Detroit Pistons: 3 New Year’s resolutions for the team in 2019

1. Build around Blake Griffin

Griffin is the present and immediate future of this team, and the team needs to work to build around him to maximize his strengths. He is a better passer than he gets credit for, as he leads the team in assists and is third among NBA bigs in that area, but the team doesn’t spread the floor around him with shooters to maximize it. Griffin doesn’t have the passing chops of Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, but additional shooters would help to better showcase his talents.

Griffin is excelling as a first option, which is something that we have seen from him in the past, but he is doing it far more efficiently than he did in the past. He is putting up career-best numbers in a number of categories, but the most important has to be his 3-point percentage, which is at 36.3 percent. On 6.4 attempts per game, this is far and away exceeding all expectations that were ahead of him before the season started.

Griffin and the Pistons are tied together for the foreseeable future, and the team needs to focus on building around his strengths. As evidenced by the Nuggets’ surge up the Western Conference standings, allowing your team’s best player to be the center of the offense can lead to good things. 2019 can be the year of Griffin, and the future can be the Pistons returning to playoff contention if they buy fully into what Griffin can do for them.