Remember when Christian Wood basically replaced Anthony Davis on the Pelicans last year and did such a good job of it that AD sent a public tweet to LeBron (that was meant to be a DM) that said “if u knew how good that wood kid is, u would be recruiting him and not me. not joking right now. he is 4 real and he doesn’t have injury concerns like me. please strip me naked and spank me”.
Okay, the second part didn’t happen, but the first part totally did happen, and now it’s happening again in Detroit, except Wood is replacing Blake Griffin this time. I feel like Wood and Griffin has a more similar skillset than most people realize simply because Wood has the skillset of every great bigman past and present except for Kareem. If there’s a big man out there getting paid fifteen to thirty million dollars per year, you can bet that Wood would provide 80% of their production for 10% of the contract.
Can Wood pass like Griffin? Sure, if he wants. Can he shoot threes like Griffin? If we’re talking about this year’s Griffin, yeah, anybody can shoot better than 24%, but if we’re talking about last year’s Griffin, the answer is still “yeah” because Wood has an underrated jumpshot. Can he dunk like Griffin? Hell yeah. He would jump over TWO Kia’s if he wanted to and do Super McVarial 900 while doing it. Can he punch trainers like Griffin? We don’t know yet, but the answer is probably “yes” because of the size disadvantage between Wood and the average training staff dude.
The only problem now is that the Pistons are supposed to tank but Wood is too good for that to happen consistently. The only solution is to strip the team of all remaining talent by trading any good players, then run a lineup of Tim Frazier/whoever/whoever/Sekou Doumbouya/Christian Wood for 48 minutes a game. That sounds fun as heck honestly.