Detroit Pistons: Observations from open practice

This morning I made the trek out to Auburn Hills to watch the Detroit Pistons open practice scrimmage. The fan turnout was solid, with most lower bowl seats filled from baseline to baseline well before the 11:00 am start.

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In many ways it was a bit of a rough performance, considering it’s just one of the first few practices of the season for the Pistons, but a couple narratives from the offseason quickly took shape in the form of the positional battles between Stanley Johnson and Marcus Morris at small forward, and the shooting guard battle between Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Jodie Meeks.

Johnson showed some flashes of brilliance, particularly late in the scrimmage when he slashed between Anthony Tolliver and Andre Drummond for a layup and a foul, but Marcus Morris looks like the man at the small forward spot at this early junction.

The few times the two were matched up on each other, Morris came out on top. Early in the game Morris drove past Johnson and forced the rookie to foul him, and later trapped Johnson in the paint, but let him off the hook with what could be described as a bail out call. At one point, after Ersan Ilyasova went down with a hip injury (more on this later,) Johnson and Morris were on the floor together, with Morris playing power forward. That could be a configuration worth revisiting from time to time, although we didn’t get much chance to see what the two could do together.

After seeing the two in action, Johnson is impressive, but Morris looks like the favorite to get the spot after this early October morning. That said, having Morris start with Johnson coming in as a reserve might just be a hell of a one-two punch.

As for the shooting guard competition, Meeks rained threes. At this point, I haven’t seen a boxscore for the scrimmage to confirm his final numbers, and I doubt such a thing even exists, but he looked really good from outside. Caldwell-Pope started the scoring for the White team (the teams didn’t matter, as players were swapped back and forth from team to team as the game wore on) with a sweet step-back, and hit a number of outside shots along with slashing to the basket pretty effectively.

I can’t say either player set themselves apart in this game, but they both looked solid. It can only be a good thing if these guys push each other through the preseason.

Now, as for the less pleasant stuff, there were some injuries. Ilyasova took a blow to the lower body pretty early on, and left the game with a hip injury. Morris also didn’t finish the game after suffering a toe injury. Reggie Jackson played through a bruised leg. Aron Baynes and Steve Blake didn’t play, as expected.

As for a happy note on the injury front, Brandon Jennings was out taking jumpers with the team while both the White and Blue squads warmed up prior to the scrimmage.