Forty days is what separates us today from the end of the 2021-22 regular season. A month and a half before the Playoffs – or the Lottery – each franchise honed its weapons during the trade deadline on February 10, then recently took advantage of a week of All-Star Break to ask itself some essential questions. to a regular end in the nails. The objectives are not the same everywhere, of course, but we also quickly settled on the main themes of the six weeks ahead of us, by selecting for each franchise three small questions, three ideas to develop. Non-exhaustive choice obviously because otherwise it never ends, and we leave without further delay on the end of the season of… Pistons.
Can Cade Cunningham still be ROY?
After a timid start and above all hampered by a small injury, Cade Cunningham went on the gas a few weeks ago. Thirties often approached and sometimes exceeded, one or two triple-doubles and a verified clutchitude, 16 points, 5 rebounds and 5 average assists and the keys to the Pistons house, that could logically be enough to make the first pick of the last draft the Rookie Of the Year. Yes, but there you go, there is competition and this season two or three cuties also have their say, even their say. We think of Franz Wagner to begin with, a nice surprise from Florida, we also think of Scottie Barnes, freak in the making on the Canadian side, but we especially think of this artist from Josh Giddey and even more of Evan Mobley, one of the major craftsmen of the great season of the Cavs and incidentally spiritual son of Tim Duncan on his early career. On March 1, it is the latter who leads the race, with Cade and Josh in the retro one imagines, but a last month of CC madness while the great EM runs out of steam could well fold the cards. There’s still a little margin but in the end not that much, we know how much scoring can count so we’re counting on the leader of Detroit to rekindle the flame of this race a little, just to spice it up a little extra at the end of the season.
Will Killian Hayes let go a little in the spring?
It would be time. He has time, he is young, but there is time. Seventh pick of the penultimate draft, Killian Hayes had a complicated rookie season, between a somewhat long start and a hip injury which deprived him of half of the exercise. Returning at the end of the season and author of several great outings, we said to ourselves that the worst was over and that year II would only be more beautiful. Well, well, not terrible. The hip creaked again, the stats are… down, and today Kiki is a substitute in Detroit, not infamous for a 21-year-old kid but still quite disappointing for a Lottery pick. The preview isn’t that great though, Killian defends hard, shows great distribution skills and looks athletically ready, but… it’s still shy, too shy, too shy like Rachid Boulaouane. Once again we come to hope that the end of the season will be disjointed enough in Michigan to be entitled to a few full-Hayes, but this season watch out because there is 1) a Cade Cunningham to feed and 2) a Jerami Grant to make up for the day of his departure. Add to that a Saddiq Bey border franchise player, a Saben Lee who runs at 100 average pawns in the G League and some big heavyweights like Stewart or Garza to develop and not sure in the end that our Gaul is still at the top of the pile prospects to pamper. Hoping that spring will prove us wrong, but for that Kikoune will have to shake himself up a bit. Go go Kiki.
Will the Pistons be… last in the League this season?
So that’s an interesting question. First clue? It is no longer so much the last place that interests franchises in search of young talents today but rather the last three, following a slight overhaul of the system a few years ago. Today the Pistons are in the right trifecta with the Magic snails and the Houston turtles, but be careful not to get trapped by the Thunder tank, or even by the Pacers who tumbled into the race there. a few weeks. We are clearly starting on a four-way race in which OKC is now in place of the idiot, but if Kelly Olynyk starts planting game winners and 25-pawn matches as he started to do and as he had already done last season in Houston… hum, it may be necessary to take out the calculators every evening. Unable to make Detroit win, Dwane Casey therefore has the ultimate mission – well yeah, he would have to get out, right? – not to lose as much as possible but with panache. It’s perhaps a little too much to ask so to choose, let’s rather go on the defeats than on the panache, because we have the impression that it is more in his strings.