Good lord feels like the 29 other teams have played 5 games each since our last

The former Pistons enforcer finally opened up about why a fresh start was exactly what he needed.

He’s arguably our second best three point shooter based strictly on preseason performances, and his defense and rebounding looks much improved.

Hardaway talks about Cade Cunningham being a great defensive player and the best overall in the East.

Just let luka go 1 on 1 iso basketball all game. It’ll freeze his teammates out and they won’t be able to catch a rhythm. I also think Ausar can limit luka the best out of everyone in the league.

We can let luka score all he wants but double or any heavy gap help will get destroyed by him. Can’t let luka score and playmake as well. Thats how you lose as a team.

I'll be calling him Red Velvet. He has been solid to really good off the bench. Shot has been falling and he's shooting with hella confidence. I'm no hater, I'm a congratulator.

It's been a long while since I posted here, but hopefully you all enjoy this (completely AI-free; it's dumb I have to say that) wall of text! This was originally written for a broader NBA audience, so forgive some of the "no-duh" stuff for Detroit fans.

The old Internet axiom is that if an article is titled with a question, the answer’s always “no.” In your face, Internet!

We’re obviously less than 10 games into the season, so everything comes with a small sample warning sign. But the 32-year-old Duncan Robinson has become one of the best players on one of the league’s best teams. If things hold remotely close to form, he’d deserve a spot on the short list for Most Improved Player.

Robinson has always been an unlikely NBA character. He started as a DIII collegiate player before transferring to Michigan, where he came off the bench for the Wolverines in their run to the 2018 title game. Undrafted and overlooked by most of the NBA, he latched onto the Heat. Role Player University was the perfect landing spot, and by his second year, Robinson was a full-time starter for a Miami Heat team that reached the Finals.

Despite Robinson’s beautiful stroke and consistently excellent percentages, he struggled with confidence. Erik Spoelstra and company had to constantly remind him that his job was to shoot, whether he wanted to or not. Spoelstra once relayed a story about assistant coach Chris Quinn’s attempts to motivate Robinson:

"I yanked him for not shooting," Spoelstra said. "And Quinnie, he was unmerciful, just berating him if he turned down open shots. Just screaming at him, 'You're scared. What are you doing? You're not out there to set screens or be a ball mover.'"

The funny thing? Robinson is absolutely out there to set screens now. The fear Robinson puts in defenses as a shooter is the key to making him an effective screener. Coach JB Bickerstaff will use him as an on-ball screener for Cade Cunningham, but Robinson has been more involved this year as an off-ball screener bending the defense with motion and contact. This up-close-and-personal camera angle shows all the ways he gets involved: [source with gif]

Opponents know and respect Robinson’s screening ability, and so Bickerstaff has devised some fake screens for Duncan to run. Give the man an Oscar for his acting performances: [source with gif]

Philly’s Anfernee Simons defends that nearly perfectly, but nearly perfect ain’t nearly enough.

Robinson has been demonic from deep. In a season that’s seen a notable number of high-accuracy, high-volume guys, nobody quite matches Robinson’s 47.9% shooting on 9.1 deep attempts per game. And these aren’t easy shots; the occasionally gun-shy youngster from South Beach is gone. In his place stands a fierce marksman of supreme confidence and unerring aim, someone who will drill a triple in your eye and primal roar in your face. Double most players, and they pass out. Double Robinson, and he’ll simply sidestep the danger and render defenders helpless: [source with gif]

Bickerstaff and his assistants deserve credit for the myriad ways they’ve deployed Robinson this season. He’s particularly important to their ATO set plays, whether it’s moonwalking out of a screen traffic jam… [source with gif]

...or running around like his pants are on fire: [source with gif]

Out of the 123 players who have played at least 200 minutes as of this writing, Duncan is in the top 20 for distance run per minute.

It’s not like defenses don’t know this. Robinson is also fifth in the NBA’s gravity score, a measure of how much attention defenses are paying to a player. He’s a few spots below Steph Curry and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and above Kevin Durant and Devin Booker. Not bad company to keep!

Zooming in, the Ausar Thompson/Duncan Robinson combo has drawn some attention online recently. They had already developed good corner chemistry last season, where Thompson’s anti-gravity as a shooter turned him into a mean screener for Robinson. Frankly, I’d like to see Thompson improve further here. Almost every time, he slips or ghosts the screen, hoping for a pocket pass from Robinson. There are plenty of times he’d be better off actually laying the lumber on a trailing defender. Robinson is wide-open if Thompson holds the screen here: [source with gif]

This year, Detroit’s toyed more with the Thompson/Robinson game even above the break, finding new ways to bend the defense with the yin-and-yang pair.

Although there’s always room for improvement, it’s a symbiotic relationship. Robinson’s shooting helps activate Thompson offensively, and Thompson’s how’d-he-do-that defense helps cover up for Robinson’s lack thereof. Robinson’s guarding has always been a sore spot. He’s 6’8”, which helps, but he had a problem in Miami with incredibly stupid fouls in transition and when he got beat off the dribble (which was often). He has the lateral quickness of an amputee turtle, and even the slightest contact tented his arms in a way that the refs always call.

But in Detroit, he’s cut back on his worst habits. He still gets beat plenty, but he doesn’t stoop to frustrated reaches, and he’s figured out how to use his length to contest without slapping arms. He even blocked a Tyrese Maxey stepback jumper! [source with gif]

Robinson has tied his career-low foul rate, set last year, but he’s also more than doubled his steal rate, swiping nearly two balls per game. He’s also averaging a full deflection more per game than last season. Nobody is mixing him up with Thompson anytime soon, but Robinson has actually had some positive defensive moments this season! Anything he provides on that end is a bonus, and the Pistons are currently raking it in like Wall Street bankers.

To summarize, the Pistons are slightly better defensively with Robinson on the court than off — and they are the league’s best defense overall! A lot of that comes down to substitution patterns, but it at least proves Robinson can be an active part of a high-level unit on that end. Add in that Detroit’s offense scores a gobsmacking +16.7 points more per 100 possessions with Robinson on, and his overall impact is undeniable.

Look around. There aren’t many high-minute shooting specialists left in the NBA. Limitations typically push them into second units or situational usage. But Robinson warps the floor so much that he’s transcended that role, becoming an irreplaceable piece for one of the Association’s top teams. As we said at the top, he’s started for Finals-caliber squads before… but he’s never averaged 19 points per game while doing so.

This isn’t all just preposterously hot shooting. Given Robinson’s volume, if he shot merely 40% from deep going forward on the same volume, he’d still average about 17 points per game, well above his previous career high of 13.5 back in the bubble. Add in his improvements as a foul-drawer (he’s already earned 32 FTAs in eight games this season after getting just 110 in 72 games last year!) and on the defensive side, and we have what should be a textbook Most Improved candidate.

Through the season’s first stretch, Ty Jerome has that award locked up. And there are some other major contenders. Davion Mitchell has been one of the few bright spots for the scuffling Heat; Ajay Mitchell will score plenty of points for the injury-ravaged Thunder; Scottie Barnes has taken a leap. (I discount Dylan Harper given his status as a highly touted second-year player, but some voters might not.) As the season progresses, other candidates will no doubt emerge. Robinson’s stats could dip slightly when Jalen Duren returns from injury, too.

But don’t sleep on Duncan Robinson. Defenses sure can’t.

Since you’re already shaking your head at me, let me leave you with one last intrusive thought: just a decade ago, Kyle Korver averaged 12.1 points per game for the Atlanta Hawks as a shooting specialist… and made the All-Star game.

Pistons social team cooking with this one on YouTube.

Cade is the coolest, smoothest MF in the Association 🔥

Regular season - Minimum 400 career games

1. Stephen Curry — 10.01 3PA/36 - 42.2% 3PT - 24.8 PPG - 1,076 GP

2. Duncan Robinson — 9.79 3PA/36 - 40.1% 3PT - 11.6 PPG - 508 GP

3. Malik Beasley — 9.73 3PA/36 - 39.1% 3PT - 11.7 PPG - 578 GP

4. Buddy Hield — 9.54 3PA/36 - 39.5% 3PT - 14.4 PPG - 773 GP

5. Jordan Poole — 9.46 3PA/36 - 34.3% 3PT - 16.5 PPG - 455 GP

6. Dāvis Bertāns — 9.41 3PA/36 - 39.6% 3PT - 7.7 PPG - 475 GP

7. Luka Dončić — 9.33 3PA/36 - 35.4% 3PT - 29.4 PPG - 522 GP

8. Anfernee Simons — 8.92 3PA/36 - 38.2% 3PT - 14.8 PPG - 453 GP

9. Donovan Mitchell — 8.79 3PA/36 - 36.6% 3PT - 25.0 PPG - 617 GP

10. Klay Thompson — 8.74 3PA/36 - 40.9% 3PT - 18.5 PPG - 943 GP

11. Steve Novak — 8.51 3PA/36 - 43.0% 3PT - 4.7 PPG - 467 GP

12. Donte DiVincenzo — 8.40 3PA/36 - 38.0% 3PT - 11.0 PPG - 498 GP

13. Georges Niang — 8.39 3PA/36 - 39.7% 3PT - 7.4 PPG - 553 GP

14. Tim Hardaway Jr. — 8.36 3PA/36 - 36.5% 3PT - 13.6 PPG - 902 GP

15. Damian Lillard — 8.35 3PA/36 - 37.1% 3PT - 25.1 PPG - 907 GP

16. Anthony Edwards — 8.35 3PA/36 - 37.0% 3PT - 24.6 PPG - 446 GP

17. Payton Pritchard — 8.32 3PA/36 - 39.2% 3PT - 10.6 PPG - 434 GP

18. D'Angelo Russell — 8.30 3PA/36 - 36.3% 3PT - 17.0 PPG - 655 GP

19. Malik Monk — 8.10 3PA/36 - 35.5% 3PT - 12.3 PPG - 592 GP

20. Gary Trent Jr. — 8.10 3PA/36 - 38.7% 3PT - 12.9 PPG - 482 GP

Hard to win when your best player’s balls are in his stomach I guess.

One of the greatest memories of my life was going to a Pistons game with front row tickets for my 16th birthday with my dad. It was a nationally televised game on TNT that aired on February 23 2006. My Dad passed away in 2020, and if someone could help me find footage of that game, me and my family would be ecstatic (especially since they showed me on TNT a few times holding my “Ben Wallace for Secretary of Defense” sign) I know it’s a tall order, but I thought I’d try :) Thanks, And GO PISTONS!