Detroit Pistons: Langston Galloway playing crucial role in turnaround

Detroit Pistons combo guard Langston Galloway is playing his best basketball of the year, and it’s coming at just the right time for both him and the team.

The Detroit Pistons came into the year with some interesting depth at the guard spots, and after an up-and-down year thus far, combo guard Langston Galloway is finally putting things together.

Over his last 15 games, he’s got a shooting line of .471/.500/.889 while playing 25.7 minutes per game. Galloway has a big contract number that makes it semi-difficult to move him, but he’s showing the value he can bring in the right situation as an offensive spark plug.

Rookie Bruce Brown Jr. has struggled to generate offense on a consistent basis this year, but the play of Galloway has allowed the Pistons to reduce Brown’s minutes and let him develop off the bench where he should’ve been all along. The best part about Galloway’s recent stretch has been his 3-point shooting being above his career-average mark of 36.2 percent. With Blake Griffin and Andre Drummond needing spacing to do their work, Galloway has been able to bring that aspect.

Another reason his shooting has helped his team is the fact that starting point guard Reggie Jackson’s shooting has come back down to earth after a strong month around the All-Star break. His 34.5 percent over the last 15 games is still above his career mark of 33.2 percent, but they really needed that shooting to hold steady to keep their offense humming. It’s not a coincidence that, as his shooting has struggled, so too has the team’s offense as a whole.

Galloway hasn’t been able to replicate his stretch with the Sacramento Kings that earned him that three-year, $21 million contract back in 2017, but he’s doing some of that right now. He’s taking 4.8 3-pointers a game, and that helps open the floor for the bigs he’s playing off of. In addition to that, him being a shooting threat keeps opposing defenses from locking in on other shooters like Luke Kennard on the wing.

Galloway’s play will become all the more important when the playoffs start, because guards begin to play even more as bigs are relegated to the bench. The Pistons will want to stay big because it keeps their best players on the floor, and if they match up with the Philadelphia 76ers, they can do so. However, there are a lot of teams in the Eastern Conference that will force them to play smaller, which will get Galloway more minutes in head coach Dwane Casey’s rotation.

Galloway has struggled with consistency for much of his career, but he can still be an effective player when he’s playing the right role. If Detroit hopes to have a chance of making any noise, they’ll need this version of Galloway to continue.