Detroit Pistons: Why offseason trades will be necessary
Detroit Pistons: Will the big men work? Unlikely
The Detroit Pistons currently have four big men in Jalen Duren, Isaiah Stewart, James Wiseman and Marvin Bagley III, three of which have a fair amount of overlapping skills.
Troy Weaver has talked about the need to get bigger to compete in the Eastern Conference but overlooked the fact that teams like Milwaukee and Cleveland aren’t just big and have dynamic bigs in Giannis Antetokounmpo and Evan Mobley who don’t just operate in the paint.
The Pistons haven’t had all four healthy at the same time (more on that later) but the small sample size we have seen has not been great. The five-man lineup with Stewart and Duren together, which has the most amount of minutes of any group, has a -16.3 net rating this season with a pathetic 124.2 defensive rating.
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The lineup with the third-most minutes, which contains Stewart and Bagley III has a -26 net rating with an unbelievable 83.6 offensive rating. Woof.
The only lineup with two bigs that has played more than a handful of minutes together and has a positive net rating is the Killian Hayes, Jaden Ivey, Bojan Bogdanovic, Isaiah Stewart and James Wiseman lineup that has played 24 minutes total this season and has a 8.2 net rating.
So there is some hope that the Detroit Pistons can find some way to make this work, but the idea that James Wiseman or Marvin Bagley III is going to suddenly play the four with another big is a long shot.
Although, the way things are going, it may never come up.