How Monty Williams will make the Pistons a top-10 offense

Detroit Pistons with Monty Williams: Read and react… shoot, pass, cut!

Monty has had the luxury of being coached up by some of the brightest minds the basketball world has ever seen. Choosing to soak up the knowledge like a sponge during his playing career, building the foundation and principles he utilizes now as a head coach. This allowed him to implement a “point five” offense based off reading and reacting to the defense.

In this system player’s are urged to either shoot, pass, or cut with-in .5 seconds. This style of play is built for decisive players who can read the floor. It’s a equal opportunity offense making it easy for a young team to buy in. It’s a quality brand of player-friendly basketball in which efficient offense is the outcome.

This forces defenses to scramble as they rotate to stay in front of the basketball as it moves. Oftentimes the results lead to assists due to miscommunications, or missed assignments as the ball swings from the strong to the weak side of the floor. A testament to this was the Suns assist numbers, and offensive rating once Monty took over there.

The Phoenix Suns ranked 28th in the league in offensive rating at 105.9 prior to Williams joining the organization. In just his first season he improved that category to 111.7 which placed 12th in the association respectively. The Detroit Pistons ironically ranked 28th last year in offensive rating, leaving Monty with the daunting task of duplicating his good deeds.

The assists also increased under Monty Williams his team averaged 27.2 assists per game, trending upward from the 23.9 the previous season. More assists accompanied by fewer turnovers catapulted the Suns to the 10th ranked scoring offense in the league in 2020. By 2021-22 ,the Suns were the number three offense in the league. The Detroit Pistons may not be a top ten scoring offense next year, however significant improvements will be noticeable.