I love the NBA draft. Actually, I love all sports drafts because they’re like Christmas. No matter what you end up getting, you’re just excited to open a present, even if it isn’t always exactly the right size or style.
For the Detroit Pistons, the NBA draft was even better than Christmas. They used the fifth overall pick to get one of the quickest and most athletic players, Purdue guard Jaden Ivey. Then general manager Troy Weaver basically said, “I’m not waiting for next Christmas! Let’s open some birthday presents right now!”
So Weaver performed some GM jedi ninja voodoo by swinging a three-team trade to acquire Memphis freshman center Jalen Duren with the No. 13 pick, adding the steak to the sizzle already on the plate.
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How impressive was this? It’s nearly impossible to find any critics of the Pistons’ draft. The Sporting News ranked the Pistons’ draft class No. 1, and two of the five ESPN analysts who broke down the draft said the Pistons had the most impressive night.
Thursday’s intoxicating night spilled into Friday afternoon’s sweltering afterglow, when Ivey and Duren arrived in Detroit and were introduced on a baking blacktop at Rouge Park. It had been Weaver’s night, but now it was coach Dwane Casey’s day as Weaver figuratively passed the baton when asked how the roster might begin to work more cohesively.
“That’s pretty much coaches,” Weaver said. “I get the guys, and coach makes the talent cohesive.”
For all the hype and hoopla and hyperventilating, it’s really about how a 65-year-old coach with a reputation for teaching and a history of developing young players brings them along and finds the best fit for them on the floor.
That’s what Casey did with DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry in Toronto. He turned the respective No. 9 and No. 24 picks into All-Stars who led the Raptors to the brink of the NBA finals. We haven’t quite seen that level of developmental success in Casey’s four seasons in Detroit, though Cade Cunningham, Isaiah Stewart and Saddiq Bey have shown early promise. But Killian Hayes hasn’t.
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Casey, sitting next to his newest pupils, referenced the progress of his own teaching that began to take hold at the end of last season. After the All-Star break, the Pistons racked up 10 of their 23 wins and almost entirely ended their embarrassing blowout losses.
“It’s almost like a light came on,” he said. “And it’s going to be this way for Jaden and Jalen. It’s going to be confusing at times. And all at once a light’s going to come on because it’s going to be consistent, a consistent message each and every day about growth, fundamentals.
“They’re going to get tired of me saying it. ‘Old coach Casey, all he talks about is fundamentals: Two hands on the ball, pivot off two.’ But that’s what’s going to make them better.”
Casey is known as a great teacher and communicator, and it isn’t hard to see why. One of the things that stuck with me most from Friday was his willingness to let Ivey and Duren fail, as long as they do it the right way.
“I just told them, ‘I don’t mind mistakes,” Casey said. “Because all young players make mistakes. But do it hard. Make hard mistakes. I don’t care if you miss 10 shots. Just play hard and do it hard and good things will happen.’
“And these two young men play the right way. They play extremely hard and that’s going to help them in their growth process.”
Process is so much more important than production in a young player’s development. And let’s be real. The NBA has become a developmental league. The era of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird coming into the NBA as finished products has been dead for decades. Heck, the era of Grant Hill arriving fully formed feels like ancient history.
That means it’s going to take time — maybe more than most of us want to accept. Ivey is 20 and Duren doesn’t turn 19 until November.
“One thing with young players that doesn’t equal to winning is learning the fundamentals,” Casey said. “When you have young players, the athleticism is there, the jumping and quickness is there. But now how do you teach them the fundamentals, which by being in school one year it’s not their fault, it’s not the coach’s fault.”
The key to this is Ivey, who will face the most scrutiny. Casey already has a plan for Ivey and knows where he needs to improve the most. His gift is his speed and ability to get to the paint, but it’s his decision-making once he’s there that will need the most work. Does he finish? Does he lob it? Does he kick it out to a shooter?
“And that’s got to happen in a millisecond,” Casey said. “And those are the nuances he’s got to learn.”
So yes, it’s going to take time. And time is the whole point. Because we’ve all spent too much time waiting for the Pistons to get better, watching them mostly fail even under this promising regime.
Casey is the first Pistons coach to keep his job after failing to make the playoffs for three straight seasons. His .344 winning percentage is sixth worst among coaches with their current teams, and third worst among current coaches at least two seasons into their tenure.
This isn’t all on Casey, of course, because the team entered a rebuild midway through his tenure. But he’s 65 and was given a one-year extension taking him through the 2023-24 season. Owner Tom Gores has to see progress fairly soon to extend Casey again.
Until we begin to see even the smallest inkling of that progress, we’re all going to be left doing the same thing: Recovering from the excitement as we sit around a tree, examining what we just unwrapped and trying to figure out whether it’s worth keeping.
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.