You can learn everything you need to know about the Detroit Pistons’ season by looking at the players they traded, cut or waived.
Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks were playing key roles for the Pistons, with Bogdanovic as their second scoring option and Burks as their first off the bench. Bogdanovic played 12 minutes for the Knicks in their last playoff game and has been reduced to a role player without much of a role.
Alec Burks isn’t in the Knicks’ rotation at all.
The Pistons traded Isaiah Livers to the Washington Wizards, and he didn’t play a single minute for the second-worst team in the NBA. Killian Hayes was cut, never found a job and is currently out of the league.
These were players who were starting for the Detroit Pistons, but have little to no role on good teams, can’t get off the bench for terrible ones or can’t find a team who will take them at all.
When you are the worst team in the NBA, you know there had to be some bad players on the roster and the Pistons managed to have three of the worst in the league on theirs this season.
Killian Hayes, James Wiseman and Isaiah Livers for the Detroit Pistons
No matter how you measure it, Killian Hayes, James Wiseman and Isaiah Livers were three of the worst players in the NBA this season. You could also add Joe Harris and Evan Fournier to this list, but I’ll leave them off since they didn’t even play enough to register as awful. But when you consider these five players, it’s arguable that this was the worst roster the Pistons have ever put together, further evidenced by their franchise-worst record.
Offensive rating
James Wiseman was 458th out of 547 players in offensive rating at 104.8. He did make some improvement as a screener, but he was mostly just in the way and couldn’t finish anything that wasn’t a dunk. He and Hayes ran some of the worst pick-and-roll I’ve ever seen.
Isaiah Livers wasn’t far ahead, coming in 422nd with a 106.1 rating and Killian Hayes finished 410th with just a 106.5 offensive rating.
Hayes’ 45.2 effective field goal percentage was 479th in the NBA and Livers was even worse at 44 percent, which was 495th in the league. Keep in mind that these were players featured in the starting lineup, as most of the others at this end of the list are guys who barely played.
Defensive rating
These three didn’t fare any better on the defensive end, though defensive rating is a tough way to judge an individual defender. In this case, the eye test backs it up, as these three were awful.
Livers had the worst defensive rating in the NBA this season at 125.4, bad even for a Piston. Wiseman’s 118.2 wasn’t much better and came in at 504th in the NBA, with Hayes at 117.6 owning the 490th spot.
Livers was especially atrocious as a 3-and-D wing who could do neither. Hayes’ defense was always overrated, and it mostly disappeared this season. Wiseman is a threat to block shots, but he bites on every pump fake, is out of position more times than not and rarely makes the correct rotation.
The Detroit Pistons were brutal defensively as a team but these three were particularly bad.
Net Rating
Isaiah Livers had the 5th-worst net rating in the NBA at –19.3 with Wiseman (-13.4) and Hayes (-11.1) not far behind.
Imagine how bad you have to be to have a nearly –20 net rating, which is where Livers was for this season.
Or how bad you have to be to stand out as bad on the worst team in Pistons’ history.
The talent level wasn’t there this season, and you can blame Troy Weaver, whose draft record is overrated, who has never found a second-round or undrafted player and who has repeatedly taken chances on first-round busts that have blown up in his face.