SALT LAKE CITY – Necessity might indeed be the mother of invention, but she also gave birth to a few of its siblings. Stan Van Gundy would tell you their names, but they perhaps wouldn’t be fit for publication.
With Kentavious Caldwell-Pope joining Joe Leuer in street clothes, Van Gundy had to mix and match to put a starting lineup together with the Pistons enduring the last gasps of a five-game road trip. His rotation took on added wrinkles when he went to the bench, looking for alternatives to a backcourt struggling with production.
He held it together with duct tape and baling wire for a half against the NBA’s No. 1-ranked defense, but it unraveled swiftly amid another barrage of opposition 3-point shots after halftime. One night after being outscored by 18 in the second half at Golden State, the Pistons were outscored by 31 at Utah in losing 110-77 to fall a season-worst six games under .500 (18-24).
“We couldn’t score and they scored every time they got it,” Van Gundy said of the game’s turning point.
That’s only a slight exaggeration. With Aron Baynes moved into the starting lineup as a response to Caldwell-Pope’s absence – on top of Harris in the lineup as a response to Leuer’s continued absence – Van Gundy had a group together without much (any?) prior experience.
They didn’t score on their first seven possessions of the first quarter in falling behind 10-0 and on just one of six to start the third. The Pistons recovered from that first wobbly start, finishing the first quarter on a 19-4 run while Utah shot just 25 percent.
But the Jazz were well heated up by the time the third quarter rolled around. They primed the pump by hitting all five of their 3-point shots in the second quarter and went 12 of 14 in the middle two periods. Rodney Hood finished 7 of 8, George Hill 5 of 6. Yet another team made better than half its shots from the arc (16 of 31) and the first four opponents on the trip are now shooting 49.5 percent from three.
“We’ve got to defend. We’ve got to make somebody miss,” Reggie Jackson said. “I don’t know what it is. We’ll do it for about a total of a half in a game. We’re just not putting it together for 48 and it’s really coming back to bite us.”
“They’re getting open shots,” Marcus Morris said. “They’re doing a great job of breaking our defense down. Got us scrambling around, ball is moving. Just getting good shots.”
The Pistons got their share of decent shots, too, though Rudy Gobert – tied with Anthony Davis as the NBA leader in blocked shots with 2.5 a game – made it difficult to score in the paint, where the Pistons shot just 19 of 40. But their three primary perimeter scorers with Caldwell-Pope out – Jackson, Morris and Tobias Harris – combined to shoot just 10 of 38 overall and 3 of 8 from the 3-point line. Morris, especially, struggled in a 3 of 15 night.
“I can’t put the bleepin’ ball in the basket,” he said. “This is the most I’ve probably ever missed since middle school. And it’s just right there. When it’s going bad, it’s going bad.”
With Caldwell-Pope out and Stanley Johnson called on for frontcourt minutes to help cover Leuer’s absence, Van Gundy really had to scramble to fill 48 minutes at shooting guard. The decision to start Baynes – largely spurred by Utah’s lineup with big, athletic Derrick Favors at power forward – moved Morris to shooting guard. Darrun Hilliard was pulled from the mix after a 2 of 12 night at Golden State – following a 0 of 6 performance in his most recent extension action before that – to open a spot for Reggie Bullock.
For Bullock, who rejoined the team after leaving earlier this week to attend to a personal matter, it was his first game back since suffering a Nov. 23 knee injury.
“Didn’t know exactly what to do about the two spot. Bullock didn’t get back until later in the day, but once he said he was going to play, we wanted to get him some minutes,” Van Gundy said.
The other notable tinkering was Beno Udrih in for Ish Smith at point guard behind Jackson. It might not be for anything more than one game, though Udrih played well with nine points and seven assists in 21 minutes.
“We wanted to give Ish a little bit of a break,” Van Gundy said. “He’s been struggling, been a little frustrated. Thought maybe sitting for a night would help a little bit. Wanted to get Beno some run.”
In the end, the way Utah shot after the first quarter – making 66 percent overall and 67 percent from the 3-point line – it hardly mattered who played.
“We can’t stop anybody,” Van Gundy shrugged. “We just can’t.”