FAST BREAKDOWN
Three quick thoughts from Friday night’s 90-84 loss to the New York Knicks at Little Caesars Arena
WELCOME BACK, BASKETBALL – After a 275-day absence, the Pistons played their first basketball game since March 11 when they lost at Philadelphia and minutes later heard the NBA had suspended the 2019-20 season – eventually ending it for the Pistons amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. There were no fans at Little Caesars Arena as the Pistons and Knicks – two of the eight teams not included in the Orlando bubble relaunch of the season that culminated in October with the Los Angeles Lakers beating Miami in the NBA Finals – and the teams had nothing approaching a conventional off-season. The Pistons had five days of training camp practices in advance of Friday’s opener and the game began as predictably ragged as you’d have thought with the Pistons committing nine turnovers and shooting 33 percent in the first quarter, yet they never trailed by more than four points. A one-point halftime deficit ballooned to 13 after three quarters as the Pistons shot less than 33 percent for most of the game and that meant a lot of transition chances for the Knicks that started to pay off in the second half. Svi Mykhailiuk and Saddiq Bey led the Pistons with 14 points each, Mykhailiuk hitting 4 of 8 3-point shots on a night the Pistons hit just 10 of 39. They shot 32.5 percent overall and 25.6 percent from the 3-point arc and committed 22 turnovers. Aesthetically, it wasn’t exactly what you imagine when you think of vintage NBA basketball. But after nine months away, it was beautiful all the same.
ROTATION NOTATIONS – Dwane Casey said not to make too much of the rotation for the first game, so file this under “for what it’s worth,” but after the starting unit of Blake Griffin, Jerami Grant, Mason Plumlee, Delon Wright and Killian Hayes came a second unit of Sekou Doumbouya, Josh Jackson, Svi Mykhailiuk, Jahlil Okafor and Derrick Rose. The next two to come off of the bench were wings Wayne Ellington and Saddiq Bey as Casey used 12 players in each half until getting his other two rookie draft picks, Saben Lee and Isaiah Stewart, in over the last several minutes. Rodney McGruder also finished the game. Griffin got his minutes in early, playing 17 in the first half and stopping at 22. That was as much as anybody played, Grant matching Griffin’s 22 with Plumlee checking in with 21 and Okafor with 20. Casey probably will mix combinations up some when the Pistons host the Knicks again on Sunday in their final home preseason game before playing twice at Washington next week to wrap up preseason.
RANDOM OBSERVATIONS – Killian Hayes accounted for three of the nine first-quarter Pistons turnovers and finished with eight, a few coming as he tried to thread passes into tight spaces – the type of adjustment-to-NBA-speed errors the Pistons knew to expect from the 19-year-old French teen. He had another rough stretch in the second half, putting up a line of five points, four rebounds and three assists in 21 minutes. But he also flashed with a stretch of four second-quarter possessions where his vision and penetration resulted in three wide-open 3-point looks for teammates. … Blake Griffin played 17 first-half minutes, finishing with nine points, seven rebounds and five assists and – most critically – appeared to move more freely than he ever managed while dealing with his surgically repaired left knee last season. … Saddiq Bey, the third first-round pick, got off five good triple attempts in seven first-half minutes, draining two. Small sample size, but the ability to find open spaces is a good omen. He looked like he belonged. … Jahlil Okafor said he’d “transformed” his body over the off-season and had a good sequence in the first half with a hustle put-back to start a three-point play and then a post-up power move to score.