The Pistons are on pace to win 46 games, which means they’ll have several candidates for a top-10 wins list when they’ve closed the book on the 82-game regular season. Here’s guessing that their 118-96 demolition of Indiana isn’t getting moved off that list.
But if it does get bumped, then it’s going to be a very interesting spring out at 6 Championship Drive.
“Tonight, I think maybe more than any other game we’ve had, I thought was truly everybody,” Stan Van Gundy said. “Everybody who played, played well tonight. I don’t know that even in some of our better games that we’ve had before tonight we had everybody play well.”
The starters were again terrific as a group and brilliant individually. Marcus Morris outplayed the great Paul George head to head. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was a supernova of energy. Reggie Jackson played like the elite point guard he’s rapidly becoming. Ersan Ilyasova hit 9 of 13 shots, blocked two and stuck his nose into every fray.
When you don’t get to Andre Drummond until fifth among the starters, you know it’s a pretty good night. He grabbed 11 boards, blocked two shots and kept his consecutive steals streak alive at 25 games – joining perimeter athletic marvels Russell Westbrook and Jimmy Butler as the only NBA players who’ve had one in every game this season.
And maybe the most critical stretch in the game came in the second quarter when Van Gundy had Morris out anchoring the bench unit.
The Pistons trailed by a point when it started, the Pacers shooting a scorching 60 percent in the first quarter. The second unit started clamping down, sped Indiana up – the Pacers coughed the ball up six times in the quarter – and handed the starters a two-point lead when Van Gundy brought Drummond, Ilyasova, Caldwell-Pope and Jackson back with less than five minutes to play. Well rested, they closed the half on a 17-9 run for a 10-point cushion that was never threatened.
“Our bench unit picked us up defensively and sort of set the tone that kept us going through the third quarter,” Van Gundy said. “It was one of our best bench performances tonight.”
The Pistons put it away with their highest-scoring third quarter of the season, a 37-point explosion led by Ilyasova’s 10 points but sparked by Caldwell-Pope, whose defense and playmaking – yes, his playmaking – was electrifying. He scored only two of his 18 points in the quarter, but grabbed four of his seven boards and dished out six of his career-high eight assists.
“We knew it was a back to back – they had one, as well – so we wanted to come out with great energy,” Caldwell-Pope said. “I had a lot of energy, me and my teammates both. That was a great team win.”
“Especially in the second half, I thought he really picked up the defense,” Van Gundy said. “He made really good, solid plays. We don’t put him a lot of positions to be able to make plays. He got a few more chances with that tonight, but I thought he did a great job and took good shots. His decision making tonight was the best it’s been in terms of when he shot, when he passed.”
Jackson made it an emphatic win for Detroit’s backcourt, adding 21 points and nine assists against only one turnover, orchestrating the 118-point outing – the highest output of the season in regulation – against the NBA’s No. 5 defense. The Pistons shot 50 percent and hit 13 of 29 from the 3-point arc. Van Gundy has said he fully expects the Pistons to finish with much better offensive rankings than their current standing and they’re showing signs, averaging 107.1 over their last eight games and going over 100 points six times after topping 100 only four times in their first 17 games.
So are they hitting their stride?
“Hopefully. We’re still trying to figure it out,” Jackson said. “We’ve still got a long ways to go, but we’re piecing it together, day by day, and figuring each other out.”
Ilyasova has both contributed to and benefited from the greater flow to the offense. Jackson said it would take him some time to figure out how to play with the two new starting forwards, Morris and Ilyasova, and that appears to be well under way. Ilyasova’s 20 points against the Pacers gives him an average of 14.3 during the eight-game offensive uptick and he’s now averaging 11 points for the season with Morris up to 14.7.
Morris finished with 16 on Saturday, holding George to 13 on 4 of 16 shooting.
“He was in his air space,” Caldwell-Pope said. “Didn’t give him too much space to shoot the ball. He was on him every drive. It was great defense.”
You could have applied that word – “great” – or its synonyms to almost anything associated with the Pistons to describe this win. They’ll chalk up plenty more wins if they come close to following that blueprint over the season’s final 57 games.