DETROIT – The Pistons had no business winning – but they should have won, anyway.
“That was a big miss for us tonight,” Langston Galloway glumly admitted after the Pistons – without Blake Griffin and Reggie Jackson and with far too little of foul-plagued Andre Drummond – let a 13-point second-half lead slip away in a 117-111 loss to Philadelphia. “We had them on the ropes. They were about to give up.”
A 13-3 run early in the third quarter put the Pistons ahead 70-57, but Philadelphia – playing without Joel Embiid but with plenty of firepower regardless – answered with a 12-0 run.
The Pistons enabled that run by committing four turnovers and taking some ill-advised shots when they weren’t treating the ball like a radioactive device. They shot 54 percent but managed only 76 shot attempts because of the glaring number of turnovers, 23. Worse, they allowed the 76ers to do way too much damage off of them, scoring 31 points.
And then there were the 15 missed free throws, too.
“We put ourselves in a position to win against one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference,” Dwane Casey said. “We were missing two of our starters – they’re missing one of their main guys – but we got to the free-throw line 36 times, made only 21. That’s the big difference in the game. And then our turnovers.”
Those turnovers started early – six of them in the first 10 possessions. That dug an early 13-2 hole, one that Casey’s bench – the easy bright spot of the season’s first week – completely covered over before the first quarter was out, scoring 23 of 29 points.
Derrick Rose again was mostly brilliant, scoring 31 points on 14 of 21 shooting. The asterisk was the six turnovers.
With Jackson out with lower-back tightness, Tim Frazier started so, Casey said, they could better manage Rose’s minutes. They don’t want to push him past 27 or 28 minutes a game and he logged 26:44 against Philadelphia.
“I just wish we had more time to play him,” Casey said. “I’m sitting there watching the clock. Medically, he can’t. I would love to play him 40 minutes, but just can’t do it. He stirs the drink. He makes things happen. No disrespect to the guys who start, but we’re just kind of buying minutes for him to get in there.”
One thing Casey has considered, he said, is starting Luke Kennard, who scored 16 in 32 minutes, while the first unit is missing the scoring punch of Griffin and Jackson. Frazier, Bruce Brown and Tony Snell combined to score just 12 points on 4 of 15 shooting. But starting Kennard takes Casey’s best backcourt defender, Brown, away from the first unit and that creates more problems.
“Defense is still important and that’s one reason why we still believe in Bruce Brown,” Casey said.
The bench wound up scoring 69 of Detroit’s 111 points on 61 percent shooting. The Pistons won’t have to rely on it as much when Griffin and Jackson return – and, in fact, adding Markieff Morris (17 points) to the mix should further improve Casey’s hand.
“Myself, Derrick, Luke, Thon, whoever else is in at the time, we’re going to bring a lot of energy,” Galloway said. “That’s our mentality every single night going out there – shut down whoever we need to shut down and try to help the team any way possible.”
They’ve done it every time out so far and it could have – should have – left the Pistons with a 2-1 record after three games even without Griffin and now Jackson.
“That’s very difficult,” Casey said of trying to field a competitive lineup with the injuries on top of Drummond’s foul trouble and Rose’s minutes limit. “You’re holding your breath. Guys are working their behinds off. They’re playing hard. We’re got to learn to do it as a team until we get Blake back, get Reggie back, whenever that is.”