OKLAHOMA CITY - Stan Van Gundy didn't promise the playoffs or X number of wins. He did vow two things: a team that played hard every night and got better as the season unfolded.
We're not far enough removed from the Oct. 29 season opener--two weeks and change--to make any sweeping assessments of the back half of that vow. But anybody who says the Pistons aren't playing consistently hard either hasn't watched, has no basis for comparison or possesses a flawed memory.
The Pistons woke up in frigid Oklahoma City--80 degrees here on Monday, low 20s when Roundball One touched down--this morning with a 2-6 record. In seven of those eight games, they've held a lead at some point within the final eight minutes. The only exception was in Monday's loss at Chicago, when they trailed by two with less than three minutes to play.
The numbers--though an eight-game sample size should be considered cautiously--say they're a better defensive team than a year ago. Not good enough for Van Gundy, who has built top-10 defensive teams in each of his seven full seasons as a head coach except the lockout year when Dwight Howards back injury dragged the Magic down to 13th, but better.
They were 25th in defensive efficiency, 23rd in defensive rebounding percentage, 27th in field-goal percentage defense and 21st in 3-point defense last season; the corresponding numbers so far are 19th, ninth, 16th and eighth this season.
Some of the corresponding offensive numbers have gone the other way. Maybe that's a byproduct of greater emphasis on defense. More likely it's a function of aberrational shooting numbers for a few of their key players coupled with the absence of two of the free-agent shooters Van Gundy imported, Jodie Meeks and Cartier Martin.
It's fair to guess that a big chunk of Van Gundy's offensive playbook would have been designed to free Meeks for 3-point shots. He was his first priority in free agency and after a dazzling first week of camp Van Gundy said Meeks had been even more than the Pistons anticipated.
Martin is the guy who would have assumed his role in the two-man shooting guard platoon with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. The absence of both has spilled over to affect the frontcourt rotation, too, meaning far more minutes at small forward for Josh Smith than Van Gundy imagined.
But there's another component of the injuries--don't forget the one to Aaron Gray, too, that eventually forced the Pistons to waive him off the roster--that won't be reflected by any statistical measure but looms over the Pistons. One reason Van Gundy was eager to bring in a handful of new players was the necessity of changing the culture of losing of getting them to believe in something they haven't known - that's afflicted the Pistons over the past five non-playoff seasons.
Van Gundy talked at length about that, seated on a folding chair outside the locker room at the Verizon Center, on Wednesday morning before the Pistons lost another game within their reach, leading at Washington in the final 90 seconds before losing 107-103.
"Because of injuries--other than D.J. (Augustin) and Caron (Butler)--you're really talking the same guys. And one of the things you fight, they all want to do it, but the psychology. Every year, it gets harder. It doesn't get easier. It gets harder every year. So I said to 'em today, Jonas (Jerebko), Greg (Monroe), you've been here four years. It hasn't worked yet. Why are you going to believe it's going to work now?"
" But the problem is when you don't, then--and we can see it in crucial times in the game, especially--guys just sort of go their own way. It's a lack of trust that things are going to work, so I'm going to try to do it on my own and hit a home run or I'm going to change up what I do defensively. It's changing that mentality and getting to the point that you believe if we stay with what were doing and we execute what were supposed to do that more times than not, it'll work out."
The Pistons have run up against that wall. The good news: They haven't been close enough the last few years to smack their collective head against it until it hurts. But breaking it down and putting it past them is hard, hard work. It doesn't generally happen in two weeks without a massive injection of major talent.
Van Gundy's track record shows he knows how to keep pushing, pushing without snapping his team's spirit. It's a race to see if a team can keep mustering the will to run headlong into the wall before its belief that it eventually will crumble fades. But Van Gundy's first Miami team went 5-15 over its first 20 games, 17-4 over its last 21. His first Orlando team a playoff team swept but not dominated by the Pistons the year before he arrived improved by 12 wins.
"We're going to do what we do hard and well and believe in it," Van Gundy said of the mind-set the Pistons are working toward. "And even if it doesn't work this time, the next time we're going to do it. Good teams have that. Once you're good and you've done it enough, it's easy. The more you lose, the harder it gets to do it the next time. So these guys are going to have to have incredible mental toughness to try to overcome that because every experience makes it more ingrained in what they're doing."
He's winning half of that battle so far. The Pistons are doing what they do hard. Doing it well--consistently and for 48 minutes--is a work in progress. A bet against Van Gundy winning that half of the battle, as well, is a bet against history.