RealGM

Something that I've been pondering over recently, although I've thought about it intermittently over the years, is our player development (or lack thereof).

This dates back as far as I can remember, at least to our championship season in 2003/04.

My question is: in the last 20 years, what players have we either drafted, or acquired early in their careers, that have really developed with our team and become good/star players? It feels like every other team has been able to do this (some teams like the Celtics, Heat and Spurs fairly consistently) but not us.

It seems to have spanned several front office iterations and multiple coaching staff setups. Is it mainly poor drafting? Not having good development pathways in place? Something else?

Tanking means no good veterans as they might win some games. This team needs a old head big who is vocal and can set the defense. Also needs Morris healthy ASAP.

Tayshaun. Is that it?

Yeah. That’s why I don’t really like looking back at drafts and saying we should’ve drafted one guy over the next. We’ve drafted enough players and it’s clear we’re just not developing guys. It’s almost like dudes don’t even get better after we draft them, they just get more minutes as the years progress leading to more counting stats. Tyrese Haliburton would be averaging 16 and 8.5 on 54% true shooting percentage if we took him over K Hayes

Tayshaun Prince for sure.
Andre Drummond probably fits too.
Gaze upon this list of non-stars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Pistons_draft_history