AUBURN HILLS – The Pistons pretty much know what they’re getting every night from Blake Griffin. They can count on Andre Drummond to win more than his share of battles for rebounds and increasingly to dissuade penetration.
Less certain is the collective contribution of their wing players, a deep and diverse group that starts with Reggie Bullock, includes recent No. 1 picks Luke Kennard and Stanley Johnson, free-agent addition Langston Galloway and rookie second-round pick Bruce Brown.
Dwane Casey has cobbled it together game by game, juggling the starting combination and adjusting on the fly as games unfold. Who finishes can vary – and has – game to game.
Bullock and Kennard have become the starters, but Galloway is just as likely to finish. In Monday’s narrow loss to Milwaukee, it was Bullock and Johnson, whose 16 fourth-quarter points had the Pistons in position to complete a comeback from 15 down.
Injuries have been the biggest factor in the inability to inject anything close to permanence in Casey’s rotation. Kennard missed 16 games with a shoulder injury. Bullock has missed seven but more like nine, bowing out early in games twice with left ankle sprains. Johnson has missed four games.
But there are signs all three are hitting their stride. Kennard scored a career-high 28 last week at Philadelphia. Bullock hit 5 of 7 triples against Milwaukee in his second game back from the latest ankle injury. And Johnson snapped a 4 of 23 shooting slump from the 3-point arc by hitting his last four threes against the Bucks in his third game back from a three-game injury absence.
“It’s very important to be at full strength and to have those guys back is huge,” Griffin said. “You see what they do on the floor. They just spread the floor. Reggie Bullock was great (against Milwaukee). Luke’s been great. It just makes everybody be aware of them and doesn’t allow the defensive to pack the paint. Having those guys is great.”
Casey can find room for all five of his wings in the rotation because Johnson – though he finished Monday’s game at small forward – has played most of his minutes at power forward this season, taking Griffin’s spot with the second unit. If his 3-point shooting improves – and he’d been on an upward trend before the mini-slump around the knee injury – he’ll take minutes next to Griffin and Drummond, as well.
Brown might be a candidate to get minutes at point guard while Ish Smith is out, an absence that could last for another month as he recovers from a torn adductor muscle suffered earlier this month.
Kennard’s 28-point outburst came at Philadelphia last week in a game that Griffin sat out. He’s averaged just 6.3 shots a game in three games since then, perhaps learning how to play off of Griffin on a unit with him as its fulcrum. Casey thinks it’s more likely still a symptom of Kennard being out most of the summer recovering from a knee injury and then missing another six weeks with the shoulder issue.
“Any time the ball is kicked out, (be) ready to shoot it,” he said. “You’ve got to be down and ready in a fighting position. In this league, those closeouts happen just like that, so your point-five mentality has to be there.”
Casey thinks similarly about Jon Leuer, who’s turned a corner in the past few weeks after being idled for months last season and the latter half of the off-season with ankle and knee injuries, and Reggie Jackson, who’s been limited the past two off-seasons after incurring knee and ankle injuries the past two seasons.
Fingers crossed, they all continue to stay healthy. If the Pistons can count on a level of production from their support players every night in the way they can on their headliners, Casey’s conviction that things are about to fall into place moves closer to reality.