In news that surely will warm the hearts of Pistons fans who recall the best of the Bad Boys and the Goin’ to Work eras, LeBron James declared after Cleveland’s loss at The Palace Tuesday that his team wasn’t tough enough, which implies the Pistons – whose best moments always were built on the foundation of toughness – were.
Stan Van Gundy didn’t think that of his Pistons a year ago and put it on his priority list.
“We added a lot of toughness,” he said after Wednesday’s practice. “Stanley (Johnson) in the draft and Aron Baynes and (Ersan) Ilyasova, Marcus Morris. All of those guys are really tough, hard-playing guys. They’ve helped raise our level of intensity with the guys we have coming back.”
Reggie Jackson and Andre Drummond dominated the postgame chatter with very good reason. They combined for nearly half the Pistons points (48 of 104), exactly half their rebounds (24 of 48) and more than half their assists (12 of 20).
But the two new starting forwards Van Gundy added last summer, Ilyasova and Morris, were right there with them in contributions to the whole.
Ilyasova scored 20 points for the second time in three games, benefiting most from Jackson’s determination to take the plays the defense were conceding by knocking down 4 of 6 from the 3-point arc. But he also grabbed six rebounds, none bigger than the defensive board wrestled from Tristan Thompson with 21 seconds left and the Pistons up a point.
“It was huge,” Van Gundy said. “He gives you a great effort every single night. The one thing we know we’re going to get out of that positions with those two guys (Anthony Tolliver the other) is both of them are going to give you a great, great effort every night.”
Ilyasova’s scoring is down through 11 games, a 9.8 average, in large measure because he’s not getting many shot attempts. His 11.0 attempts per 36 minutes are a career low. But he got 10 shots in his 28 minutes against Cleveland – only the fourth time he’s been in double-digit attempts for the season. In fact, all five Pistons starters got double-digit attempts in their win over the Cavs. And for the way this team is built, that’s what Van Gundy wants to see.
“That is a good thing,” he said. “I think it should be. We should be, on our best nights, I would think if the ball’s moving – and a lot of it depends on how you’re defended – but it’s a good night when we have that kind of balance.”
Morris didn’t get much coming his way offensively in the first half with Jackson getting the ball to the weak side to Ilyasova and Caldwell-Pope frequently. But he rebounded from a 1 of 5 first half to play LeBron James to pretty much a draw in the second half, outscoring him 11-7 in exactly the same minutes, 19:58 apiece.
“I thought he battled him well,” Van Gundy said. “He’s got some size. He’s got great toughness. He’s not going to back down. I said it after the game, you don’t stop LeBron. But he didn’t give him anything easy. Even in the first half, he was hitting long threes. As good as LeBron is off the dribble, you’ve got to concede something. I thought he played him pretty well, pretty tough.”
Toughness can take different forms. It’s playing over fatigue. It’s Ilyasova battling an elite rebounder for the loose ball that might have made the difference between winning and losing. It’s Morris putting a so-so first half behind him to go toe to toe down the stretch with the greatest player on the planet. It’s Jackson switching on to James and not conceding despite the physical mismatch.
And it’s rebounding from the disappointing end to the six-game road trip to stand up to the Eastern Conference heavyweights 36 hours after touching down from California.
“It was a conscious effort to add those kinds of guys,” Van Gundy said. “They’ve added a lot to us.”