Daniss Jenkins Gains 15 Minutes a Night for the Pistons
With a teammate sidelined, Jenkins has taken on a much bigger role in Detroit's backcourt.
Fifteen. That's how many more minutes a night Daniss Jenkins has played for the Pistons over his last three games, with a teammate out of the lineup, compared to his season average.
Jenkins is up to 35.2 minutes a night over that stretch, well above his 20.6-minute average across the 2025-26 season. His scoring has climbed too: 17 points in that span, versus a season average of 9.3.
The last of those three games came on May 17, 2026. Three games is a short stretch. The size of the jump matters more than the number of games: doubling a player's court time changes what he is asked to do, not just how long he does it.
Whether this holds depends on one thing: the teammate Jenkins is filling in for. If that player returns to the lineup, Detroit's rotation reverts, and Jenkins' minutes come back down toward his season number. If the absence drags on, this stretch stops looking like a fill-in job and starts looking like Jenkins' actual role for the rest of 2025-26.
For now, the change is tied directly to that other player's status, not to any announced shift in the rotation. Watch the injury report first. It will tell you more about Jenkins' next month than his last three games did.