Isaiah Stewart has become the most underestimated player in the league in a surprise area

If you haven’t seen Detroit Piston’s games this season and only looked at the statistics, think that Isaiah Stewart was a subsequent thought.

Almost every of his counting statistics have dropped, including his minutes, when he plays the least of his career, almost 11 less per game than last season.

He takes about half of the number of shots per game compared to last season and essentially stopped taking 3 points after he had two seasons in which he achieved an average of 4.1 and 3.8 attempts per game.

But if you have looked at the games, you know that the statistics do not tell the whole story, since Stewart may play less and not do so much on the offensive, but has reduced his focus to pretty much one: protection of the rim at all costs.

Stew is still a good defender in space, and he was known for which he only blocked 0.8 shots per game last year and spent a lot of time to hunt on power forwards and wings.

If they had described Stewart’s defense before this season, they might have said “physically” or “versatile” or talked about how well he stayed with smaller players.

They would not have said “natural power on the edge”, but that’s exactly what he became this year.

Isaiah Stewart: The best marginal protection of the NBA

After Victor Wembanyama is out, the award for the defensive player of the year is to be won, and if Stewart were justified (he is not), then he would be in the run, since what he does this season is something special, even though he does it in less than 20 minutes per game.

The opponents shoot 46 percent on the edge when the stew is on the face, which is the best brand in the NBA for this season and the last five.

It is not surprising that Stew has improved (as he showed that he was able to protect the edge in his rookie season when he only played in the middle), but it is the improvement that is shocking.

Although he plays 11 less minutes per game, Stewart blocks almost twice as many shots as just last season.

Although he is definitely not on Ben Wallace (not even nearby, if we are honest), Stew has some of the same properties because it has a huge wingspan that enables him to influence shots, even if he does not block them and forces the players to adapt to the edge.

Another area in which he reminds me of Wallace is trouble because Stewart follows everything and never withdraws. Sure, this means that it is dipped from time to time, but more than not, he either gets the block or at least affects the shot.

And the opponents know that they are increasingly avoiding Stewart in color, and those who have not received the memo are usually hunted or forced to pull for a kind of rainbow floater.

Because he is not a 7-foot fighter, most people do not immediately think of Stewart when they think of the best marginal protection protectors of the NBA, but he is a surprise with the best up there in view of his defense profile.

This year shows what Stew is about because he would receive more awards if he would shoot more 3-pointer and play more minutes, but he was ready to sacrifice this role for a more important thing, and he was a large part of the piston as a top 10 defensive.