Stanley Johnson surely will have more spectacular games over the course of what’s shaping up as a long and memorable NBA career. But he’ll remember the 19 points and 10 boards he put up against Houston.
But not as much as he’ll remember something else.
“Stan yelling at me in the fourth quarter,” he grinned after Monday’s woolly 116-105 win – a game the Pistons led by 28 in the second quarter and saw it shrink to four a minute into the fourth. “It was an experience. Definitely.”
“He played well offensively tonight. Defensively, he wasn’t very good,” Stan Van Gundy said. “It seemed like they scored every point on him in the fourth quarter. No matter who he switched on to, that’s who scored.”
The rookie caught some of the full James Harden experience and then got a good dose of Marcus Thornton, one of those guys who can come off the bench and hit you with a 12-point spurt in a few minutes every now and then. They combined for 27 points in the fourth quarter as the Rockets kept surging after a thoroughly listless first half in which the Pistons scored 64 points and shot 55 percent a night after shooting 33 percent and scoring 83 in losing at Brooklyn.
“The rules went out the window and no one told me,” Johnson said. “I was following the (Pistons defensive) rules when I wasn’t supposed to be following the real rules, just the end-of-the-game rules. Dwight Howard’s under the rim, you drop in there. I dropped in there like I was supposed to, but it’s end of the game. You’re supposed to stay with your man and let Dwight dunk it. I didn’t know.
“Another day, another lesson.”
Better to absorb them in wins, though. This win pulled the Pistons back to .500 after they dipped below for the first time this season with Sunday’s loss.
“We had a really bad three minutes at the end of the third quarter – really bad,” Van Gundy said. “We didn’t come out in the second half with great energy, but we were still up 20 and then we just … fell apart very quickly, which gives teams a lot of momentum when it happens that quick. That part was disappointing, but we hung in there and we did a good job, finished out, got the win. That’s all that matters.”
It was the kind of game that makes NBA coaches consider life as a TV analyst – like another Van Gundy, perhaps – but it was the kind of game that also spoke to the resolve that characterize Van Gundy’s teams, the reason he’s held in such regard. Sunday’s loss was frustrating for their blatant inability to make shots that pros routinely make and that could have played on their mind to start the game but didn’t. Then they had to deal with one of the most paralyzing situations NBA teams face – a huge lead evaporates and how do you swing momentum back to your side after it’s already done a 180?
In both cases, the performance of Reggie Jackson was huge. Coming off a 4 of 20 game at Brooklyn, Jackson lit the fuse that got the Pistons off and running Monday with an 11-point first quarter as the Pistons jumped ahead 29-21. And when it got tight late, he had the ball in his hands and made huge plays in the fourth quarter, scoring 14 points on 4 of 6 shooting with two assists and just one turnover even as the Rockets constantly trapped and applied full-court pressure.
“He was really, really good,” Van Gundy said. “He and Andre have to play well. I think everybody knows that. We need those guys to play well. We need (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope) to defend, we need guys to rebound. We’ve all got roles.”
Andre Drummond didn’t get much of a chance to play his early, picking up two fouls in the first three minutes on reaches against Dwight Howard. It’s a tough thing for any player, young ones especially, to get past that, to get back in the flow of the game after sitting for long stretches. But Drummond finished with 24 points, 13 boards, three steals and three blocks in just 27 minutes, the only blemish on his night the 4 of 18 foul shooting in the face of Houston’s tactic of intentionally fouling – a big part of its third-quarter comeback.
“He’s been special. It’s kind of hard to say he goes to a whole ’nother level, but I think he looks forward to matchups like this,” Jackson said. “Man, Dwight kind of brought out the shot-blocker in Andre. He really had our back.”
It didn’t go unnoticed over on the other sideline who made the big plays to beat a team that got to the Western Conference finals a year ago.
“They’re very good players,” Rockets coach J.B. Bickerstaff said of Drummond and Jackson. “This team has a very nice young core. Drummond has the ability to dominate the paint on both ends. He’s a great offensive rebounder, he’s running the floor now, he’s a tremendous player. Then the combination of him and Reggie – Reggie can get in the paint. He’s tough to guard in pick and roll. This team is put together well.”