Detroit Fixed the Perimeter. The Paint Is Still a Problem.

The Pistons spent the better part of June and July building a roster designed to win close games. That was the right diagnosis. But a team can address its symptoms while leaving the underlying condition untreated, and as training camp approaches, that is exactly where Detroit finds itself.

I wrote last month about the number that drove this entire offseason: 14–10. That was Detroit's record in games decided by five points or fewer, a 58% close-game win rate on a team that otherwise won 73% of the time. Fifteen percentage points of gap, all of it concentrated in the moments that decide playoff series. The front office responded with perimeter reinforcements — Gary Harris arriving from Milwaukee, Isaiah Joe from Oklahoma City, Kevin Huerter re-signed for three years. Then the headline: John Collins on a three-year, $51 million deal to shore up the power forward spot alongside Jalen Duren. Taken together, it is a coherent answer to a real question. Late-game execution requires ball-handlers who don't wilt and shooters who don't disappear, and Detroit added several of both.

Here is the part that keeps nagging at me. Every dollar and every second-round pick this offseason went to the perimeter and the four. Not one move addressed what happens when Duren sits. The depth chart at center reads Duren, then Isaac Jones — and the production gap between those two names is not a gap so much as a cliff. Duren finished the season at 17.7 points and 9.9 rebounds on nearly 65% shooting. Jones registered essentially nothing in meaningful minutes. That is not a backup situation; that is a single-player position.

The perimeter additions are real improvements, and I don't want to minimize what Collins brings to the frontcourt in terms of stretch-four versatility. But Collins is a power forward, not a center, and playoff basketball has a way of hunting the weakest structural point on a roster. Opponents will find Duren's foul trouble. They will find the moments when he needs rest in a fourth quarter. And when they do, Detroit's answer is currently a player who produced nothing measurable last season. My read is that this is the roster's single most dangerous unresolved question heading into the fall — more dangerous than the close-game execution problem the front office spent $78 million trying to fix, because at least that problem got addressed.

The Eastern Conference is getting harder, not easier. The Pistons have the talent to compete at the top of it. Cade Cunningham at 24.6 points and 9.3 assists per game is a legitimate engine for a contender, and the supporting cast around him is meaningfully better than it was a year ago. But 60 wins and a second-round exit is already evidence that regular-season dominance does not automatically translate. What translates in the playoffs is depth at every position, and right now Detroit has a gaping hole in the one spot where size and physicality are hardest to fake. Training camp will tell us whether the front office has a plan for that hole, or whether they're hoping the perimeter talent is enough to paper over it. History suggests it rarely is.