This is the 3rd season preview. Stanley Johnson's will be appearing on hashtag basketball soon.

Follow along with all relevant stats on Basketball-Reference.com





About Last Year:

Griffin, of course, came to the Detroit Pistons just before the deadline last season in a blockbuster deal that sent Tobias Harris, Avery Bradley, Boban Marjanovic and the Pistons first-round pick to the Clippers.

Griffin took some time to get settled in with Detroit, having trouble with efficiency and defense in the early going, but he finished the season very strong. In his last 14 games, he put up a line of 20.3 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 6.9 assists (nice) while shooting 45.9% from the field and 41% from deep. Even though his rebound totals were not high the Pistons rebounded at a much better rate when he was on the floor. When Griffin and Drummond were on the floor together the Pistons rebounded a whopping 52.8% of all misses, 25.7% of their own and 80% of opponents. If stretched out over the entire season those numbers would be good for the best overall rebounding percentage in the NBA, third-best defensive and tied for the second offense. Griffin is a good rebounder.

The Pistons failed to make the run for the playoffs that so many were hoping for, but Griffin settled in nicely after a rough start and showed enough to give real hope for the team going forward if he can manage to remain healthy.

What to expect next year:

Role:

Griffin is likely to fill, by and large, the same role he filled last year with the Pistons. He is obviously going to be the starting power forward and will operate as the central offensive hub for the Pistons. A (hopefully) healthy Reggie Jackson should allow Griffin to carry a lighter workload on offense than he did with the Pistons last year, but he will still have the ball a lot. They will let him isolate and post up when he wants, while also having him play a two-man game with different players, and run pick and rolls. Griffin will be the engine that powers the Pistons offense.

The one question as to his role will be if the Pistons opt to experiment with Griffin playing minutes at center again or not. The Pistons gave this a try right after the trade last year and it was a mixed bag. Griffin has never played center in even limited minutes before, but when both Jackson and Griffin are healthy it makes sense, in theory, to keep one of the two on the floor all the time. Offensively, Griffin at center should be a home run, the idea of him at center, surrounded (mostly) by shooters while he mashes backup bigs is quite appealing. The problem is that Griffin really struggled with defense at center. Hopefully, the Pistons at least explore the possibility of this even if they decide to shelve it.





Offensively:

On offense, the hope is that the way Griffin finished the season was a sign of what is to come. While he is unlikely to shoot as well from deep as he did over that stretch, everything else should be fairly replicable. The problems with efficiency early on are forgivable when you remember that Reggie Bullock was literally the only capable three-point shooter he played with most of the time and the fact that there was very little offense put in place for him right away.

There are two big things that will be interesting to see this coming season. First off, how do Griffin and Jackson split ball-handling duties when they are on the floor together? Griffin suffering an injury at the end of last year robbed us of any meaningful sample-size for how they may coexist which makes this an open question.

It is worth mentioning that I don't really see this as a potential issue, Griffin and Jackson are both high-IQ players who are good passers and at least competent shooters. Especially given the way Jackson fit so well into the motion-heavy offense the Pistons ran early last season, I have no doubt that they will be able to co-exist effectively. It will still be interesting to see how Dwane Casey elects to split duties between the two.

The second thing to watch will be how much time Griffin spends on the perimeter. With the Pistons last year, Griffin shot 5.4 three-pointers per game and hit 34.8% of them, which is actually a pretty decent mark given that a lot of them were tough pull-up looks, which is a pretty high number for such a dominant inside player.

Regardless of all that, Griffin is the right combination of scoring and passing ability to be a legit #1 option in a good offense. He's a matchup nightmare that can mush smaller guys in the post and dribble around most big guys, there are all sorts of fun things you can do with someone as big as him with his passing abilities as well. If he can hover around 35% from deep like he did last year it would be a huge victory as well and would significantly lessen the worries about potential spacing issues for the Pistons. On that note, when playing with Reggie Jackson the supposed spacing issues are not likely to be nearly as bad as many have suggested. Per Synergy Sports, last year Griffin ranked in the 90th percentile and an "Excellent" rating as a spot-up shooter. 36% from deep should be attainable this year for him.

For all the talk of how he's declining the reality is that when he's been on the floor he's remained a dominant offensive player. Over the last three years, three years where he has failed to make an all-star team due to injuries, he has averaged 21.5 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 5.2 assists per game with a true shooting percentage of 55.4%. Those are elite marks by pretty much any stretch of the imagination. His rebounds will likely be lower than that given that he has clearly shown that he is content to just box out his man and let Andre Drummond swallow up boards, but something around 20/6/6 should be the expectation for Griffin and he is almost certain to reach it. Health is the only worry.

With all my confidence in Griffin's abilities out in the open, there is one place where I feel like he must improve from his time in Detroit last season. He must become a factor when the ball isn't in his hands beyond simply hitting enough of his three-point shots. Far too often when he didn't have the ball he simply went through the motions while waiting to get the ball back.

Plays like this: