game recap

detddelfuoco

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Photos: Pistons 120 Hawks 126

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Photos: Pistons108 Bulls 119

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Photos: Pistons 106 76ers 114

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Photos: Pistons 118 Bucks 120

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Photos: Pistons 109 Warriors 120

Keith Langlois

If you were curious as to why Troy Weaver has maintained throughout his restoration project that it was critical to sprinkle a handful of veterans among the wave of young draft picks, the past two games serve as foundational evidence.

If you were struck by Monty Williams’ stated desire to have the current handful of Pistons veterans split among the starting and bench units to guide the ascendant young stars who constitute the franchise’s future, same.

The Pistons had a 15-point lead midway through the third quarter on Wednesday against Portland, but when the Trail Blazers found a hot hand, Shaedon Sharpe, to suddenly whittle their deficit, the screws tightened – and so did the Pistons. On Thursday night in New Orleans, the Pistons opened 7 of 7 but got caught up in a shootout – and when their shots stopped dropping but the Pelicans kept the scoreboard churning, again the Pistons lost their moorings.

The Pistons focused intently on becoming a better defensive team throughout training camp and put that on display through the first three games, holding teams to 101.3 points on average. But young teams are prone to turnovers and bouts of offensive dysfunction and in those stretches everything else, defense and focus included, starts to unravel.

It's in those moments – the inevitable dips when your team is on the wrong end of a run – where the veterans for whom Williams scripted roles over off-season strategizing sessions are leaned on to stabilize matters. To prevent 6-0 runs from becoming 16-0 landslides. To remember to keep running offense instead of devolving into street ball. To block out every external distraction and double down on defense and fundamentals.

When adversity strikes, a young player’s instincts tell him to do something to pull his team out of a tailspin. And “something” usually means something off script. That’s when small cracks become gaping chasms.

It was a 14-0 New Orleans run in the first quarter that was the turning point on Thursday and even if the Pelicans were also missing two dynamic players – Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram – they had two bellwether veterans, C.J. McCollum and Jonas Valanciunas, to ground them.

McCollum scored 25 points, Valanciunas 12 and seven rebounds in the first half to put their team far enough ahead that even when the young Pistons exhibited the resilience that Williams has extolled, they couldn’t come any closer than eight points.

“We had a number of guys out there that just said, ‘Enough. We’ve got to guard the ball. We’ve got to do our stuff harder,’ ” Williams said after the Pistons outscored New Orleans 67-53 after halftime. “That was the standard we have to start games with and play with for as close to 48 minutes as we can. I know it’s a back-to-back. I know guys are tired. But we showed what we can do and be in the second half.”

The Pistons veterans, the guys they would have gone to down the stretch to protect the lead against Portland and the ones they would have sent out to halt the bleeding early against New Orleans, aren’t just journeymen who’ve lasted as long as they have in the NBA because they’ve earned reputations as great teammates and reliable players. They’re all of that, but much more than that.

Give the Pistons Bojan Bogdanovic, Alec Burks and Monte Morris and you’ve got three players who are crafty, efficient scorers who stretch defenses and make life so much easier for the players at their sides. Isaiah Livers provides 3-point shooting, size, defensive versatility and a high basketball IQ. They and veteran sniper Joe Harris are the only five Pistons 25 or older. The first four are out.

Bogdanovic, Burks and Morris are especially good at exploiting a defense’s vulnerabilities. Modern-day NBA defenses, the ones run by veteran teams, can be suffocating but all of them have some areas that can be exploited by those with the smarts and skills to do so. The Pistons are missing an awful lot of smarts and skill without those three.

The Pistons miss those guys for more than their savvy and their shooting. Weaver put the roster together with an eye toward building depth and prioritizing defense and the attributes common to good defenders – length, athleticism, tenacity. But when you lose four key players – four guys who ranged from dead-solid locks to highly probable to be part of their rotation – the depth takes a whopper of a hit. And with diminished depth comes diminished defense.

In their absence, the Pistons are leaning heavily on those still standing. Ausar Thompson comes with 220 volts of electricity flowing through his every fiber and he’s already stamped himself as a building block, but he’s still in his infancy in understanding game flow. When the Pistons were groping to find anything to slow New Orleans during the 14-0 run, Thompson – left so wide open you can only assume it was a bullet point on the game plan to exploit his underdeveloped jump shot – launched four 3-pointers and missed them all.

If Bogdanovic or Burks had been available, surely one or both would have been on the floor at that time. For a young team that’s been badly dinged by turnovers, Morris – allergic to mistakes – would be a panacea.

If there’s a silver lining here, it’s the experience being logged by young players getting extended minutes and learning how to respond to failure and situations they’ve never experienced. Marcus Sasser, the other rookie, is grasping opportunity with both hands. He scored 19 points, all in 13 second-half minutes while missing just one shot and not committing a turnover, and Williams said something to make the ears perk up after the game: “He’s starting to look like a good complement to Cade and Killian. Those three guys, they played well tonight.”

It's been a perfect storm so far for the Pistons, getting six games in nine days with three separate road trips already in the books and doing so with the veterans that had Weaver and Williams believing they were poised to sprint out of the gates mostly unavailable.

The Pistons get two days now to catch their breath. They’ll need it. Next up: back-to-back games against the star-laden Phoenix Suns and Golden State Warriors.

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After a striking start, Pistons miss their vets when times get tough

The Pistons have steered every conversation to defense since the start of training camp, but the results through two preseason games are a useful reminder that experience and continuity are every bit as essential to effective defense as effort and scheme.

Phoenix hit 17 of its first 19 shots against the Pistons in their preseason opener, though view that performance through the prism of the Suns employing three of the best offensive players in the world in Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal. In Thursday’s second game, the Pistons were down three of their lineup anchors – Jalen Duren, Cade Cunningham and Bojan Bodanovic – in addition to still being without Monte Morris and Isaiah Livers.

Oklahoma City rolled to a 74-point first half, outscoring the Pistons 17-3 at the foul line and winning the turnover battle 13-5. All those turnovers put undue stress on a defense that would have a better chance to find its footing if it didn’t have to play in transition nearly as much as it did in Montreal as part of the NBA’s Canada Series.

The team defense is going to take some time to iron out the wrinkles. You can tailor your offense to play to the strengths of every individual and cobble a coherent attack together without nearly as many as hurdles to clear as it takes to produce a highly functioning defense where all five players – no matter which five you choose to employ – move and think as one.

But as the Pistons rallied from 21 down to win in Montreal, 128-125 – outscoring the Thunder 38-23 in the fourth quarter – there were several encouraging individual performances, including reasons for optimism defensively.

Thompson had at least a handful of sparkling defensive possessions, including two within a three-possession stretch of the second quarter against two of Oklahoma City’s best players. On the first, he blocked a shot from the post by Jalen Williams, a play that led to a transition layup from Jaden Ivey. A minute later, he stayed earthbound against the irresistible head fakes of All-NBA guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, then forced an awkward air ball that fueled another transition chance resulting in a Joe Harris triple.

Through two preseason games, Thompson is giving every indication he’s going to be to this team’s defense what Cade Cunningham is to its offense – the axis around which those worlds spin. Despite the foul trouble and a 2 of 10 shooting night, Thompson was a force and finished with eight points, eight boards, two assists, two blocks and a steal.

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Rookies, Wiseman, Umude lead Pistons charge in comeback win

Three quick observations from Sunday afternoon’s 103-81 loss to the Chicago Bulls at United Center

THAT’S A WRAP – It wasn’t the season the Pistons envisioned – those dreams withered when Cade Cunningham was lost after 12 games – but it was one that produced two high-end rookies and sets them up to land another player who can join Cunningham, Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren as cornerstones of their future. Cunningham and seven others sat out the finale, a fitting end to a season disrupted constantly by injury, as the Pistons LOST at Chicago – the 15th straight loss to the Bulls. And when the clock hit zeroes, it started the metaphorical clock ticking on a critical off-season for general manager Troy Weaver and the front office with critical decisions looming. The Pistons finished 17-65, which means they’ll pick no lower than fifth in June’s draft. They’ll learn their exact fate on May 16 when they’ll carry 14 percent odds of landing the No. 1 pick and a 52 percent shot to land one of the top four picks that the lottery determines. Because they finished with the NBA’s worst record, they can’t fall past fifth. A season-high 25 turnovers were their undoing in the finale, the Bulls finishing with a 28-point advantage (30-2) in points off turnovers. The Bulls were locked into the 10th spot, the last play-in berth, which sends them to play Toronto, the ninth seed, for the right to advice to play the loser of the 7-8 game between Miami and Atlanta for the eighth playoff seed and the right to play East No. 1 seed Milwaukee in a first-round series. They played their starters in the first half but used most of them sparingly in the second.

ROOKIE REWIND – Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren have both logged more impressive games over the course of their rookie seasons, but they both ended with outings that underscore their development over the course of the season and has the Pistons so enthused about the future of each. Ivey went out with 16 points, fouling out, and finished his season by scoring in double figures 39 straight times, a Pistons rookie record. Since the All-Star break, Ivey averaged 19.4 points and 7.3 assists while upping his 3-point shooting from 33 percent before the break to 37 percent after. Duren spent a chunk of his 35 minutes going against ex-Pistons center Andre Drummond, the dominant rebounder of his generation, and the NBA’s youngest player showed he can hold his own with anybody, grabbing 18 boards. He’s got skills development ahead of him and needs to hone his defensive instincts, but his physical tools can’t be taught and his motor runs hot – essential ingredients to hasten a young player’s learning curve. Duren led all rookies in rebounds, offensive rebounds and dunks and his 19 double-doubles are most for a teen in NBA history behind Moses Malone, Dwight Howard and LeBron James. A third player, James Wiseman, is essentially a rookie even though he was a part of the 2020 draft. Wiseman played three games in college, missed all of the 2022-23 season with a knee injury and played sparingly in his two other seasons on a Golden State team with no tolerance for a young player’s mistakes. He finished with 11 points and 12 rebounds in his finale and averaged 12.8 points and 7.9 rebounds for the Pistons after arriving at the February trade deadline.

SIGNS OF PROMISE – The Pistons fell behind 22-9 and looked in a fog early, the sort of response coaches fear with early tipoffs – the finale was a noon start in Chicago – but a 16-4 close to end the first quarter was sparked by 5 of 9 3-point shooting with two players whose perimeter shooting could unlock their futures leading the way. Killian Hayes, a 27.7 percent 3-point shooter, hit 2 of 3 in the quarter; and Marvin Bagley III, a 27.4 percent 3-point shooter, was 2 of 2, both from the left corner. Hayes had a two-month stretch from early November to early January when he hit 35.6 percent from the 3-point arc on four attempts a game, but before and after he was below 20 percent. Only once since the All-Star break did Hayes make more than a single triple in a game before finishing the season by hitting 6 of 15 in the final two games. Hayes chalked up seven assists, giving him 26 consecutive games with at least five, and followed up his career-high 29 points to lead Friday’s win at Indiana by scoring 26 more. Bagley isn’t likely to ever be a high-volume 3-point shooter, but with his future likely at power forward with Jalen Duren and James Wiseman in the picture he’d help himself and the Pistons by developing into a credible threat. Bagley hit 7 of 15 from the 3-point arc over his previous seven games before finishing up 2 of 4 in the finale.