Stan Van Gundy leaned on his front office to help make the final call on the choice for the last roster spot. Ray McCallum Jr. got the nod over Lorenzo Brown, a personnel decision that took on much greater impact when Reggie Jackson was lost for approximately the first quarter of the season with a knee injury.
If it had been a boxing match, it would have been a split decision. When Van Gundy polled his coaching staff, opinion was split down the middle between Brown and McCallum, both products of the 2011 draft, both second-round draft picks after three college basketball seasons, with not much separating them statistically in the three preseason games Van Gundy gave each to prove himself.
General manager Jeff Bower did a deep dive into preseason videotape Friday night, looking at each of McCallum’s 67 minutes and all of Brown’s 61 for clarity. He conferred with his inner circle – associate GM Pat Garrity, assistant GM Jeff Nix and executive staffers Adam Glessner and J.R. Holden.
“Sometimes you’re in the middle of it and it’s the old saying, true to a degree: You can’t see the forest for the trees,” Van Gundy said. “I know Jeff went back last night and watched both of their minutes from the preseason. He specifically focused on those two guys. I’m watching, but I’m watching everything.”
McCallum will get regular rotation minutes for as long as it takes Jackson to return from his Oct. 10 platelet-rich plasma injection to address left knee tendinosis. The timetable for his return was six to eight weeks from the date of the procedure, putting him on course to return in late November to early December.
The timing of the injury at least gave the Pistons time to adjust to Ish Smith as their starter, not only allowing Smith and the starters to learn each other’s tendencies and strengths but to give everyone time to grasp the reality of life without Jackson.
“Exactly,” Tobias Harris said. “We need Reggie to get healthy. At the same time, we’re going to keep getting better and keep building chemistry together. That’s what it’s going to come down to – pushing for each other, both sides of the basketball. With Reggie being out, having this time to bring Ish in and learn the way he likes to play and what he likes to do on the floor, that helps us out.”
“Playing with the second unit, you get used to that, and then playing with the first team, it’s an adjustment,” Smith said. “I thank God for training camp because I needed it. First it was like, ‘All right, what do I do? How do I play my game?’ That took a while and that took an adjustment, but it was a good adjustment.”
Van Gundy intended to diversify the offense and use players at multiple positions – Jon Leuer at power forward and center, Harris and Marcus Morris at both forward spots among several similar examples – even before Jackson got hurt. He says that’s put the Pistons a little behind the curve with offensive installation, but the Jackson injury reinforced the underlying reasons for the decision.
“As a matter of fact, I felt like we would need it even more and it accelerated the need to diversity the offense,” he said. “We’ll still run a lot of 1-5 pick and rolls, but probably not quite as many as we did when it was Reggie.”