FAST BREAKDOWN
Three quick observations for Friday night’s 110-104 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder at Little Caesars Arena
KIDS NIGHT – Somebody will check the records, but the Pistons and Oklahoma City Thunder might have sent out the youngest collective group of starters in NBA history on Friday night. The Pistons – starting Saddiq Bey, who turned 22 last week; Sekou Doumbouya, 20; Isaiah Stewart, 19; Josh Jackson, 24; and Killian Hayes, 19 – averaged 21 years 2 months. Oklahoma City came in even younger by a month. The Pistons played without Wayne Ellington, Mason Plumlee, Jerami Grant, Cory Joseph, Rodney McGruder, Hamidou Diallo and Dennis Smith Jr. Josh Jackson – the oldest starter for either team – led the Pistons with 29 points. The three Pistons first-round draft picks had a big impact on the game: Saddiq Bey scored 18 points and did that despite going 2 of 12 from the 3-point arc, showing off the progress he’s made at finishing inside, where he was 6 of 8; Isaiah Stewart set a new high with 21 rebounds while scoring 15 points; and Killian Hayes had nine points and seven assists, including a highlight-reel transition bounce pass from beyond half court that found Bey for a layup. It was the second time this season the Pistons started three rookies in a game and the last time that had happened came in March 1980 when Greg Kelser, Phil Hubbard and Terry Duerod all started. The Pistons won the game from the 3-point arc – or, more accurately, Oklahoma City lost it there. While the Pistons shot just 28.6 percent from the arc (10 of 35), the Thunder shot just 17.9 percent (7 of 39).
REMEMBER ME? – With Hamidou Diallo sitting out with right knee inflammation, there was no head-to-head matchup of the players traded for each other last month. Svi Mykhailiuk came off of the Oklahoma City bench and scored nine points, but the Pistons limited his 3-point attempts to just three – all misses – in nine total shots. Mykhailiuk took 77 percent of his shots with the Pistons this season from the 3-point arc, but he’s down to just more than 50 percent. The player with a Detroit-Oklahoma City connection who had the biggest impact on the game, though, was Frank Jackson. Waived by the Thunder coming out of training camp and picked up by the Pistons on a two-way contract, Jackson scored 18 points off the bench. Tyler Cook, picked up by the Pistons on two 10-day contracts and then signed for the rest of this season and beyond, never played for Oklahoma City but did spend time with the Thunder’s G League affiliate, the Oklahoma City Blue. Cook finished with eight points and six rebounds in 21 minutes.
SIRVYDIS TIME – With seven players unavailable, the Pistons had 10 players in uniform for Dwane Casey and that cracked the door for Deividas Sirvydis to get his first first-half minutes of the season. The 20-year-old, a Lithuania native, had played a total of 26 minutes in 12 games coming into Friday’s game and most of that had come recently. His two longest stints of the season – 4:14 against Washington and 4:41 against Oklahoma City both came in the first week of April. Sirvydis played nine minutes, going scoreless while missing three shots, including a pair of 3-point attempts. He picked up a nice assist on his first touch of the game, probing the middle and kicking the ball out to Frank Jackson for a triple. Dwane Casey praised Sirvydis’ offensive skill set before the game, saying, “He’s a shooter. Time and space, he can shoot it. The young man has an excellent basketball IQ. He’s done a good job in practice. He’s gotten in the weight room and gotten stronger. Not saying when, but he’s going to be an NBA player at one point. The things that stick out to your are his offensive IQ and his shooting.”