The Detroit Pistons entered the offseason needing a complete overhaul, and that is exactly what they got. Out goes Troy Weaver and Monty Williams. In comes Trajan Langdon and JB Bickerstaff. Most of the 31 players who played for the team last season have found new homes in and out of the NBA. The only returning pieces are the young players drafted by the previous regime.
Armed with droves of cap space, some people may call the Pistons’ free agency quiet, but they had a clear goal — add reliable veteran floor spacers with a solid track record of health. Tobias Harris is the standout of that group and he was paid a pretty penny to do so.
Whether you like the contract the Pistons gave him or not, Harris is set for a significant role with the 2024-2025 Detroit Pistons
Let’s take a look at what Tobias Harris provides to the team.
Offense
Pistons fans should be pretty familiar with what Tobias Harris provides on the court since this is his second stint with the team. For those of you who were not around during his first go-round or haven’t been following his game closely since he left, let’s take a look at what he provides on the offensive end of the court.
The biggest and most obvious skill that Tobias Harris provides is the ability to hit outside shots while having the size to play either wing position. It is a skillset the Pistons have been missing since trading away Jerami Grant. It is also a skillset that all of the successful teams in the NBA have multiple players capable of providing.
Harris is a career 36.8% shooter from beyond the arc on 3.7 attempts per game. But more importantly, he has not shot below 35% from beyond the arc since the 2015-16 season. His game-to-game consistency in terms of how many shots he is taking will leave a little bit to be desired, but he has been one of the more consistent big-bodied shooters in the NBA.
He isn’t exactly a high-volume 3-point shooter, and his attempts per game have been trending down, but he is a shooter who defenses respect, and he can also punish teams off the dribble if they close out too hard.
For his career, 89.7% of his 3s are assisted while only 48.1% of his 2-point shots are assisted, and his numbers last season were in line with that (44.4% assisted inside the arc and 95.6% assisted from three). It shows that he isn’t creating a ton of open threes for himself, but he is still capable of putting the ball on the floor and creating his own shot inside the arc. He did only shoot 35.3 % on catch-and-shoot 3s last season according to NBA.com, which is something you are hoping improves since he is likely getting a lot of catch-and-shoot opportunities playing off of Cade Cunningham.
When Isaiah Stewart played the four for the Pistons last season, he was able to mostly replicate the shooting that Tobias Harris can provide, but the ability to put the ball on the floor and make decisions was completely absent. Stew also hasn’t earned the respect Harris has as a shooter so it didn’t help as much with spacing. That is a skillset Tobias provides and one that has been sorely lacking for the Pistons over the last couple of seasons.
Harris does a solid job finishing at the rim and even shoots the ball well from mid-range. From 0-3 feet Tobias Harris is at 67.4% for his career and shot 68.6% from that distance last season. That mark would have topped all non-centers that played more than 30 games for the Pistons last season except for Killian Hayes.
From 10-16 feet, Harris shot 51.1%. From 16 feet to the 3-point line, he shot 39.4%. Just to paint a picture, Cunningham has a highly-regarded mid-range game, and he shot 52.8% from 10-16 feet and 42.7% from 16 feet to the 3-point line. Harris shot 14% of his shots from 10-16 feet last season and 7% of his shots from 16 feet to the three-point line, so it is a part of his game that he does utilize, although he still takes the highest percentage of his shots from beyond the arc (27.1% last season)
I wouldn’t call Tobias Harris a great passer by any means, but he is capable of making decisions with the ball and keeping the ball moving, which is something you want out of your Power Forward. Harris has hovered around 3 assists per game during his tenure with Philadelphia while only turning over the ball about 1.5 times per game. That isn’t exceptional, but definitely something that is welcomed on a team with a lot of young players with turnover issues.
Harris’s career turnover percentage is 8.9 and was 8.2 last season. The only player still on the roster that had a lower turnover percentage than that is Simone Fontecchio
Harris should have no issues playing off a ball-dominant player in Cunningham since he played off of two in Philadelphia in Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid, but one reason for his bad reception in Philadelphia was the fact that he had a tendency to disappear at inopportune times. There is no finer example than his last two games with the 76ers. He had 19 points on 7-of-11 shooting in Game 5 of the playoffs against the Knicks and then followed that up with an 0-of-2 no-show in 29 minutes in the elimination Game 6.
If you look at his game log throughout his career, he has a lot of games where he will score 25 points one night on high efficiency and follow that up with a 12 point game on 3-of-10 shooting. Only superstar players are able to consistently bring it every night, but the inconsistency is a big reason for the perception of Tobias Harris as a player around the league.
I think some of his issues are overblown, especially his “playoff struggles,” as he averages 16.3 points per game in the playoffs, the same as his career average. The shooting numbers are very similar as well. Plus, playoff performance is the last thing the Pistons should worry about right now.
One underrated aspect of Harris, which isn’t really categorized with his defense or offense, is his ability to stay healthy. For most teams, that would be a minor note for a free-agent acquisition, but in the case of the Pistons, who have dealt with countless injuries to the veterans they were counting on in the last few seasons, it is a huge footnote.
He has not played less than 70 games in a season since 2014-15, with the exception of the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season. Having a veteran who spaces the floor at a position of need and also plays every game cannot be understated. The game-to-game consistency in terms of scoring may not always be there, but Tobias Harris will be a fixture in the Pistons’ starting lineup.
Defense
Defensively, there is less to explore. Harris isn’t a bad defender by any means, but I wouldn’t classify him as particularly good. He can defend his position and play team defense, but you are not getting a guy who can change a game on defense. The defensive counting stats are nothing impressive, as he sports career averages of 0.8 steals and 0.5 blocks per game.
He has a career defensive BPM of -0.2, which basically means he is a slightly below-average defender. The eye test supports that, and there isn’t a whole lot more to say about it that hasn’t already been mentioned. He tries on defense but doesn’t have any standout characteristics. He is not a superior athlete, nor does he possess an insane wing span that gives him an advantage on defense. He will stay with his man and can be switched onto smaller players occasionally, but he definitely isn’t making the Pistons a better team defensively.
In fact, they are probably a worse team defensively since he is not as switchable or as good on defense as Isaiah Stewart, who played a large amount of his minutes at the four last season.
You also have to account for the fact that he will have Jalen Duren defending the rim behind him instead of Joel Embiid and a worse defensive infrastructure around him. Maybe he decides to exert a bit more effort on defense as the veteran that the young players are looking up to, but the fact that he didn’t really do it with Philadelphia despite a lighter offensive load doesn’t bode well for him exerting more effort on defense while probably being relied on more offensively at an older age.
Regarding rebounding, Harris has averaged 6.2 rebounds per game in his career, which is right around his averages for the 76ers (6.5 last season). Rebounding is one aspect that shouldn’t be a huge issue for the Pistons since Jalen Duren is one of the better rebounders in the league, and Harris is close to Isaiah Stewart’s average of 6.6 last season, so there isn’t really much of a drop-off. He also rebounds way more than Bojan Bogdanovic, who spent some time at the four with the Pistons before being traded to the Knicks.
Tobias Harris is obviously being signed for his offensive abilities, but you don’t get heavy minutes on a consistent playoff team without at least being passable on defense if you are not a superstar offensive player.
Expectations for the Season
It is pretty easy to predict what you will get from Harris since it has mostly been the same throughout his career. You are getting somebody capable of knocking down outside shots and playing off of other players. He isn’t going to carry you offensively, but is certainly capable of complementing a high-end offensive creator, which is what the Pistons are hoping Cade Cunningham is.
On this team, Tobias Harris is probably the number 2 option on offense, unless Jaden Ivey is starting, so you can probably expect a bit of an uptick in numbers. By the end of his time in Philadelphia, you could tell Tobias Harris was checked out mentally so playing somewhere he is familiar and wanted to be should help him re-engage himself.
The Pistons will rely on Tobias Harris to space the floor for Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey while also providing invaluable leadership to a team badly in need of veterans that are available to play and can actually play effectively.
If the Pistons get a re-engaged Tobias Harris, what he can provide on offense should make him worth the contract that he signed. If last year was the start of a decline from him as a player, I still think you will be getting value out of him, but probably not the value that the Pistons are paying for.
The Pistons path forward to being a respectable basketball team probably comes from becoming a top half of the league team on offense, which Tobias Harris does help. It is also why his defense isn’t a huge roadblock in the Pistons getting back to respectability.
I will predict averages of 17.5 points, 6.5 rebounds, 3 assists on 48/37/84 shooting for Tobias Harris in 2024-2025.