MILWAUKEE – There was a serious debate whether Michael Beasley should’ve been the No. 1 pick in the 2008 NBA draft and a time not so long ago when the Pistons looked destined to build a team around Greg Monroe.
The convergence of the very best of Beasley and Monroe was enough to knock the Pistons back Monday night in Milwaukee, the two southpaws combining for 48 points while missing only six of a combined 28 shots.
“Those two guys crushed us,” Stan Van Gundy said after the 102-89 loss to one of the horde of teams on their heels in the congested Eastern Conference playoff race.
For a second straight night, the Pistons found themselves trailing by 16 points after three quarters. Expecting a second straight comeback win – which the Pistons achieved Sunday when Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s 3-pointer with 13 seconds left completed the uphill climb – seemed foolhardly, given that the Toronto miracle was the greatest fourth-quarter deficit erased in a Pistons win since moving to Detroit in 1957.
The Pistons cut their deficit to 11 with nine minutes remaining, but never came any closer. A Bucks team playing without Jabari Parker, out for the season after suffering his second ACL tear a week ago, got just eight points from All-Star starter Giannis Antetokounmpo but still had more than enough of a cushion thanks to the prolific and efficient scoring of Monroe and Beasley.
“They got it going early on in the game and just made some tough shots,” said one of the heroes of Sunday’s rally, Tobias Harris, whose NBA career began in Milwaukee six years ago. “At the same time, we got broken down. Greg Monroe was able to get some inside touches and some easy baskets around the rim. It was tough because those guys got it going.”
Beasley’s always been viewed as one of the game’s most naturally gifted scorers, which is why some saw him a more apt No. 1 overall pick in 2008 than Derrick Rose. The character issues that ultimately chased Beasley out of the league for a time ultimately led Chicago to draft Rose and leave Beasley for Miami. He got the Bucks off and running by going 5 for 5 in the first quarter. Monroe came on midway through the quarter and there was a time deep into the second quarter when Monroe and Beasley had each gone 6 for 6.
“Beasley is just a great scorer,” Van Gundy said. “They’re both scorers. Beasley hit some tough pull-up, fadeaway stuff where we had a hand up and he made shots. And then Greg’s a good scorer and we just let him get to his strengths all night. We had three different guys on him and none of ’em defended him well at all.”
That would be Andre Drummond, Aron Baynes and Boban Marjanovic. Van Gundy used Marjanovic in the second half over Baynes just to look to shake things up on a night where he used adjectives like “miserable,” “pathetic,” “mindless” and “very bad” to describle all or various parts of his team’s performance.
It didn’t start off that way, necessarily. The Pistons led 19-17 with three minutes left in the first quarter, but went scoreless the rest of the quarter and came unraveled in the second quarter when they shot 5 of 13 and committed eight of their 17 turnovers.
“Especially against a team like this, who likes to get up and down, any time you help them in turning the ball over, careless turnovers, especially live-ball turnovers, they used that against us and it spurred them to get going,” Reggie Jackson said.
Jackson was one of the few players Van Gundy spared in his assessment. Milwaukee attacked him to force the ball out of his hands, but Jackson handled it well and finished with nine assists and a single turnover. He could have easily had another handful of assists but several were left on the table, especially early in the game, when teammates failed to finish quality scoring chances off of his setups.
It was especially noticeable that the players taxed most in Sunday’s comeback – Harris, Ish Smith and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, most notably – all struggled to reach their norms. Harris resisted using it as an excuse.
“We got another game and you lace up your shoes, you’re ready to play,” he said. “I thought our focus wasn’t as great as it needs to be today, especially in a game that we needed to win. This would’ve been a big one for us just be building a consistency that we need to have as a team and putting some games together. When you step on the floor, you’ve got to be ready for whatever and tonight I don’t think we were as mentally focused as we needed to be.”
Smith’s run of four straight games and seven of eight in double figures ended with a three-point game that saw him shoot 1 of 4. Harris finished with six points on 3 of 11 shooting. Caldwell-Pope hit just 2 of 10 shots and 1 of 4 from the 3-point line – it came with less than three minutes to play and the Pistons trailing by 19 – while committing four turnovers.
“Our offense was pathetic,” Van Gundy said. “Their defense was good, but we knew how they would play and what was open and we didn’t have any focus on getting it there. Seven turnovers. It was just a miserable night all around.”