Last season, the Detroit Pistons were structurally designed to target high-percentage looks inside the arc, and the Motown hoops squad finished as the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference after turning in a top five performance in terms of paint production during the regular season. 

With Cade Cunningham feeding Jalen Duren with enough lobs to make his first All-Star team and Tobias Harris hitting shots in the mid-range, the Pistons prioritized interior looks more than any other. Now, that made sense considering Duncan Robinson was the only shooter to eclipse 40% from three-point range last season, but Detroit predictably ran into perimeter trouble during the playoffs against both the Orlando Magic and Cleveland Cavaliers. 

As a result, Pistons President of Basketball Operations Trajan Langdon focused on adding outside shooting during the offseason, and no summertime transaction makes that more clear than Detroit’s decision to trade for Isaiah Joe. 

At 27 years old, Joe served as a microwave shooting guard off the bench for the Oklahoma City Thunder over the past four seasons and injected the Western Conference squad with 40% three-point shooting the entire time. Joe is an elite movement shooter who ranked in the top 10 for corner threes last year, so Robinson is slated to have some company from beyond the arc for the 2026-27 campaign. 

When digesting Detroit’s decision to trade a pair of future second-round picks for Joe, which is a low cost for a player of his shooting caliber, it is important to understand what a quality performance from the three-point specialist in Detroit could look like. And harkening back to the tail end of the 2024-25 regular season, Joe put on a vintage shooting display for the Thunder in what unfolded as a 145-117 victory over the Chicago Bulls on March 31. 

”Isaiah Joe got it going really early, and I thought that’s what gave us some rhythm offensively that we were able to sustain for most of the night,” Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault said. 

In the cross-conference battle, Joe posted 31 points while connecting on eight triples (8-for-14 from deep) while adding two rebounds and an assist to his total in 24 minutes of action. Joe found a long-range shooting rhythm early on in the matchup, and the Thunder kept feeding their sharp-shooting 6-4 guard while he was on such a heater. But after the game, Oklahoma City’s head coach spoke highly of Joe’s mentality and how it allows for the Arkansas product to show up in high-pressure situations. 

”He’s got a great approach and routine on his own and inside the team,” Daigneault said. “He just has unwavering confidence. He’s another example of a guy that shoots his shots, and his shots are more difficult than everybody else’s obviously because of his gravity, but he finds his shots. He works on his shots, and he keeps going down and shooting them.”

Last season, Joe connected on the deep ball at a 42.3% rate, which would have led the Pistons last year, so he’s immediately going to serve as one of the more accomplished snipers on the squad once the season tips off on Oct. 20. And according to his former coach, part of what makes Joe so effective from downtown is his ability to play with a short memory in terms of turning the page on the off night when his shot isn’t falling. 

“He hates missing open shots, but he doesn’t seem to stay there very much,” Daigneault said. “The next day, he’s back to it. In the next game, he’s shooting his shots, and it helps him work through that. It’s very impressive, and he changed the game for us tonight.”

The Thunder were able to cruise to victory over the Bulls thanks to Joe’s 31-point outburst a couple seasons back, and that type of quick-scoring impact from long-range should help Joe fit into the Pistons’ rotation in an effort to provide some balance to the squad.