NEW YORK – On the night of Brandon Jennings’ return, the identity of the Pistons backup point guard mattered as much to their 108-96 loss to the Knicks as the identity of their bus driver to the airport did.
“We bring nothing defensively,” a terse and agitated Stan Van Gundy said in the bowels of the world’s most famous arena after the Pistons lost their third straight game. “Nothing.”
Against a team that averages 97.7 points a game, the Pistons allowed the Knicks – on a four-game losing streak – to score 25 or more points in all four quarters. Against the league’s No. 26 shooting team, the Pistons allowed New York to shoot 50 percent or better in every quarter but the second and 61 percent for the second half when the Knicks dropped 58 points on them.
“We didn’t get stops all night,” Reggie Jackson said. “We’ve all got to be better. That’s myself, that’s everybody. Coach, if the guys aren’t giving the effort, they’ve got to come out of the game – doesn’t matter who it is. We’re not doing the things we’ve got to do. We can’t continue to sink. We can’t continue to watch ourselves sink.”
The Pistons started the game in high gear offensively, scoring on their first five possessions and running up 20 points in the first seven minutes. But the seven-point lead they gave themselves all but evaporated less than a minute later on consecutive wide-open triples from Jose Calderon.
“Calderon, we just gave easy shots early. We just let him shoot,” Van Gundy said. “Didn’t do anything. We didn’t guard (Robin) Lopez early in the game. We didn’t try hard enough to win. Give the Knicks credit. They played a lot harder than we did – a lot harder.”
Van Gundy gave two starters something of a pass defensively, Marcus Morris for his work on Carmelo Anthony and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope against Aron Afflalo. Asked about the job stars Jackson and Andre Drummond did on the two Knicks he cited, Calderon and Lopez, Van Gundy shrugged.
“I thought Marcus fought pretty hard individually. I thought Pope on Afflalo fought pretty hard. And that was it for defensive effort that I was happy with. It’s not just (Drummond and Jackson). I didn’t think anybody else guarded.”
Lopez helped get the Knicks righted defensively after the Pistons’ early surge, blocking six shots for the game, four of them in the first half. Drummond was a multiple victim, getting five of his shots blocked. Drummond finished with 13 points and nine rebounds, almost all of his production squeezed into the last seven minutes of the third quarter when he had nine points and six boards as the Pistons rallied within two points on a 9-0 run. In five fourth-quarter minutes, he went scoreless without a rebound after re-entering the game with eight minutes left and the Pistons trailing by six points.
“Lopez blocked six shots. You know why? Because he tried hard,” Van Gundy said. “We need to take a lesson from that. Robin Lopez was the hardest-playing guy on the floor tonight and was a major factor in the game. He played a lot harder.”
The Pistons trailed by one point at halftime, but the Knicks scored 15 points by getting something out of each of their first seven possessions of the half to quickly seize control of the game.
“That’s where our starters are at right now,” he said. “No defensive focus at all. No ability to stop anybody. Not rebounding the ball. There’s where it is.”
Van Gundy said before the game that while his starting group had been better together much longer than they’d been less than satisfactory, he wouldn’t allow them to continue as a unit indefinitely if they didn’t start playing more effectively in the first and third quarters.
Jackson kept coming back to playing time as a coach’s best weapon to combat poor play after the double-digits loss.
“If guys aren’t willing to do it, you’ve got to come out. Tired of losing,” he said. “Tired of watching fans walk out of here, up 15, knowing they’re going home excited about a win. Season’s not even halfway through. This playoff thing we talked about, it’s not guaranteed. If we want to be there, we’ve got to come out here and play like we want to be there.”
Jennings went scoreless in two stints of about seven minutes each in both halves with four assists and one turnover, then scored seven points in the last 2:36 when Van Gundy waved his bench back in with the Knicks up by 15, making both of his shots, one a triple, plus two free throws.
“He was all right. First time out there, he was all right,” Van Gundy said. “He wasn’t great, but he wasn’t bad. He was OK.”
OK is a C. On a night Van Gundy flunked the Pistons defensively, the identity of their backup point guard didn’t much matter.