Detroit Pistons: Center Boban Marjanovic is highly paid and rarely used

Detroit Pistons center Boban Marjanovic is paid like a high-caliber backup, but still isn’t getting minutes under Stan Van Gundy in 2017-18.

During this past offseason, Detroit Pistons head coach and president of basketball operations Stan Van Gundy made several comments about being dead-set on giving seldom-used backup center Boban Marjanovic more minutes in 2017-18.

So far through seven Pistons games, nothing much has changed — Marjanovic has played just a total of four minutes in one game.

Last season, in the first year of a three-year, $21 million deal with the Detroit Pistons, 7’3″ center Boban Marjanovic didn’t see much action, playing just 35 games and sitting out nearly all others as a “Did Not Play – Coach’s Decision.”

Boban, for those not too familiar with his game, is a skilled post player and reliable free throw shooter who spent one season (playing 54 games at nine minutes per game) with the San Antonio Spurs before signing the deal with Detroit prior in 2016. Despite his unique size and skill-set, in most match-ups Boban doesn’t have the lateral quickness to play adequate defense, especially against any kind of athletic (small-ball) center or in many pick-and-roll situations.

This significant weakness was quite apparent last season, but Van Gundy’s line of thought seemed to evolve, in that Detroit was going to be proactive and punish teams with Boban on offense instead of only being reactive and worrying about his deficiencies on the defensive end. In theory it sounded plausible, but in reality, it hasn’t worked out.

Here’s where things went south and why Van Gundy probably won’t soon forget.

The tape is all-knowing

Against the New York Knicks in Detroit’s third game of the season, Boban drew Kyle O’Quinn as his big man matchup. O’Quinn has been a rotation level player just about his entire five-year NBA career, able to hit jump shots and maneuver successfully around the basket in favorable matchups.

While Boban is in solid position to help in case Michael Beasley blows by Henry Ellenson, when the ball is swung to O’Quinn, Boban is just too far away. If he comes out too far to contest, O’Quinn will easily go around him. Boban, clearly aware of his own limitations, cautiously closes out (but never really does) and it allows O’Quinn to take a completely wide open look.

Boban let Ron Baker and O’Quinn work in unlimited space, but did manage to get a hand up in O’Quinn’s face. Not a terrible sequence by any means, but just a little too easy for the offense.

Boban moved his feet decently enough, but O’Quinn used his leverage to get the shot up over the laterally slower Boban. This is not the worst defense ever (although the weak-side help is porous), but allowing the and-1 opportunity was quite careless. If you’re going to foul, make sure it’s not a graze.

Being that this was the third time O’Quinn had scored on Boban in just a few minutes, it was enough for Van Gundy to substitute him out shortly thereafter.

Overall, O’Quinn was 3-for-3 from the field when directly working against Boban, while Boban managed one bucket and a steal in four total minutes in the game. The Pistons came out on top.

With Detroit’s early season success at 5-2, there’s likely not much reason to change the way Detroit uses the offensively talented but defensively inferior Boban Marjanovic any time soon.

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At any rate, the NBA is a league that is seeing fewer and fewer plodding big men have success, and it’s plain as day why that is.