Pistons: A closer look at life after Derrick Rose and Blake Griffin

The Detroit Pistons went from a young team strafing against its veteran constraints to a full-blown youth movement in barely more than a week. They traded Derrick Rose for Dennis Smith Jr. and the Charlotte Hornets 2021 second-round pick, and on Monday news broke that Blake Griffin would be sidelined while the team and his representatives seek a new destination.

This opens the door for youngsters like defending Eastern Conference Player of the Week Saddiq Bey to get nearly unlimited minutes, and Sekou Doumbouya may get a more reliable and consistent role going forward. Another favorable byproduct of these moves is that players like Jerami Grant can shift to his more natural power forward spot, now that Griffin has vacated it.

Life after Blake Griffin and Derrick Rose for the Detroit Pistons

If Derrick Rose’s departure provided the Pistons with addition by subtraction, Griffin’s absence does so doubly. In fact, when both players are off the floor this season, the Pistons have a 0.0 net rating in a large sample of 996 possessions. When Rose played, they had a -9.2 net rating. When Griffin played, they were -5.4.

When Rose and Griffin played together, the Pistons had a -12.7 net rating.

Clearly, the Pistons will immediately upgrade in their absence. There are reasons for this, and the biggest one is that it’s going to allow their best players to play more, and to better utilize their fit and abilities.

Griffin was fourth on the team in minutes with 626 and second in minutes per game at 31.3, and when he is off the floor, the five players who play the most are Jerami Grant, Josh Jackson, Saddiq Bey, Isaiah Stewart and Delon Wright. Conversely, Jackson only played 206 minutes with Griffin and Bey only 108 minutes.

With him out of the mix and Grant sliding to the four, Bey and Jackson will be afforded more playing time and head coach Dwane Casey can start unleashing some more fruitful combinations.

The frontcourt trio of Jerami Grant and Saddiq Bey and Mason Plumlee in particular will be one to watch after these recent changes to the roster. They’ve played just 300 minutes together without Griffin and Rose and have a -0.3 net rating, but almost half of those minutes were with Killian Hayes who struggled before his hip injury.

Adding Delon Wright’s stability to that trio has yielded a +6.7 net rating in 178 possessions.

Obviously, we’re dealing with small samples that aren’t indicative of much, but they do show trends that should be watched now that this new chapter of the season is set to begin. Another reason these samples are small is that Griffin has played so many minutes that it’s hard to parse together any kind of reliable Griffin-OFF segment.

The Pistons have played a veritable murderer’s row of opponents so far this season and their 8-19 record indicates that. They have three games against the Milwaukee Bucks, three against the Boston Celtics (with two wins), two against the Los Angeles Lakers (with a win), two against the Phoenix Suns (one win).

Their remaining schedule in this season’s first half is among the easiest in the NBA, and considering how much better they got simply by removing their two weakest links, they may be poised to go on a run that gets them out of the Eastern Conference basement.