SACRAMENTO – For three quarters, Blake Griffin gave the Pistons a fighting chance to end an 11-game road drought. But Griffin was on the bench when the Pistons used a 10-0 run in the fourth quarter to move the needle from “likely” to “certain” that they’d get a win on the season’s longest road trip.
“We knew we needed to get some stops,” Luke Kennard said after the Pistons won on the road for the first time since Jan. 10 with a 106-90 knockout of Sacramento, which had split its last 10 games. “The group we had in there, some of the bench guys, we told each other that we wanted to be positive and try to get a lead going, continue to do what the starters did at the beginning of the third. It’s good when we can communicate and be on the same page and that’s what we did. We fought hard and brought some energy.”
Griffin finished with 26 points, nine rebounds, seven assists and just one turnover. Sacramento used five different matchups against him, including war horses Zach Randolph and Vince Carter, young colts Willie Cauley-Stein and Skal Labissiere and plodding Kosta Koufos. Griffin had something he could use against all of them – size, quickness or strength – in some combination.
“I just tried to attack at certain spots for certain shots,” Griffin said. “But our offense was just pretty good. Reggie (Bullock) coming off the handoff or Reggie coming off side pick and roll, I feel like we have that down. That’s kind of a favorite for us, a comfortable play. When he draws attention coming off that and kicks back, now it’s up to me to finish the play, not necessarily start it.”
Bullock, the most pleasant emergence of the Pistons season, finished with 17 points and hit half of his 3-point shots on a night the Pistons held a whopping advantage – plus 24 points – from the 3-point arc. They hit 14 of 29 while Sacramento hit 6 of 23.
“I don’t know that we held them,” Stan Van Gundy said. “We got a little fortunate with Garrett Temple, especially. He had good looks and he’s a great 3-point shooter and a hell of a player and he couldn’t make anything. That helped us quite a bit – which I’ll take.”
The Pistons haven’t had a lot of breaks of any sort lately and they’ve seen many teams – and many mediocre 3-point shooters – suddenly impersonate Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors against them during their swoon that’s made the playoffs a fleeting hope.
Six different Pistons made a triple against the Kings and five of them had more than one. Ish Smith made 2 of 3 and Stanley Johnson – back in the starting lineup for James Ennis after Van Gundy looked at the numbers for the starting lineup over the past nine games – made one. It’s the kind of shooting Van Gundy knows he needs around Griffin.
“Blake was good all night. Ish was good. Bullock played really well,” he said. “I thought at times we had really good ball movement. And our defense we played in stretches, but we made our runs off good defensive plays. Andre (Drummond, 16 rebounds and three blocks) had a couple at the end of the third quarter that we were able to get out and go and we didn’t turn the over a whole lot (10).”
The lead was seven after three quarters and Griffin, already with 30 minutes under his belt and a back to back at Phoenix facing the Pistons, opened it on the bench. The fact the Pistons nearly doubled the lead before Van Gundy brought him back midway through the quarter made everyone breathe a little easier.
“It’s not that we were pressing and making it super tough,” Griffin said. “We just played our defensive principles and gave them the shots – not gave them the shots, but made them take the shots that we wanted them to take. And we blocked out and rebounded, ran the floor. When you get stops, it’s so much easier to run. We took advantage of that.”
It was the first time Griffin left a building other than Little Caesars Arena as a winner since joining the Pistons.
“That’s crazy,” he said. “This time of year, you take any way however you can get it. You get one on the road after being on the road for eight nights already, it’s always great. So we took care of business. Now we’ve got to do it again.”