Steve Blake shows that Stan Van Gundy is only human
Since taking over as head coach and president of basketball operations for the Detroit Pistons, Stan Van Gundy has been heralded as a genius.
SVG has received universal praise for both his coaching and front office moves and it’s hard to argue with them when observing what he has done for this team.
On-court he has the Pistons playing a far more effective and entertaining style of basketball than they have in a long time, and off-court he has made several trades that have left people wondering if he is actually a magician.
At the trade deadline in 2015 he pulled off a D.J. Augustin, Kyle Singler and future second round pick for Reggie Jackson trade, which has improved this team out of sight.
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Jackson was out of favour in Oklahoma City and Van Gundy took advantage, only having to give up two bench players who hadn’t performed all that well for the Pistons.
Then during this offseason he took advantage of the Phoenix Suns looking to clear cap space to potentially lure LaMarcus Aldridge.
Phoenix received a single draft pick (and didn’t end up signing Aldridge) for Marcus Morris, Reggie Bullock and Danny Granger.
Just as the case was with OKC, Van Gundy saw a team in prime position to be exploited and he managed to extract two players who would go on to feature in the Pistons’ rotation during the playoffs.
Additionally, the trades for Tobias Harris, Anthony Tolliver and the signing of Aron Baynes have all been great moves that have improved the team over what was previously in place.
However, there’s one standout that shows Stan Van Gundy isn’t infallible.
Steve Blake was downright horrendous for the Pistons this season.
I can understand the motive behind signing Steve Blake; this is an incredibly young team at the moment and it severely lacks both veteran leadership and extensive NBA experience.
Having a 13-season veteran helping run things for the bench unit seems like a smart idea in theory, but more often than not Blake was a huge detriment to the team.
Too many times this season the Pistons’ starters had begun the game well or had started to go on a strong run during the game, only for the bench to come in and undo all the hard work.
The Pistons were ranked dead last in bench scoring in 2015-16 with a dismal 25.7 points per game, and while all of the bench players have to take blame, much of it rests on Blake’s shoulders.
It seemed like every time Blake stepped onto the court ball movement would become sloppy and the Motor City turned into Turnover City.
Where was that on-court leadership he was supposed to bring?
His shooting was also a problem, averaging just 4.4 points per game on a field goal percentage of just 38.
Arguably the worst part of Blake’s game was his defence.
At 36 years of age he is old and slow and has next to no chance of keeping opposing point guards in front of him, something that contributed to opposing bench units scoring 31.9 points per game, the fifth highest in the league.
Blake’s horrendous play was most evident during the Pistons’ first-round matchup with Cleveland.
He averaged 1 point per game, 2.5 assists and 1.3 turnovers on 20 per cent shooting.
He committed more turnovers than he had points for the entire series.
He didn’t take a single field goal in the first game of the series and it took him until game four to actually make a shot that wasn’t a free throw, leading to him having as many turnovers as field goal attempts.
Awful play was so prevalent from Blake during the playoffs that his turnover percentage finished at 46 per cent, and at one stage it was as high as 63.5 per cent.
When someone’s playing this badly it’s almost the same as playing with only four players on the court, so it’s not surprising to see that he had a plus/minus of -9.3 and offered up negative win shares.
Steve Blake was so bad during the playoffs that it honestly made me wonder why SVG hadn’t just given his minutes to Spencer Dinwiddie already.
In the past week Blake has come out and said that he wants to play one more year with Pistons, but one would think a man as smart as Stan Van Gundy would be able to look back on the season and accept that he made a mistake and it’s time for the Piston’s to part ways with Steve Blake.