![]() ![]() It’s not impossible for Duren to get there. Every team needs those guys, but it’s the big men creating for themselves who are placed in a different tier. Right now, he’s a traditional center with elite potential as a rim protector. The only thing holding Duren back from being higher on this list is the lack of shooting and ball skills. The good thing for Pistons fans, though, is that those two things can be corrected with more experience. However, Duren has to improve his reaction time and be better in ball screens to fully unlock the upside defensively. He’s got everything you want in a defender from the center spot in today’s game. Duren moves his feet well, has long arms, jumps high and is strong. The strides he takes defensively will determine his ceiling. With more experience, I do believe that’ll be more evident to the naked eye. He also showed flashes of being a defense-bending passer from the center position.ĭuren has all the physical and mental tools to be an All-Star in this league. He was very good on the glass and as a rim runner. ![]() Like Ivey, Duren, who is only 19, had an impressive rookie season. But given his work ethic and competitiveness, it’s hard to envision a world where Ivey isn’t a legitimate starter on a good team at some point in his career. His turnovers need to improve, which I think they will with Cunningham back in the fold, and he needs to get better defensively. There’s just a lot to believe in going forward after what the 21-year-old guard showed during his rookie season. Ivey developed a midrange game as the season went on, learned to play with a change of pace and shot 37 percent from 3 from February until April. Having never really played point guard at a high level, Ivey took on lead ballhandling duties after Cunningham went down, and he got better every single month, rising up the scouting reports of opposing teams. ![]() ![]() However, from about mid-January to the end of the season, the case could be made that he was Detroit’s best player. Ivey’s rookie season wasn’t talked about enough nationally. If you need proof or a reminder, look no further than last month, when Cunningham, by many accounts, was considered one of the three best performers in Las Vegas during Team USA training camp after not having played high-level five-on-five basketball since last November. Make no mistake, though, people around the league view Cunningham as a legitimate potential superstar player. He’s been out of sight and out of mind after missing pretty much all of last season because of injury. It’s easy for people outside of the Pistons bubble to forget the flashes Cunningham has shown and just how revered he was by many talent evaluators going into the 2021 NBA Draft. Defensively, he will be - and has been - an asset. He projects as a 25-point scorer and should average around seven assists at his peak, if all goes well. Cunningham, at this moment, is the only player on Detroit’s roster with superstar potential. Additionally, if the Pistons elected to make a big swing for a proven star, this column will give you an idea of who will have to go in order to make that happen. It’s more of a guide to understanding how valuable each player/draft pick is to the organization at this point in time and how they’re valued by the rest of the NBA. It’s also not necessarily a ranking of the team’s current best players. This isn’t a list stating Detroit is looking to or will trade these players. Here, as I do every year, is my annual column evaluating the Pistons’ top-10 assets/trade chips. For Detroit, the goal is figuring out how to make the future not as far away. The Pistons, not long ago, had one of the more bleak futures in the NBA. ![]()
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