After the Pistons wrapped up their preseason schedule, Stan Van Gundy said Reggie Bullock had been their best player. He didn’t mean Bullock had suddenly leapfrogged Andre Drummond, Reggie Jackson or Stanley Johnson in importance to the franchise’s future. Only that Bullock had more consistently met or exceeded expectations for his role.
Bullock was so good in preseason, in fact, that he went from being on the roster bubble to having his option for 2016-17 picked up before the regular season began.
“A no-brainer,” Van Gundy called it – the chance to keep a good young player on a modest contract for another season.
That despite the fact Van Gundy sees shooting guard as Bullock’s best position and the Pistons already had three other shooting guards – Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Jodie Meeks and rookie Darrun Hilliard – under contract for 2016-17. And then there’s Johnson, who in fact has been the primary backup shooting guard to Caldwell-Pope since Meeks went down in the season’s second game.
Then the regular season started and Bullock simply didn’t look like the same guy who’d shot so consistently well and made almost zero mistakes in preseason.
“My shots weren’t falling. I was going in and getting a little bit of minutes, but if you go oh-for-three in those, you pretty much didn’t bring anything to the game,” Bullock said Thursday, the day after a shoulder injury to Johnson opened the door for him and he charged through with a 16-point, 26-minute outing in a 20-point Pistons win. “I did that for four or five games and pretty much fell out of the rotation and coach went in a different direction. I had to gain my confidence back.”
Through it all – the long stretches without a sniff of playing time, the mop-up minutes in one-sided losses – Bullock maintained the same upbeat demeanor that makes him a favorite of his teammates and has earned him consistent praise from Van Gundy. That’s why Van Gundy said, “If you go through everything they liked tonight, I think (Bullock’s performance) would probably be at the top of their list – they were really happy for him.”
“He works hard,” said Andre Drummond, among Bullock’s best friends. “He works hard when nobody’s watching. He does all the things he’s supposed to do when he’s in the gym. And when he gets on the floor, he produces.”
What Van Gundy likes best about Bullock is his self-awareness. There’s no coloring outside the lines for Reggie Bullock.
“Reggie always tries to play to his strengths,” Van Gundy said. “I think he knows who he is. He’s got to defend and he’s got to make open shots and he certainly made open shots last night. Those are two things that make him a good player. He got out on the break and got the layup, he’s bringing energy, he’s playing defense and he’s hitting his open shots.”
Bullock’s superb preseason came under apparent duress as the battle for a roster spot hung over his head, but he said he never felt it because he knew he was going to get sufficient playing time to show what he could do. Those minutes got squeezed in the regular season and when he picked the wrong time for a shooting slump they disappeared. He was brilliant, though, in a one-game stint in the D-League, hitting 10 of 12 shots – 6 of 8 from the 3-point arc – in a 29-point outing. And that helped restore his confidence.
It also helped when Van Gundy told him he “deserved this opportunity, go out and enjoy it, bring energy and just play your game,” and to see his teammates celebrate his success.
“We’re a true team off the court,” he said. “We’re still learning to be a true team on the court and being unselfish and everything like that. But me, Dre, Stanley, Reggie (Jackson), we hang out every day after practice. We’ve got a great team bond.”
Coming through for them when the Pistons needed it badly can only strengthen it. Johnson is out for at least the next two games – Saturday at Milwaukee, Sunday vs. Toronto – and possibly another week or so after that. Bullock can’t guarantee his shot will always fall with the regularity it did Wednesday, but he’ll be ready to provide everything else under his control.
“(Van Gundy) believed in me, gave me another opportunity with Stanley going down,” he said. “I’m not happy that he went down as a teammate, but it’s an opportunity for me to be able to show what I’m capable of doing. I just have to be consistent on it for the rest of the games that he’s not here.”