by
We are 18 games into the NBA season, approaching the end to the first quarter of the season. And the Pistons find themselves dead even in the standings: nine wins and nine losses.
It is, after all, about what we expected. The team began the season with hopes of reaching the playoffs, but also well aware that the roster had not improved enough to warrant dreams of champagne and parades.
Five wins in the first six games caused a little bit of buzz to take over the city, but reality set in over the next few weeks and the Pistons reverted back to the mean, dropping eight of their last twelve.
Let’s take a look at some of the Piston storylines that have developed thus far...
Reggie Jackson
• When Reggie Jackson plays well, the team wins. When he struggles, the team does, too. It’s really that simple. The Pistons aren’t rife with guys that create their own shot, so much of the onus offensively falls on Jackson’s shoulders. How well he breaks down the defense, gets others involved, makes a high percentage of his own looks, usually goes a long way in deciding the outcome of the game.
You don’t need to look any further than these last four contests. Against Miami and Houston at home, Jackson was locked in. He knocked down a bunch of threes (7-for-9), took great care of the ball (15 assists to 3 TO’s), and played with the confidence of a future NBA All-Star. The Stones cruised to blowout victories in both games.
The two road dates sandwiched between, at Oklahoma City and Brooklyn, saw Reckless Reggie take the floor. He shot miserably from the field (4-16, 4-20) and did not attack defenses the way he is capable. Not surprisingly, the Pistons dropped both games, despite holding comfortable leads in each.
Stan Van Gundy has worked hard to develop better depth on this roster, but to this point, it is still a group very reliant on its primary ball handler/scorer. The “lead dog” role might be one that Jackson is still getting used to, but unfortunately, the Pistons don’t have the surrounding elements to just sit back and wait for that growth to occur. The organization desperately needs to make a playoff appearance -- however brief -- this season, and Jackson churning out quality performances on a nightly basis will go a long way toward making that happen.
Andre Drummond
• Andre Drummond has busted out this season, posting video game-type numbers of 18 points and 17 boards a night. Every errant shot the Pistons throw up has a very good chance of being collected by the league’s best offensive rebounder in Drummond. His post game has shown nice signs of improvement. While none of his moves will elicit flashbacks to Ewing or Olajuwon, he has quietly matured into a viable offensive threat, whereas he never really had been before.
But his Achilles heel, the free throw line, continues to haunt both him and the team. For those that look to ignore Drummond’s wayward free throw shooting, pretending that his other strengths make moot his league-worst percentage at the line, you’re not placing enough value on this critical element of the NBA game.
Let’s examine Sunday’s loss to the hapless Brooklyn Nets. The Pistons, obviously not one of the elite teams in the Eastern Conference, are still by all accounts a better team than the Nets. This was a game the Pistons needed to win if they are ever going to emerge from this dormant state of the last seven years.
After a Drummond basket (plus foul) to put the Pistons up two with 1:30 to play, he missed the subsequent free throw and Jarret Jack tied it with a short jumper the next time down. A few more empty possessions later, the Pistons had seen their lead fully evaporate into an unsettling four-point loss.
The Pistons lost by four. For the night, Drummond was 2-for-11 from the foul line. This is not just nitpicking one weak point of the man’s game. It is meant to display the very fine line that this Pistons team walks on every night, their margin for error far different than that of a team like San Antonio or Cleveland. Against good teams, bad teams, the ones in the middle like Detroit, having close to 10 misses at the foul line from one player will often be too large an obstacle to overcome.
Even in last night’s solid victory over the reeling Houston Rockets, the visitors were able to turn a massive 30-point hole into a tight game down the stretch by repeatedly hacking Drummond. He marched to the line for 18 attempts and connected on just four. He’s at 38% for the year, basically right in line with his career average.
It’s not enough to just say, “He does so many other things well. Shooting just isn't his strength.” It’s a part of the game that can and must be improved, because unlike pretty much everything else in sports, this is a challenge in which the particulars are constant: no defenders, no time restriction (that's actually enforced), and the distance is always the exact same.
Karl Malone entered the league a horrendous free throw shooter. He hit less than 50% in his rookie season. Even in year two, he was in the high 50’s (still far better than Andre). But in year three, Malone turned a corner and hit exactly 70% from the stripe. For the rest of his Hall of Fame career, he was mid-to-high 70s each and every year.
If Drummond were Chris Dudley or Eric Montross, some third-string big man that very little was expected of, such free throw numbers would be nothing more than an ugly stat for a forgotten man. But Andre is, along with Jackson, the face of this franchise. If the Pistons are going to return to something resembling their glory days, it will be with Drummond factoring in heavily. But it will never happen if he ceases to improve, in even the slightest way, from the free throw line.
• Marcus Morris has been a nice surprise on the offensive end, third on the team in scoring at almost 14 a game. Having said that, in order for him to really make us forget about Josh Smith, his shooting percentages need to see a healthy tick upwards.
For the year, he’s at 39% from the field and just 26% from downtown. In a perfect world, Van Gundy’s offense will revolve around Andre Drummond commanding the paint and four shooters surrounding him pelting in threes from the outside. Morris can be a part of that attack, but he’ll need to do so by knocking down more shots than he has to this point. Still, the deal by SVG to snag Morris from Phoenix for only a second-round pick in 2020 was one of the better steals of the NBA off-season.
• Props to longtime Deadline Detroit reader Marc Stankus for bringing to my attention an interesting note regarding the Pistons’ schedule. On March 16 of 2016, the Hawks will come to the Palace. Two nights later, it’ll be the Kings. The following day, the Nets arrive. And it just keeps going. From mid-March to early-April, the Pistons will play nothing but home games, nine in total, the single longest homestand in the history of the franchise.
You look at it and it almost seems like an error. Nine-game homestands are for baseball teams, right? The most you typically see in the NBA or NHL is maybe four or five. Anything over that looks downright strange, and in this case, it’s nine home dates in a row.
If the Pistons can keep their heads above water until then, this literal “home” stretch to the season should put the team in prime position to nab a playoff spot with a bunch of Palace wins against mostly average competition.
As to why Mr. Stankus was spending his Monday evening breaking down the Pistons’ schedule fifty games from now...well, that’s something I haven’t yet figured out. And I’m not sure I ever want to.
