NBA Team Preview: Detroit Pistons

Apr 11, 2014; Chicago, IL, USA; Detroit Pistons center Andre Drummond (0) drives against Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah (13) during the second quarter at the United Center. Mandatory Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports

Dunking With Wolves is counting down NBA Team Previews from the worst to the best. The Detroit Pistons are ranked #20.

The Detroit Pistons have been the flagship of mediocrity for a while now — seemingly since current Timberwolves boss Flip Saunders took them to three consecutive Eastern Conference Finals from 2005 through 2008.

And not fan-base-placating, 35-40-win mediocrity, either. We’re talking ugly 25-30 win mediocrity, with little to be excited about or hopeful for if you’re a Pistons fan.

The exciting off-season of 2013 netted an overpaid Josh Smith and a swap of uninspiring, underachieving point guards in sending out Brandon Knight and acquiring Brandon Jennings. The idea of Josh Smith and Brandon Jennings is significantly better than the actual, real-life, basketball-playing versions, of course, and the Pistons floundered to a 29-53 record in the terrible Eastern Conference, watching head coach Maurice Cheeks get canned just 50 games into his Pistons career.

The only light at the end of the tunnel of despair that is the Detroit Pistons comes in the form of new boss Stan Van Gundy, who took over as both the boss of basketball operations and as the head coach.

Van Gundy is fantastic, although it remains to be seen how he will handle his dual-role after working in tandem with Otis Smith in Orlando in crafting the Dwight Howard-centric championship contenders a few years ago. As a coach, he’s a known quantity, and he’s very, very good.

The roster, on the other hand, could use some serious work. It’s almost as if Joe Dumars and Co. were trying to corner the market on vastly under-performing, vastly overpaid players. The only above-average starters that the 2013-14 Pistons featured are Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe, and they more or less play the same position.

Monroe signed a one-year qualifying offer in the off-season as a restricted free agent, ensuring that he will become an unrestricted free agent next summer. In other words, he’s either gone or he’ll be due an enormous raise.

Drummond is still on his rookie deal, and is the superior player. Obviously, more value lies in the 21-year old, cheaper, better option, and it seems likely that Van Gundy also realizes this and will do everything he can to build the squad around one of the leagues best rebounders.

Elsewhere, the roster is a mess. Jennings, D.J. Augustin, and Will Bynum are all very average (at best) players, and outside of Augustin, don’t compliment solid low-post players like Monroe and Drummond with their lack of consistent outside shooting. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope largely struggled as a rookie last season, but also didn’t receive much support or consistent playing time from the head coaches.

Caldwell-Pope’s calling card is shooting, and while 40.2% of his shots came from beyond the arc, he shot just 31.9% from deep. That said, he’s still a very encouraging piece to potentially righting the ship in Motown.

The Pistons added Jodie Meeks and Caron Butler as veterans that can fill it up from long-range — a clear Stan Van Gundy stamp on the roster. They’ll provide solid, replacement-level play, and could help buoy the win total enough that it could sniff the playoffs in the still-bad East. But they aren’t part of the future, and they aren’t going to suddenly morph into stars.

Jonas Jerebko, on the other hand, finally began to come around a bit in 2013-14 as he’s still recovering from a serious injury just a couple of years ago. There’s still hope for him to turn into a starting-caliber player over longer stretches of minutes.

The front court of Smith, Drummond, Monroe, Aaron Gray, and Hasheem Thabeet is pretty decent if used properly. And knowing Van Gundy, it’s a legitimate possibility (weird, isn’t it, Pistons fans?).

The ceiling for this version of the Pistons? Well, it’s certainly higher than last year’s train wreck, and competent wing play and coaching should ultimately do wonders for this long-lost organization. Let’s go with 38 wins, with the understanding that this could easily be 5+ wins too low if the team buys into Van Gundy and stays healthy. It’s tough to justify a swing of more than 10 wins for a team that kept most of it’s key players intact, so let’s settle in at 38 and call it a day.

Van Gundy is a great coach, however, and depending on how he performs as a front office executive, things could turn around fairly quickly in Detroit.