What should the Pistons prioritize this offseason? (2024)

There is not one thing that will fix a 14-win team. Losing of that magnitude only occurs when shortcomings work in unison.

For the Detroit Pistons, who recently wrapped up the worst season in franchise history and the worst in the NBA yet again, the goal this summer needs to be mitigating their limitations. Detroit needs to find something to hang its hat on to avoid putting together one of the worst seasons in NBA history for the third straight year. However, that shouldn’t be the bar. The Pistons need to flirt with good.

Ultimately, this story can be summed up with one sentence: Detroit needs more proven players with built-in NBA skill sets. It’s that simple. Part of the Pistons’ demise a season ago is that there were too many young players who don’t yet know what they’re good at, what they can bring to the table every night and what it takes to be successful every night. Experimentation derives from uncertainty. Experimentation can also lead to losing. As Detroit’s young players attempted to learn more about themselves, a lot of losing ensued. Young teams will by nature feature more experimentation than most, but Detroit featured so much that there was no bedrock foundation.

The Pistons, with nearly $64 million in cap space to use this summer and in-house assets to move, have a lot to address in the coming months. What should they prioritize? Let’s get into it.

3-and-D players

I don’t particularly care what position(s) these players classify as. The Pistons need to go out and get as many players who can both shoot and defend as possible this offseason.

For the majority of this season, Detroit either had players on the floor who could defend or players who could only shoot — if that. For all that Bojan Bogdanović and Alec Burks provided on offense, their defensive shortcomings essentially neutralized whatever they did on the other end. On defense, rookie Ausar Thompson and fourth-year guard Killian Hayes provided the defense that the Pistons needed more of, but their inability to shoot the ball hindered the offense. Thompson has a lot of upside and will figure it out one day. I’m sure of that. However, given that he was often surrounded by other non-shooting and non-defending players, he wasn’t always able to utilize the positives he does provide offensively: getting out in transition or getting downhill without a crowd on in the half court.

Not having players who blended these two coveted skills led to the Pistons being at a disadvantage on both sides of the court. When Detroit wanted to go with its best defensive lineups, that meant it was putting out a bad offensive lineup. Conversely, when the Pistons wanted to put out their best offensive lineups, there weren’t enough defenders on the floor to make what it was getting on offense worthwhile.

Hence, 14 wins.

The Pistons desperately need players with more two-way ability.

Perimeter defenders

For as bad as Detroit was shooting the 3-ball this season, it was even worse defensively.

The Pistons ranked 27th in the NBA in opponent points in the paint and that is in large part due to not having enough guards and wings able to keep the ball in front of them. Detroit’s season ended with four players on the roster who grade as average-to-good defenders in space: Thompson, Isaiah Stewart, Quentin Grimes and Simone Fontecchio. The latter two joined the team at the deadline, after a 28-game losing streak forced massive change, and Grimes played just six games after the trade due to a lingering knee injury.

The Pistons couldn’t get stops this year. It’s easy for everyone to focus on the offense, but the defense was putrid. The rim protection from the center position needed to be better, but the guards and wings in front of Jalen Duren and James Wiseman didn’t do the big men any favors.

If Detroit can only get one or two players this offseason who can both shoot and defend, it then needs to invest a lot of dollars into players who are good defenders. Good defense makes for easier offense. The Pistons forced 12.4 turnovers per game, which was tied for the fourth-lowest mark in the NBA. Furthermore, Detroit ranked dead last in the NBA in points off turnovers.

A team as young as Detroit should, at the very least, be able to cause more havoc defensively than it did. It shouldn’t have been good defensively, but it should have been able to be more disruptive.

Rim protection

I won’t spend a lot of time here because I’ve emphasized it a lot already this summer, but the Pistons could desperately use a veteran center with good defensive instincts.

While a lot of the defensive issues this season were due to the lack of perimeter defense, Detroit didn’t get a ton of rim protection from the duo of Duren and Wiseman. For example, Duren had zero blocks in his final 116 minutes played to end the season. Wiseman had only three in his final 140 minutes of the season. Blocked shots as a stat isn’t an end-all-be-all indicator that attests to solid rim protection, but you’d figure two guys this young, with that much size and athleticism would be able to be better in that department.

The Pistons need a center who is feared when an opponent goes to the lane. Detroit needs someone who can disrupt shots even if he can’t block them. Stewart and Thompson were the team’s best shot deterrents this year, and both are under 6-foot-9.

Physically, Duren has all the tools to become a good-to-great rim protector. The 20-year-old has had a lot thrown at him in his two seasons. The Pistons, though, need him to make significant strides on that end sooner rather than later in order to take the steps they need to take.

High IQ

Most young teams make boneheaded plays. It’s part of the maturation process. But, man, this Pistons team could have had a 30-minute YouTube highlight reel of “Did he really do that?” plays.

The turnovers were the most baffling. Detroit was already at a talent disadvantage most nights, and it didn’t help that the team was far too often handing the ball to the opponent, like a quarterback stuffing the ball into the stomach of his running back. It was as if the Pistons wanted to make sure their opponent had the ball. There was also a lot of dribbling without a plan. There was a lot of miscommunications defensively.

Again, this is expected of most young teams. But the levels to which the Pistons sabotaged themselves felt over the top.

Detroit needs to acquire more players who see the game a step or two ahead. It needs more players willing to make the safe play as opposed to the home-run play. It needs more players who know where to be defensively.

Just knowing what to do and how to do it goes a long way.

(Photo of Ausar Thompson defending Tyrese Maxey: Brian Sevald / NBAE via Getty Images)

James L. Edwards III is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Detroit Pistons. Previously, he was a reporter for the Lansing State Journal, where he covered Michigan State and high school sports. Follow James L. on Twitter @JLEdwardsIII