WASHINGTON – The Pistons showed the same quickness in dissecting the cause of their road backslide as John Wall showed in penetrating their paint.
“We didn’t play defense,” Reggie Jackson said.
And why was it so tough to guard both Wall and backcourt buddy Bradley Beal?
Jackson: “We didn’t play defense.”
Those guys show you anything new?
Jackson: “No, we just didn’t play defense.”
Ish Smith used a few extra adjectives and altered his phrasing a little more, but made the same essential points about the 122-108 loss to Washington that slammed the brakes on the defensive momentum the Pistons had built in going 5-1 over their last six road games.
“It was terrible, especially the way we’ve been guarding. This is not us. They scored 122 points and we’ve had seven or eight straight games, I think, where we had held teams under 100 points. So our calling card is defense and tonight wasn’t.”
The Pistons led 20-15, but it went downhill fast from there. The Wizards tied it at 27 by the end of the first quarter and then scored on their first nine possessions of the second quarter to start pulling away. It was an 11-point game at halftime and quickly began building toward 20.
Wall scored 29 points over three quarters, then got waved back in by Scott Brooks with less than five minutes to play after the Pistons sliced eight points off a 24-point deficit. Bradley Beal added 25 for the Wizards as one of the NBA’s most potent backcourts bettered its typical numbers in punishing the Pistons.
“We couldn’t handle their guards at all,” Stan Van Gundy said. “John Wall was great. Beal was great. We couldn’t handle them at all. They were getting wherever they wanted on the floor and then making plays. Their other guys shot the ball well, too, but those two guys just destroyed us.”
The Wizards proved a bad matchup for the Pistons last season, winning the first three meetings and putting a 43-point thumping on them in March just as the Pistons were about to begin a successful playoff drive. The only Pistons win in four meetings came on April 8 as Jackson scored 39 points in a win that clinched a playoff berth. Not coincidentally, perhaps, Wall missed that game due to injury.
Always a handful, Wall’s effectiveness was magnified this time out by the fact that he drained all four of his 3-point attempts – the only weak spot in his game, typically.
“He’s tough to guard then,” Smith said. “Pick your poison then. Whenever he’s making shots, knocking down threes, it makes him that much more difficult. Chalk this up. Tough one.”
It was going to be tough under any circumstances to keep up with Washington, but it surely wasn’t going to happen on a night the Pistons got such uneven production from two of their critical scorers, Tobias Harris and Marcus Morris. Harris could have no quarrel with the quality of his scoring attempts, but made just 5 of 16 shots and 1 of 5 from the 3-point line in scoring 14 points. Morris would swap stat lines with him in a heartbeat, finishing 1 of 8 shooting for two points with three rebounds and one assist in 24 minutes.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Jon Leuer carried the offense, Caldwell-Pope finishing with 24 points and making 4 of 7 triples and Leuer scoring a season-high 19 points for a second straight game to go with seven rebounds and five assists.
That wasn’t nearly enough to counter Washington’s 57 percent shooting and atypically efficient night from the 3-point line, where the Wizards made a dozen of their 25 heaves.
“We didn’t really get physical. They were in us all night,” Jackson said. “We didn’t really push up and make them have to change or do anything else. It was lack of defense from us tonight that really allowed them to get going and just feel comfortable.”