Ish Smith started the first 21 games of the 2016-17 season. This was only to be a temporary situation until their near all-star level starting point guard, Reggie Jackson, returned from an off-season knee treatment. Tonight, Ish retained his starting job after the Pistons have gone through yet another rough stretch in their season as Stan Van Gundy searches for answers to his team’s slow starts and inconsistencies.
Reggie Jackson has had a whole lot of flack thrown his way this season. From the Detroit Pistons team meeting where he was ripped by his teammates for his lack of ball movement and defensive intensity to questionable shot selection in a recent loss to the Boston Celtics, criticism is a very familiar thing to Jackson at this point. Some have called for this change for a while because for most of the season, Detroit has played better with Ish Smith running the point.
Stan Van Gundy has called for Jackson to try and replicate Smith’s ability to push the pace on offense and it seems that Jackson has not been up for it so far this year. With a team starting slow each and every game and struggling to hit their shots, Van Gundy’s thinking seems to be the key to a quicker start is Smith pushing the ball in transition to lead to easy baskets.
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Smith also has a tendency to make great ball movement infectious throughout his teammates and when a team is struggling to make shots this is a huge benefit.
Our own Duncan Smith put out a series of tweets earlier today regarding Jackson’s struggles this season and this one does a good job of summing them up.
Additionally, filtering for 25%+ USG, RJ has worst (NBA dot com) offensive rating (102.2), 5th worst d-rating (110), 2nd worst net (-7.8).
— Duncan Smith (@DuncanSmithNBA) March 22, 2017
Is Ish Smith necessarily the answer to the Piston’s problems? Probably not, but for a team fighting for their lives to make the playoffs, it is a change that does not hurt to try at this point in the season.