This is what happens when fringe teams go hard for the playoffs: their young talent rots away in the name of “wins”. The Pistons have a bunch of dudes who should probably get playing time (I’m actually mainly thinking of Henry Ellenson here), but don’t, because SVG desires nothing more than the 8th seed and a sweep at the hands of the Wizards.
Stanley Johnson is one of those afflicted players. Kind of. He actually has been getting decent minutes, like 15 a game, for a while now and hasn’t been doing much of anything with them. Pistons fans will be able to tell me of his lack of production is because he sucks on offense or if it’s for other reasons outside of his direct control (SVG HATES HIM THAT IS THE TRUTH CAN’T YOU SEE).
This is Johnson’s first good offensive game of the season. It took him long enough. Hard to earn minutes when you rarely score in double figures. Worst part is, we don’t even get to hear George Blaha talk about how confident he looks while he hits a bunch of shots. Instead, we have to listen to some ESPN dummkopfs talk about how confident he looks while he hits a bunch of shots. At least the national TV audience will have an inflated sense of his value after this game. If they even watched the game at all, which I bet no one did.