Newsstand: Derrick Walton starts for hometown Detroit Pistons on short notice
Former Michigan basketball point guard Derrick Walton was called into action for his hometown season on Sunday night. The Detroit Pistons are one of several teams across pro sports dealing with a COVID-19 outbreak and had nine players out for Sunday’s game against the San Antonio Spurs.
The Pistons signed Walton via a 10-day hardship waiver given the team’s virus situation. He made his second-career NBA start, finishing with six assists and four rebounds in 31 minutes in a 144-109 loss.
Detroit was missing most of its key players, headlined by rookie guard Cade Cunningham, on Sunday night. It was also playing under a different head coach with Dwane Casey away from the team for personal reasons.
Michigan’s NBA team made due the best it could.
“Playing hard is a non-negotiable, kind of the way we want to play. We may not play well every night, but we want to play hard every night,” acting head coach Rex Kalamian said. “It’s hard to play well every night, but it’s easy to play hard every night and that’s what we should do.
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“We have a lot of guys who were touching the floor for some NBA minutes for the first time in a long time, and I think we played hard, but we didn’t play necessarily smart so much. That was kind of our problem, that we didn’t share the ball enough in the first half.”
Walton had spent his previous time this year with the Motor City Cruise, the Pistons’ G-League affiliate.
Walton spent four seasons at Michigan from 2013-17 and was a Second-Team All-Big Ten selection in 2017. The former undrafted prospect spent time with the Miami Heat, Los Angeles Clippers and Pistons.
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Michigan quote of the day
“Yeah 100 percent. This was the last part of it. These last two games that we have, this is part of my legacy, this is a part of everybody’s dream here on this team. To get this thing finished up and beat Georgia and then go on to the National Championship.”
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