by
Pick-and-Roll Nightmares
If the Pistons are to make this a legitimate series at any point, they will have to come up with a suitable way to defend the pick-and-roll. Since this is the pet play for almost every team in the NBA, how a team stacks up defensively is often just a measure of how well they guard this particular situation. On Sunday, the Pistons didn’t have a prayer.
There’s blame to pass around everywhere. The Pistons just completed their 83rd game of the year and Stan Van Gundy doesn’t seem to have cemented a set strategy for how he wants this play defended. Sometimes the big man shows, sometimes he does nothing. Sometimes the guard fights over the screen, sometimes he lazily goes under. It oftentimes seems completely random as to how the Pistons guard the two-man game on each individual trip.
The other main issue is that of Andre Drummond. While the man is an owner of certain gifts from a physical standpoint, his ability to think and feel the game is still lacking greatly. Despite Kevin Love killing the Pistons all afternoon with outside shots and open 3s, there was Drummond in critical sequences of the final quarter just drifting into the paint so as to help on a potential driver, leaving Love (his responsibility) wide open outside the arc for another dagger.
While Drummond is admittedly the team’s best rim protector, he doesn’t have the privilege of just hanging around the basket if he happens to be covering Love. At that point, he must float right out to that long line to play defense 22 feet from the hoop and hope the rest of his Piston brethren pick up the slack if the action heads to the paint.
(Note: simply switching these pick-and-rolls, leaving a big to try and stay in front of Kyrie Irving, was also far from the soundest strategy. Maybe throw in some hard traps -- force the Cavs to rotate the ball, then do your best to scramble out to shooters. It still might result in an open look, but it’ll be more hard-earned than a simple screen by Love, then him popping out and one pass for an unguarded trey.)
No Crying in Basketball
Even if you’re a native Ohioan and a lifelong Cavs fan, is it really fun to root for a guy like LeBron James? He mauls people on defense all game long, then when he hip-checks Marcus Morris out of bounds and is actually whistled for a foul, he stalks off to the bench with a pouty look on his face.
Granted, LeBron is one of the league’s premier players and his winning history is unquestioned, but as far as exhibiting class and a humble demeanor on the court, the man is no Joe Dumars. On Sunday, though, his childish moments were secondary to those of...
Reggie Jackson showed "the epitome of selfishness."
Worst Timing Award
Reggie Jackson. With the Pistons trailing by just four with 3:24 to play, he forced up a questionable shot that clanged off the backboard.
He obviously felt there was contact, but at that point in the game, what are you gonna do? Maybe during the next stoppage, you go over to the ref nearest that play and let him know he missed one. That he owes you one the next time down. Instead, Jackson decided to make a big show of stomping over to the official, getting right in his face, and screaming his complaint until the technical was called (which took about 1.5 seconds).
It was the epitome of selfishness. It was a guy clearly more concerned with his appearance and looking like some kind of tough guy than simply trying to win the game. In all my years of watching basketball, I can’t say I remember a time that late in a close game where a player so obviously set out to pick up a tech. Jackson’s former teammates on the Thunder ripped him apart a few weeks back after what they thought was immature and excessive celebration following a Pistons’ win at the Palace. After his behavior down the stretch against Cleveland, you get a sense that maybe the OKC guys had a point. Jackson then spent many of the game’s closing possessions against the Cavs dribbling and dribbling to no avail, which further hampered the Pistons chances of stealing the series opener.
Going forward, Reggie must really make a concerted effort to get vertical when he has the ball on a pick-and-roll. Too often when he gets a screen set for him on offense, he’ll just float side to side; maybe a big switched onto him, maybe the guard is trying to get back in front, but either way, Reggie frequently forgets that one of the primary objectives on the play is to attack. Simply dribbling for an extended period of time outside the arc is not the best outcome for the two-man game.
Major credit must be given, though, to the Cavs’ Iman Shumpert for really bottling up the Pistons top scorer in the second half. Shumpert’s length obviously frustrated Jackson, and he has the athleticism and tenacity to not get beat off the dribble much, either. In a game where he only scored two points and logged just 22 minutes, Shumpert had a tremendous impact on the contest’s outcome.
LeBron the Untouchable
It became a bit of a national story when Stan Van Gundy commented during one of those silly in-game interviews that “they are never going to call offensive fouls on LeBron. He gets to do whatever he wants.” Is that some big surprise or something? We had this covered last week! Perhaps SVG is a Deadline Detroit reader!
Overworking the Starters
It appeared that some of the Pistons tired as the game hit the home stretch. Tobias Harris never looked in sync at any point of the afternoon, and Marcus Morris was a complete non-factor in the second half. Both of the forwards carried a heavy workload of 40 minutes.
Watching that mini-meltdown, maybe Van Gundy can find some minutes for Anthony Tolliver going forward. High Socks Tolliver was one of the more reliable Piston bench players all year long; hitting him with a DNP-CD in a crucial playoff game seemed odd. I get that in the postseason rotations get shortened a bit and you ride your best guys, but on this club, with a number of complimentary pieces and few (if any) real “stars,” it seems counterproductive not to try and squeeze a little more out of the bench brigade.
I’m not suggesting that the Pistons would have won this game with a different breakdown of playing time, but I do believe that 80 combined minutes for Morris/Harris is not the most prudent way for the Pistons to try and take games from the top-seeded Cavs, let alone capture a whole series.
Wish We Were in Canada
I thought it was critical that the Pistons play their tails off the last couple weeks and try to slip past Indiana for the Eastern Conference’s 7th seed. Instead, with Detroit and the Pacers tied in the standings with two games to play, the Pistons sat Reggie Jackson and were content to lock horns with Cleveland in round one.
Sure enough, the Pistons hit 15 threes yesterday and still lose to the Cavs, while Indiana went into Toronto and walked away with a fairly easy ten-point win. Coaches and players always say, “We don’t care who we play,” and Jackson even said something about “wanting to take on Goliath.”
I ask, “Why?” What’s the point in ignoring who your potential opponent could be? If the top team is a heavy favorite to make the NBA Finals, and the second-best team is one with almost no history of playoff success at all, why not do everything you possibly can to match up with the less threatening squad?
It’s like Goose Gossage in the 1984 World Series insisting that he be allowed to pitch to Kirk Gibson, despite there being a base open and a right-handed double play candidate (Lance Parrish) waiting on deck. Gossage took the more difficult of two paths and paid the price to the tune of a 3-run series-clinching bomb. The Pistons know that feeling right now.
Can’t This Guy Just Retire?
The Pistons got beat in a playoff game because Richard Jefferson knocked down big-time shots in the fourth quarter. Wait, what year is this??
Ball Movement Issues
Of course Reggie Jackson is the superior player and can do more explosive things for the Pistons; BUT there are certain games when the ball moves so much better and thus the offense flows easier with Steve Blake on the floor.
This was one of those times. In just 14 minutes, Old Man Blake dished out six assists. Jackson picked up seven in 34. Blake is really no longer a scoring threat and can be taken advantage of on defense sometimes, but when he gets a screen, he still knows how to wiggle down the lane, find cutters, or kick out to shooters.
Being a truly elite point guard means really knowing how to blend your own aggression with the ability to create easy opportunities for others. It’s a dance that Reggie Jackson is still a ways from mastering.
Glimpse of Future Cornerstones
What a performance by Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in his first ever playoff game. He canned four from downtown on his way to 21 points, and it was his strong start that put the Pistons in control early. It’s a game like this one that lets Piston fans dream of a possible 1-2 punch in the backcourt with Jackson for years to come.
When people discuss the future of this franchise, and they reference “Jackson and Drummond,” I think they are missing the mark. Yes, Drummond is a terrific rebounder, but he’s also in possession of a a severely limited arsenal on offense. That’s not something that just changes overnight. Guys like Reggie Evans don’t show up to training camp suddenly having transformed into Patrick Ewing.
Drummond is what he is, and when people say he just needs to “develop a game on offense,” they underestimate what that statement actually means. As an NBA player, you can improve on certain things from year to year, but more often than not, once you enter the league, you aren’t becoming a completely different player altogether or creating a brand new set of skills one season to the next. Dwight Howard has been in the NBA since 2004, and his repertoire on offense now is eerily similar to the one he entered the league with. That’s just how it goes.
With the league continuing to lean in the direction of guard play and outside shooting, the best-case scenario for the Detroit Pistons is KCP emerging as a 20-point threat every single night and for Reggie Jackson to refine the rough edges around his game. We got a little flash of that Caldwell-Pope potential in Game One; the key will be for him to make that a nightly ritual in 2016-17, and beyond.
