{"id":707372,"date":"2026-04-10T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T12:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/707372\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T12:00:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T12:00:45","slug":"quiet-truth-pistons-fans-have-tried-to-ignore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/707372\/","title":{"rendered":"Quiet truth Pistons fans have tried to ignore"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caris LeVert has been the favorite punching bag for Pistons fans this season, but he has quietly been playing his best basketball at just the right time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

LeVert has been the scapegoat for most of the season\u00a0and for good reason. He\u00a0hasn\u2019t\u00a0been good on either end\u00a0and\u00a0has not excelled in the role of creator that the Pistons thought he might be off the bench.\u00a0<\/p>\n

LeVert is having the worst season of his career by most\u00a0measures but\u00a0has started picking it up at the right time and is finding ways to\u00a0impact\u00a0the game without being a point guard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

LeVert has played better off the ball\u00a0<\/p>\n

LeVert\u2019s offensive numbers over the last few weeks are still not great, but he has\u00a0benefitted\u00a0from the emergence of Daniss Jenkins and Kevin Huerter, who have taken over the\u00a0ball\u00a0handling duties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The biggest compliment I can give him is that he\u00a0hasn\u2019t\u00a0stood out for any bad reasons on the offensive end as he has for most of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

LeVert has proven one thing this season, which is that he is not a point\u00a0guard,\u00a0and\u00a0him\u00a0initiating\u00a0the offense for Detroit has mostly been a disaster.\u00a0He\u2019s\u00a0better at being a secondary attacker, and his shot does look to be coming around.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s\u00a0shot\u00a0nearly 50 percent\u00a0from the floor in his last five games and 40 percent from\u00a0long\u00a0range, hopefully a sign of\u00a0things\u00a0to come.\u00a0To be fair to LeVert, he’s been in and out with injuries (something the Pistons should have seen coming<\/a>) and hasn’t really gotten into a rhythm at any point this season.<\/p>\n

But his biggest impact of late has been on the defensive end, and that is how\u00a0he\u2019ll\u00a0earn minutes in the playoffs, as JB Bickerstaff will prioritize defense.\u00a0He\u2019s\u00a0been\u00a0coming up with\u00a0big defensive plays over the last weeks with Cade Cunningham out, and that alone may keep him in the playoff rotation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Pistons need Caris LeVert\u00a0<\/p>\n

No one wants to admit this, but the Pistons really need LeVert to start scoring the basketball, especially in the playoffs when buckets are harder to come by.\u00a0<\/p>\n

LeVert is a guy who can get his own\u00a0shot,\u00a0and\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0been a bucket\u00a0getter\u00a0his entire career, so the Pistons need him to tap into that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We know teams are going to sell out to stop Cade Cunningham, Jalen Duren and even Duncan Robinson, so Detroit will need an X-Factor to provide some unexpected\u00a0production.\u00a0<\/p>\n

LeVert is the only player on the Pistons bench who has ever averaged 20 points per game for a season, so this would be\u00a0a great time\u00a0for him to remember that and have a few big games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s\u00a0often the unheralded players who no one expects\u00a0that end\u00a0up being the difference makers in the playoffs, so\u00a0let\u2019s\u00a0hope LeVert\u2019s recent defensive surge and his modest offensive leaps are signs of things to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caris LeVert has been the favorite punching bag for Pistons fans this season, but he has quietly been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,296,188,3860,6,297],"class_list":{"0":"post-707372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-pistons","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-pistons","11":"tag-detroitpistons","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-pistons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116380304843918400","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}