PHOENIX – You don’t have to squint very hard to see what Stan Van Gundy envisions on the horizon.
Start with Blake Griffin, who since a pep talk from Van Gundy nine games ago has shifted into full-blown superstar mode. Add the Andre Drummond who over his past two games has blocked eight shots and is on track to claim his second NBA rebounding title. Drop in the Reggie Jackson from Dec. 26 – before he went down in his 22nd minute of play with 13 assists – darting into the paint and whipping passes with either hand to open 3-point shooters.
“If we can get Reggie healthy and keep him healthy,” Van Gundy said after the Pistons won by 27 here in Jackson’s debut Tuesday, “with those three guys, that’s going to be a formidable group to play against for anybody.”
That’s three pretty good ingredients: the dominant scorer who commands double teams but slices them up with superb passing skills; the overpowering rebounder who’s become a much more consistent, responsible defender at 24; and a point guard who combines scoring and shooting range with playmaking skills.
Around them, the Pistons could come back with much the same roster next season. Everybody currently in the rotation save for Anthony Tolliver and James Ennis is under contract and it wouldn’t be an upset if one or both sign on for another term. The Pistons won’t have cap space, like the majority of teams, but will have exceptions at their disposal to tweak the roster.
And don’t ever rule out a significant trade from a front office that’s swung deals for Jackson, Tobias Harris, Marcus Morris, Avery Bradley and – kaboom! – for Griffin in the past three years.
Even without a trade, though, merely reasonable luck on the health front plus the continuity the Pistons would have going for them would set up a favorable launch point for 2018-19. The Pistons are in a similar spot to Portland a season ago. The Blazers went .500 last season, brought back essentially the same team, sits in the No. 3 spot in the West and just had a 13-game winning streak snapped by Houston while the Pistons were manhandling Phoenix.
A good chunk of Pistons fans have thrown up their hands and concluded this team, as constituted, has run its course. Never mind that we’ve yet to see Jackson at full go with Griffin at any point.
Two years ago the Pistons won 44 games and made the playoffs. They didn’t have Griffin then – averaging 24 points and more than six rebounds and assists while making nearly half his shots over the past nine games – and Drummond, though often overpowering, hadn’t yet achieved the night-to-night consistency he’s demonstrated this season. To add a healthy Jackson – and to not need to burden him with carrying the half-court offense on virtually every possession now, thanks to the Griffin deal – vaults the Pistons into another tier.
If Jackson hadn’t missed a third of last season and nearly half of this with injuries, the strong bet is that the Pistons would be cruising toward a third straight playoff berth and would we really be having a conversation about the direction of the franchise?
The Griffin trade was portrayed nationally as a desperate grab by a front office flailing to save itself by salvaging a playoff berth this season. That was never the case. Van Gundy has been transparent since his arrival about the pursuit of star players. Whenever someone would be more than rumored but confirmed to be on the market – Paul George and Jimmy Butler, notably, from last off-season – Van Gundy admitted that of course the Pistons would make a bid, as he assumed every team would.
“That’s a deal we would have made even before Reggie was hurt,” Van Gundy said of nabbing Griffin. “That deal was always about next year and the year after.”
Grouping three prominent players has become the formula du jour for elite teams, though that’s a construct of the salary cap more than a generational blueprint for success. But you still need complementary pieces. Do the Pistons have all they need on hand given their cap puzzle?
Well, the emergence of Reggie Bullock this season as one of the NBA’s elite snipers – since Bullock became a full-time starter in December, no starter taking more than three triples a game has a better percentage than Bullock’s 46.7 – gives the Pistons an ideal complement to the Griffin-Drummond-Jackson triumvirate.
That leaves one open spot in the starting lineup and two candidates, 21-year-olds Stanley Johnson and Luke Kennard. Johnson has taken a big step forward this season and now that he understands the NBA – he says he’s been his most “professional” this season and Van Gundy wholeheartedly agrees – another jump next season should be anticipated.
The holy grail for Johnson is a consistent 3-point shot and if that happens in his fourth season, hardly unprecedented for young players who come to the NBA having had success without need for a great perimeter game, now you’re talking about a fourth impact player. Kennard, too, could really take off next season, showing signs on the six-game road trip of a strong finish, witness his 16 points at Phoenix. Whichever one doesn’t start surely will be an anchor of the bench.
And that second unit will get a shot in the arm from the return of Ish Smith as its bandleader, freed to resume a more natural role with Jackson back to run the first unit, and another from a healthy Jon Leuer, whose defensive versatility gives the Pistons that much more size and depth.
Griffin, even in the depths of the second-half swoon, is bullish on the potential. And don’t write it off as “what else is he going to say?” There’s a million ways to deflect such questions and Griffin has been interviewed as much as anyone in the NBA this side of LeBron James over the last decade. If he wasn’t enthusiastic about this team’s future, he could have found any number of ways to finesse the answer.
“I like our team a lot,” Griffin said earlier this week. He told Marc Spears of The Undefeated that he saw the ceiling as “very, very high.” He’s touted Jackson’s impact since the day of the trade.
“He’s a great player and he automatically changes the dynamic of your team,” Griffin said of Jackson. “I think he’s going to help us a lot. He’s a big guard and not only that, I think Ish has done an unbelievable job for us. Ish was always been one of those guards that you know when he comes in with the second unit, he’s coming at you and it’s a nightmare to guard. When you take him away from the second unit, it changes our second unit. Just getting Reggie back affects our team in a lot of ways.”
Having him out affected the Pistons – severely, negatively – each of the past two seasons. Give him 82 games next year – alongside a scoring horse and a rebounding monster, with a deep bench augmented by a few potential roster tweaks – and, yeah, things are going to get interesting. No squinting necessary.