Experiments can’t last long for the Pistons next season

Fans of the Detroit Pistons have shown a lot of patience.

The team has been terrible for years as they tanked to try and stack talent through the NBA Draft. It has somewhat worked, as the Pistons do have some exciting young players, but it has yet to translate to wins, including last season, when Detroit managed just 17 of them.

Yet in his letter to fans after last season, Troy Weaver asked for more patience from fans, who have already suffered through the NBA’s longest drought without winning a playoff series.

Detroit somewhat showed they were serious about finally being competitive by hiring head coach Monty Williams, who was not brought here to oversee more tanking. But an underwhelming offseason and a wonky roster coupled with the inevitable growing pains of a young team are going to require more patience, but it will be limited.

Experiments can’t last long for the Pistons next season

We’ve talked a lot about the potential logjam at center, and the fear that the Pistons will try to clear it by playing one of James Wiseman or Marvin Bagley III at power forward with another big.

I’m sure Monty Williams will be free to set his rotation as he sees fit, but it’s also pretty clear that Detroit is at least going to experiment with two-big lineups next season, unless there is another trade, which is entirely possible.

It’s also possible that this won’t be a problem, as two of the Pistons’ big men, Wiseman and MBII, have had injury issues in their careers, so Detroit may end up needing all of these centers, who knows.

We have limited data about the two-big configurations so far, but what we do have is not promising.

Unless there are more changes to the roster, it’s going to take some amount of experimenting to figure things out, which is expected with a young team whose parts aren’t all clearly complementary.

But Williams needs to pull the plug quickly on anything that isn’t working, even if that means one of Troy Weaver’s expensive backup centers never leaves the bench. The Eastern Conference is going to be even tougher next season, and the Pistons are already trying to work Cade Cunningham along with newcomer Ausar Thompson into the rotation, so they can’t waste games trying to make James Wiseman a stretch four.

The time to experiment is nearly over for the Detroit Pistons, who have to show some signs of getting better next season or risk using up whatever patience the fans have left.