The Pistons Head Into Training Camp With One Question They Still Haven't Answered

Everything the Pistons did this offseason made sense. The Gary Harris acquisition addressed the late-game defensive rotations that kept breaking down. Kevin Huerter's return preserved the floor spacing Detroit needs to operate in half-court sets. John Collins at $51 million gives Jalen Duren a legitimate power-forward partner rather than a body filler. If you were designing a roster to fix a 14–10 close-game record, you'd make most of these moves. The problem is that fixing the perimeter doesn't fix the paint, and the paint is where Detroit's deepest structural risk now lives.

I wrote that sentence last week. I'm writing a version of it again because nothing has changed at center. The depth chart behind Duren lists Isaac Jones as the backup, and the production gap between them is not a rotation concern — it's a roster emergency. Duren put up 17.7 points and 9.9 rebounds on 64.8% shooting last season. His backup registered essentially nothing in meaningful minutes. That is not a depth chart. That is one player and a placeholder.

What makes this particularly sharp is that the Pistons built their entire offseason around the 14–10 close-game record, the number that exposed where a 60–22 team still had unfinished business. But close games in the playoffs don't get decided by perimeter depth alone. They get decided by who's on the floor in the final four minutes, and in those minutes, opposing coaches will hunt the backup center the moment Duren picks up his fourth foul. Collins can slide to center in small-ball lineups — that's a reasonable counter — but it's a concession, not a solution. It compresses the frontcourt and removes the physical deterrent Duren provides.

The broader irony is that the moves Detroit made were genuinely good. Taurean Prince adds a defensive wing who can guard multiple positions. Isaiah Joe adds shooting off the bench. The perimeter is legitimately deeper and more versatile than it was in April. But depth at guard and forward doesn't transfer to the five. When Duren needs rest in Game 6 of a playoff series, the Pistons will need an answer that isn't currently on this roster. My read is that this isn't a problem you can scheme around indefinitely — at some point, a team with a legitimate center rotation will expose it in ways that no amount of three-point shooting can compensate for.

Training camp opens with a roster that is meaningfully better than last year's in several real ways. The close-game execution gap was the right thing to target, and the front office deserves credit for acting on the diagnosis rather than standing pat. But the center position is the one place where the offseason left a question sitting on the table unanswered, and in the Eastern Conference that figures to be as competitive as it's been in years, unresolved questions have a way of becoming the only thing anyone remembers about a promising season.