What’s up with the 0-3 road record? How much longer until Reggie Jackson’s return? What about the job Stan Van Gundy has done putting the Pistons together? The season is in full swing and Pistons Mailbag is overflowing.
ThatGuyGayle (@ThatGuyGayle): How concerned should I be about Pistons failures on the road? Small sample size, but we look like two completely different teams.
Langlois: A really small sample size, Gayle. You can explain all three road losses pretty easily. Toronto – team coming off best season in franchise history playing home opener; Brooklyn – Pistons playing a back to back, third game in four nights, on the road, against a team that had been off the previous night; Los Angeles Clippers – team playing as well as anyone in the NBA, coming off a 24-point road win at San Antonio. Taken individually, not a real surprise in the bunch, though the loss to Brooklyn still counts as a disappointment, as does the fact the Pistons couldn’t make it competitive against the Clippers. The Pistons have a smaller margin for error without Reggie Jackson. His absence removes the dominant element of their offense, The Clippers did a terrific job of making it tough for both Marcus Morris and Tobias Harris – the players who’ve had their roles elevated in Jackson’s absence – to get space to operate. Could other teams take a page from that? Well, maybe, but not everybody has an elite defender like Luc Mbah a Moute or an athletic dynamo like Blake Griffin to throw at them as primary defenders. The great majority of teams, history shows, wins more often at home than on the road. Good teams win more on the road than bad teams, but still not as much as they do at home. The Pistons are a good team, though a lesser team without Jackson, a team that simply doesn’t have as many ways to score. That puts an even greater premium on their ability to defend well. So far, that’s been the common element in their road losses: an inability to do the fundamental thing defenses try to do – stop teams from scoring by taking away the things they most want to do. They’ve got to address that and start scratching out enough wins – home or away – to keep themselves in the mix until Jackson returns, gets back to form and diversifies the offense.
Bridget (@bridgetobm): What the heck happened the other night?
Langlois: A bad start snowballed. It happens to pretty much every team once or more during the course of a season. Golden State won a record 73 games last year and had it happen to them – at The Palace, by the Pistons. The Clippers came out with a palpable confidence after crushing the Spurs on the road two nights earlier, the Pistons went through a stretch of a dozen or so possessions where they had trouble finding open spaces, the ball stopped moving and it all fed into transition scoring chances for a Clippers team run by a master orchestrator in Chris Paul. Bad, bad game.
Isaac (Los Angeles): Can we get your detailed clues as to when and how Reggie Jackson will be returning to action?
Langlois: He passed the first threshold earlier this week, Isaac, when he was cleared – at the four-week mark since undergoing an Oct. 10 platelet-rich plasma injection in his left knee – to return to the court. But there are other milestones he’ll have to clear before a more definitive estimate for his return can be made. The original call was six to eight weeks. Nothing’s changed. If he makes it at the near end of the original estimate, he’d be back by Nov. 21. At the far end, we’re talking about the first week of December. How he responds to various tests along the way could alter the timetable, but nothing to date has done so.
Chris (Rochester Hills, Mich.): Two questions: What do you think of how Pistons fans cheer every time Boban touches the ball? I think it’s beyond silly and needs to stop. They cheer like he’s some scrub who is only on the court because it’s a blowout. Boban is a good player who can really play the game and after Aron Baynes leaves they will see it. Those fans are an embarrassment. Two: When is Reggie Jackson going to change his number? He needs to do it ASAP.
Langlois: Well, let’s start with this on Boban: The Pistons have played four games at The Palace this season and won by an average of 18 points. Boban’s getting to play in games that are blowouts and fans are in a pretty festive mood by the time he gets in the game. His own teammates are up leading the cheers for him. I’d never fault fans for responding enthusiastically to one of their own. They surely aren’t intending it as a sign of disrespect to Boban. He’s a gregarious guy and they’ve responded warmly to him. Nothing more than that. As for Jackson continuing to wear No. 1 after it was retired last February for Chauncey Billups, I continue to be perplexed as to why this is a source of consternation for fans. It’s a number. The Pistons issued it to Jackson – and to Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady and Andre Drummond before him – before it was retired for Billups. It is customary in those instances to allow the player to continue wearing it if he chooses to do so. It doesn’t detract from anything Billups accomplished during his time wearing the Pistons No. 1 jersey and I’m not sure why it should agitate fans. Billups has his jersey retired. No one will ever wear it again after Jackson takes it off. Maybe someday Jackson’s No. 1 can hang in the rafters next to Billups’ No. 1.
Horald Bob (@bob_horald): Do you think Reggie Bullock should have a spot in the rotation when healthy?
Langlois: His play will determine that, Bob. Stan Van Gundy has said his rotation essentially is at nine – the five starters and Beno Udrih (Ish Smith when he reverts to his bench role upon Reggie Jackson’s return), Stanley Johnson, Jon Leuer and Aron Baynes – with a 10th to be used situationally. And that means some nights it will be nine and some nights it will be Reggie Bullock and maybe other nights it will be Darrun Hilliard or Henry Ellenson or Michael Gbinije. If the first nine guys stay healthy once Jackson returns, my guess is he’ll keep it at nine more often than not. But to your question, if Bullock consistently drains shots when he gets his opportunity and plays the way he’s performed in the past in other areas – moves the ball, commits few turnovers or mental errors, defends reliably – he’ll get a foothold on a consistent rotation spot.
Tim (Battle Creek, Mich.): Any chance of Ben Wallace coming in to help Andre with defense? Wallace was always closer so when guys jumped, he reacted much quicker. Andre is just not physical enough on defense for some reason.
Langlois: Wallace was 22 when he came into the league and 26 when he arrived in Detroit in 2000. Drummond turned 23 in August. So we start with an apples-to-oranges comparison. You’ve seen Drummond thrown into the fire at a much different stage of physical development than Wallace at similar points in their careers. Let’s also keep in mind that Wallace was one of the greatest frontcourt defenders of his or any other generation, a four-time Defensive Player of the Year. Pretty much everyone is going to suffer in that comparison. I’m not sure I completely understand your point about Wallace being “always closer,” though. If you mean he was in better position to block or alter shots, I’d wager that a strong majority of Wallace’s blocked and altered shots were launched by players other than the one Wallace was guarding – off the ball, in other words. Wallace’s true strength as a defender was the way he could leave his man to dissuade dribble penetration or block or alter shots for those who challenged him. That’s what I see as the greatest difference between Wallace and Drummond, not quite so much their one-on-one defensive capabilities. Wallace had the lateral quickness of a great perimeter defender. Drummond has elite lateral quickness for a big man. He’s not a dominant defender, but he has the physical tools to become one. He also has the physical tools to be a big-time scorer, too. Wallace understood his value to NBA teams was almost exclusively tied to defense and blue-collar endeavors like setting screens. Drummond has a wider spectrum of responsibilities and has had to focus on honing many things at a younger age. As for bringing Wallace in to work with Drummond, it would have to start with Wallace expressing interest in coaching. Sometimes players who achieved greatness for a specific thing – Wallace and NBA defense in this case – find trying to convey their ability impossible and frustrating. Wallace had what is commonly called a “sixth sense” in anticipating the next move an offense was going to make. How do you teach intuition? Some can communicate that better than others. Finally, you have to consider it from Stan Van Gundy’s perspective. He has to be careful about monitoring the messages his players receive. Maybe the tips Wallace could pass on to Drummond would have been perfect for a defense designed by Larry Brown but at odds with what Van Gundy wants from his big men. Again, keep in mind that Wallace’s greatest attribute as a defender – well, beyond his enormous pride in preventing the other team from scoring – was his role in great team defense. He was great at probing and retreating. For less mobile and instinctive big men, the way he played could leave a defense vulnerable and might run counter to Van Gundy’s tenets. Bringing in Hakeem Olajuwon to work with a big man’s post moves is one thing; bringing in someone who devoured his coach’s defensive system and played it to near perfection and expecting him to convey that ability to another player in another system is a different animal.
Bob (Albany, Oregon): I’ve always enjoyed watching a skilled NBA general manager build a team and kudos to Stan Van Gundy, who has done an incredible job in a short time. The Pistons are now three deep with reasonable contracts and a young core with excellent roster balance. They are well set up to grow into a contender within a season, if not this year. Your thoughts?
Langlois: Tough to argue with that assessment, Bob. Van Gundy and general manager Jeff Bower have been methodical, patient and logical with their every move. Even in that frantic first off-season, when he signed five free agents and got very little in the way of long-term gain out of it, the logic was pretty easy to spot. He wanted players who were tough, smart and offered 3-point shooting that was in frighteningly short supply on the roster he inherited. Jodie Meeks’ two seasons were marred by injury – first a stress fracture of the lower back that cost him the first 22 games of 2014-15, then a fractured foot that essentially wiped out all of 2015-16 – but it was easy to see why Van Gundy moved quickly on him; while higher profile free agents held the attention of many teams, Van Gundy – who knew the Pistons had too many holes to fill to take flyers on bigger names – grabbed Meeks. D.J. Augustin came on a team-friendly contract that paid off in a big way when he was essential for Oklahoma City to get back in parting with Reggie Jackson. The trades for Jackson, Marcus Morris and Tobias Harris – viewed from the standpoint of the cumulative pittance the Pistons surrendered to acquire them – were three knockout wins for the front office and remain the single biggest reason the Pistons have gone from six-time lottery franchise to 44 wins in Van Gundy’s second season. If Stanley Johnson and Henry Ellenson reach the projections Van Gundy expects, their draft record will look nearly as flawless as their trade resume. Once Jackson gets back and Ish Smith can return to the role envisioned for him, Smith and Jon Leuer have a real chance to prove they got free agency right, too.
Daniel (@DClionfan): Do you see SVG shaking up this roster before the season is over?
Langlois: I don’t expect that, Daniel. Then again, who saw the trades for Reggie Jackson and Tobias Harris coming in 2015 and ’16? The Pistons don’t have the holes on their roster they had then – in large part because of those trades – so if they make a deal this season, it’s more likely to be of a different sort. In both the Jackson and Harris deals, the Pistons were combining bits and pieces to acquire someone they viewed as a starting-caliber NBA player. Now they’ve got players at all five spots that any reasonable assessment would agree gives them average or better starters across the board. They’ve got two players on their bench – Stanley Johnson, 20, and Henry Ellenson, 19 – they expect to grow into starters, potentially well above average starters. They’ve got all of their first-round draft picks. If they make a trade this year, perhaps it will be one that combines assets that include a starter in return for what they consider a talent upgrade or a more complementary fit. Again, I don’t see that. Stan Van Gundy is very comfortable with his roster as it is, likes the fact they’re all just entering or ahead of the primes of their careers and likes the mesh of personalities. It’s his roster now, through and through, and he won’t tinker with it unless he sees a trade win as clearly as he saw the deals for Jackson, Harris and Marcus Morris as slam-dunk wins.
Brian (@CarryTheNine): Is there any cause for concern over Stanley’s slow start. It seems like his shot is off a little bit.
Langlois: Not long-term concern, Brian. His last two games have been pretty good. He’s averaging 11.5 points and shooting 61 percent. He’s made half of his six 3-point shots. He had three assists and four boards against the Clippers. He combines unique physical talent with an equally rare competitive drive. I’ll bet on that combination 10 times out of 10. It’s going to take him time to find his niche within this roster and in the NBA in general, but there’s too much to like to worry about five spotty games at age 20.