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1 hour ago
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If you're a glass half full kind of person, this is the stat for you.
Jalen Duren, the struggling Detroit Pistons center, is residing in a similar realm to all-time great Wilt Chamberlain.
The problem, though, is that the stat isn't a positive one.
Duren has the second-largest drop-off at the moment from regular season scoring average to playoff scoring average.
The only larger one was Chamberlain, but that was in the season he scored 50 points per game, so a bit of a drop-off in the competition of the playoffs was to be expected.
Here are all the specifics from Underdog:
Jalen Duren regular-season PPG: 19.5
Jalen Duren playoff PPG: 10.1
9.4 PPG falloff
The only All-Star in NBA history to have a larger falloff (min 10 GP) is Wilt Chamberlain in 1962, who went from 50.4 PPG to 35.0 in the playoffs.
Wilt was 2nd in playoff scoring that year.… pic.twitter.com/amutvbHTP5
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The Pistons' Game 5 usage of Paul Reed may sum up better than anything else how head coach J.B. Bickerstaff is feeling about Duren.
Reed didn't play at all in the first three quarters. But then, the guy who is nominally the third-string center played all 12 minutes of the fourth quarter and all five minutes of overtime.
If Duren was playing the way he did in the regular season, there's no chance he'd be relegated behind Reed like that.
This isn't the same Duren, though. He's struggled with the length of the Cavaliers' big guys, Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley.
At this point, Duren has been able to create pretty much nothing for himself. He's had to settle for the occasional lob or putback.
The Pistons' best chance of rallying in their series against the Cavs would likely be if Duren actually decided to play a bit more like Chamberlain. At this point, though, that seems unlikely.
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