!” or the “NBA changed!” and those are both technically true.

But they changed for everyone, not just Monroe, and guys like Brook Lopez were able to adjust with the times and change their game to suit the modern era.

In fact, many of the bigs from Monroe’s draft are still contributing at some level in the NBA, including Derrick Favors, Boogie Cousins and Hassan Whiteside, who are in the same league whose “rules” ended Monroe’s career.

Monroe had some decent seasons for the Detroit Pistons but to me he’ll always be symbolic of Joe Dumars’ failure to identify how the league was changing and adjust.

While the rest of the league was starting to go smaller and draft two-way wings, the Pistons doubled down on size with Monroe and Drummond, kicking off the most mediocre and boring era of Pistons basketball in my lifetime.

The game “passed Monroe by” because he wasn’t good enough to adjust. He could have been a nice backup center, but he should have never been drafted as high as he was, especially when Paul George was right there.

Pistons’ fans like to remember Monroe as more than he was, but if this were true, he’d still be playing.

Most overrated Detroit Pistons #1- Luke Kennard

No player represents the “we need something to hope for” narrative more than Luke Kennard.

In the year 2021 there are people still yelling at me on Twitter that the Pistons shouldn’t have traded Kennard for Saddiq Bey, even though Bey is clearly already better.

Seriously, I get this argument more than you’d think.

There is a small but vocal group of people who are still willing die on Kennard hill, even after watching him catch DNP’s in the playoffs because he was getting absolutely abused on defense.

Yes, Kennard can shoot and he is a pretty good passer, but he can’t guard anyone, has no motor and gets hurt a lot.

The only numbers his Stans point to are shooting percentages, but if you only take six shots per game it doesn’t really matter how many of them go in.

I am guilty of this as well, as I wrote one embarrassing take about Kennard back when the team was so horrible we were looking for anything to be excited about.

If Kennard ever stops playing the game like he is someone’s little brother, he could end up being an effective bench player, as the guy can score, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Kennard’s fans were still arguing he was the right choice even after we watched Donovan Mitchell become a superstar in Utah, which is why I have to make him the most overrated Piston.

What do you think? Who else should be on this list?