Our Pistons Preview continues, now with Pistons backup point-guard Ish Smith.







Follow along with all the stats on Basketball-Reference.







About Last Year:

Another year of the same Ish Smith more or less. As a backup he is rock-solid, but when pressed into starting duty his flaws were so magnified that nothing good came of it. He did set a career-best (by a wide margin) in scoring efficiency with a true shooting percentage of 52.5% which was cool. His defense was utterly terrible which was not cool. Ish is a player who is, at times, exceedingly fun, and at times, exceedingly maddening. His total lack of shooting totally choked out the offense, he would run a pick and roll with the pick being set in the paint and opponents would still duck under the screen, and his vision is poor. He does avoid turnovers, however, runs in transition, and occasionally has bouts of hot shooting where he is awesome.







Offensively:







The key for Ish is going to be staying with the bench unit, which is actually a key for Reggie Jackson to stay healthy. If Ish is with the bench his game can bloom. On offense, he is a transition terror, who can play at full-tilt every moment he is on the floor instead of having to save himself for 30 minutes or risk running himself out of energy.

Perhaps just as notable as him being able to conserve energy, backups are simply not as good as starters. Ish won't look so terrible defensively when he doesn't have to go against the murders row of point guards in the NBA, and his offense won't look so miserable when he is scooting around backup point-guards and cooking bench bigs off the dribble.

A big key for him will be trying to replicate his scoring efficiency from last year. Previously in his career, he was so inefficient that every shot he took was essentially a wasted possession, last year him shooting still wasn't a great option, but it wasn't a terrible one either. It makes a big difference over the course of a season.

The last thing to watch will be a potential addition of a three-point shot to his regular arsenal. He started to launch some at the end of last season and has come out firing in the preseason. (even if it looked terrible in their opening preseason game) If he could can even 33% from deep it would help immensely. The degree to which opponents ignored him last season was so painful to watch.