The thing about adding an influx of veteran players who are regular contributors to playoff-caliber teams who are also a paragon of health and availability is that they play a lot of minutes. Or at least, they are used to playing a lot of minutes. The thing about having a perpetually rebuilding, nay, tanking, team full of youth who are learning on the job is that they play a lot of minutes. Or at least, they are used to playing a lot of minutes.
You might want to chalk this up to a good problem to have, but the Pistons are faced with a lot of bodies in training camp who are used to eclipsing 2,000 minutes a season or playing 28 minutes or more when healthy, and they aren’t all going to get to play as much as they are used to.
Let’s start with the veterans. Tobias Harris returned to Detroit as the team’s top offseason acquisition, it’s veteran leader, and an iron man reputation. He played 2,368 minutes for the Philadelphia 76ers last season, and I don’t see much reason to expect that to drop significantly.
Malik Beasley was a stalwart in the championship-level rotation with the Milwaukee Bucks a season ago. He played 2337 minutes as the team’s primary floor spacer, and he will serve much the same role for the Pistons.
That’s already 4,700 minutes of the 19,680 a team can allocate to players on the floor during the regular season.
There are two additional veteran additions, and they could certainly be impacted by a minutes shortfall. One, Tim Hardaway Jr., played 2,120 minutes last season (second on the Mavericks), but he’s also on the wrong side of 32 and was a defensive liability in Dallas to the point of a greatly reduced role by the time the team made its push to the NBA Finals.
Paul Reed, conversely, played very well for the Sixers. He always plays well. That’s why he is called Bbal Paul and is revered by the NBA nerd community. He has an uphill climb toward a regular rotation role with Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart in front of him at the center position. There are question marks about the team’s plans at backup power forward behind Harris, but they also have a number of candidates. There is the still-uncleared Ausar Thompson, reliable outside threat Simone Fontecchio, rookie Bobi Klintman and old friend Beef Stew.
Speaking of incumbents, there are plenty in Detroit who are returning after the team’s disastrous 14-win season. Plenty of names are gone, but not many who matter. The only player who eclipsed 1,000 minutes with Detroit last season who also finished last year on the team is James Wiseman.
The players who return are the players who matter — or at least, they could matter. There are still plenty of unanswered questions about the viability of this team’s young core. This season, with quality reinforcements throughout the lineup, is to find those answers.
For the young players, it makes more sense to look at minutes per game instead of total minutes as players like Fontecchio arrived via trade, some players sat out for tanking reasons, and others, like Ausar, were lost to injury.
The top seven returning players by minutes per game are Cade Cunningham (33.5), Stewart (30.9), Fontecchio (30.3), Duren (29.1), Jaden Ivey (28.8), Thompson (25.1), and Marcus Sasser (19). It’s unrealistic to assume everyone will play all 82 games. In fact, Thompson might not even be active to start the season, but we can extrapolate what that minute load would mean if Detroit’s young core was as available as these new veterans and played all 82.
- Cunningham: 2747
- Stewart: 2533
- Fontecchio: 2484
- Duren: 2386
- Ivey: 2361
- Thompson: 2058
- Sasser: 1558
Also, we must not forget the team’s latest No. 5 overall pick in Ron Holland Jr., who also was the breakout player of the Pistons’ preseason win against the Bucks. Ivey played 31 minutes per game as a rookie and Thompson played 25 minutes, both picked No. 5 overall. That would represent somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 minutes. That seems highly unlikely for Holland.
Now time for some maths. The veteran contingent of Harris, Beasley, Hardaway, and Reed played 8,415 minutes last year. A fully healthy season from Detroit’s young players could have netted them 16,127 minutes last season. Even accounting for their actual playing time, it equals 10,909 minutes. Add in 2,000 minutes for Holland for good measure.
If every player only played exactly as many minutes as last season, and again, that would mean some get injured and some sit out, and you try to create 2,000 minutes for a high lottery pick, this group of players netted
That’s 22,484 minutes of playing time crammed into a 19,680 minute season. If you hope each core young player could play all 82 with a similar minute load, it would total 28,600 minutes.
That is, of course, not just unrealistic but impossible. Players do get hurt and lineups are adjusted accordingly. But we never want to root for or even expect injuries. We want every player to be healthy and for the team to perform at the height of their capabilities.
So the question then comes, who loses out?
As mentioned previously, I think the biggest veteran loser of the bunch is Hardaway Jr. His path to minutes is likely as a perimeter-oriented small forward playing out of position. If the Pistons find enough shooting elsewhere to create space for Thompson’s and Holland’s defense, it’ll be tough to come by minutes. is Hardaway ready to see a significant reduction in minutes while playing for a demonstrably worse team than he had in Dallas?
Reed is likely also on the outside looking in with a chance to play spot big man minutes and the potential for even more if the team decides Duren isn’t performing well enough defensively to keep his starting center role.
The team is fundamentally without a point guard, and that looks like an avenue for some consistent minutes for Ivey and/or Sasser. If Cade plays 30 minutes a night, that creates 18 minutes for a backup point guard.
Trajan Langdon prioritized adding shooting in the offseason, and conversations tend to begin and end with how spacing is needed to help create a functional offense and maximize Cade. That means players with iffier shooting profiles — especially Thompson and Holland, could have a more difficult pathway to minutes.
On the other hand, as we saw last year with Ausar and the first preseason game with Holland, they have special athletic gifts on the defensive end, and know how to function in an offense to the point where it might be difficult to keep them off the floor.
The options are plentiful, and JB Bickerstaff will likely mix and match pieces as he looks for the idealized balance between offensive effectiveness and defensive potential. But it will mean that several players will be on the outside looking in, and everyone is going to have to sacrifice a bit for the greater good.