Wherever Brian Wright was on Saturday, he had himself a fine day.
“Those guys, Brian and the scouts, it’s a good day for them,” Stan Van Gundy said of one of his assistant general managers, Wright, who heads up Pistons college and amateur scouting. “I mean that seriously. You put in all that time and effort and then you get to make two picks and you sit there and sweat it out every day with them. Every day. You understand it’s a long-term thing and they’re going to have bad games, but you still sweat it out every day. So a day like today – most of ’em are probably at (college) games – but hopefully, afterward, they can look at the stat sheet and go have a beer.”
The reason Wright and his scouts should share a toast: the play of the two players their work produced in the 2015 draft, lottery pick Stanley Johnson and second-rounder Darrun Hilliard.
The first injury that cost a Pistons starter a game – left knee tendinitis for Marcus Morris, who said after the 103-89 win over Brooklyn that he expected to play in Tuesday’s game against San Antonio – elevated Johnson to the starting lineup and Hilliard to the rotation.
Johnson missed his first six shots and was 0 of 5 from the 3-point line for the game, but his biggest contribution was rock-solid defense against Nets veteran Joe Johnson, who broke into the NBA when Stanley Johnson was 5 in 2001. Johnson finished with just 14 points and only one 3-point attempt while being guarded by Stanley Johnson – and that one came with the Pistons 16 points ahead with three minutes remaining.
Van Gundy said before the game – before he even knew Morris wouldn’t be able to play – that the scorers who gave Johnson the most difficulty were players who use movement and screens to get their shots off. But the rookie held up beautifully against a potential future Hall of Famer.
“I just tried to make it tough for him,” Stanley Johnson said. “You’re not going to shut guys like that down, but you try to make it tough for him. I know he wants to get physical with you and take you on the block and get right-shoulder turnarounds and get threes off. I thought I did OK on him. A couple of up-fakes he got me on, but it was more of a team job.”
Johnson assumed Morris’ role right down to the heavy workload, logging a career-high 39 minutes. And Hilliard slid right into Johnson’s role as the primary wing backup, logging 20 minutes. Johnson finished with eight points, four rebounds and two steals. Hilliard hit 3 of 5 shots for a career-high eight points plus four rebounds. When the Pistons hit their only drought of the game, going seven straight scoreless possessions in the third quarter as Brooklyn cut a 14-point deficit to two, Hilliard drained a critical 3-pointer. He added a crafty three-point play with a nice drive later.
“Our two rookies, they have heart, they have confidence,” said Reggie Jackson, who had 23 points plus eight assists. “They just found a way. That was a big shot. We needed it. Just proud of Darrun and how he played and happy for him.”
Hilliard said last week that he took the lesson of Joel Anthony to heart, a veteran who goes weeks without playing but produces when called on, as he did in the four-overtime win at Chicago last month and in the comeback win at Boston earlier this week.
“You go through this process and sometimes it’s tough, but you’ve just got to stay humble, you’ve got to stay grounded and you know your time is coming,” Hilliard said. “Like I said last week, Joel, him working hard and staying ready, I just try to base my work ethic off of that and it just worked out today.”
“That’s what he does,” Johnson said. “If he got the opportunity, I felt like he would do something like that or better. That’s what the league is about – opportunity and patience. When it’s his time to get called, when he’s playing real minutes every night, I feel like he would do that or more every night.”
Van Gundy turned down a draft-night trade for the 38th pick to move down a handful of spots. The Pistons thought there was still a better than 50-50 shot Hilliard would be available, but Van Gundy knew how highly Wright regarded the four-year product of Villanova – the Pistons had Hilliard in the top 25 on their draft board – and decided not to risk losing him.
“Darrun played really well. It was good to see him play like that,” Van Gundy said. “Darrun’s going to be a good player. Just hasn’t gotten a lot of chances so far, but it was good for him to get 20 minutes and play to that level. I thought he did a good job. Stanley had a rough offensive day, but I thought that he did a pretty good job on Joe Johnson fighting through screens. I was happy with both of those guys.”
Jackson didn’t blink when he found out Stanley Johnson was going to start and go up against the seven-time All-Star.
“I didn’t have any doubt in the kid,” he said. “He exudes so much confidence, it’s hard to be worried for him. He’s one of the most confident players I’ve ever been around, especially at this young age. He exudes it so well that everybody else just believes that he can go out there and handle himself.”
Jackson would prefer, though, if things go back to normal for the next game – Morris back in his starting role, Johnson coming off the bench, Hilliard waiting his turn.
“I joked with Marcus, ‘Get back – get back immediately,’ ” Jackson said. “Stanley did a great job. But you’ve got a player like that, we want to be full strength. I don’t want to have anybody else go down. We want to get him back, we want to get Jodie (Meeks) back, make this team complete and really try to hit the ground running once we get everybody feeling great.”
They left The Palace feeling pretty great Saturday night. And somewhere, spread across the country, Brian Wright and his staff of scouts probably felt pretty good, too.