CHARLOTTE – The Pistons played a stinker but still managed to hold on to their No. 8 playoff spot. (Thanks, Miami, for the whuppin’ you put on the Bulls.) But if they make the playoffs, the one team they won’t want to see is Charlotte.
For the second time this season, the Pistons were dominated by the red-hot Hornets, who scored 38 points in the first quarter and never trailed in their 118-103 win. Charlotte’s sixth straight win – and seventh straight at home – is the franchise’s longest in six years.
The Pistons lost by 20 points in their first visit to Charlotte, back in December, and there was never a doubt about that outcome. The Pistons made it a little more interesting this time, cutting a 19-point deficit late in the second quarter to five late in the third.
“But that was it,” Stan Van Gundy said. “And then they just buried us again.”
Mostly they buried them under a pile of their own mistakes. It wasn’t as if the Pistons made a ton of them – they’re No. 10 in the league in turnovers committed at 13.6 a game and came in under even that number, 12. But Charlotte converted them into 25 points, a crazy number, reflecting just how well and how confidently the Hornets are playing at this time.
“I think 12 times two is 24, so they damn near scored every possession and maybe hit a three,” said Reggie Jackson, whose 20-point, 10-assist double-double felt a little hollow because of Charlotte’s offensive brilliance. The Hornets put seven players in double figures, shot 50 percent overall and 40 percent from the line, won the rebound battle (37-33) and dished 28 assists.
“We weren’t able to keep up,” Van Gundy said. “The two games with them, we haven’t been able to keep up with them. They play too fast; we play too slow. We can’t keep up with them.”
“They move the ball. They share the ball a lot,” said Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who did more than his share to contain Kemba Walker – a player Van Gundy said before the game was playing as well as any point guard in the league – by holding him to 3 of 11 shooting while leading the Pistons with 24 points. “It’s not just one person holding the ball the whole time. The ball is moving from one side to the other.”
If the Pistons could have mustered a modicum of defense early, they might have been the team to run away with this one. The first quarter was played like the All-Star game, the Pistons shooting 68 percent (13 of 19, including 4 of 8 from the 3-point arc) and still trailing by six mostly because Charlotte shot just as well and outscored them 7-2 at the foul line.
The scoring pace slowed in the second quarter for both teams and the Pistons were hanging around, down 10 after two Tobias Harris free throws with 1:56 left before halftime. Seventy-five seconds later, the deficit was 19 – a Nic Batum triple, a turnover converted into a Frank Kaminsky triple and a Caldwell-Pope foul of Walker shooting a triple that allowed three more free throws.
“It was a big stretch for them,” Jackson said. “We were almost where we wanted to be. We said we wanted to be at 10 or below at half. Had it within striking distance. Unfortunately, got back down (19). Came back once again. It was just a game of runs and it was tough to really overcome that deficit.”
“All they did was go back with their guys and they killed us,” Van Gundy said. “Their starters dominated us tonight. We couldn’t do anything with them at all.”
The Pistons were coming off a rousing win at Dallas in which they held another potent offensive team to 96 points. They just didn’t have the same bounce in their step this time out.
“They outhustled us,” Caldwell-Pope said. “They just had more energy than us the whole game.”
Particularly vexing for Van Gundy was Andre Drummond’s outing. He finished with five points and nine rebounds in 23 minutes and made his only shot of the night with less than six minutes left in the game.
“He didn’t play with any energy at all,” Van Gundy said of his All-Star center, coming off of a 25-point, 17-rebound game at Dallas. “He didn’t roll in his pick and rolls, he didn’t run the floor, he didn’t go to the offensive glass other than to push people. He just didn’t do anything.”
That Miami rally to beat Chicago spared them irreparable damage to their playoff chances, but Jackson knows it’s a dangerous game to count on anyone other than themselves over the season’s final 17 games.
“If we want to make the playoffs, we’ve got to come out like it’s our last game, like it means everything,” he said of Saturday’s game at Philadelphia. “We need every one right now. We know it. We’ve got to play hard, play through that fatigue. Just try to dig deep down. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough in the tank today.”