Two games under Stan Van Gundy at The Palace, two 98-95 Pistons wins. That’s not the only weird quirk in common those two games have. In both, Josh Smith struggled mightily to put the ball in the basket – though Friday’s 5 of 14 wasn’t quite as painful as Wednesday’s 2 of 17 – but still was at the heart of the win through the variety of his contributions.
“The game winner and the defensive play at the other end,” Stan Van Gundy said of plays six seconds apart that preserved Friday’s win over Milwaukee. “The two biggest plays of the game.”
The Pistons were ahead 95-93 late in the shot clock when Kentavious Caldwell-Pope missed a hurried jump shot. It went wide left and only an alert rebounder would have been in position to corral it. Smith was wide awake, grabbed it and – because the ball hadn’t hit the rim to reset the shot clock – got the follow up in a hurry to give the Pistons a two-point lead with 15 seconds to go.
“I saw the angle of it and I was just trying to get in position to get it and try to make a play on it,” Smith said. “I knew the clock was going down so I wanted to make a quick play on it.”
Milwaukee, hurrying downcourt in a two-possession game, never managed to get a shot up because Smith found a passing lane and picked off Brandon Knight’s pass, feeding ahead to Caron Butler to put him at the free-throw line.
“I give him a lot of credit, I really do,” Van Gundy said. “Fighting through frustration and everything else and just hanging in there and caring about nothing other than winning the game. I give him a lot of credit for that.”
“Just intangibles,” Smith grinned when Van Gundy’s words were passed on to him. “The game is not all about scoring. Offense comes and goes and right now it’s a little struggle for me getting the ball in the hole, so I try to be as versatile as possible – draw defenders, make passes to the perimeter folks and guys knocking down shots and just finding a way to will myself to make plays.”
So Smith finished with 14 points, one of six Pistons in double figures, but also eight rebounds, five assists, two steals and a blocked shot – not a bad night’s work.
His co-star was another native Georgian, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who scored 19 points and for the second straight game drained a critical 3-pointer to keep a rallying team at bay. This time it came with 2:27 to play and Milwaukee on a 6-0 run to pull within three points.
“Huge, huge, huge,” Van Gundy said. “And great to see him taking it. He hit a huge shot. I thought he played great perimeter defense tonight.”
“He was backing off of me,” Caldwell-Pope said of his big triple, one of three he hit in five attempts, “so I just raised up and shot the ball instead of forcing it. I took what he gave me.”
For long stretches, he was matched up with Knight, the ex-Piston, who didn’t get much going until late in the third quarter, when a seven-point burst from him helped the Bucks take a 68-63 lead. It lasted as long as it took Brandon Jennings to drain two 3-pointers: 37 seconds.
“The thing I really liked team-wide is we hit a really bad stretch where we sort of lost it, they took a five- or six-point lead, and we didn’t melt down at all,” Van Gundy said. “We went from there and played. I thought that was a big step forward for us. A lot of times, those kind of games get away and I thought we played very well down the stretch.”
The consecutive wins leave the Pistons at 2-3 with Utah coming in Sunday before they hit the road for a daunting four-game trip against four 2014 playoff teams. No chance of looking past the Jazz, Smith said.
“We’re definitely taking it one game and one day at a time. Utah is a good team. They beat Cleveland at home and they have a lot of young talent there. We’re definitely not looking past Utah. Our main focus is to get that win before we go on this long road trip.”