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Playing one way works just fine for Pistons when Ilyasova, Tolliver are draining 3s

In his ideal world, Stan Van Gundy has a bench deep enough with talented players that he’d have a counter for whatever the opponent drew up. He said last season, when the Pistons played parts of games with two big men in Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond, that it was to the Pistons’ benefit to be able to play both ways – spreading the floor with four shooters around Drummond or Monroe, then using them in tandem.

But Monroe left in free agency and the Pistons are a one-way team so far this season, using two 3-point shooters at power forward – Ersan Ilyasova to start, Anthony Tolliver off the bench.

“Right now it’s a good way for us to go,” Van Gundy said. “I just think our chemistry and connectedness sort of goes up and down. That’s the problem right now. It should be easier in the fact that we’re playing one way. But it hasn’t worked out that way. We’ve been up and down. We’ve got a lot of new guys and all of that, but we’ve got to get better.”

But the one way the Pistons play works beautifully on nights like New Year’s Eve when Ilyasova was perfect on his three 3-point attempts and Tolliver drained 5 of 7.

“That helps us, yes. Look, there’s no substitute for the ball going in the basket,” Van Gundy said after the first practice of 2016. “I didn’t think we played particularly well last night, but when you make 14 threes and (shoot) 40 percent, you’ve got a damn good chance of winning.”

Ilyasova leads the Pistons in 3-point shots made with 52 despite being fifth in minutes played and Tolliver is fourth with 43. They’ve combined to make 35.7 percent of their 3-point shots and average nearly three made triples a game. Tolliver’s shooting has picked up of late, more in line with his career numbers, and they now rank 1-2 in accuracy – Ilyasova at .382, Tolliver at .361 – among Pistons with double-digit attempts.

“Never lose confidence when you’re a shooter,” said Tolliver, who shot .414 from the 3-point arc in December after bumping along at .308 in November. “You just shoot it and live with the results. It’s been going in for me lately.”

Reggie Jackson struggled upon arrival from Oklahoma City last February when playing with both Monroe and Drummond. On the night Monroe missed his first of 11 games with a knee injury, Jackson had a 20-20 points-assists game in a win over Memphis, starting a dynamic finishing kick to his season.

“It just makes it easy,” Jackson said of playing the same way for 48 minutes. “You know what the general basis of the offense is going to look like and where guys are typically going to be if we’re in the right spots. After that, you just kind of have your picture that you already know and the template that you’re in.”

But it’s not really simple to get it right. It takes execution and repetition and familiarity to make it work and that’s still in process. When it works right, Jackson finds he has more space to operate. When it doesn’t …

“When we have proper spacing, yeah; when we don’t, it doesn’t help at all,” Jackson said. “It’s almost the same as having Greg in there. If we’re not making just random cuts and we’re doing our jobs of being in our spots, it makes my job a lot easier and makes it easier to deliver the ball to guys in the shooting pocket.”

Playing without an old-school power forward is working for the Pistons because Ilyasova and Tolliver have also held up defensively. Ilyasova’s scrappiness and IQ serves him well. And defense is an underrated aspect of Tolliver’s game, Van Gundy thinks.

“I think that’s actually one of his real strengths,” Van Gundy said. “He’s a good defender, both individually and as a team defender. And the numbers bear that out. When you look at the lineups, lineups with him defend pretty well.”

The combined production of Ilyasova and Tolliver has also helped the Pistons survive the Jodie Meeks injury. Van Gundy anticipated using Marcus Morris some at power forward, as well, but with Meeks gone he needs Morris, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and rookie Stanley Johnson to absorb all 96 minutes at small forward and shooting guard.

“We’d have to give minutes to another perimeter guy and I think right now we’re better with (Ilyasova and Tolliver) playing,” Van Gundy said. “Marcus is certainly capable of playing the four. I don’t think that’s the issue. It’s the issue of who else we want to play.”

For now, who else they want to play isn’t a concern. For the most part, neither is how they want to play.