Isaiah Livers has barely played enough basketball over the past year to break a sweat, but he’s shown Dwane Casey enough to earn the universal coach’s stamp of approval: “I think he’s going to be a player.”
The Pistons took Livers with the 42nd pick in last summer’s NBA draft despite knowing his rookie season would begin with rehabilitation from foot surgery that ended his career at Michigan last March, the type of injury that’s sidetracked more than a few careers.
Finally cleared to return in November, Livers made his NBA debut with a five-minute cameo at Indiana on Dec. 16. But the foot, though healed, was still causing him pain.
“With ever injury, especially the navicular, you never really know when you’re ready. That was my time to try it,” Livers said. “But I had the foot soreness and the Pistons were like, ‘You know, let’s take our month – month, month and a half, two months. Whatever you need just to get back right.’ And it helped. It was perfect. I was in here just grinding.”
It's tough enough for a veteran to get dropped into the middle of a season after a lengthy injury absence, but doubly challenging for a rookie. But Livers hasn’t felt like a fish out of water since being folded back into the mix, taking advantage of injuries to Marvin Bagley III and Frank Jackson to come off the bench in four straight games. And that, perhaps, is a testament to both the experience Livers soaked up over four years at Michigan and to the feel for the game that Casey spots in the Kalamazoo native who was Michigan’s Mr. Basketball in 2017.
“Watching kind of slowed the speed down for me – and playing in the G League. A couple of games with them, it’s actually faster than the NBA. I was ready. My conditioning feels good, my body feels good. I credit the guys in the training room for getting me ready.”
Livers’ NBA carrying tool is a good one, a potentially elite 3-point shot. He was a career 41 percent 3-point shooter at Michigan and took 53 percent of his shots from the arc over four years. There’s a place in the NBA for someone with Livers’ 6-foot-7 frame, shooting touch and feel for the game.
“He’s got an excellent basketball IQ. I like his IQ,” Casey said. “I like his attention to detail defensively. He’s always in the right place, showing his length. All those things are pluses for him and his size. He’s a big kid.”
With Jackson missing seven of the last eight games with a back injury that, the Pistons said on Sunday, will sideline him another week, at minimum, there also appears to be a place for Livers in the rotation at this point. Like Jackson, Livers is a volume 3-point shooter with a quick trigger and boundless confidence.
When it appeared Livers would make his return last week at Charlotte, he told his teammates, “I get in, my first shot is going in, no matter what. So I was confident from the start.”
“A lot of movement stuff we had we were running for Frank. He is great at that,” Casey said. “Livers is more deliberate in his movement, coming off screens a little slower where Frank is bang-bang. But he gives you the same threat of his 3-point shooting.”
Though Livers is a rookie, at 23 he’s older than four-year veterans Hamidou Diallo (by three days) and Marvin Bagley III (by eight-plus months) and younger than Jackson by less than three months, another reason Casey wasn’t hesitant about turning him loose when his foot issues resolved.
“I think he’s going to be a player,” Casey said. “He’s a shooter. And you can’t get enough of those guys to go out and stretch the floor.”