That the Chicago Bulls came out with a palpable sense of urgency should have surprised no one. The last time the Pistons and the Bulls played a game, well, they really played a game and a half. And at the end of four overtimes, all Chicago had to show for it was a loss. The time before that, they also lost to the Pistons, also in overtime. The Bulls wanted to take care of business before the 48-minute mark this time – and it showed.
Throw in a whole weekend off for Chicago leading to Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day matinee, and add a scoop of Pistons letdown, perhaps, following the wave of emotion they rode to an 18-point win Saturday night as the Pistons hung Ben Wallace’s jersey in The Palace rafters, and this is what you got: The Pistons playing a really good first nine minutes, throwing punches in furious combinations at Chicago, and then punching themselves out.
“We didn’t defend,” Stan Van Gundy said after Chicago shot 52.4 percent overall and 42.9 percent from the 3-point arc in a 111-101 win. “We just did not defend at all. Started the game pretty well with our starters. We went to the bench – the bench didn’t have anything going today. We got crushed with the bench. And then, after that, we just got pretty well taken apart the rest of the game.”
“Seemed gassed,” Reggie Jackson said in a hushed monotone. “It was tough. I wish we had more energy. Didn’t have any legs.”
The Pistons scored 26 points in the first nine minutes and took a 12-point lead – the first double-digit lead for either side over the first 129 minutes they’d played each other – eight minutes into the game, 22-10. But then Chicago heated up. And never cooled off. The Bulls did the vast majority of their damage from the perimeter, too, Pau Gasol knocking down a flurry of mid-range jump shots en route to 31 points. Chicago scored 34 points in the paint, a modest amount, and 12 of those came in the fourth quarter.
So spooked was Andre Drummond by turning his head and seeing a Gasol shot get nothing but net that he charged at him too aggressively with four minutes left and the Pistons trailing by seven points. With 0.3 showing on the shot clock, Drummond was whistled for fouling Gasol 30 feet from the basket as he was about to launch a desperation heave with the shot clock about to expire. It’s a call that won’t get made very often, bailing out a shooter under those circumstances, but Drummond opened the door by his actions – no doubt influenced by Gasol making 9 of his first 11 shots, almost all mid-range jumpers.
“Closing out, yeah, but fouling him there was not a smart play,” Van Gundy said.
The Pistons were clearly distracted by the officiating. Drummond picked up a technical foul in the third quarter and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was slapped with two and an automatic ejection.
“Felt like it was a bad call,” Jackson said of the play that got Caldwell-Pope bounced after he was whistled for trying to poke the ball away from E’Twaun Moore from behind. “Think he just wants to feel like someone has his back. He’s very feisty, plays hard all the time. KCP just wants somebody to have his back. I got him, but I think he knows better. We already talked about it. I think he’ll learn from this.”
That threw off Van Gundy’s rotation and left the Pistons without their best perimeter defender. He’d have been on Derrick Rose down the stretch when Rose scored on two straight dribble penetrations to keep the Pistons flailing from too far behind.
For all of that – the defense that surrendered too many open jump shots, the loss of composure, the hangover from Saturday’s jubilation – the Pistons might have won anyway had they been even mediocre from the 3-point line. They’re 17-3 when they shoot 33 percent or better from the arc, but they were below 20 percent – 5 of 26 – against the Bulls. They’d won their previous two games against Chicago despite shooting under 30 percent from the arc, but the 19.2 percent they recorded Monday was too much to overcome.
“I think we just shot poorly, personally,” said Marcus Morris, who was lights out inside the arc – 8 of 10, almost all of them mid-range jump shots – but 0 of 6 from the 3-point line. Ersan Ilyasova hit 3 of 8, but the rest of the team was 2 of 18. “Myself, I got a lot of clean looks I think normally I would make. I just missed a couple.”
“I think they’re just a good defensive team,” said Anthony Tolliver, who was scoreless on two 3-point attempts. “I don’t know if it’s anything in particular. You have to shoot it well in order to beat those guys because they force you into some tough shots. They’re just a really good defensive team. That’s all it is.”
The win delivered the Pistons to the season’s halfway point at 22-19, in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff race. But they’re in a critical stretch of the schedule with 13 games in the 22 days before the All-Star break. It starts with a four-game road trip that takes them to Houston, New Orleans, Denver and Utah.
“It’s definitely a tough one to lose going on the road trip,” Tolliver said, “but at the end of the day we’ve got to go out and just take care of business on the road and hope for the best.”