Gilbert Johnson – a veteran, former league player who’s in his 14th season…who is a great talent in his own right, but also one of the league’s most overpaid scorers. “The only regret I have is that I didn’t try to develop him,” Jackson reflected. “My role was to bring in, I’d call him up and bring him up and we’d play.” As good as he was, though, Johnson was the third-worst scoring big man in the league during his rookie year, averaging 10 points on 14.5 percent shooting and 29.6 minutes per game. Even in his rookie year, he was a major reason Memphis missed the playoffs. Johnson had a reputation as a bad rebounder and didn’t shoot much at all during his first year, but that quickly changed as he started playing a more efficient brand of basketball at the end of his rookie year. That’s when he led the NBA with a 14.8 rebound rate and a 40.3 percent shooting percentage, allowing only two turnovers in 15 games.
For the year, he averaged 13.8 points per game and 10 threes. Even with a significant drop-off from last year, he still averaged double-digits per game and put up a.405 true shooting percentage. Johnson has gotten better each year and he will be the centerpiece of this Pistons squad for years to come.
The young Pistons’ core will be heavily reliant on Caldwell-Pope’s production this season. He was a rookie last year, and he started well by improving his overall offensive production and becoming a decent pick-and-roll option. If these two make a seamless transition to becoming the starting pair of the next decade, the Pistons should win a lot of games in the process.
Andre Drummond – the one and only starting center in this rotation, and it’s clear that he really could become the league’s best rim defender in the next few years. As a junior in college, when Pistons head coach Stan Van Gundy had him playing alongside fellow sophomore Andre Drummond, the two played about 30 minutes per game and showed that they would be more than a complementary duo with their defensive talent.
“I’m an energy guy,” Drummond explained to me. “The guys who come in can create things for us and also help us score by coming off screens. So it’s two different types of energy that we’re looking to generate. He’s an