Detroit Pistons: 3 players facing most pressure in 2019-20
The Detroit Pistons have big expectations for this season and the play of these three players is going to be criticized the most.
The Detroit Pistons have big expectations for themselves after making it back to the playoffs at the end of the 2018-19 season. Blake Griffin was an All-Star and All-NBA player last season.
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Reggie Jackson played all 82 games for the first time in his career, and they got a big contribution out of rookie point guard Bruce Brown Jr. In 2019-20, they’ll be looking to build on that, and some players will be under more scrutiny than others.
The Eastern Conference got deeper this year at the back end of the playoff picture. Among the first five teams to miss the playoffs in the East last season, the only one that got noticeably worse was the Charlotte Hornets that lost Kemba Walker.
They’ll slip down, but the four teams behind them all took a significant step forward to contending for a playoff spot. The Pistons backed their way into the playoffs with a 41-41 record.
Detroit’s roster isn’t one that’s built for the long term. It’s built to be competitive and go after championships now with several older and aging veterans that all have a fair number of injury risks to them.
Griffin, Jackson and the newly-acquired Derrick Rose are all known injury-prone players. If anyone of them goes down, their season can quickly go up in smoke. Let’s look under the microscope to see who will be under the most scrutiny this season.