The greatest Detroit Pistons of all time by height

Detroit Pistons: Greatest player at each height

6’6″

Jerry Stackhouse

In doing this piece, I’ve been reminded of how many truly great players the Detroit Pistons have had over the years. For example, Mark Aguirre doesn’t even make it into the contender round on this one, and he was integral to Detroit’s first two NBA titles. Then of the three remaining to battle it out, postseason success was minimal at best.

Let’s get Big D out of the way. DeBusschere was nice in his era, but not spectacular. We tend to think of him as one of ours, but in reality, he spent just half his career here, having the majority of his playoff success as a member of the New York Knicks. We can cut him out of the equation without the need to second-guess ourselves. Stack and Tripucka make for a much more interesting debate.

Kelly Tripucka was drafted here in 1981, 12th overall, to give Isiah Thomas a small forward to run with. They played five seasons together, during which Kelly gave the team 21.6 points a night. He erupted for a career-high 56 points.

Stackhouse also spent five seasons with the Pistons, and he averaged 22.1 points per game to go along with 4.4 apg and 3.7 rpg. It was nice work for a guy who, like Tripucka, often played second fiddle. In his mightiest moment, 6’6″ Jerry Stackhouse used every ounce of his Tar Heel magic to score 57 points. To this day, those remain the two best individual scoring outputs from any Piston ever. It would have been fun to watch these two agree to throw defense out the window and then go head-to-head.