With seven players 22 or under on the roster, pretty much all of them central to the future of the franchise, the Pistons enter the 2023-24 season as one of the NBA’s youngest teams.
A decade from now, if Troy Weaver’s restoration of the Pistons has gone according to plan, you would expect to see Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey show up on career leaders lists for points and assists, Jalen Duren for rebounds and blocked shots and Ausar Thompson for steals.
For this season, career milestones will be monitored mostly for the only four players 28 or older on the roster – Bojan Bogdanovic, Alec Burks, Joe Harris and Monte Morris.
Here’s a look at some of the thresholds that foursome will approach and surpass in the season ahead:
Bojan Bogdanovic – Bogdanovic, 34, got a late start on his NBA career, arriving as a 25-year-old in 2014 after a decorated career in Europe. If he’d come to the NBA at 21 or 22, the numbers would be even more impressive.
As it is, Bogdanovic almost certainly will surpass 1,500 3-pointers made this season. To put that in perspective, Joe Dumars is the Pistons career leader with 990, 100 more than Chauncey Billups. With 1,378 career triples in 662 games, Bogdanovic averages a little more than two triples a game for his career, but it’s been more than 2.6 per game over his last four seasons.
If Bogdanovic averages 2.5 made triples a game this season, he’ll pass 1,500 triples in the season’s 49th game.
Bogdanovic should also pass 2,000 career free throws at some point this season. He enters the season with 1,812.
Monte Morris – Morris, 28, is on course to pass 10,000 career minutes played in the season’s 48th game if he maintains his career average of 26 minutes a game. And if he does that, then Morris is in line to pass 1,500 career assists, 300 steals, 1,000 rebounds and 500 3-pointers.
Morris needs 132 assists and maintaining his career average of 4.0 per game should get him there in the season’s 33rd game. He’s 36 steals shy of 300 and his career pace of 0.8 per game gets him to 300 in the season’s 45th game. Morris needs 135 rebounds to get to 1,000 and meeting his career norm of 2.5 would require 54 games. And averaging 1.2 triples per game, as he’s done through his first six NBA seasons, would have Morris on track to make his 500th triple in the season’s 73rd game.
Alec Burks – Burks, 32, comes into the season needing 699 points to reach 8,000 for his career, 12 3-point attempts to get to 2,000 career tries, 24 steals shy of 500 and 132 rebounds short of 2,500.
At his career norms, Burks would get to 8,000 points in the season’s 65th game, 2,000 3-point attempts in game five, 500 steals in the season’s 35th game and 2,500 rebounds in game 44.
Joe Harris – Harris, 32, is closing in on 500 career games, needing to play in 12 more to get there. He’s 176 attempts shy of 2,500 career 3-pointers and, at his career average of 4.8 attempts per game, he’ll get there in the season’s 37th game.
Harris last season passed 1,000 career triples made (1,016), 1,500 rebounds (1,508) and 750 assists (780). He’s 12 shy of recording his 250th career steal and would get there in the season’s 24th game if he stays on his career rate of 0.5 per game.