A look back on the season for the much improved Reggie Bullock.

Follow along with any and all stats on Basketball-Reference. Any stats not pulled directly from there will be otherwise noted.

Final Per-game line: 11.3 points, 2.5 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 0.8 turnovers, 27.9 minutes. 48.9% from the field, 44.5% from deep, true shooting percentage of 61.5%.

Shot Chart

The Good

From the moment he arrived in Detroit and played his first minutes in the preseason it was obvious that Reggie Bullock could be a useful player. The main problems were that he had been unable to sustain any shooting, he was too skinny, and he was prone to minor injuries. As a result, he was almost totally unused when he arrived in Detroit. While he had brief moments of breaking into the rotation the previous two seasons, injuries and inconsistency on both ends of the floor kept him from fully establishing himself as a full-time rotation player.

This season, Reggie Bullock finally put it all together. He finally got an opportunity to play, thanks to injuries to both Stanley Johnson and Avery Bradley, and he played at a high level, having managed to avoid the injury bug the rest of the season.

Bullock was an elite complimentary offensive player this season as his shot chart and other synergy numbers indicate. As a spot-up shooter, he ranked in the 85th percentile, per Synergy; he was in the 92nd percentile off of screens. His combination of dead-on accuracy, quick release, and decent height makes him an elite spot-up guy whom defenses cannot sag off of at all. Overall, on jump-shots Bullock ranked in the 97th percentile, per synergy. Combine the elite shooting abilities with a high basketball IQ for quick cuts and passes and you have a winning offensive player.

The reality is that this was not entirely unexpected. We had seen Bullock show those skills previously as a Piston. The biggest question around those skills was whether he could sustain them over a larger sample size? Even though this season he played more minutes than the rest of his career combined, the sample size is still pretty small. So while this was a great step, there is still some question about how Bullock and his numbers will hold up over an entire season, where opponents are ready for him.

Bullock's most significant improvement came in his ability to become more than merely a complimentary player on offense. Shooting off of dribble hand-offs, Bullock ranked in the 79th percentile, per Synergy, and not all of those were just pull-up shots. Following the Blake Griffin trade, Bullock took on some extra ball-handling duties, where he actually fared pretty well. On top of that, playing a two-man game with Griffin was quickly established as a staple of the offense, and a really good one at that. Bullock even ranked in the 60th percentile as a ball-handler in pick-and-rolls. As you can see from the shot chart above, he struggles in floater rage -- the areas in between layups and jump shots -- and ranks in the 12th percentile on runners. He has a bad habit of not getting his feet set, which leads to some very ugly toss-up shots, but he is still able to hit them regularly enough.

On the defensive end, Bullock still has limitations -- he isn't very strong and he tends to lose focus at times. But he has managed to largely cut out some of the dumber mistakes he has committed in the past such as fouling jump-shooters and overcompensating on plays that he can't complete. On top of that, he has good length, he's heady, and he plays hard. Even though he may never be a stopper, his combination of effort and IQ can take him a long way on the defensive end.

The Bad

I mean, there aren't a lot of negatives from Bullock's season. The only downsides to his game are really that he is elite at what he does, but probably not capable of a whole lot more. While his forays into more ball-handling duties were not a disaster, he is clearly a guy who is never going to be a high-usage offensive player. Similar to his defensive limitations, he is a really good complementary guy, but not more than that. The biggest downside for Bullock as of now is that there still is not a huge sample-size for him, and time will tell if he can sustain the sort of elite shooting he displayed as a starter this season.

Biggest Question?

Exactly as stated above: Can his play and body hold up over a full season? Even this year they shut him down for the final few games of the year to rest a nagging injury he had been dealing with. On a team with Blake Griffin and Reggie Jackson, the Pistons likely can't afford to have many more games per year missed. Even if he is able to hold up physically, can his play be sustained? This season he was legitimately one of the best shooters and off-ball players in basketball. Is he really at that level, or will he regress to being just good?

Biggest Answer

He is a real player. Even though time will tell just how good he is, we now know with some certainty that Reggie Bullock is capable of being a really valuable player in this league -- one who provides a skill-set that is especially valuable to the shooting-depraved Pistons.

The Verdict

Reggie Bullock was one of the brightest spots for the Pistons in their darkest times this season. Considering that he nearly left for a different team this offseason makes the story around him even more fun. Following the Blake Griffin trade, it was immediately clear that the Pistons needed at least one of their wing players to pop. Reggie Bullock may well be the one. Great season for Reggie Bullock.

Looking forward

Reggie Bullock has one more year left on his contract worth $2.5 million, after which he will become an unrestricted free agent. Given his reasonable salary combined with the lack of space for the Pistons, he is likely to be around next season and the Pistons will likely try and use his bird rights to sign him to an extension sooner rather than later. That said, his combination of skill at a cheap price make him an intriguing trade target for other teams if the Pistons decided to make another splash.

What do you think? Can his numbers hold up long-term? Can he stay healthy?