Marvin Bagley III

Keith Langlois

We’re a week into training camp, but more like a month into the evaluation process. Over the past decade or so, the reality is that a healthy number of most teams’ players set up base at the training facility right after Labor Day and group workouts commence.

The Players Association sets up safeguards so that coaches can only interact so much and in smaller numbers at a time than the whole roster, but those workouts almost always finish with full-court scrimmages that coaches can monitor if not direct.

So Monty Williams wasn’t starting from chapter one when he blew the whistle on his first official Pistons practice last Tuesday. And when he proclaimed on Wednesday that Marvin Bagley III and James Wiseman were, in all likelihood, competing for the backup center position, he wasn’t saying that based only on the three practices he’d seen to date.

So we can extrapolate from the first week of camp and Sunday’s preseason opener with a little more certainty than might otherwise seem warranted.

And here, based on what we saw Sunday and what Williams and Pistons players have said over the past week, are a few observations and projections:

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On 3-guard lineups, Livers, Ausar, Hayes and more after first week of Pistons camp

If you need any convincing how fast things can change in the NBA, consider the circumstances that led to Marvin Bagley III being acquired by the Pistons and how different they’d become in one calendar year.

When Bagley arrived from Sacramento at the 2022 trade deadline, he came to a team with a 6-foot-8 starting center and no real lob threats in Detroit. A year later, both Bagley and that 6-foot-8 center, Isaiah Stewart, were splitting time at power forward to make way for two supremely athletic centers, Jalen Duren and James Wiseman. The Pistons went from one of the NBA’s most undersized teams to one of its biggest. In an ideal world, it will play to Bagley’s strengths as a versatile scorer who can create mismatch problems.

Here's a look at Bagley’s past, present and future:

PROFILE: 6-foot-11 power forward/center, 24 years old, 5 NBA seasons

2022-23 STATS: 12.0 points and 6.4 rebounds on 52.9 shooting and 28.8 3-point shooting in 24 minutes a game over 42 games with 25 starts

STATUS: Bagley signed a reported three-year contract with the Pistons last summer after being acquired via trade from Sacramento at the 2022 trade deadline while playing out the last season of his rookie contract.

DID YOU KNOW?: The Pistons used the No. 2 overall pick in the 1964 draft on Joe Caldwell – a/k/a Jumpin’ Joe – who would go on to a decorated career in the NBA and ABA and begat a grandson, Marvin Bagley III. Caldwell was an All-American at Arizona State who starred on the 1964 USA Basketball Olympic gold medalists. He lasted just a little over a season in Detroit as the Pistons traded Caldwell to the St. Louis Hawks for John Barnhill in December 1965. Caldwell averaged 15.2 points a game over seven NBA seasons, peaking at 21.1 in 1969-70, before jumping to the rival ABA and averaging 17.5 points over five seasons. Caldwell was a two-time All-Star in both leagues.

A LOOK BACK: Bagley, as Jalen Duren would do four years later, reclassified late in the summer of 2017 to facilitate his eligibility for both the 2017-18 college season and the 2018 NBA draft. As a Duke freshman, Bagley was dominant, averaging 21.0 points and 11.1 rebounds a game while shooting 61 percent for a Blue Devils team that went 29-8 and lost in overtime to Kansas in the regional finals. Bagley, as expected, left Duke after one season for the NBA where he wound up being the No. 2 pick in a loaded draft that saw Luka Doncic, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Trae Young go 3-4-5. Bagley’s former teammate at Sierra Canyon Prep, DeAndre Ayton, went No. 1 to Phoenix. Bagley averaged 14.9 points and 7.6 rebounds off of Sacramento’s bench as a rookie, then saw his second season limited to 14 games by a broken wrist. Because of the success of the players drafted around him and bubbling unrest in Sacramento with the direction of the franchise, Bagley became a target for public frustration and the clock seemed to be ticking on his tenure in Sacramento from early on. Bagley got a second chance when the Pistons acquired him at the 2022 trade deadline and he immediately gave their frontcourt a degree of size and athleticism otherwise lacking. In 18 games to finish 2021-22, Bagley averaged 14.6 points and 6.8 rebounds for Detroit and signed a reported three-year deal to stay with the Pistons.

THE SEASON THAT WAS: Bagley’s first full season in Detroit was marred by two injuries – a bone bruise and sprained medial collateral ligament of the right knee suffered in preseason and a broken hand incurred on Jan. 2. The knee injury knocked Bagley out for the season’s first 13 games and the hand injury cost him another 20. Bagley played perhaps his best basketball after returning from the hand injury in late February, including consecutive games of 21 points and 18 rebounds and 21 points and 12 rebounds. He also scored 31 points, one off his career high, in a March loss to Atlanta in which he hit 12 of 19 shots and 4 of 5 from the 3-point line. Bagley made 9 of 19 from the 3-point arc over his final eight games.

A LOOK AHEAD: The additions of Duren via the 2022 draft and Wiseman via trade make it very likely that Bagley goes into the 2023-24 season as a full-time power forward capable of moving to center if injuries strike. That doesn’t necessarily make it imperative that Bagley becomes a volume 3-point shooter, but his late-season improvement in accuracy – and especially from the corners – will make the two-big lineups the Pistons are likely to employ given their roster construction more viable if it is sustainable. Bagley has enough off-the-dribble skills and body control to be an effective scorer facing the basket from the perimeter and he’s displayed a good shooting touch from inside the arc. With the reclassification, Bagley will play virtually all of his sixth NBA season as a 24-year-old, so it bears keeping in mind that he remains a young player even if he’s got more NBA experience by a considerable amount than Stewart, Duren and Wiseman. Getting Cade Cunningham and his playmaking flair back should help Bagley become an even more efficient scorer. Bagley has shown in flashes since early in his NBA career the ability to have dominant stretches, but injuries that sideline him for weeks at a time have interrupted meaningful career progression. He’s also perhaps been victimized to a degree by his versatility, leading to frequent altering of his roles. Focusing on power forward and learning to play off of Wiseman and Duren could narrow the scope of what is asked of Bagley and allow him to flourish.

MONEY QUOTE: “This wasn’t the season we planned on having, but we made it through and I’m still excited about what we’ve got here. I’ve said since day one when I got here and I still believe that we’ve got some dawgs in this locker room and that ain’t ever changed for me. I still stand on the fact we’ve got dawgs in the locker room and hopefully get everybody healthy and I think we’ll be a problem for teams in this league for years to come.” – Marvin Bagley III at the conclusion of the season

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Season Rewind: Influx of athletic big men streamlines Bagley’s role with Pistons

The Pistons got their first glimpse of lineups with two big men side by side in Saturday’s matchup with Boston. If they’re right about the futures of Isaiah Stewart, Jalen Duren and Marvin Bagley III, the fact it took until the season’s 14th&nbsp;game will be but a historic footnote.

Bagley, 23, is the elder statesmen of the group and in his fifth NBA season. Stewart, 21, is in his third year. Duren, the NBA’s youngest player, turns 19 this week. They’re all works in progress but the individual ceilings are tantalizing. Collectively, they give the Pistons a mixture of toughness, athleticism, rebounding and shot-blocking they haven’t had since the heyday of Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess.

It was a very different NBA, of course, when the Wallaces and McDyess terrorized Pistons opponents. Playing with two big men in that era was the norm. Most teams took 80 percent of their shots inside the 3-point arc. Nobody could play any of those three off the floor without risking getting pulverized in the paint.

Bagley, who scored four points and blocked two shots in 17 minutes after missing a month with a knee injury suffered in the preseason, believes ironing out the kinks will come with the familiarity only experience can provide.

“Just doing it more. Just playing on the court at the same time more and reading each other,” Bagley said. “We’ve got different guys who can do a lot of different things, big guys who can do a lot of different things. Once we’re out there, we’ve just got to read each other and that comes with time.”

Most of Bagley’s minutes against Boston came alongside Duren, though there was a two-minute span late in the third quarter when Bagley replaced Stewart and played as the lone big man. Bagley roughly split his time equally between forward and power center during his time with Sacramento and says he’s equally comfortable playing either spot.

One reason Dwane Casey might have been leaning toward starting Bagley – he started two of three preseason games before injury struck – was Isaiah Stewart’s burgeoning 3-point threat pairs better with Bagley than a Bagley-Duren duo and Duren’s more paint-based skill set at this point. Cade Cunningham missing at least the next three games while he deals with left shin pain might argue against making any further changes to the starting lineup until his return, but a Bagley move to the starting lineup remains a prominent option.

For as long as Bagley comes off the bench, his scoring ability – Bagley’s career average per 36 minutes is 19.5 – will be of great service to a second unit starved for consistent production. Alec Burks scored 17 points in his debut on Friday night before taking Saturday off as a precaution. The Pistons are on the cusp of having the ingredients to field two well-balanced units. The challenge for Casey will be to sort through the possibilities to find the best functional combinations. He’s happy to have the options.

“I like the rebounding, the size, the presence at the rim,” Casey said of Saturday’s experiment. “Even though they may not block a shot, other teams know they’re at the restricted line. Offensively, we’ve got to make sure we have spacing. The spacing has to get better, but the defensive rebounding and rim protection is something we need – and the size at the rim.”

Bagley came into training camp exuding confidence and optimism fresh off signing a three-year contract with the Pistons. The trade that brought him to Detroit from Sacramento at the February trade deadline last winter, he said at the time, had made basketball enjoyable again. He didn’t want to let the idle time while recuperating dim his optimism.

“I was really focused and locked in,” he said. “My main goal was to stay locked in throughout the whole time – practices, on the bench during games, just being ready. The day (his injury) happened, I didn’t know how long I was going to be out but once I got the timeline I was going to be out, I just mentally prepared for it and now I’m back, ready to play. It felt good being back out there.”

It puts the Pistons that much closer to having all of their puzzle pieces intact. Now it will be a matter of putting them in their proper place.

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Bagley’s return puts Pistons closer to having all hands on deck

He’s had one practice, barely knows the names much less the games of new teammates and won’t play his first home game for another 10 days. But through all of the fog, it wasn’t hard to see how Marvin Bagley III gives the Pistons a different look and can ultimately make them a more potent team.

“I liked it. I tell you what, he’s long,” Dwane Casey said after Bagley debuted with 10 points and eight rebounds in 21 minutes as the Pistons lost 103-94 at Washington. “His timing’s off a little bit, understandably, but he has an advantage in the post with his length and his ability to score around the basket. I really liked that. First play down the floor, he took a charge. I loved that.”

Bagley, at 6-foot-11 with a 7-foot-1 wingspan, can play on a higher plane than any other big man on the Pistons roster, underscored by his first-quarter basket when he took a high feed from Killian Hayes to score about as easy a basket at the rim in traffic as the Pistons have gotten all season. It’s a skill set they desperately need and one they’ll explore to the fullest depths over the season’s final 25 games.

“We’re excited to have him,” Saddiq Bey said. “In practice, workouts or games, just get him acclimated. Once he gets comfortable, he’ll definitely be a force for us.”

Bagley scored all four of his baskets around the rim, a hook shot from 10 feet out along the left baseline the deepest of his hoops. After playing nine minutes in the first half, Bagley was left out for one 12-minute stint of the second half and played a chunk of the fourth quarter with the starters at center. His stat line would have looked a little better, too, if he hadn’t missed four of his six free throws.

“He’s a little rusty,” Casey said, “but I like the way he plays.”

It was easy to like Bey’s performance, too. He scored 24 points, five rebounds and five assists. Beyond him, offense was a heavy lift for the Pistons all night. They were limited to just 23 3-point attempts and made only eight. Cade Cunningham, playing only his second game since missing five with a hip injury, was dogged by foul trouble that likely combined with his layoff to mess with his timing. Cunningham shot 5 of 16 and missed all five of his 3-point tries.

The bench was a problem, too. With Bagley’s assimilation in its infancy, Kelly Olynyk still off his form since returning from a prolonged absence and the Pistons missing Frank Jackson with back spasms, the second unit had a serious lack of punch. It cost the Pistons in the first half when they managed only four points in nearly five minutes and prompted Casey to rejigger the rotation in the second half.

But there’s only so much you can do when there’s not the perimeter shooting or scoring power available. The bench unit wound up scoring just 24 points and, most glaringly, taking only three 3-point shots and not making one. Olynyk, Killian Hayes, Hamidou Diallo and Bagley are all shooting less than 30 percent from the arc for the season. Jackson is the only player off the bench who shoots threes often and well enough to bend defenses.

“Just the 3-point shooting he brings to the table,” Casey said. “The spacing he brings because of the respect they have for him.”

More than the 3-point shooting or lack of scoring, though, Casey most lamented the 37 points the Pistons allowed in the third quarter when Washington got 17 points from Kyle Kuzma, who finished with 23.

“It was our defense with Kuzma that got away from us in the third quarter,” he said. “Some of it was our 3-point shooting, but most of it was our approach and taking it personally when somebody’s lighting us up like that. Too many times we let guys get away instead of putting my stake in the ground: ‘No more.’ ”

The Pistons play one more game – at Boston on Wednesday – before taking a week off for the All-Star break, then they’ll come back and play 24 games in 46 days to finish the regular season. Nothing will be more important over that time than fully integrating Bagley to allow a full evaluation of him ahead of a critical free agency decision on the 22-year-old.

“It’s an experiment to see where he fits,” Casey said. “He fits with both groups. He can play the four. He’s very flexible, very versatile in the positions he can play. I like the way he came in and contributed.”

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Bagley flashes hints of how he’ll help transform Pistons

Three quick observations from Monday night’s 103-94 loss to the Washington Wizards at Capital One Arena.

SOLID START – Marvin Bagley III made a solid first impression in his Pistons debut, finishing with 10 points and eight rebounds in 21 minutes. Bagley was the first big man off the bench, coming on at center for Isaiah Stewart with 4:24 left in the first quarter. He scored two quick baskets inside, the first on a nice spin move and the second using his length to make himself available for a Killian Hayes feed and scoring over the top of Washington’s defense. Bagley also played with Kelly Olynyk on the second unit where their versatility makes them virtually interchangeable. In the second half, Dwane Casey played Bagley for a longer stretch, leaving him in to play with the starers until bringing Isaiah Stewart back with a little less than five minutes to play. Bagley drew a charge and was called for a flagrant-1 foul for not giving Rui Hachimura room to land on a successful 3-point attempt, which resulted in a six-point Wizards possession. He came on at the same point of the third quarter and again scored a couple of quick baskets, including an impressive deep baseline hook. Bagley is enough of a scoring threat around the rim that he got to the foul line six times, though he made only two. The Pistons were within two points with six minutes to play, but a 9-0 Washington run ended by a Cory Joseph 3-pointer with two minutes left iced the win for the Wizards. Cade Cunningham, playing his second game since missing five with a hip pointer, started slowly and was limited to 12 first-half minutes by foul trouble, but got rolling in the third quarter. Dwane Casey challenged what would have been Cunningham’s fifth foul with 9:31 left in the third quarter and the call was overturned, Cunningham scored eight points in the next four minutes and finished with 12 points, four rebounds and four assists but shot just 5 of 16. 

SECOND UNIT STRUGGLE – With Marvin Bagley added to the mix, Trey Lyles and Josh Jackson subtracted and Frank Jackson out with back spasms, the Pistons had a new-look second unit that consisted of Bagley, Kelly Olynyk, Rodney McGruder, Hamidou Diallo and Killian Hayes. With Olynyk still struggling after returning from his stint with COVID-19 that came two games after his coming back from a 33-game absence with a knee injury, there’s not a lot of 3-point shooting with that mix while Frank Jackson is out. McGruder shoots 40 percent from the arc, though he’s played in only 31 games and averages 14 minutes. Hayes and Olynyk are both shooting less than 28 percent from three and Diallo is less than 25 percent on relatively low volume. Dwane Casey believes Bagley will grow into a floor-stretching big man, but so far he’s a career 30 percent 3-point shooter who’s at 24 percent this season. That unit scored four points in nearly five minutes to start the second quarter before Casey called timeout and rushed his starters back into the game. In the second half, Casey staggered the minutes to have Cory Joseph at point guard to start the fourth quarter with the bench unit. That move paid off. The bench chipped away at a nine-point deficit, cutting it to five with 7:18 to play when Casey began re-inserting his starters.

BEY WATCH – Saddiq Bey didn’t waste much time extending his streak of games with a 3-pointer made to 31, the fifth-longest active streak in the NBA. Bey scored 11 of the first 13 Pistons points and had 18 of their 50 first-half points on just 10 shots, hitting 3 of 6 from the 3-point arc. He finished with 24 points, five rebounds and five assists. One of Bey’s less heralded but vitally important attributes so far has been his durability. Bey didn’t play in the first game of his rookie season, held out of the rotation, but he’s played in 127 of 128 games since then and in all 57 so far this season. Not only that, he’s playing increasingly heavy minutes, leading the Pistons in minutes per game at 33.5 and coming into Monday’s game eighth in the NBA in total minutes for the season. Bey, named to the All-Rookie first team after being picked 19th in 2020, got off to a slow start this season, averaging 11.9 points and shooting 30 percent from the 3-point arc in his first 26 games. But since Dec. 16 – or about the time Jerami Grant was sidelined with a thumb injury and Bey’s role became magnified – he’s averaged 19.1 points and has shot better from the 3-point arc (37 percent) than he did overall (35 percent) prior to that.

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Wizards ruin Bagley’s Pistons debut with late run

After three-plus years of not being Luka Doncic, Marvin Bagley III was ready to relaunch his NBA career somewhere other than Sacramento. After watching the Pistons he created for the first 50-some games too often in need of an athletic big man, Troy Weaver was ready to make Detroit that place for Bagley.

“A big, athletic guy who can run, rebound and put the ball in the basket,” Weaver said after Bagley went through his first Pistons practice on Sunday. “We’re excited to add that to the mix. We don’t have a guy like that. I’m charged with making sure we have enough tools in the toolbox and we’re exciting about adding it.”

Bagley, 22, was the second pick in a loaded 2018 draft that saw Deandre Ayton go first and Doncic, Trae Young and Jaren Jackson Jr. taken 3-4-5 after Bagley. Bagley’s wasn’t the first NBA career to be derailed in Sacramento, but the perception of Bagley is colored heavily by the success of the players taken after him, Doncic especially. His career averages of 13.5 points and 7.2 rebounds don’t exactly say “bust.”

Relieved of the burden of relentless expectations in Sacramento, Bagley appears energized by wearing a Pistons uniform.

“I’m excited,” he said Sunday. “It’s a new start. We’ve got a lot of young guys on this team. They play hard every night. That’s something that caught my attention and I’m super excited about finally being a part of it. I can’t wait to get this thing rolling.”

Bagley was the crown jewel of Duke’s 2017 recruiting class. He was the nation’s No. 1 prospect and originally was supposed to be a high school senior in the fall of 2017, but instead announced that August he was reclassifying and committing to Duke for the 2017-18 season. In his one year, playing alongside fellow future lottery pick Wendell Carter plus Gary Trent Jr. and Grayson Allen, Bagley averaged 21 points and 11 rebounds. He shot 65 percent overall and 40 percent from the 3-point line.

The Pistons traded Trey Lyles, Josh Jackson and two future second-round picks on the bet that those tools are still there and they’re willing to enjoin Bagley in drawing them out. The risk-reward ratio of the deal made it an irresistible one for Weaver and Dwane Casey.

“He’s going to have an opportunity to show what he can do,” Casey said. “Nothing against Sacramento, but sometimes guys are not a good fit. This league is about opportunity and our situation provides that for him, whether it’s at the four or the five, to show what he can do.”

Bagley said he spent a lot of time at power forward in Sunday’s practice and that is almost surely where he’ll start out, essentially taking over Lyle’s role with the second unit playing alongside Kelly Olynyk. But Bagley’s size, agility and ability to operate on the perimeter at both ends mean he should be a pretty easy fit no matter whom he’s playing alongside – Olynyk, Jerami Grant, Isaiah Stewart or anyone else Weaver might acquire going forward.

“I’ve seen him on video, coached against him, one day at practice,” Casey said. “We’ll evaluate everything about him and try to plug him into what we’re doing.”

Bagley’s debut should come Monday when the Pistons play at Washington. Then he’ll have 25 more games to make the case for being a big piece of the franchise’s future. Weaver addressed the logic of trading for Bagley as opposed to waiting for free agency this July.

“We wanted to bring him in the fold, work with him and know how he fits as a person and as a player instead of just waiting for free agency,” he said. “I always believe in getting guys in house, similar to what we did with (Hamidou) Diallo (at last season’s trade deadline ahead of him becoming a restricted free agent). We like guys to come in and get within the walls and assimilate in the locker room, find out who they really are.”

There is connective tissue for Bagley to Detroit. The Pistons drafted his grandfather, Joe Caldwell, with the second pick in 1964 out of Arizona State. “Jumpin’ Joe” Caldwell spent 1½ seasons with the Pistons but blossomed into a great player with the NBA’s St. Louis Hawks and the ABA’s Carolina Cougars, becoming a two-time All-Star in each league.

“It’s crazy how it comes back around,” Bagley said. “I’m excited to be here and be able to have something in common with him. When I’m at the dinner table talking to him, we can share Detroit stories.”