AUBURN HILLS – Marcus Morris had a two-part message for his teammates as they prepared to put The Palace in their rear-view mirror for the All-Star break. The first part: be safe.
The second: be ready.
“We’ve got to come back with a playoff mindset,” Morris said after the 98-91 win. “Every game, the last ones we’ve got, are going to count. So we’ve got to come back and got to be really locked in.”
For all the travails of the season’s first half – first two-thirds, really – the Pistons take their leave sitting inside the Eastern Conference playoff field despite their 27-30 record. They’ve got everybody healthy. The schedule sets up favorably for them. They’ve won nine of their last 15 games. And their defense, porous for a month that began in mid-December, has drifted back toward the top 10 in the NBA, right where Van Gundy insists it must to be taken seriously.
It was as good as it’s been all season in Wednesday’s first half, in which they held Dallas to 35 points and 33 percent shooting. The Pistons led by 27 at halftime, saw that cut by more than half in the first five minutes by what was likely Dirk Nowitzki’s last great hurrah before Pistons fans, then held on for a win that felt critical.
“You just put it in the win column, go to our break, relax a little bit and move on,” Stan Van Gundy said.
If Van Gundy could be assured the Pistons would capture and sustain their first-half defense more consistently over the season’s final 25 games than they did in the first 57, he’d rest comfortably – well, reasonably so – over the All-Star break. If you could guarantee him the Reggie Jackson for all of Wednesday’s first half and at important moments when Dallas threatened the lead late for the next eight weeks, he might even ponder the possibilities of the havoc his team could wreak once the postseason commences.
Jackson, after a few weeks of tentative play and unsatisfactory results, was up on his toes early and often. He finished with 22 points, hitting 8 of 12 shots. He got into the paint when it wasn’t crowded with defenders and got the ball out of his hands decisively when the Mavericks ganged up on him.
“He was really aggressive to the basket,” Tobias Harris said. “He’s a guy who set the tone for us from the beginning of the game and got us that big lead. He looked really good tonight. It was good to see, especially when he hasn’t been playing his best. But that was a really good game for him. Probably a good confidence boost, also.”
Jackson darted into openings for two first-half steals that led to a dunk for Andre Drummond and one for him, though he came up a little gimpy after the dunk and drew semi-admonishment from teammates for not taking the easy layup instead, he joked. All good with the knee, though, he said, and grudgingly admitted it was a good game to take into the break.
“It feels good. It’s just a little confidence builder,” he said. “I’m not losing too much confidence. I figure the tides will turn.”
The Pistons scored the game’s first 10 points with Jackson making a handful of early impact plays: a driving reverse layup for the game’s first basket, a steal that led to Drummond’s dunk, a step-back 3-pointer after sending Deron Williams backpedaling into the paint off dribble penetration. The Pistons shot 52 percent and scored 62 first-half points while not really knocking down open shots – they were just 3 of 11 from the 3-point line – but defending brilliantly on many possessions.
“I thought we really defended and I thought we did a good job moving the ball,” Van Gundy said. “We didn’t shoot it great, but I thought we played well in the first half.”
It was, essentially, the blueprint for their playoff push as they hope to replicate the 16-9 finishing kick that ended a six-season playoff drought last spring.
“That’s who we have to be. That’s who we have to be all the time,” Jackson said. “I don’t know if you can get as many stops consistently, but the effort we came out with – just a concerted effort to get stops collectively, to be together, all five guys, and then to get out and run and make plays for each other, that’s the way we have to be every night.”