FAST BREAKDOWN
Three quick observations from Friday night’s 109-106 loss to the Charlotte Hornets at Spectrum Center
BITTER PILL – The Pistons had legitimate reasons for the 4-8 record they lugged into Friday’s game at Charlotte, but their performance against the Hornets is one they won’t easily digest. Leading by 14 at halftime on a night they had both Blake Griffin and Derrick Rose in the lineup, the Pistons scuffled through a second half in which they scored just 41 points while committing 12 turnovers. Their 14-point lead evaporated in the third quarter – Charlotte both started and ended the quarter on 11-2 runs – and then Charlotte went on a 9-0 run as the Pistons went scoreless for nearly four minutes. The Pistons took a 3-point lead with 50 seconds left on Langston Galloway’s seventh 3-pointer of the game, but Marvin Williams tied it on a second-chance triple with 23 seconds to play. After the Pistons committed their 21st turnover of the game with a second left, Charlotte got a triple from Malik Monk off an inbound play from the sideline near the Pistons bench. Charlotte outrebounded the Pistons by eight in the second half and scored 15 second-chance points in the second half alone. They scored 27 off of Pistons turnovers. The loss was the Pistons fourth straight.
STARS REAPPEAR – Derrick Rose drew his first start of the season in his most recent game, but after sitting out at Miami on Tuesday Dwane Casey chose to return Rose to his role off the bench. With both Rose and Blake Griffin on a minutes restriction in the Monday loss to Minnesota, Casey started both but played them in short bursts. They were both on the bench, along with three other starters including the foul-plagued Andre Drummond, when Minnesota went on a 15-1 run in the last 2:25 of the first quarter to seize control of a game it would win by six points. Then both Griffin and Rose sat out at Miami the next night on a back to back. Griffin played in five- to six-minute bursts in his return on Monday, but the leash got let out incrementally at Charlotte. Griffin played 7:05 to start the second quarter and 9:18 to start the third, though Casey brought Markieff Morris off of the bench to the scorer’s table nearly two minutes of playing time prior to that. He then returned for the final 7:32, finishing with 19 points, three rebounds and six assists in 30 minutes. Rose played 12 first-half minutes and 26 for the game, finishing with 16 points.
IN THE ZONE – With the Pistons generally underperforming on defense – they came into the game 27th in defensive rating, 27th in field-goal percentage defense and 28th in 3-point percentage defense – Dwane Casey has sprinkled zone defense into the mix the past two games. He broke it out against Miami to good effect after the Pistons fell behind by 29 points, helping turn the game around to enable the Pistons to pull within single digits midway through the fourth quarter. When Charlotte cut an early 14-point deficit in half after Andre Drummond exited with two fouls nine minutes into the game, Casey again helped blunt opposition momentum by switching to the zone in the second quarter, helping the Pistons expand their lead to 14 again by halftime. The Pistons again used a zone to good effect in the middle of the third quarter after the Hornets opened with an 11-2 spurt. Charlotte, after hitting just 3 of 14 3-point shots in the first half, finished 13 of 35 from the arc.