Reggie Jackson injury not changing Stan Van Gundy’s roster plans

Pistons’ Jackson chooses plasma injection to treat knee — Detroit News

Coach Stan Van Gundy announced Saturday that Jackson will have a platelet-rich plasma injection on Monday to help ease the issues from the tendinitis, which worsened just before the team began voluntary workouts last month.

It’s unclear how long Jackson will be sidelined, but Van Gundy estimated that it could be 6-8 weeks.

“He will get the PRP injection in New York on Monday,” Van Gundy said. “I haven’t gotten the timetable but it’s a significant amount of time. He’ll be on crutches for three to seven days.

Detroit Pistons likely to enter season with two point guards — Detroit Free Press

From a Sunday evening article by Vince Ellis - bold is my emphasis:

With Lorenzo Brown and Ray McCallum backing up Ish Smith on the Detroit Pistons' roster, there would appear to be an easy solution to the problem of Reggie Jackson likely missing time to start of the regular season with left knee tendinitis.

But to keep Brown and McCallum, the Pistons would have to waive a player with a contract for this season.

So Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy has reiterated that the 15th roster spot will still likely come down to Brown and McCallum, the former Detroit Mercy star.

“It’s not going to be an easy decision,” Van Gundy said. “They’re both good players. They’re both, in my mind, NBA players. You’re not stretching to bring either one of them in. Obviously, the way we’d love to start the year is to have them both because you want to have three point guards, but do that we’d actually have to cut somebody on a guaranteed contract. I don’t foresee that.”

For those of you who noticed the absence of Lorenzo Brown in the first preseason game against the Brooklyn Nets, Van Gundy has made it clear that there will be a rotation, as in, Brown will get his chance to play behind starter Ish Smith at The Palace on Monday against the San Antonio Spurs while Ray McCallum will sit. Essentially Van Gundy is saying don’t assume that McCallum is ahead of Brown in the point guard pecking order just because he got the nod in Brooklyn.

“Ish will play every game. We need to get used to playing with Ish and work those other two guys in,” Van Gundy said. “As Ish’s minutes go up, they won’t get as many but they’ll get backup minutes. For the first four games, we’ll give them each two games and then we’ll decide how to go.”

Let me remind you, our Steve Hinson wrote in the Nets-Pistons game recap last Friday that McCallum put up a “decent box score” but didn’t make “much of an impact for a sputtering offense”. So, now let’s see what Brown can do. If the last roster spot battle goes down to the wire (even if it doesn’t) we will have everything our staff says about these two point guards clearly accessible here at DBB. Let’s say it’s the DBB fact checking ability. Should be a doozy.