When he’s bored with coaching and if he’s willing to take a pay cut – a massive pay cut – Stan Van Gundy could have a career in editing.
The way he encapsulated his team’s third straight win – a 103-89 decision over the New York Knicks – cut right to the guts of the story.
“5:20 .. 94-89,” it read on the whiteboard at the west end of the Pistons’ locker room at The Palace. And under that, “10 straight stops.” And under that, “Learn without losing.”
That was all you needed to know. But there was a lot more you’d want to know about a fun win for a team that’s surviving the absence of Reggie Jackson pretty well, enjoying playing together and growing its confidence in the process.
The game was all about offense for the first three quarters, the Pistons opening a double-digit lead late in the first half and maintaining it, more or less, up 86-79 headed to the fourth.
And then, not much offense. At all. The Pistons were wobbling, up just five when Derrick Rose threw in a runner with 5:40 left to cut the lead to five, 94-89. They scored eight points in the first eight minutes of the fourth quarter. Ten seconds after Rose’s basket, Ish Smith was whistled for charging and Van Gundy regrouped with a timeout.
“We came into that timeout with, I think, 5:20 remaining,” Harris said, glancing to the whiteboard to his left to get his facts in order. “That was our emphasis: go out there, get stops, get rebounds and let���s see how many we can string together to come out with this victory. It was really satisfying for us as a team to go out there and accomplish that.”
Those last 10 Knicks possessions – on a night Carmelo Anthony and Derrick Rose played like Carmelo Anthony and Derrick Rose – resulted in 0 of 8 shooting with two turnovers, so that’s zero offensive rebounds for the Knicks in that span, too. And one of the shots, a Joakim Noah attempt near the rim on the rare occasion down the stretch the Knicks got in the paint, was swatted away by Andre Drummond.
“We just really buckled down and focused on getting stops and getting rebounds and pushing in transition,” Kentavious Caldwell-Pope said. “We played hard and didn’t give them easy looks.”
So that was the guts of the story. But getting there was a lot about the way Marcus Morris and Tobias Harris carried the offense and a lot about the way Caldwell-Pope – those three combined for 66 of the 102 points – pitched in with big shots and great decisions.
Two cases in point on that last score. With Morris and Anthony having a marvelous mano a mano duel late in the second quarter, Morris scoring two buckets, Anthony countering by deking Morris to draw a foul, it was Anthony’s turn to hold serve.
But he missed a triple and Caldwell-Pope grabbed the rebound and was off to the races. It’s a spot where he often pulls up for a transition triple, riding momentum, but he knew Morris had it going. So he deferred, hitting Morris in stride, and his triple put the Pistons up 10, the first double-digit lead of the game.
“I didn’t have an initial shot or a drive to the basket,” he said, “so I pulled out and tried to find somebody else. Marcus was running in transition, so I found him.”
At about the same point of the second half, with the Pistons again ahead by seven, this time it was Caldwell-Pope’s decision to take the open triple for himself. He hit that one with 2:47 left – and again the Pistons led by double digits, this time for good.
“I just took the open shot,” he said. “Ish had a drive and (Kristaps) Porzingis had a hard closeout, so I took the shot. It’s all about just being ready in the moment and ready to shoot.”
Van Gundy looked at the shot distribution and nodded in satisfaction: 14 for Morris and Smith, 13 for Drummond, 12 for Harris, 11 for Caldwell-Pope, nine apiece for Jon Leuer and Beno Udrih.
“Sometimes our ball movement isn’t as good as others, but I think we have an unselfish group,” he said. “It shows in how our shots are distributed. We are only calling plays for the point guard, Marcus and Tobias, really. Yet the shots balance out pretty well. It’s a sign those guys are playing the game the right way.”
But at big moments, the ball usually finds Harris or Morris. Their combined 47 points came on 26 shots, sizzling efficiency. Van Gundy is putting the burden of creating offense on their shoulders in Jackson’s absence and they’re flourishing in expanded roles. Harris is averaging 20.3 points to lead the Pistons, Morris second at 16.8.
“The good thing is, coming here last year and getting traded, I kind of understood where my spots were and where I would get looks,” Harris said. “That was a big emphasis this summer, picking those spots and trying to master what I can do at that end. All shots I practice. But another thing is we have a lot of good playmakers.”
“I’ve been very amazed,” Caldwell-Pope said of the balance and unselfishness. “We are moving the ball. Everybody’s getting equal shots. Nobody’s being selfish. We’re being a little too unselfish – that’s good.”
So far, so good, at least. They know they’re getting Jackson back, perhaps before November’s end. He’ll return to a team that’s finding ways to create offense without him – and finding ways to win games with its defense when it must.