Pistons Playbook: Week 4

Each week, we look at some of the important plays, schemes, and sets that have been successes and failures for the Detroit Pistons.

It was another successful week for the Detroit Pistons – the team completed a five game sweep of its home stand.  But, the team again fell behind by double digits in multiple games.  Against the Miami Heat, it was clear that there were holes defensively that need to be plugged.

Corner Three Defense

Perhaps the most significant issue defensively for the Pistons has been the amount of corner threes the team has surrendered.  Detroit ranks fifth-worst in the league in corner threes attempted against them and 13th-worst in terms of shooting percentage on those shots.

Langston Galloway cheated well off his man in the corner against the Pacers to help Boban Marjanovic in the pick-and-roll.  While Galloway helped provide some resistance to Al Jefferson on this place, Marjanovic hadn’t really been beaten on the roll.  Regardless, if Galloway is going to help so much, Anthony Tolliver should be shifting into the corner with Marjanovic shifting down to cover Tolliver’s man.  Instead, Galloway had to run halfway across the floor and didn’t come close to contesting Cory Joseph‘s corner three.

Earlier in the game against Miami, Reggie Jackson again helps off the corner on a pick-and-roll.  This time, Drummond had the play defended well and Jackson provided no tangible help against Hassan Whiteside.  Dion Waiters made the skip pass to the corner and Josh Richardson nailed another wide open corner three.

A few minutes later, Reggie Bullock is the culprit.

Bullock helps way too far off another well-defended pick-and-roll and Dragic is able to take his time to make a pass to Richardson, who is again wide open for a corner three.

Whether the Pistons are helping so far off these corner threes on pick-and-roll situations on their own or by design, it needs to be fixed in a hurry or teams will continue to take far too many of these high-percentage shots.

Point-Center Andre Drummond

The emergence of Andre Drummond as a passer has been a revelation for the Pistons offense through 13 games.  And the Pistons added a new wrinkle to Drummond’s passing this week.

Capitalizing on the success of the Bradley/Drummond dribble hand-off, Detroit faked the hand-off against the Hawks.  Bradley took advantage of the space created by the play, darted towards the rim, and Drummond hit him with a great alley oop for a dunk.

Against the Heat, the Pistons used Ish Smith as a screener to get Tobias Harris a little extra room to cut towards the paint.  Smith cut back towards Drummond for a possible hand-off, but the big man instead threw an alley oop to Harris for a layup.

The beauty of the dribble hand-off set and emergence of Drummond as a passer is that the Pistons can run numerous counters off the play depending on how defenses are reacting.  So far, the results are extremely encouraging.