The 89-69 loss at Philadelphia was an aberration for Stan Van Gundy's Pistons on most counts – the impotence of their offense, the way they got outworked, their inability to take care of the basketball.
But in one broad sense, it was right in keeping with Van Gundy's blueprint. The Pistons took 75 shots against Philadelphia. That's not enough shots and forget for a minute that only 23 of them went in the basket, the worst shooting performance for a Pistons team in more than five years. Focus on where those shots were taken.
They hoisted 46 of them from the paint and another 20 from the 3-point line. So 66 of their 75 shots came from those two areas, which would make the analytics guys who attend the relatively young but enormously popular Sloan Conference at MIT in late February delirious in their approval.
"It's where we want to be – in the paint, at the free-throw line and shooting threes," Van Gundy said after the Pistons' 128-118 win over Orlando last week in which they epitomized the vision, taking 86 of 94 shots either in the paint (62) or from three (24). "It's how we've tried to build the team. Some nights you can't get what you want – the defenses take it away – but we played really well (against Orlando) and we got the shots that we wanted to get."
Nobody gets more shots in the paint than the Pistons, who take 45.4 shots per game in the paint. They're also second in the league in percentage of shots in the paint at 53 percent. The Pistons aren't quite as prolific from the 3-point line, yet still rank in the upper one-third at 25.3 attempts per game (ninth in the NBA), which accounts for 29 percent (10th in the league) of their shots. So more than four of every five Pistons shots, 82 percent, come from one of those two areas.
It was an easy call for Van Gundy to build the Pistons in this fashion. The roster he inherited was heavy with interior players who scored almost exclusively near the rim – Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe, and to a lesser extent, Josh Smith.
What he lacked was shooters around them. Armed with a middle-of-the-road amount of cap space and too many needs to target a single elite player, Van Gundy spread his money around on multiple shooters. He took four – Jodie Meeks, Caron Butler, D.J. Augustin and Cartier Martin – who together shot 40 percent from the arc last year and took nearly half of their total shots from distance.
But even if Drummond and Monroe weren't bequeathed to him, Van Gundy would have looked for a way to get to this point. He might cast a skeptical eye on those who blindly accept analytics-driven strategies, but it's not because he doesn't believe in the lessons those numbers tell. Van Gundy's skepticism comes from how they might be interpreted or in granting all analytical data equal weight.
It's why the Pistons have vastly beefed up their front-office staff and invested heavily in devising ways not only to collect vast amounts of data but – more critically – in studying the numbers to see which ones have real value. General manager Jeff Bower embraced the analytics movement early on – as a college assistant at Marist when he was just getting started, they charted obscure data on Northeast Conference rivals to get an extra edge in scouting reports – and both assistant GM Ken Catanella and director of strategic planning Pat Garrity are Duke MBAs with keen understandings of data-driven analysis.
Van Gundy has long since accepted the wisdom of taking shots near the rim and from the 3-point line over those that fall in the nether region. He knew that intuitively, before the numbers brought that sense to life.
So it's no accident the preponderance of Pistons field-goal attempts come from those two areas. The playbook isn't heavy on schemes designed to produce 18-foot jump shots.
"We have some," he said. "Every play's got a possibility for it. Basically, it's the decisions you make. But I'm certainly not trying to create a lot of those shots. It's the least efficient shot in the game. I like the shot distribution we're getting. Not getting to the line quite as much as I would like, but I like our shot distribution, for the most part. We've just got to take care of the ball better and we've got to create more quality shots."
Consider how Van Gundy uses Monroe. Since the end of his rookie season, the narrative on Monroe has been that to take the next step he must refine the 15- to 18-foot jump shot from the high post or elbow areas. He's taken few such shots this season and Van Gundy isn't forcing the issue by running plays designed to produce such shots for him.
"It would help him, but he's so good around the basket and so comfortable," Van Gundy said. "It's a lot harder to find guys who can score around the basket in this league now than it is to find guys who can make 15-foot jump shots."
Before he was lost for the season to an Achilles tendon injury last week, Brandon Jennings agreed that it wasn't coincidence the team shot chart was heavy with dots in the paint and around the 3-point perimeter.
"Definitely being aware, but also just taking what the defense gives us," he said. "If they don't make adjustments, we just keep doing the same thing."
You can expect the Pistons to take another step in the direction Van Gundy wants to go next season, when he'll have another off-season – and considerably more cap space – to bring the roster further in line with the ideal. The Pistons have all three point guards – Jennings, Augustin and Spencer Dinwiddie – under contract, all proven or promising shooters. Both shooting guards, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Jodie Meeks, also return. Kyle Singler, a .412 3-point shooter who leads the team, is a restricted free agent, which means he's likely to be back, too.
And Drummond will still be in the middle of it, creating space for shooters – and they for him – with his hard dives to the rim that force a defense to stay honest. That space might be increased if Van Gundy can lure one or, perhaps, two top-tier free agents with the $30 million the Pistons figure to have to take to the market.
"Guards penetrating, bigs rolling to the rim, post-up game with Greg and Andre and 3-point shooters around them," Van Gundy said. "We've tried to build it that way, both in terms of who we've put on the roster, who we play and how we play."