It’s taken a while, three long years of patience from Pistons fans, but Stanley Johnson is finally turning into a not-horrible offensive player. After tonight’s performance, he’s crawled over the 40 percent mark for field goal shooting on a season, something he has never done before. At least, something he has never done before as far as I can tell. He definitely didn’t last year; I still have fun memories of his 0-for-13 performance in the season-opener that season.
Not only is his quality of shooting better, his quantity is as well. The double whammy of being a better offensive player. He’s still not great from three, but he’s hitting his twos at nice rate, mainly because he’s taken the deep midrange jumper out of his repertoire. Hear that, Budenholzer?
Just joking around, even though he’s better, please don’t get him anywhere near the Bucks. I’d trade Thon Maker for him, but that’s it, and only so we could immediately re-flip him to another team who thinks they can rehabilitate him further.
There isn’t much time left before his rookie contract runs out, though, and who knows what’s going to happen with him after that. Are the Pistons still committed to him? Were they not committed but then became committed after seeing how good-ish he is now?