With the NBA season right around the corner, the Detroit Pistons are laser-focused on the Jalen Duren saga. The hope is that the restricted free agent signs a new deal with the Pistons sooner rather than later. Simultaneously, the Pistons also have to prepare for the season. They want to get over the hump and make a deep postseason run after their 60-win campaign last season.
Since the Pistons didn't make any splashy additions this summer, they will rely on the same core from a season ago. This means that Ausar Thompson will play a large role if Detroit wants to go far.
As valuable as Thompson is, however, there seems to be a complete misevaluation and overrating of his level as a player. There is a lot of hype ahead of his fourth season in the league, and it's difficult to imagine he will be able to meet the expectations.
The latest example of the hype was the "best players on rookie deals" article The Athletic published this week. Three staff writers drafted young players who are still on their rookie-scale contracts. There, Thompson was drafted eighth overall by James L. Edwards, who used to cover the Pistons for The Athletic for many years.
Edwards is right to call Thompson "the best non-big defender in the NBA." The 23-year-old forward has a very good argument for being the most impactful perimeter defender in the league.
But drafting him over the likes of Kon Knueppel and Stephon Castle is just indefensible.
Pistons have to be realistic about Ausar Thompson ahead of his fourth season
There is this idea that Thompson's only offensive shortcoming is shooting. That undersells Thompson's offensive issues significantly. Thompson is a net negative in half-court offense because, in addition to not shooting any threes, he is not a scoring threat. He is not a good finisher around the basket, and he can't make free throws. He has been below-league-average in efficiency (True Shooting %) every season of his career.
There is a reason Thompson only played 26 minutes per game in the regular season and 30 in the playoffs. The Pistons closed plenty of games without him because there are a lot of situations in which Thompson's presence on the floor hurts the team.
Contrast this with Castle, who was arguably the second-best player on an NBA Finals team, and Knueppel, who had one of the most efficient scoring seasons ever for a rookie, and it becomes very difficult to argue Thompson is a better player or a prospect than either player.
This comes on the heels of the Pistons reportedly treating Thompson as their second-best player, ahead of Duren. The contract extension Thompson will inevitably get before the season will tell us more about how the team sees him, but the hype around him suggests that it may be a deal that gives us some sticker shock.
Every Pistons fan wants Thompson to be the player the organization and the media already think that he is. He has the physical and athletic tools to be an elite starter, but he is not there yet. There are obvious areas of offensive improvement he has to go through to be a key player on a championship contender.
At this point, Thompson is a defensive specialist. He is an all-time great in that role, but let's not overrate how valuable that role is. Treating him like he is a star in the making will only set him up to fail.
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