The Detroit Pistons have lost 16 of their last 17 games and it hasn’t been pretty.
The veterans are all sitting with dubious injuries, leaving Detroit with a young, shorthanded team that doesn’t have any direction.
Detroit has continued the experiment of using two-bigs in the starting lineup, which has been a flop, especially on the defensive end, where James Wiseman and Marvin Bagley III have a rating of over 130 as a duo.
The worst part about the two-bigs fiasco is that they aren’t even using rookie Jalen Duren as one of them even though he’s arguably been the best of the three at just 19-years-old.
The Pistons clearly want to see what they have in James Wiseman after trading Saddiq Bey for him, but it makes little sense to penalize Duren, who has been one of the only bright spots of the season and should be considered the center of the future.
Detroit Pistons: Jalen Duren deserves to start
Even though Jalen Duren is the youngest player in the NBA, he is already a force on the boards, the best perimeter defender of the three centers and easily the best passer, which we saw again last night when he racked up four assists off the bench, including a couple of really slick passes:
.@JalenDuren finds Eugene for the dunk 🔥 pic.twitter.com/dnpK4nAR9w
— Detroit Pistons (@DetroitPistons) March 25, 2023
He had an even better one to a cutting Isaiah Livers where he threaded the needle between two defenders.
Duren obviously has a lot of work to do on different aspects of his game, but he’s already better than Wiseman at pretty much everything except scoring. For a team that claims they are trying to build an identity around defense, it makes no sense to bring their best big off the bench in favor of two mismatched centers who don’t defend in Wiseman and Bagley III.
Duren actually played more minutes than Wiseman last night, but if he is really your center of the future, why not have him start with some of the guys he’ll be playing with, specifically Jaden Ivey?
Duren partially lost his starting spot because of recent injuries, but now that he is back, he should be starting, as he is the future at that spot, and Wiseman seems more suited for a bench role where he can come in and be the number one scoring option.
Duren is the better player now and the more certain part of the future, so it is baffling why he is not in the starting lineup.