When the Detroit Pistons get a big game from Tobias Harris or Daniss Jenkins, they are tough to beat. The problem is you never know when those are going to come.
The Pistons as a whole have been one of the most consistent teams in the NBA, largely because they are built on defense, which you can count on night in and night out, even when the shots aren’t falling.
Detroit pretty much knows what they are going to get from guys like Cade Cunningham, Jalen Duren, Ausar Thompson and Isaiah Stewart, who have steadily put up similar numbers on most nights.
You know you are getting 20+ from Cade, 18 from Duren and strong defense from Thompson and Stewart. The biggest X-Factor is whether a role player steps up and has a big game, and there have been two in particular who have been wildly inconsistent this season.
Tobias Harris is there when the Pistons need him
Few players have been more consistent over the course of their careers than Tobias Harris, who has pretty much averaged 15-16 points per game for 15 seasons, but he’s been up and down in this one.
The last seven games exemplify this perfectly as Harris has scored 16, 7, 25, 10, 4, 16 and 22 points since returning from injury.
Harris will go from taking 20 shots one game to six in the next, generally picking his spots to be aggressive when the Pistons most need his offense.
But given the fact that we’ve spent all season talking about how the Pistons need a consistent second scoring option, it would be nice for Harris to be consistently putting up his 15 points a game instead of this Jekyll and Hyde routine.
Detroit is 10-3 this season when Harris scores 15 or more points, so when he is on, Detroit is tough to beat, but they will need that consistently to make a deep playoff run.
Daniss Jenkins is the ultimate all-or-nothing player
Jenkins has been getting more consistent minutes with Caris LeVert out, and though he’s played well most of the time, his shooting swings wildly from all to nothing.
In his last 15 games, Jenkins has scored in double digits six times, including a 25-point outburst that was the difference against Cleveland.
But he scored six or fewer points in the other nine games, including four games when he didn’t score at all, including last night when he went 0-of-8 from the floor.
Some of this has been minutes, but he played 20+ in seven of those games, so he’s getting the time, but the results have varied wildly.
The Pistons are 9-3 in games in which Daniss Jenkins scores 10 or more points, so he too is an important X-Factor who can swing a game.
The most important addition the Pistons make at the deadline might just be consistency from their role players, as they will be in good shape if they can get one or both of these guys to hit their marks with more regularity.