Detroit Pistons: Rotation staggering leads to more scoring

After the Detroit Pistons opening night win, the young team has struggled to find their identity, quickly ending up in the midst of a five game skid following that first game.

The Pistons have been looking for a spark to drive their season forward, and they may have found it after beating the defending champion Golden State Warriors to snap that losing streak.

Now, beating such a prominent and dynamic team like the Warriors will give any team confidence. However, for the Pistons, their new roster is still figuring out how to play together and needs to see growth to determine their own game.

With such a young and fairly new roster, the Pistons’ rotation is still a work in progress, and will likely continue to change as the season moves along. The rotation and minutes distribution in the win against the Warriors was undoubtedly the most successful so far this season, and could be a taste of how this team can get the best out of each other moving forward.

Detroit Pistons: Coach Casey finally staggering the starters

Against the Warriors, each member of the Pistons starting five scored at least 15 points, with four of those players hitting 20 points or more.

The Pistons have not seen anything close to that scoring distribution and efficiency this season. Part of that was due to the staggering of minutes by coach Dwane Casey, ensuring that there was a member of the starting lineup playing alongside the second unit to continue generating offense and get that player going individually.

In fact, there was only one minute throughout the whole game where there was not a starter on the floor for the Pistons. This shows the importance that Casey put on making sure at least one of his key pieces was with the bench unit as a spark plug for the five that was on the court.

This led to the long-awaited splash from Saddiq Bey this season, scoring 28 points, as well as a career high for Isaiah Stewart with 24 points. Now, we can’t expect Stewart to go out and score 20 or more points every night, however I do think that the strategy Casey used with these players proved to be effective to get them going.

The starting lineup of Stewart, Bey, Cade Cunningham, Bojan Bogdanovic, and Jaden Ivey are all capable of scoring at a high volume individually any time that they step on the floor. The problem that the Detroit Pistons have ran into this season has involved the offensive success of one hindering that of another.

Specifically with Bey, the acquisition of Bogdanovic has brought forth a smaller amount of offensive opportunities for Bey than we’ve seen in the past. Against the Warriors, at certain points throughout the game, Bey was on the floor as the leader of the second unit which brought him more scoring chances that developed into seeing big shots fall during crunch time when his fellow starters were back on the floor.

This strategy also worked for Ivey, allowing him to handle the ball more often on the court with the second unit, giving the rookie plenty of opportunities to generate offense against the defending champs. Allowing Ivey to run the offense at certain points will be crucial to his development in this league, and potentially evolving into the Pistons’ second star alongside Cunningham.

The success that the Pistons saw against the Warriors was hugely impacted by all of their key players contributing offensively. Moving forward, coach Casey will need to find a way to continue to have each player find their groove on a nightly basis. To do that, his rotations will need to have one of his primary scorers and distributors on the floor at all times.