Do shooters fall apart in Detroit?

Me at the Detroit Free Press,

"For years now, the Pistons have been among the worst shooting teams in the NBA. That largely has been because of personnel. You don’t employ a trio of Josh Smith, Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond and expect your team to torch the nets from deep.But in spite of having some very bad shooters at the core of the team, it’s not like the Pistons’ front office has completely neglected the skill. Luigi Datome was signed largely for his shooting. Van Gundy brought in Jodie Meeks, D.J. Augustin and Cartier Martin to help out. One even could argue that Joe Dumars demonstrated some of the most poorly executed prescience ever in recognizing where the league was going and chasing down a pair of free agents whose main asset was shooting: the infamous Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva.Somehow, it looks like bringing good shooters to Detroit is like bringing clean clothes to a mud pit. The mud doesn’t get clean, the clothes get muddy. Twenty players suited up for the Pistons this season. All but Drummond, Monroe, Spencer Dinwiddie and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope have played for another team."

"Thank goodness for Reggie Jackson, who came to the Pistons and played at a career-best level, including shooting better than he ever had. Apart from him (and the special case of Butler), the Pistons employed one guy who never attempts threes (Joel Anthony), four who have done about as well here as elsewhere (Tayshaun Prince, Anthony Tolliver, Kyle Singler and Brandon Jennings) and nine whose percentages have fallen off catastrophically.When we go back even further, Gordon, Corey Maggette, Damien Wilkins, Arron Afflalo, and Allen Iverson keep hurting the Pistons’ numbers, but they’re balanced out a bit by the likes of Jose Calderon, Austin Daye and Brandon Knight.The most obvious explanation is a lack of spacing. There has been much conversation about how that bogs down the offense by forcing guys who like to operate near the basket to contend with a clogged paint. But there’s another downside. Most teams have a couple of good perimeter defenders but not a limitless supply. If the Pistons have so many bad shooters on the floor that it only takes a couple of good perimeter defenders to lock up all their guys, there’s not much opportunity to create mismatches.So let’s add this to the reasons the Pistons need more shooting on the team. Not just so the new guys can hit shots but to hopefully rejuvenate the struggling shooters they already have."

Any other perspectives on what has caused this evaporation of shooting ability (or a defense on why that hasn’t happened)? Let me know below. It’s mostly just a feeling I’ve had for a long time that shooters lost their touch when they became Pistons. It’s depressing how consistently that has in fact happened. Let’s hope that new shooting coach is really good.