Stan Van Gundy seemed almost happy, a decidedly unnatural state for a peripatetic worrywart once the off-season ends.
Maybe here’s a clue as to why. When I asked Andre Drummond what his first impression was after 2½ days and five practices, perhaps something he found encouraging, here’s what he said: “We’re a tough team, man. We’ve got a lot of physical guys out there. The harder we play, the more energy everybody brings, it makes it fun to play. Everybody’s not being soft. Everybody’s really attacking and not avoiding contact, so for me it’s fun. Instead of being the only guy that’s physical, I’ve got a whole team that wants to bang with me.”
From a thousand yards, the chatter about the Pistons is about how they’re going to replace Greg Monroe’s scoring and what they’ll look like on the offensive end with Reggie Jackson and Drummond running the pick and roll surrounded by shooting.
Inside the walls at 6 Championship Drive, the belief is that they’re going to be fine offensively but that their fates are directly linked to defense.
“We made some really good steps forward today,” Van Gundy said. “We really worked on our defense and I thought we made some progress, particularly in terms of our intensity and our ball pressure. Our intensity was way up. I thought we played a lot harder.”
The focus on defense is twofold. It’s about attitude and it’s about scheme. Van Gundy and his staff have made what he calls “substantial” tweaks to the defensive blueprint – more put on the pair of defenders involved in pick-and-roll plays and more of an emphasis on keeping Drummond around the rim – but also more on just being a little more ornery. Toward that end, he likes the impact newcomers Marcus Morris, Aron Baynes, Stanley Johnson, Steve Blake and Ersan Ilyasova project on the whole.
“He’s a tough guy,” Van Gundy said of Morris, who brings more size to small forward – as does 240-pound rookie Johnson – than the Pistons had a year ago. “The post-up three types – Carmelo, LeBron, Jimmy Butler – nobody stops those guys. They’re great players. But now we’ve got two guys with he and Stanley with the toughness and the mentality to battle those guys and at least make it difficult on them.”
Drummond, too, singled out Morris for contributing to a new mentality at the defensive end.
“I call him Deebo. He’s a bully,” Drummond grinned. “He’s a great guy off the court. Nobody wants to be a nice guy on the floor. He does a great job and I love playing with him.”
The guy he’ll be jostling with most frequently in practices this season, Baynes, also drew a smile from Drummond.
“Aron Baynes is a part of that, too. He’s definitely an interesting guy to play against,” he said. “He’s just a strong dude, man. He’s always talking, just always moving around. Sparkplug.”
Drummond, at 22 now the longest-tenured Piston with three years of service, knows Van Gundy is counting on him more than anyone to allow the magnitude of team defensive improvement he’s seeking.
“Defense just comes down to making the right calls early, a lot and often, and I’ve done a great job of that throughout training camp,” he said. “So I’m feeling really good about that, having the right positioning on the post and playing good pick-and-roll defense.”
Drummond put in a rigorous off-season devoted to conditioning, honing his post moves and improving his shooting. But there’s not much a player can do over the summer to take steps forward defensively.
“That work’s got to come out there,” Van Gundy said, nodding his head toward the court. “As much as guys work this summer, they haven’t done much defensive work. So that’s what we’ve got to get in. The focus was on defense the entire day.”
And, very likely, will continue to be for much of the preseason as the Pistons reshape their defense – and their mindset.
- Van Gundy, asked if there was any separation yet among the players fighting for the last few roster spots: “The tough part is they’re all playing well. We really don’t have anybody in camp that’s not playing pretty well. And all of those guys, they know what the competition is all about. So it’s sort of heightened and everybody’s playing hard with good focus.