Pistons Centre Isaiah Stewart’s Offensive Reinvention Keeps Him Ahead Of His Supposed Replacement

The Detroit Pistons are labouring through another difficult season, and only some of it is on purpose.

Very much players in the unsubtle race to the bottom for a chance at Victor Wembanyama, the Pistons have not planned to go anywhere quickly. They did some tinkering around the margins in the offseason, such as in their trade for the veteran Bojan Bogdanovic, yet they are bottom of the Eastern Conference right now because they want to be.

Instead, the idea of this season was to prioritise internal growth. This has not been entirely smooth-sailing; stand-out rookie and franchise hope Cade Cunningham has already been shut down through injury, and aside from one game-winner, former high lottery pick Killian Hayes has mostly been newsworthy for a punch.

Still, while Cunningham has not been able to do much development, third-year centre Isaiah Stewart has. Rather than being pushed aside by the offseason addition of Jalen Duren, he has instead thrived ahead of him.

A man with an old-school physical profile, the man aptly named Beef Stew is built like a bulldozer, and has hitherto played accordingly. Whereas big man prospects today are largely evaluated for how much ground they cover and the resultant “defensive range”, Stewart has an absolute unit of an upper body, and he deploys it offensively in a more orthodox way.

Or at least, he used to.

Last season, his second in the NBA, Stewart started all 71 games he played in and averaged 8.3 points, 8.7 boards and 1.1 blocks in 25.6 minutes per game. 3.2 of those rebounds per game came on the offensive end, the tenth-highest mark in the league, and despite some inefficient finishing on the resultant put-backs – hindered by being rather slower off the ground than many of the peers contesting him in there – it nevertheless formed the basis of Stewart’s offensive purpose. Set good screens, get into the paint, use the elbows, clear space, catch it down low, see what happens, run to the rim if the defence let him, and tidy up while trying not turn over. Physicality over finesse. In accordance with his body type.

Absent from that list was much in the way of outside shooting. Stewart did shoot 15-46 from three in 2021/22, and hit a few jumpers from just beyond the free throw line as well, but it was an ancillary part of things rather than something obtained much by design.

This year, though, his offensive profile has changed quite a lot. Now, perhaps more so than being a paint-based mountain, he is a jump shooter.

On the season to date, Stewart has shot 47-126 from three, a healthy 37.3% percentage, and the mid-range and baseline attempts have almost gone entirely. Stewart is spotting up and popping more than he is rolling and deep-paint-catching this year, and while the overall shooting percentage has gone down to 46.7%, the added threes (plus a far higher free throw rate) has seen his true shooting percentage climb from .550 to .597. The Pistons are running pick-and-pops for Stewart and empowering him to take trailers in transition, and with this added diversification in his game has come better resultant output.

Inevitably, Stewart’s offensive rebounding has suffered as a result, and the 12.8% offensive rebounding rate of last season is down to only 7.8% in this one. Playing alongside Duren at times has meant a fairly regular shift to the power forward position, and the requirements there are different. The Pistons need some frontcourt spacing to aid the driving games of Cunningham and Jaden Ivey (neither of whom is a plus-NBA shooter at this time), and with more conventional stretch four profiles found in Marvin Bagley, Isaiah Livers, Bogdanovic at times and Saddiq Bey at others, Stewart needed to take on some of that responsibility to stake his claim in the team’s future with Duren breathing down his neck.

Nevertheless, he is nothing if not fearless. Stewart has taken to the new role with confidence, and already has the results to back it up. Appearances can be deceiving, and it appears Isaiah Stewart is a consistent shooter now. After all, with all that muscle, it is not like he needs his legs to jump into the shot much.