PHOENIX – Reggie Jackson finished with a powerful array of pitches, blowing Phoenix away as the Pistons opened a road trip of baseball proportions with a win, and maybe it was because he wasn’t asked to record a six-out save.
Jackson played only 30 minutes, thanks to the strong 18 minutes Steve Blake gave Stan Van Gundy. None of those minutes were more important than the first four of the fourth quarter, when Blake led a group that included only one starter – Marcus Morris, who dropped 20 points on the Phoenix Suns in his return to the desert – in increasing the four-point lead they were handed to 10.
“Very satisifying,” Jackson said of the 4:13 he spent as a spectator to start the quarter, making him fresh for the bottom of the ninth. “I know it’s probably even more satisifying for them, especially after the last outing.”
Ah, yes. The last outing. In their only loss so far – the 100-92 win at Phoenix makes the Pistons 4-1 and gets their six-game Western road swing off to a wonderful start – the Pistons gave up a 20-0 run in just five minutes to start the second quarter against Indiana.
That led Van Gundy to stagger the rotation, never having zero starters on the floor. It worked for the first time around, at least, and he got critical contributions in a variety of areas from all four bench players – Anthony Tolliver’s hustle, Stanley Johnson’s defense, Aron Baynes’ opportunism and Blake’s poise.
“I thought we got good play out of Aron, good play out of Steve. I thought we had a little bit more balance,” Van Gundy said. “We���ll see how it goes.”
Blake opened the quarter with a perfect feed to Baynes for a layup, then hit him again at the rim, leading to two free throws. A Tolliver triple pushed the lead to nine. Van Gundy brought Jackson and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope back first, then Andre Drummond a minute later. The Pistons began the game 0 for 8, but Caldwell-Pope’s early offensive flurry – 11 points on 5 of 6 shooting in the first quarter – put them ahead five minutes into the game and they never surrendered it.
They held the Suns to 40 percent shooting and scored 18 points off of their 16 turnovers. They also had a 64.5 percent shooting performance in the second half to finish at 50 percent after coming into the game with three straight under-40 showings and ranking last in the league in shooting.
“Our guys continue to fight,” Van Gundy said. “We’ve still got to iron out a lot of things offensively, but as I told ’em in there, we did shoot 50 percent tonight – from the field and from the free throw line.”
Drummond was 2 of 13 at the line and the Suns tried to get back in the game by intentionally fouling. He finished with his fifth straight double-double, 12 points and 17 rebounds, grabbing 10 boards after halftime when the Pistons held a 24-16 edge.
All those points the Pistons left at the foul line could have been fatal if not for the big shots they made down the stretch, including a 27-footer from Caldwell-Pope with the shot clock winding down to put the Pistons up 10 with four minutes to play and a huge driving three-point play from Jackson – fouling out Eric Bledsoe in the process – with 1:47 left, 23 seconds after Bledsoe’s triple pulled Phoenix within three.
“He made big shots down the stretch,” Van Gundy said of Jackson, who scored 14 of his 23 after returning. “He was tremendous.”
And well rested, thanks to Blake, who finished with eight points and two assists but contributed much more than that.
“It felt great,” Blake said of widening the lead for the starters. “That’s our job, to go in there and be productive and either keep the lead or extend it. And we haven’t done a good job of that, so it was nice for us to have some confidence and feel good going into the next one.”
“He had a big smile on his face, so that was good,” Van Gundy said of Blake. “I talked to him yesterday. We brought him here for a reason. I’ve coached against him for a long time and had great respect for him. I know what he could bring.”
Blake told Van Gundy he wasn’t in the type of shape he needed to be in, a result of missing three weeks of training camp and all but one preseason game as he recovered from a concussion. So Van Gundy extended Thursday’s practice by 15 to 20 minutes to go four-on-four full court for Blake’s benefit.
“I wasn’t quite where I wanted to be,” he said. “I’m still working through that. Just the feel for the game. No matter how long you play, when you take a few weeks off, still not just feeling quite comfortable. Today was a step in the right direction.”
With tough games in tough places ahead, including two sets of back-to-backs and dates against the defending champ Warriors and title contenders Clippers, it was a huge step toward a productive road trip.
“Feels great to start off this way,” Jackson said. “It’s a tough six-game road trip. We got the first one. We can’t worry about the third, fourth, fifth or sixth. We’ve got to focus on the second.”