AUBURN HILLS – It might have come too late to save their season, but perhaps their 90-89 win over Brooklyn will help save their sanity.
The Pistons snapped a five-game losing streak, winning for just the second time in the last 10 games, this time overcoming the fatal flaw – inexplicably bad shooting – that began to afflict them at exactly the time it appeared they were in position to surge in the standings.
From the All-Star break through their 112-92 win over New York March 11, the Pistons had a top-10 NBA offense. In their 10 games since then, they rank 30th in the NBA in scoring (92.5), 29th in shooting (.407) and 28th in 3-point shooting (.286).
It was more of the same, amplified, in a first half in which the Pistons scored 35 points and shot 33 percent. It had nothing to do with effort or stagnation, from Stan Van Gundy’s vantage point, and everything to do with shooting blanks.
“I thought we were getting great looks,” he said. “A lot of nights I’m on the bench – especially lately – I’m talking to my assistants, ‘We have to find a way to create better shots.’ Tonight, I felt like everything we called, we were able to get a pretty good look.”
Van Gundy at least found two options, Marcus Morris and Ish Smith. Morris had a double-double by halftime and finished with 28 points and 13 rebounds. Smith scored a season-high 21 and added six rebounds and five assists with zero turnovers. They combined to shoot 21 of 36, their teammates 15 of 50.
“Marcus and Ish and our bench,” Van Gundy said. “Even though you don’t get big numbers on the bench, look at all those guys’ plus-minuses. That’s where we won the game.”
The bench includes the two oldest Pistons, Beno Udrih and Aron Baynes, the only two players on the roster 30 or older. Van Gundy cited those two and Smith – in his seventh year, and wearing his 10th NBA uniform – as the three players on the roster who haven’t allowed the frustration of the past 16 days to spill over into their performances.
“They are just coming and playing. Their spirits are right. The frustration hasn’t overwhelmed them. They are just playing and fighting, not worried about anything. Marcus had it going tonight and that was huge for us.”
Morris’ triple with 4:57 left gave the Pistons their biggest lead, six points, but then Brooklyn went on a 9-0 run as the Pistons went scoreless for three minutes. It was Morris who ended the five-possession drought with a baseline jump shot to pull the Pistons within a point, but Brook Lopez answered with a triple to put Brooklyn ahead by four with 1:34 left. Smith’s 17-footer cut it to two, then Baynes got the ball back for the Pistons by blocking Caris LeVert’s layup attempt.
Smith – a 23 percent 3-point shooter coming into the game – then sunk his third in four tries to put the Pistons ahead 87-86 with 28.5 seconds to play and the Pistons survived Lopez’s 3-point try on the next possession.
“I get to play basketball for a living,” Smith said. “There are people really having problems and struggles out there and I’m complaining about missing and making shots? All I have to do is go out there and work on my game and the rest will fall into place.”
The win stopped the bleeding, but the Pistons ended the night where they began it pretty much – still needing to hop over two teams to sneak into the playoffs. At 35-41, they’re 1½ games behind Chicago and 2½ behind both Indiana and Miami with all three of those teams holding the tiebreaker advantage.
“Just take a little deep breath after that, finally. Just get one and hopefully it can lead to more,” said Morris, who came within one rebound of tying a career high. “We just talk about what’s needed to happen for us to get in the playoffs. We’ve got to think about some teams losing, but also we’ve got to win, starting now. Maybe we’ll put a couple together and see what happens. … On to the next. We’ve got to string ’em together and keep getting wins.”
“I’m happy,” Van Gundy said. “For all of the problems – 16 turnovers, some missed wide-open shots and the struggle throughout the entire thing – two games in a row our guys have had resilience and really fought. Our guys hang in there and they fight. I’m really proud of them for that. I’m happy for our guys and happy to get the win.”