It wasn’t often a thing of beauty, but the 30 minutes of scrimmage that Lawrence Frank opened to reporters Tuesday would have sent a wave of electricity through Pistons fans for the defensive intensity and the constant communication exhibited from a team that too often came up lacking in those categories the last few seasons.
Frank, as several players have noted over the first five days of camp, interrupted the scrimmage a handful of times over those 30 minutes to point out mistakes, most notably for the way the White team defended the pick and roll. Twice he awarded the other team three points even when an open 3-pointer didn’t fall – once before it could even be attempted – as a way of pointing out the defensive breakdown.
“Any time you’re going against yourself, there is going to be a plus on one side and a minus on the other,” Frank said. “This has been a planned buildup. In the half court, we practice for 2½ hours before we scrimmage, so in the half court it’s got to be very precise and we’ve got to do it perfectly. But now there’s slippage once you go full court. We’ve just got to keep on building to have the same execution when we go full court that we do in half court.”
Some quick impressions from Tuesday’s scrimmage: