They have 79 games left to turn things around, but so far the Pistons are right where they finished last year in 3-point shooting: 29th in the NBA. And, in fact, the raw numbers are even worse. The 2014-15 Pistons are shooting .219 from the 3-point arc compared to .321 a season ago.
And that only concerns Stan Van Gundy in as much as he sees it affecting the psyche of his players. He's observed D.J. Augustin, a 40 percent career 3-point shooter who took 5.3 a game with Chicago last season, pass up wide-open triples and dribble himself into tougher shots, for one example, which prompted a pep talk at Sunday's practice.
"I said, 'You're going to shoot 40 percent from three. That's what you do,'" Van Gundy said. "You've got to hang with it and you can't start hesitating. That's our whole team. They got frustrated a couple of times today missing shots."
But shooting wasn't a point of emphasis of Sunday's practice, one that left Van Gundy pleased with the demeanor of his 0-3 team for its spirit and attentiveness the day after a disheartening home-opening loss to Brooklyn. All the things that lead up to shooting, however, were high on the docket.
Among them: cleaning up defensive breakdowns, getting better ball movement and setting sturdier screens. Van Gundy counted 20 points Brooklyn scored simply because of game-plan mistakes in the defense. Get more stops, he says, and your shooters are going to play with more ease and confidence, not feeling like every possession is do or die because of an alarming yield on the other end.
"I honestly believe that stuff goes hand in hand. If you're not stopping people and then you go down and have to make shots, that's not easy. But when you know your defense is holding and you're sort of playing free and easy, the game gets better."
He knows the improbable 1 of 17 shooting performance from the 3-point line contributed to the 102-90 loss--a game the Pistons led 84-83 with nine minutes to play before Joe Johnson scored 15 points in a 17-2 Brooklyn run--but he also knows better days are ahead on that count.
Besides the fact that Augustin is 3 of 13 from the arc and Van Gundy insists, "He's going to shoot 40 percent from three--I'd be willing to bet anybody on that," there's the fact that the player he surely felt would play significant minutes and likely lead the team in 3-point shooting, Jodie Meeks, is out with a stress reaction in his lower back ... and the guy who would have taken his spot in the rotation, Cartier Martin--another 40 percent 3-point shooter--has missed the first three games with a foot injury.
Meeks still has five weeks to go before he can be cleared for return, based on the eight-week projection made at the time of the mid-October diagnosis. Martin should be back much sooner, perhaps this week. And Van Gundy is confident that Caron Butler (4 of 12), Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (2 of 16), and Kyle Singler (4 of 11), along with Augustin, will give the Pistons sufficient 3-point punch until Meeks and Martin can return.
"We've got guys who can shoot the ball," he said. "If you look at true shooting percentage last year for small forwards, Caron and Cartier are both in the top 10. Kyle, too, I believe, so you're talking about three really good shooters--none of whom have shot the ball real well. If we get quality shots, those guys will more than likely go back to being who they are."
Van Gundy said Martin is feeling better and Meeks can now begin some more aggressive conditioning work. Even Gigi Datome is in the mix, he said. And he blamed himself for not getting Jonas Jerebko--a 3-point threat from the power forward position--in Saturday's game while playing Josh Smith 44 minutes.
"I didn't find minutes for him and I think that was a mistake," he said. "As I told these guys today, we are truly in this together. They've got to get better at some things, but it's not like Im laying it all on them. There are some things where I've got to get better and one of them is, at some point here in the near future, I've got to do a better job with our rotation and who were going to play."