The Detroit Pistons will travel to Boston tonight to take on the Celtics and the big question is whether we will see new acquisition James Wiseman.
The Saddiq Bey and Kevin Knox for James Wiseman four-team trade hit some snags along the way, but eventually went through, giving coach Dwane Casey a new weapon in his arsenal and the headache of trying to figure out a starting lineup and depth chart that gets all of these young players minutes.
How coach Casey plans to use James Wiseman will be one of the ongoing narratives for the rest of this season, as he is a questionable fit next to any of their bigs and may have to adjust his game to be more of a power forward than center.
This is especially true after Jalen Duren has been playing well in the starting lineup, putting up his best game of the season and joining the record books recently against the Spurs.
Can a two-big lineup be effective for the Detroit Pistons? We should get our first glimpse of it tonight.
Detroit Pistons: Will James Wiseman play vs. Celtics?
James Wiseman is with the team and cleared to play, so should be making his debut tonight against Boston, who lost last night in overtime to the Bucks. The Celtics and Bucks are two of the teams Troy Weaver mentioned when he talked about the Pistons’ need to get bigger, which was part of his mindset when swapping out two forwards for another big man.
ESPN, among others, reported that the Pistons planned on using Wiseman as the starting center, which is unlikely given the rise of Duren, but we could see him in the starting five as the power forward or coming off the bench as the primary backup big.
With both Marvin Bagley III and Nerlens Noel out, coach Casey has fewer options and combinations, so it makes sense to just run Wiseman off the bench and then stagger him at times with Duren to see how that combination works.
Wiseman has a lot of similarities with MBIII, so Bagley being out actually makes the rotation a little easier to manage.
We’ll have to wait to see how Wiseman is utilitzed, but one thing is for certain, the trade added a jolt of life to this season and fans of the Detorit Pisotns will be tuned in tonight.