Sports

Yashinsky: In Stan(s) We Trust, Both Coach and Newest Piston

June 26, 2015, 4:05 PM by  Joey Yashinsky

 

The first major pick of Stanley Van Gundy's era results in the Pistons adding a guy named . . . Stanley.  It likely wasn’t the primary reason Van Gundy pulled the trigger on the Arizona forward, but we all tend to have a little bias toward our own first name.

The critics and second-guessers are out in full force today, but really, there is little to get overly emotional about.

Could the Pistons have drafted Justise Winslow, one of the main cogs in Duke’s championship squad?  Sure.  Would it have made sense?  Of course.

But anyone that tries to give you a 20-minute discourse on the atrociousness of Stanley Johnson over Winslow (or Kentucky’s Devin Booker) is simply looking for a controversy where there isn’t one.

Relative Unknowns

The truth of the matter is that in today’s basketball world, a large percentage of the prospects that populate the first round are relative unknowns in terms of what their final hoops potential will be.

There was a time when guys left high school to spend the next three to four years at the collegiate level, improving their skill sets and competing against top competition.  You couldn’t simply flash a little upside and be on your way.  You had to dominate; be one of the nation’s best; do something in the NCAA Tournament to earn a berth in the following year’s draft lottery.

Today the opposite is true.  Players are not drafted based on what they have shown they are capable of; they are drafted for the players they might materialize into five or ten years down the line.

Look no further than this year’s top overall pick, Karl-Anthony Towns. 

He was the guy that checked all the right boxes: size, strength, athleticism.  But on the court, he was not some dominant force.  He averaged just over ten points per game.  He could be another Anthony Davis in the pros, but it wouldn’t knock me out of my chair if he wound up as Michael Olowokandi reincarnate.

When the Pistons tabbed Grant Hill third overall in 1994, they knew exactly what they were getting.  The guy had played on TV countless times in dramatic settings.  His strengths, his weaknesses, his mental makeup had all revealed themselves over the four years he spent at Duke.

Unfortunately, that luxury is not provided to decision-makers like Van Gundy today.  You get maybe 30 games of tape, half of which probably came against second-rate competition, and the next thing you know, it’s your turn to deliver a potentially franchise-changing selection to Adam Silver at the podium.

Daunting Task 

It’s a near-impossible task, but you do the best with the tools you’re given and hope you make the right choice.  I can’t see any major fault in the Pistons draft last night.

There are undoubtedly some flaws in the game of Stanley Johnson.  He is by all accounts a below average outside shooter, and does not possess otherworldly athletic gifts.  Creating his own shot might be an issue early on, which is not super-encouraging since this team was lacking in that department already.

But there are plenty of things to like here, too. 

Stanley is 6-foot-7 and 245 pounds.  That’s a big man, especially since at small forward, he’ll be only the third biggest Piston on the court at most times.  The offensive glass should be a dear friend of the Motor City squad next season.

He’s also a very solid free throw shooter at 74%, a stat that needs to be taken seriously anytime you are adding a player to a team that already has Andre Drummond, one of the game’s worst charity stripers in history. 

And let’s remember that while Johnson still has much work to do in refining his perimeter game, he is not some brick-thrower, either.  45% from the field, 37% from downtown are passable figures, though one would expect his accuracy from beyond the arc to come down a bit with the longer line in the NBA.   

This team has been searching for a viable option at small forward for several years now.  Tayshaun Prince started to decline five or six years ago, and since that time, the franchise has failed to find a suitable replacement.  Out of ideas, they even brought Tayshaun back from the dead last season to see if there was any juice left.  There wasn’t. 

So from a positional standpoint, the selection of Johnson makes perfect sense.  Last year, the Pistons trotted out a laundry list of journeymen to try and fill the SF spot: Prince, Kyle Singler, Caron Butler, Cartier Martin, Shawne Williams.  Take a minute to let those names really sink in.

Van Gundy needed a real contributor at this spot in the worst way, and looking at what was available to him when the eighth pick rolled around, it’s hard to see how he could have fared a whole lot better.

Stanley Johnson will likely be compared to Justise Winslow in Detroit as their careers begin to evolve, and that’s fine.  Winslow might wind up being the more dynamic player, Johnson the more solid but unspectacular one.  But all indications were that Winslow was far from the happiest guy in the world during his pre-draft trip to Detroit, and with that being the case, why use a valuable top-ten choice on the guy?

The Pistons are trying to reverse a culture of misery and losing that’s overtaken the franchise these last half-dozen or so years, and the way to do that is not by bringing in a malcontent who’d prefer to be somewhere else.

Stan Van Gundy took a Miami team to the Eastern Conference Finals, and probably would have gone even further had Pat Riley not stepped in the following year to take over.  Then he went to Orlando and got that club all the way to the NBA Finals.

He’s done enough in this league to earn our trust.  To keep the post-draft hysteria to a low murmur.

Even if it’s more fun to scream and shout.

 



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