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The RIP-ple effect of Hamilton, especially, being out of the lineup is perhaps most telling in Stuckey’s shooting numbers. One game isn’t a very reliable sample size, obviously, but in the 22-point win at Memphis to open the season a week ago, Stuckey shot 6 of 10. In the four games since then, Stuckey is 22 of 72. I’ll save you the math – that’s 30 percent shooting.
And perhaps more troubling than the shooting percentage is the number of shots Stuckey is putting up. Eighteen a game is a little high for a point guard – or, for that matter, for any player in an offense designed to spread the shots around.
But Stuckey’s shot total is less an indictment of him than a nod to the reality of the situation. Without Hamilton and Prince, and with Charlie Villanueva scuffling, and with the other four veteran big men who’ve gotten cracks at the frontcourt rotation combining to score 49 points in five games … well, Stuckey is balancing a lot on his sturdy shoulders these days.
Ben Gordon seems less affected by Hamilton’s absence, though his minutes – as they have for Stuckey and Will Bynum, as well – are up dramatically. After playing 26 in the Memphis win, Gordon is averaging more than 41 since. Gordon scored 22 on 12 shots in the one game he played with Hamilton and is averaging 25.8 on 16 shots since.
That’s not all that hard to digest, really – Gordon’s role hasn’t changed all that much since Hamilton went down, only the amount of time he’s playing it. Stuckey’s role has changed in that one of the two primary scoring threats on his flanks – at least until Villanueva establishes his niche, as he took a step toward doing with his 16-point game at Toronto – is no longer available to him.
And until Villanueva gets rolling, and until he earns the full trust of John Kuester defensively to warrant more than the 26 minutes he’s getting, the lack of a frontcourt scoring option puts even more of the onus on the backcourt to shoulder the burden. Without Prince to co-anchor the defense along with Ben Wallace, Kuester can’t afford to be tolerant of defensive lapses, further squeezing Villanueva’s minutes.
Stuckey’s not going to continue to shoot 30 percent with Hamilton out, of course, and this isn’t to suggest missing mid-range jump shots has anything to do with Hamilton in or out of the game. Only that Stuckey is necessarily more focused on scoring when he only has one other scorer in the game with him, as he often does, and that such a focus on scoring means he’s taking a greater number of tough chances than otherwise.
More of those RIP-ple effects, not all of them bad:
It will be a great luxury, once Hamilton and Prince return, for Kuester to go back to using Bynum more selectively. Somewhere around 20 minutes a game would allow Bynum to go full bore on pretty much every possession – and that’s another thing that will lighten the load on Stuckey’s shoulders.
Given their druthers, the Pistons would have rather nursed Jerebko and Daye along, just as they are DaJuan Summers, in practices so their mistakes wouldn’t cost possessions in games that count. But the Hamilton-Prince absences cost them that luxury. The flip side is nothing accelerates the learning curve quite like real game experience.
Even if the Pistons are asking limited roles of both Jerebko and Daye now, they both have the stuff of terrific all-around games.
The fact Jerebko did a defensive job that skilled defensive veterans would have envied on back-to-back nights against two pros with offensive skills as diverse and multifaceted as Vince Carter and Hedo Turkoglu – that’s like batting against Justin Verlander one night, Tim Wakefield the next – trumpets his athleticism and tenacity. Jerebko is being asked to be a defender/hustle guy right now, but you can see the roots of a well-rounded offensive game already sunk, too.
One night after missing all five of his shots against Orlando, he made all three against Toronto – including a triple. One of the first things Pistons personnel director George David told me about Jerebko last summer, after the draft, was that he was struck how effortlessly Jerebko could shoot 3s. And if he’s playing small forward, as he has in Prince’s stead, Jerebko gives the Pistons a rebounding force at that position.
In the present, Jerebko does a nice job of keeping the ball moving with purposeful passes. In the future – perhaps the near future – you’ll see that he can put it on the floor with positive results. In Las Vegas, a few times he called to mind Turkoglu, of all people, for the way he wound his way to the basket, without any explosive movements, by keeping his dribble alive and his head up. The Pistons love his potential as a pick-and-roll big man, too.
As for Daye, get accustomed to seeing him block shots without leaving his feet, as he did to Marco Belinelli. The play he made to block a shot, dribble the length of the floor and set up a scoring chance for a teammate flashes all of his unorthodox skills – the incredible length, ballhandling and vision.
Well, almost. The skill that really jumps out with Daye – and it hasn’t really translated much to games yet – is that shooting stroke. We saw Daye shake a little of that rookie awe factor in Toronto; once it’s left for good, you’re going to see a shooter who on some nights will rival Gordon on the wow meter.
At least one more game – Friday night at Orlando – the Pistons will have to live with and hope to benefit from those RIP-ple effects that are touching both their frontcourt and their backcourt, their offense and their defense.
