Roughly thirteen minutes into Thursday’s 129-115 loss to the Indiana Pacers, Detroit Pistons coach Monty Williams subbed in Malachi Flynn, the 11th player on the night to touch the floor for the visiting squad.
Eleven players in, essentially, one quarter.
That is a lot for any team, let alone a squad at the bottom of the NBA’s standings. The Pistons have eight wins … in total. It has a handful of new players who just put their bags down in Detroit for the first time sometime last week, if that. For the first 24 minutes of the game, which was the first since the All-Star break concluded, the Pistons looked like a group of strangers asked to play professional basketball together. Detroit gave up 42 points in the first quarter and 30 in the second. It turned the ball over 11 times in the first half alone.
It felt as if Williams were experimenting, as if the Pistons were still having auditions for next year’s squad. The problem is, the day before the loss, he said that wouldn’t happen.
“I’m not going to be throwing combinations on the floor to just be looking at certain combinations,” Williams said Wednesday. “We’re done with that, in my opinion. We’re trying to develop guys, for sure, but we’re going to try and win every game we can so that we can create what we feel (will give us momentum) going into the summer.”
At times, Williams has said one thing publicly this season and then done another. This was the latest example of such confusion. Evan Fournier, who joined the team at the trade deadline, played eight first-half minutes, three more than Marcus Sasser. James Wiseman, too, played eight first-half minutes, which was eight more than veteran Mike Muscala. Cade Cunningham, who finished the night with 30 points, eight assists and five rebounds, played 14 first-half minutes, the least of any starter.
There’s really no rhyme or reason to Williams’ method. Sasser has been one of the most efficient scorers in the NBA, not just for a rookie, and he played 10 total minutes. Flynn, who likely won’t be on the team next season, played 11 minutes. If the team is prioritizing winning down the stretch, Muscala’s getting minutes behind Jalen Duren would help with that. Cunningham and Jaden Ivey were the only players on the floor with a positive plus-minus for Detroit in a 14-point loss. Yet, there was no staggering of the two franchise guards for any real substantial period.
If Williams is emphasizing development and, along with the front office, trying to get a sense of who is worth keeping and who isn’t, he should say that. It’ll at least help make sense of some of the rotation decisions. But even then, the rookie Sasser’s only playing 10 minutes doesn’t follow that theory. If Williams is waiting for the recently acquired Quinten Grimes, who is rehabbing a knee sprain, to make his debut and for Isaiah Stewart to come back from suspension before settling into a more consolidated rotation, he should say that. Because, right now, it just seems like Williams is trying things in real time to see what sticks.
Pistons already using 10 men before the end of the 1Q.
— James L. Edwards III (@JLEdwardsIII) February 23, 2024
The deep rotation mixed with so many new faces, surely, can’t help players get into a rhythm. One night Sasser plays 20-plus minutes and the next he’s playing 10. Muscala went from a rotation mainstay to not playing at all. If Sasser were playing 20 minutes per night every night, it would be easier to understand why Cunningham and Ivey aren’t staggered very often, but that’s not happening, either.
The bench hasn’t provided nearly enough to justify six players getting 10-plus minutes per night. It’s also unreasonable to expect a lot from the majority of them. Four players were acquired two weeks ago and some were out of the rotation on teams much better than Detroit. To go even further, it’s hard to see a world where more than just two of the six bench players Detroit used Thursday night are even on the roster when next season starts. Couldn’t Flynn’s 11 minutes be split up between Cunningham and Ivey, allowing both to play for a decent stretch without the other? Cunningham would have only played 35 minutes if that were the case. Ivey would have been about 37 minutes. They’re young. They can handle that. Indiana’s Bennedict Mathurin logged 35 minutes in a game his team led comfortably for most of the night.
Detroit’s objective appears to be the opposite of what Williams is saying publicly. Somewhere, the wires have been crossed. When asked, Williams often sounds like he’s eventually going to shorten his rotation, stagger Ivey and Cunningham or do this, do that, and then he does something else. The only thing to expect has been the unexpected. Everything about the rotations, pretty much all season long, has been a bit chaotic, and the Pistons’ sporadic play backs that up.
It’s hard to know why this is happening because Williams’ soundbites, when asked, don’t often match what we see on the floor. There’s a disconnect somewhere. Pinpointing that has been one of this season’s greatest mysteries.
(Photo of Jalen Duren: Dylan Buell / Getty Images)
