DETROIT – If Dwane Casey had his roster available for all 39 games played to date, his top five 3-point shooters by volume would almost certainly include Blake Griffin, Luke Kennard, Reggie Jackson and Markieff Morris.
None of them are currently available.
And thus there are destined to be nights like Thursday, when the coach who wants to get up 35 or more 3-point shots a night has to settle for the Pistons launching 20 – in an overtime game, no less.
Cleveland didn’t get up any more and actually made one fewer than the six the Pistons sunk, but the Cavaliers had just enough for a 115-112 win, anyway. Just enough Tristan Thompson, who scored a career-best 35 points, and just enough punch from the young lottery backcourt of Collin Sexton (19 points) and Darius Garland (20).
“The old theory that you can’t make enough twos to win – evidently, they did,” Casey said after the 115-112 overtime loss Thursday upon the return from a six-game road trip that ended with Tuesday’s win at Cleveland.
“We had trouble with Thompson on the boards. When we did get stops, he did a heck of a job keeping rebounds alive. We had a hard time keeping their small guys in front of us and Tristan Thompson was tricking us a little bit with his slip outs. The inside play and containing the ball was the difference in the game.”
The Pistons had the game under control for about 33 minutes. Up 12 with three minutes left in the third quarter, they allowed Cleveland to finish the quarter on a 12-2 run with Garland scoring Cleveland’s last eight points on three shots.
With the Pistons focused on smothering Sexton and Garland, openings for Thompson arose.
“He was making that jump hook today,” Christian Wood said of Thompson, who hit 15 of 20 shots, all within sniffing distance of the rim, either the jump hooks Wood referenced or layups or lobs created by penetration that required Andre Drummond to venture off of Thompson. “He was doing a good job of rebounding, playing hard with effort.”
The Pistons appeared to regain their footing with a 9-0 run, though, after Cleveland took its first lead since it was 1-0 on Brandon Knight’s basket with 7:33 to go. It was 100-92 with 4:27 left but Cleveland went on an 8-0 run and got to overtime on two Thompson free throws to tie it at 102 with 24.5 seconds left and subsequently surviving Derrick Rose’s 22-footer at the buzzer.
Rose wound up blowing past his previous season-high in minutes – 31, which came in Tuesday’s win at Cleveland – with the overtime, finishing at 36. Rose played all but 1:12 of the fourth quarter and all five minutes of overtime and Casey felt that came into play late.
Maybe it affected Rose’s last regulation possession, when he feinted a few times against the defense of Alfonzo McKinnie but never really committed to getting into the paint and settled for the long, step-back two. He did score on three straight overtime possessions to put the Pistons ahead 110-106 with 1:59 to play, but missed a 15-footer on the next possession and committed a key turnover after Cleveland took a 113-110 lead on Kevin Love’s corner three with 38 seconds left.
“Derrick was getting in there,” Casey said. “Down the stretch, was wanting him to get in the paint a little bit more. Just didn’t know how much juice he had left. He wanted to play, but you could see it – some of the uncharacteristic turnovers he had.”
Since Tim Frazier struggled in last week’s loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, Casey has re-inserted Bruce Brown into the starting lineup and cut Frazier from the rotation. As he’s done for the past four games, Casey again started Rose in the third quarter. But the absence of Jackson coupled with the loss of Griffin and Kennard – two players who the offense can be funneled through in addition to two volume 3-point shooters – has left the Pistons with far fewer offensive dimensions than they envisioned.
“We’ve still got a lot of guys that can shoot the three ball,” said Drummond, whose seventh 20-20 game of the season (28 points, 23 boards) was also his second straight. “Obviously, our main guys that shoot the ball are out right now.”
The only 3-point shooters of consequence in the rotation are Tony Snell, Svi Mykhailiuk and Langston Galloway. But without the playmaking skills and scoring threats represented by Griffin, Kennard and Jackson, their opportunities to catch and shoot have been curtailed.
“They’re struggling a little bit,” Casey admitted after Snell (1 of 5), Mykahiliuk (1 of 2) and Galloway (1 of 4) were held down. “We want to attack the paint – multiple paint touches – and we did get into the paint. But we’ve got to make sure we continue to see the kickouts. I think the basket looks so wide open that we forget that those kickouts are there and the right people are in those spots. We’ve got to continue to look for that. I know the last game, that was the key for us winning was the kickout threes we got. And tonight we didn’t find it.”