Ranking the 5 worst Pistons starters of the Grant Hill era

The Detroit Pistons had one of the best players of the late 90’s in forward Grant Hill, who was the prototype for the modern two-way point forward.

The Pistons had a couple of good teams with Hill but were never able to put the right supporting cast around him. The 1996-97 group was one of my favorite teams and they did win 54 games, but ultimately got beaten in the first round of the playoffs.

Hill did have some good players around him, guys like Joe Dumars, Lindsey Hunter and Jerry Stackhouse, but they could never get the right complementary players at the right time to take advantage of Hill’s immense talent. He played just six seasons in Detroit, making the All-Star game five times, but never making it out of the first round of the playoffs.

Part of the reason is that the Detroit Pistons kept filling the roster with long-in-the-tooth veterans or mediocre young players, many of whom were in the starting lineup during Hill’s time in Detroit.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the trade that sent Grant Hill to the Orlando Magic and brought Ben Wallace to the Pistons, a move that looked terribly lopsided at the time, but actually worked out much better for Detroit. Hill was never able to stay healthy in Orlando and Detroit went on to win a title with Big Ben, but you do have to wonder how the Hill era might have gone if the Pistons had put better starters around him.

Here are the five worst, ranked from best to worst.

Ranking the 5 worst Pistons starters of the Grant Hill era

#5: Oliver Miller, 1994-95

The Detroit Pistons never had great bigs around Grant Hill, which was a big problem in an era largely dominated by bigs (and Michael Jordan) like David Robinson, Karl Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O’Neal.

Detroit had a couple of bruisers on this team, including Oliver “Big O” Miller, who wasn’t terrible, but was hardly in the elite of NBA bigs at the time. Miller averaged 8.5 points, 7.4 rebounds and 1.8 blocks for the Pistons in this season in 22 starts, so he wasn’t awful, but Detroit only won 28 games.

Big O was a fan favorite because he was built like a professional wrestler or beer league softball player, but somehow managed to block shots, but in the end, he wasn’t enough at power forward or center to really help Grant Hill in his rookie season.