Since Andre Drummond got traded to the Cavaliers, Thon Maker has been doing things. He hasn’t had much of a choice, since the Pistons’ bigman rotation is pretty messed up right now (which is kinda what happens when your two huge-minute bigs from last season have disappeared), but there was a good chance that he’d receive the 30-ish minutes per game and still do nothing with it. Because he is, after all, still just Thon Maker.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised. The Pistons haven’t won any of these four games, but that’s not the point. The point is that Maker is showing that if you give him a bunch of minutes, let him play without worrying about getting yanked for sucking, and don’t care about actually winning games, he can produce a meager amount of stats. That’s a lot of conditionals right there, but there are tons of players out there who even if you gave them that exact situation, they would still do nothing. Like me. Playing me 48 minutes a game with no pressure to succeed would still only result in a few misses (that wouldn’t even get close to the rim because they’d be blocked right out of my hand) and maybe a pity rebound.
Speaking of rebounds, Maker only grabbed 2 of them tonight. When I was talking about him producing, I was really talking more about the points side of things. It’s possible that he hasn’t realized quite yet that Drummond isn’t there to vacuum up literally every rebound that could possibly exist.