The Detroit Pistons are surpassing all expectations early on this season amid a franchise record-tying 13-game winning streak and sitting in first place in the Eastern Conference.
Despite dealing with injuries early in the season, the Pistons (15-2) have rattled off victories as every game different players are able to step up.
New additions to the roster have proved impactful for the team, Detroit’s young players continue to show growth and the roster is getting healthier by the day, with guard Jaden Ivey and forward Tobias Harris the latest to return after a nearly year-long absence for Ivey and three weeks away for Harris.
It seems like just about everything is going right for the Pistons at this point.
There’s still one mounting problem the team may not be dreading, but it will have to deal with.
There aren’t enough minutes for all their playmakers.
Almost every starter for the Pistons missed at least two games due to an injury to this point in the season and in their steads, players further down the bench like two-way guard Daniss Jenkins, big man Paul Reed and skilled defensive wing Javonte Green showed up and delivered wins.
With the starting five all back again and Ivey’s return to the fold, it makes for a complicated situation for coach J.B. Bickerstaff.
It’s one he’s welcoming as he plans to continue mixing in more players, particularly in the first half of games.
“It might not always be easy, but guys are going to have an opportunity because they’ve earned it,” Bickerstaff said after Detroit’s win over the Milwaukee Bucks Saturday. “If you go out and just shine in your role for those minutes that you’re in, that’s your responsibility and ours guys have bought into it.”
In Saturday’s game — where Ivey returned to play 15 minutes and Harris 23 — it certainly saw minutes go down for bench players.
Reed only played five minutes and rookie guard Chaz Lanier only got two minutes.
But Jenkins logged 13 minutes and was effective, combining with Green to go on a 14-0 run together. He scored seven points, making all three of his shots and assisting three more baskets.
But in a more tightly-contested game against the Indiana Pacers on Monday, Jenkins played just eight minutes and Green 11 minutes while Reed and Lanier didn’t see the court.
That will likely be the nature of things for guys further down the bench when the roster is healthy.
Bickerstaff is clear that those players aren’t being forgotten about, though, and the team will be running with a 12-man rotation after rolling just eight deep in the postseason.
“It’s a combination of things, still, trying to put together the best five-man units that we can and then matching that up with rotations of your opponent and their lineups, figuring out where you can go smaller, where you may have to go bigger where those things all come into play,” Bickerstaff said before the Pacers game. “In my mind it’s just the right thing to do to give guys opportunities to continue to play.
“We believe in the depth that we have here and we’re hopeful that over the long term it pays dividends because we don’t have to wear anybody out. There’s going to be some guys some night that play big minutes, but having the confidence in our depth allows us to play guys in maybe shorter stints but now they can go harder for those stints.”
Jenkins’ status is probably the biggest question mark as he’s a two-way player and is only allowed to play in 50 games for the Pistons and wouldn’t be eligible to play in the postseason under his current deal.
He’s competed in 12 games so far, making four starts and shown to be a solid ball-handling guard to slot in behind star Cade Cunningham.
Bickerstaff hasn’t shifted the starting five much outside of health this season, but he’s welcomed the chance to test out different groups of player together throughout games.
Don’t expect the experimenting to end soon as Ivey continues ramping up what he’s able to do and as bench players continue doing their jobs at a high level.
When asked if he’d ever coached a 12-man rotation before on Saturday, it elicited a chuckle from Bickerstaff.
“No,” he said laughing. “No I have not.”