Pistons: What would have happened if Blake Griffin was better in Detroit?

What if Blake Griffin had played better for the Pistons?

In order to determine what “better” looks like out of Blake Griffin, we need to set a threshold significantly lower than his now-legendary 2018-19 season. Depending on your perspective, that season was very likely his best season ever and certainly is no worse than top-three in his career.

That career-best season, alongside a solid campaign from Andre Drummond and Reggie Jackson’s own best (or second-best) season netted the Pistons a 41-41 record and a tight battle for the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference. Griffin was hampered down the stretch by the knee injury which has diminished him to this day over the final quarter or so of that season, but regardless it resulted in utter mediocrity and a four-game demolition at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks.

So Griffin’s Piston peak, on the best Piston team he played on, didn’t result in wins. This team, littered with rookies and reclamation projects, absolutely falls short in the talent and experience categories versus that middling veteran squad.

There are a handful of clear results that we can point to if this Pistons team got better (but not peak) performance out of Blake Griffin:

• They would have probably won too many games to end up in the bottom three records in the league, worsening their lottery prospects in what could be a historically talented draft.
• They wouldn’t have won nearly enough games to end up in the play-in tournament and give themselves a shot at the NBA playoffs (and a swift demise at the hands of the Philadelphia 76ers or whoever finishes first in the East in this alternate universe)
• Saddiq Bey averaged 19.1 minutes per game with Blake Griffin around with two DNP-CDs and only seven starts, but averaged 31.5 minutes per game with 46 starts after Griffin left the lineup. Bey’s development would have been stunted significantly by Griffin’s continued presence.

The best-case scenario for the Pistons and Blake Griffin is a non-playoff, bad-lottery season where Saddiq Bey, a key part of the team’s future, is stuck far behind his current trajectory. Is that something you think the Pistons should want?