AUBURN HILLS – Stan Van Gundy’s plan to alter the starting lineup was temporarily shelved by Jon Leuer’s game-day car accident and he reserved the right to change his mind based on what he saw in Wednesday’s game vs. Memphis.
Whatever he was looking for, it doesn’t sound like he saw it, even though the Pistons played with more passion than in their two previous losses when Van Gundy found the energy level alarmingly low.
“We’re going to have to do something,” he said after today’s practice. “We didn’t even talk about it as a staff, what we’re going to do. But that lineup, for whatever reason – not looking to blame anybody – that lineup just hasn’t been good. We’ve gone 10 games now (since Reggie Jackson’s return) with that starting lineup and it just has not been good. And it wasn’t playing well when Ish was starting with that group, too.”
The Pistons have bottomed out offensively, but the driving force in Van Gundy’s decision to elevate Leuer to the starting lineup came from the defensive side. No matter who else is out there, the common element with Leuer on the floor is better defensive numbers.
“Every lineup he’s in defends better than the lineups he’s not in,” he said. “We haven’t started games well defensively. People have jumped on us. You would hope over the long haul that your lineup would be better defensively with him in it because every lineup he’s been in, whether he’s with Marcus (Morris) or Tobias (Harris), the lineup’s a lot better defensively than it is with those two forwards in there together.”
The Pistons understood there would be a tradeoff by starting two hybrid forwards, offense for defense. They got the best of it in the 25 games Harris started to end last season after being acquired at the trade deadline, going 16-9. But the offensive efficiency hasn’t been the same this season and Van Gundy can’t afford to wait for Jackson to bounce all the way back to form to remedy the situation.
“It’s a different year, different dynamics,” Van Gundy said. “And that lineup isn’t working. So we’ve got to do something else. We’ve got an option that through a lot of minutes this year has proven to be effective, so to not go with it would be a bad idea.
“The last 10 games, we’ve had some bad defensive games and our offense has just been really, really bad pretty much for most of the 10 games. Part of it is as simple as making shots. Part of it is playing with more energy and getting better ball movement. We’ll just have to see.”
There at least was good news on the health front with both Leuer and Jackson feeling fine and going through Thursday’s practice without limitations. Leuer said he felt surprisingly well despite the accident that left his car severely damaged and another totaled. Jackson left early in Wednesday’s game after experiencing pain in his left knee – the one that caused him to miss the season’s first 21 games – but finished the game and didn’t expect further issues, he said.
Van Gundy said the thing he most wanted to address in Thursday’s practice was picking up spirits and seeing the joy of playing from his players again. It was a day he might have given the players off under normal circumstances. He generally doesn’t like to run them more than four consecutive days and with Friday’s game and Saturday’s practice – he’ll give them Christmas off, of course – the Pistons will be at six consecutive days.
“We needed to get back in here. Everybody’s a little frustrated and a little down, to be honest. Best way to deal with that, I think, is just get in the gym and do some work. I’ve worked for coaches who call it ‘blowing it out’ – you just come in. We didn’t start by sitting down in the film room. It was all about energy. We put 60 minutes on the clock, running time, ‘We’re going to go for one hour; we’re going hard,’ and that was it. That’s what we did. And when the horn went off, we were done. We just need to get some life back first in us and then we’ll go from there.”