Ahead of the 2026 NBA Draft, the Detroit Pistons spent a lot of time scouting Ebuka Okorie to make sure that he was the right backcourt option to bring into the Motor City
During the 2025-26 regular season, the Detroit Pistons found ways to be successful while pounding the paint offensively, but they found it difficult to win games in the playoffs using the same formula. Since both the Orlando Magic and Cleveland Cavaliers sagged inward to clog the mid-range, the Pistons struggled to score from the perimeter or create outside of Cade Cunningham.
With those pitfalls plaguing the Pistons en route to a second round exit, Detroit sought to rectify those issues during the offseason. Ahead of the 2026 NBA Draft, the Pistons held the 21st overall selection and scouted a variety of sharp-shooting off-ball guards to pair alongside Cunningham. In the end, Detroit made a trade to land former Stanford point guard Ebuka Okorie at No. 17 overall, so the Pistons wound up with a ball handler who has shown shades of elite self-creation ability.
After leading the ACC in scoring as a freshman, Okorie will have an opportunity to compete with Daniss Jenkins for the backup point guard role in the Motor City, and he’ll receive a fair shake after scoring nearly 20 points per game in the Summer League. Okorie has a long wingspan at 6-8, so the Pistons rookie is a defensive threat at the point of attack as well, but the only knock on the Cardinal was his rather middle of the road percentage from long-range.
During his first and only year at the college level, Okorie connected on triples at a 35% clip, which is not bad for a freshman but still a fair distance below the elite level. Now, Stanford head coach Kyle Smith mentioned that Okorie was often tasked with saving his team at the end of the shot clock since the team didn’t have many other offensive weapons, so that 35% from beyond the arc might not accurately illustrate Okorie’s range since he dealt with grenades.
In an effort to supplement his perimeter shooting ahead of the draft, Okorie participated in workouts with former NBA marksman Mike Miller to hone his three-ball. Considering Miller was a 17-year vet who averaged over 40% from downtown, that’s some of the best three-point coaching that Okorie could find before finding out that he’d be playing in Motown.
During that time, the Pistons brought Okorie in for several workouts before the draft on June 23rd in order to get the full picture for what he could offer in the Motor City. As a 19-year old, Okorie had been on the Pistons radar for several months and they kept tabs on his development during his freshman year at Stanford, so the Detroit staff did their due diligence on the type of player and person that they’d be bringing into the organization.
As a scorer, Okorie has the top-end speed, agility and vision necessary to navigate on the floor without much resistance, which leads to a high volume of paint touches for the self-creating artist. Okorie showed during the Summer League that he can turn up the dial from a slow, methodical pace to an outright mad dash to the bucket in the blink of an eye, so it will be up to head coach J.B. Bickerstaff to deploy that skill set in the right moments.
Since the Pistons ran small-ball three-guard sets at the end of their Eastern Conference Semifinals series against the Cavs last season, there’s a chance that Okorie, Cunningham and Jenkins all hit the floor simultaneously at times during the 2026-27 season. The Pistons are looking to become a more dangerous unit from the perimeter, and lineups like that would allow for the squad to facilitate at a high level while still preserving some three-point bite.
