(Editor’s note: In the week leading to the opening of Pistons training camp next Tuesday, Pistons.com will look at the five biggest questions they’ll need to start sorting out before rosters are set and the season tips off on Oct. 23. Today: Determining the pecking order after their top six or seven players.)
There’s a golden rule that the best offensive line coaches abide by: Find your five best football players and get them on the field even if it means one or two of them are playing at something other than their optimal position.
It’s a little like that in configuring an NBA rotation, too.
We know that Blake Griffin, Andre Drummond, Reggie Jackson, Derrick Rose and Luke Kennard are going to play critical roles for the Pistons this season. There are three others – Bruce Brown, Tony Snell and Markieff Morris – likely to be every-game staples.
After that?
All bets are off.
Casey has enough flexibility within that group of eight to accommodate pretty much any other combination of two players to fill out a 10-man rotation, which was the formula he used most often last season. He can get to nine easily enough by shortening the big-man rotation to three or even cut the playing group to eight by doing that plus using a three-man cohort – say Snell, Kennard and Brown – to man the two wing positions.
But let’s assume – in an era where teams are ever more conscious of the wear and tear of the 82-game schedule – that Casey again goes with a 10-man rotation, often playing a full five-man second unit as one.
Then the question becomes, who fills out the ninth and 10th spots?
And there is no wrong answer possible. Everybody else on the roster – and with Joe Johnson and Christian Wood, two players on non-guaranteed contracts vying for the 15th roster spot, that means eight other players – is a realistic possibility.
Let’s take them, case by case: