NEW YORK – There will be no difficulty for Stan Van Gundy in finding teaching moments from his team’s preseason opener.
Van Gundy has preached defense as the key to unlocking the potential of a team that was one of the NBA’s most improved a season ago, but their performance at that end in Thursday’s 101-94 loss to Brooklyn wasn’t close to what he hoped to see.
Van Gundy preaches limiting opposition layups, free throws and 3-pointers and … well, oops!
“All they got was layups, free throws and threes. We didn’t make ’em take anything else,” Van Gundy said.
He burned three timeouts in the first half after easy Brooklyn baskets as the Nets scored 32 first-quarter points and shot 69 percent overall. They made nine first-half 3-pointers and held an 18-8 edge in free-throw attempts.
The Pistons had some overwhelming first-half offensive numbers themselves: 42 combined points from the starting frontcourt of Andre Drummond, Tobias Harris and Marcus Morris on 17 of 24 shooting – with two Drummond misses in a last-second scramble to get off a shot lowering the accuracy rate. Drummond finished with 17 points and 21 rebounds in just 24 minutes.
Nobody had to tell Van Gundy’s players what cost them the game. Harris looked at their first-half production and grimaced.
“If we were able to get a few more stops out there, we could’ve been running more and those are even more high-percentage shots,” he said. “That’s something we know as a unit. The thing about it is, our offense is going to be there. We have a lot of good players and different skilled players. So that’s going to say a lot for us as a group to really emphasize defense and have that defense-first type attitude to bring us along even faster. That’s going to be real key for us.”
No five-man unit in the NBA played more minutes together than Pistons starters after the All-Star break when Harris came from Orlando in trade. The numbers they put up underscored their offensive potential. But Van Gundy sent a shot across their bow after the game.
“I was really disappointed in our defense, particularly in our first unit. I just didn’t think they put much into the game defensively,” he said. “We may have to address it lineup wise. I want to see more out of them, but if that first unit can’t improve defensively then we’re going to have to get some other people in there and put some of them on the bench. We can’t defend like that and have a chance, especially with Reggie (Jackson) out. We’re not going to be able to guard the way we guarded tonight.”
Jackson is expected to make a decision Friday on which course of treatment to address his left knee tendinitis. “One more phone call tomorrow and we’ll know,” he said. He’s undergone platement-rich plasma therapy before, in 2011, and is familiar with that process. Van Gundy said it would be the longest recovery, perhaps six to eight weeks, but also offered the best prognosis for preventing recurrence.
In Jackson’s place, Ish Smith played 27 minutes and shot 2 of 7 for four points to go with three assists. Signed as a free agent to lead a fortified second unit, Smith is suddenly running the show with the starters.
“I’m trying to figure out where the guys are and after a while that’ll start clicking,” Smith said. “Defensively is the main thing. Offensively, we can fix, but defensively is something Coach has been harping on and we’ve got to get better. But that’s the beauty of preseason.”
Van Gundy used 10 players in a semi-normal rotation pattern over the game’s first 33 minutes, then went into his bench to give both Boban Marjanovic and Henry Ellenson a look. Ray McCallum Jr. was the backup point guard. Van Gundy said Lorenzo Brown would probably back up Smith in Monday’s next game, the home preseason opener against San Antonio.
More than anything, he’ll expect a more focused defensive effort no matter who’s out there. And his players already know what they’ll hear in practices between now and then.
“We’ve got to put more effort into a lot of things,” Stanley Johnson said. “You see (Brooklyn’s Sean) Kilpatrick and guys like that diving on loose balls. Forget we’re the first game of the season. If we’re about what we say we’re about, we’ve got to do that stuff consistently.”
“All of us, collectively, have to look in the mirror at this game and have to grow from it,” Harris said. “We can’t dwell on ‘it’s only the preseason’ type of attitude. We want to be the best team we can be, so we have to take a lot from this game and learn from it and grow. Into the next game, we have to have a different defensive mindset. Defensively – we knew in the locker room after the game, we were talking about it during the game – we have to be better.”