The Pistons considered having Stanley Johnson skip Summer League to focus on the skill work required to unleash the breadth of his potential. They’ve reconsidered for much the same reason. And because of that, don’t be surprised if Johnson doesn’t have the same impact this time around as he did last July, when he was considered the top rookie in Orlando by acclamation.
“There’s a great possibility – and we’ve got to prepare him for this, because he’s so competitive – that he actually won’t play as well in the Summer League this year as he did last year,” Stan Van Gundy said Tuesday. “Because we’ll almost be playing to his weaknesses in a lot of cases this year. We’re going to use the Summer League, at least in his case, as a developmental tool for him. Not just, let’s go out and learn to play the NBA game. He’s played enough minutes. He understands what that’s about. Now it’s trying to work on specific things.”
The things Van Gundy tasked Johnson with honing over the off-season start with shooting, ballhandling and footwork. Assistant coach Bob Beyer has spent the past three weeks at Johnson’s Orange County, Calif., base overseeing the process. Shooting coach Dave Hopla has been to California, as well.
Beyer, elevated to associate head coach last week to acknowledge his importance to Van Gundy’s ability to both coach and oversee the franchise’s front office, helped convince Van Gundy that plunging Johnson into Summer League play and forcing him to expand his game was the right path.
“He spends a lot of time working with him,” Van Gundy said. “It’s a big summer for Stanley in terms of skill development and there are some things in the realm of skill development that you just can’t do in a gym by yourself. So he’s putting a lot of time in on his shooting, which you can obviously actually do better in a gym by yourself than you can out playing. He’s spending a lot of time on his left hand, his footwork. Those are all things you can work on, but being able to make plays on the pick and roll and being able to make more plays – particularly going to his left hand and to make passes, reads on pick and rolls, coming off screens and making reads – those are things we just can’t really work on in a gym.”
Beyer again will coach the Summer League team, which in addition to Johnson also will include two others who finished the 2015-16 season with the Pistons, fellow 2015 draftee Darrun Hilliard and late addition Lorenzo Brown. If the Pistons exercise both of their draft picks at 18 and 49 – and both players prove healthy and otherwise available to perform – that will make up the five-man group most likely to play the most Summer League minutes.
Hilliard, taken 38th last June, is held in high regard by the Pistons and they expect him to seriously challenge for a rotation spot. His biggest off-season objective was to gain strength, but playing time to learn how to make better use of his diverse skill set will benefit Hilliard, Van Gundy believes.
“The feeling with him would be try to get him a little bit more in his comfort zone and in the role we would want him to play during the season to gain comfort. Stanley’s got a little bit of that. Stanley played well over a thousand more minutes than Darrun, so it’s really a different situation.”
Brown is on a non-guaranteed contract, but his competition for a roster spot improved when the Pistons last week traded Spencer Dinwiddie to Chicago. The Pistons will target a backup point guard in free agency and could add another veteran at the position, as well. But if they don’t draft a point guard Thursday, Brown might be given a legitimate shot to compete for a roster spot based on his Summer League performance.