Monty Williams' lineup choices are stunting Detroit Pistons development

The Detroit Pistons' season has been a disaster.

Despite improved play the past couple weeks — notwithstanding back-to-back poor efforts in Los Angeles and Phoenix this week to wrap up a five-game Western swing — they remain a mess entering the All-Star break.

At least they aren’t likely to go down as the NBA's worst team ever, needing just two wins to surpass the nine of the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers. So that’s nice.

They're also added seven players recently. So that’s ... interesting?

There are several reasons to watch the last 28 games — or at least check in from time to time if you’re not a hoophead — including how the new players fit with the young fellas and whether guards Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey can find a rhythm together.

There’s another compelling reason to keep an eye on this team but we’ll get to that momentarily. As for that mess?

Their starting power forward, Isaiah Stewart — who wasn't even playing, thanks to an ankle injury — was arrested Wednesday night for assault after allegedly punching the Suns’ Drew Eubanks near the security dock at Footprint Center. Apparently, they’d had words. (Expect Stewart to have words with the NBA, and a suspension, when the league concludes its investigation.)

Their No. 1 pick and hopeful franchise cornerstone, Cunningham, hasn’t looked the same since he returned from knee issues two weeks ago. Even before that, though, he still hadn’t shown whether he was, in the immortal words of ex-Piston and ex-Mayor Dave Bing, “that guy" (though he still has time to show it).

Their general manager, Troy Weaver, told reporters last Friday he was “absolutely” that guy, or at least the guy to rebuild this team (even though it has been tough to see the plan from "that guy"). And their owner, Tom Gores, backed Weaver on Saturday, agreeing Weaver remains the guy.

Their roster has all those new players and it’s hard to say if they will help the Pistons “young core,” as Weaver likes to say. "Young core" implies promise, and it is understandable why Weaver and everyone else on the staff likes to use it.

Whether there actually is promise is another matter. Again, we don’t know, and that’s part of the mess, too.

As for the new players, Simone Fontecchio, the forward who came over from Utah, looks like a nice fit. He makes 3-pointers, he defends, he understands the game. Quentin Grimes, the other player who was brought here with future hopes, hasn’t played yet as he recovers from a strained knee. He’s expected to be back after the All-Star break.

And then there is that last reason to monitor these next two months:

The head coach, Monty Williams, who deserves time to figure out a rotation with so many new faces. Then again, he has hardly earned that time, much less the belief that he can.

Wednesday night was the latest example.

For the umpteenth time this season, Williams insisted on playing five reserves late in the first quarter against the Suns. The Suns, predictably, outscored that lineup, 14-2, over the last few minutes of the quarter.

The group — rookie Marcus Sasser, former No. 2 pick James Wiseman and three trade-deadline pickups (Troy Brown Jr. and Evan Fournier and Shake Milton) — played like strangers. That was understandable, considering three of them had been Pistons for all of a week. What’s not understandable is why Williams insisted on all five at once.

It’d be one thing if there were foul trouble or favorable matchups for a short stretch against a unique opponent. Or even if he were trying to teach one of his players a lesson with an early season on the bench.

But no, this has been a pattern all season, and it’s not working.

Now, the Pistons weren’t likely to win no matter what rotation Williams used against his former team. Cunningham and Ivey didn’t have it that night.

But to sit them at the same time? When the game was still close?

It’s confounding, and frankly, takes away development opportunities. And for a team with eight wins at the All-Star break — when “development” is all this franchise has — sitting both at once is malpractice.

So is his insistence on using hockey-style substitutions. This is basketball, where sending five to the scorer’s table worked for the Dream Team in the 1990s, and almost no one else since.

Williams could argue that he is auditioning a new crew for roles, and that’s reasonable, and maybe even defensible ... until you consider his struggle to figure out his roster back in training camp, and that he kept playing Killian Hayes — mercifully released last week — over Ivey.

That choice remains baffling. Thankfully for Pistons fans, Williams can no longer make it.

He can, though, keep sitting Ivey and Cunningham together instead of staggering their minutes when one of them needs a blow. This needs to change.

For one, Ivey could use the reps as the lead ballhandler. Turnovers are a problem for him, and game experience —and film study of said game experience — is a good tool to help. It’s also a good gauge to see if Ivey will ever figure out said turnover issues.

For another, the roster needs either Cunningham or Ivey to make plays. When they sit, that’s left to Sasser, the No. 25 pick in last summer's draft. The former Houston star has shown promise, but he shouldn’t be the lead guard in a close game late in the first quarter. He needs another shot creator out there with him, at least for now.

Every coach needs time to learn a new team and new players. How much time is the question.

“Monty has this year pain,” Weaver said last week. “All of us that have been here have a different level of pain. He has to learn the team, and learn the players, and figure that out. How to connect the group, and the right combinations. He's fresh into this. It's painful as we’re going through it. But that’s just where we are.”

Weaver went on to say he thinks the team has the right coach. Let’s see if Williams can show more of that in the next two months.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Pistons need more from their guards — and coach Monty Williams