AUBURN HILLS – Atlanta came to The Palace last week having won 9 of 10 games. The Pistons crushed the Hawks by 23. A few nights later in their next game, the Pistons beat Washington, which arrived having won 7 of 8. Then came Monday, two nights after Marcus Morris’ tip-in beat the Wizards to extend Detroit’s winning streak to three games, and Sacramento showed up as the opponent with a 1-8 record over its last nine games.
You know where this is going, right?
Sacramento’s 109-104 win not only denied the Pistons their first four-game winning streak of the season, it essentially defined their season.
“We’ve got to approach every game the same way, no matter who we’re playing,” Morris said. “They lost eight out of (nine) games and we know they beat us (two weeks ago at Sacramento). We just beat a couple of good teams that are on good runs. We’re capable. The good teams in the league, they take care of business.”
The Pistons looked like they were well on their way to taking care of business when they smoked the Kings for 38 first-quarter points. But the warning signs were there, too. They also surrendered 28 points and allowed Sacramento to shoot 55 percent and hit 4 of 6 from the 3-point line.
“I think we had 38; they had 28,” Reggie Jackson said. “So still almost gave ’em 30 in the first quarter.”
And then it got worse.
The Kings scored 37 in the second quarter and took a 65-62 halftime lead that was never seriously challenged. The Pistons defended more forcefully in the second half, holding Sacramento to 44 points and 44 percent shooting, but put up lesser numbers on their end: 42 points and 40 percent shooting with eight turnovers.
The good news was the return of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope after missing five games with a shoulder injury, but in the short term it caused two issues. First was Caldwell-Pope’s rusty 3-point shot. He missed his first seven and was 0 of 9 on jump shots until draining a triple with eight seconds with the Pistons down by eight. His other three baskets were layups.
The other ripple effect from Caldwell-Pope’s return was giving Van Gundy a whole roster available for the first time in the season’s 46th game. Long term, that’s a bonus. This time, it meant beginning the second quarter with five bench players – Tobias Harris, Stanley Johnson, Reggie Bullock, Aron Baynes and Ish Smith – and a unit that hasn’t played together had issues at both ends. It took Sacramento just 3:06 and seven possessions to score seven baskets and 16 points to tie the game at 44. Five of the seven were layups and the other two were jump shots from inside 8 feet. Two of the baskets were part of three-point plays.
Van Gundy pulled Johnson after three minutes and cut him out of the rotation in the second half, but only Harris played more than six minutes off the bench in the second half.
“I’ve got to do a better job with the lineups,” Van Gundy said. “Their bench – just look at the plus/minuses. As bad as it was today, four of our starters we were plus with. Our bench got crushed.”
Sacramento’s bench outscored Detroit’s 52-30 with 35 first-half points for Kings reserves. Ty Lawson scored 12 of his 19 points in the first half, Willie Cauley-Stein 10 of his 12.
“It was tough,” Andre Drummond said of being on the bench while the 10-point lead disappeared. “We came out of the game and their bench came in and got off to a great start.”
Sacramento took a huge proportion of its 82 shots – 47 of them – in the paint and scored 56 points there. That underscores the defensive lapses that continue to haunt Van Gundy’s team. The Kings came into the game ranked 18th in NBA offensive efficiency.
“A lot of that was just one-on-one defense,” Van Gundy said. “We couldn’t keep their guards in front of us at all. I thought Lawson and (starter Nick) Collison really, really hurt us. We just didn’t defend guys off the dribble at all.”
It was a weird night all around the NBA, not that it makes the Pistons feel any better that Cleveland lost to the 17-27 New Orleans Pelicans or that Atlanta lost at home to a Clippers team minus Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. Red-hot Houston lost at Milwaukee – which pushes the Pistons two games behind the Bucks for the final playoff berth – and Indiana lost at home to the reeling Knicks and Charlotte’s three-game winning streak was also snapped in a home loss to Washington.
Those seeming aberrations have become the pattern of the Pistons’ season. Morris wouldn’t characterize Monday’s loss to an inferior team as a letdown, but something else at least as damning.
“They just seemed like they wanted it more,” he said. “I didn’t think we let up. I just think we got punked.”