Detroit Pistons vs Atlanta Hawks, a second look

The Detroit Pistons dropped their second straight in a frustrating loss to the Hawks. What went wrong? What went right?

So Blake Griffin was bad again right?

Yeah, he was. I would once again like to point out that he played poorly but still finished with 23 points on 24 shot equivalents with seven rebounds and six assists.

But yes, the biggest problem that I saw from this game (and the last one) is that he was just too willing to take jump shots. He popped way too often after setting picks and just took what the defense gave him.

That play is one of the more acceptable offenses but it just isn’t ideal. To be clear, Griffin can shoot better than he has in a Pistons uniform and it is totally fine for him to take jumpers including long balls. But a three-pointer should never be the end-goal of a possession.

When there is that much time still on the clock I would much rather run into something else. There were worse decisions about taking threes for Blake though:

This one is probably the one that frustrated me the most on the night. He is at center with nothing but shooters around him and the defense ignores him when he pops for a three.

He is wide open because in this lineup there is literally no better outcome than Griffin taking a jumper, even a wide open one. Every other player on the floor is a good to great shooter and Griffin is a beast on the inside.

When defenses give him that kind of space, I’d much rather he use it as a runway to build steam to get inside. This is later in that same lineup and situation.

That is so much better for your offense. Griffin is at center with shooters all around, they will have to collapse on his drive to stop it and then you have open shooters. The problem is that this was one of the only times he took a three and turned it into a drive and kick opportunity.

Once again, he can take some threes, and when there is less spacing on the floor it is more permissible, but when he is on the floor with so much shooting he should almost never take threes. Get inside and kick it out.

Some of the problems remain just comfort issues of them struggling to get Griffin into the offense which is something that is going to happen.

Here they are a bit slow to get into the offense, run a pick and roll with Ish that doesn’t go anywhere and Griffin ends up with the ball on the perimeter, they don’t run anything else and Griffin ends up dribbling the ball a few times and jacking a three.

This one is frustrating but considering the circumstances you just kind of live with it. They don’t get a clean run, and Griffin has to try and create something with limited time and there is so little shooting on the floor that driving into the lane is going to be a tough proposition.

You can already see Stanley Johnson’s defender (Taurean Prince) inching closer to Griffin to block the lane, so while that isn’t good, that is mostly just growing pains.

Why don’t they have more stuff put in for him already though?

They do have some stuff. Maybe a better coach would have more put in already, but there is enough stuff that gives me hope going forward, especially since the all-star break is coming which should help a bit.

Some of it is simple like having Griffin and Drummond run pick and rolls right at the free throw line. The Pistons have found that running normal high pick and rolls (starting out by the three-point line) have been largely ineffective because teams just duck way under the pick.

Especially with the lack of shooting in the starting lineup it just isn’t a great option. They have shaken it up by running them lower and disguising them a bit.

This works for a couple of reasons, first off the Hawks are not really ready for the pick and roll to come. Often a high pick and roll are telegraphed because it is so far from the hoop.

Here though, after Ish Smith gives Griffin the ball he runs to the corner where Stanley Johnson is and it is set up exactly as they usually do for a dribble handoff. Instead, though Drummond takes a quick couple of steps up and slams Ersan Ilyasova with a pick he doesn’t see coming at which point you’ve struck pay-dirt.

Even if Ilaysova sees’s that pick coming though, they are close enough to the hoop that going under the screen is less attractive, Griffin is more accurate at that range and you also give him the chance to get a little head of steam to just bull to the hoop. I would like to see them run that a little bit more.

Beyond that, they also are working to make his post-ups easier. They ran a lot less of them with the no-shooting starting lineup, but let him go at it more when there are shooters and also continue to keep dangerous shooters close to Griffin.

It takes two tries after Griffin cleans up his miss with an offensive rebound but that is a good post up. They clear out but then bring Kennard over as a safety valve and then swap him and Bullock while keeping Ish Smith on the opposite side of the court.

Once again it means that if you ignore Smith then the help has to come from the other side of the court, and the easiest places to bring help from are easy passes to good shooters. One other thing to look at on that play is Drummond and Dedmon.

If you wonder what people mean when they say that Drummond’s rebounding scares opposing coaches, that is it. Drummond is literally standing out of bounds and Dedmon has no interest in abandoning him. And despite that, Drummond’s presence ends up creating the second opportunity. Placing Drummond there is a clever way of making a non-shooter provide spacing because no one is helping off Drummond there.

It also shows a continued trend that Drummond is getting smarter about finding spots to get too in order to take advantage of Griffin.

There was one play in particular last night that really stood out as something that should give fans hope that they can figure this out to get a dynamite offense going in the future.

Holy smokes that is good, and a clear example of something they have actually been able to run in practice.

They get right into it, everyone moves at full speed and never hesitates. Drummond blows Griffin’s assist by needing a put-back to finish the play but that is a great design.

The question will be how much of that sort of stuff can they get put in on the fly this year, and it may not be a lot. But plays like that make it clear that they are working on it and have some really good ideas about how to leverage their players.

The other good news is that both Stan Van Gundy and Blake Griffin seemed to be pretty aware of the fact that Griffin popped and took too many jumpers in this game.

Both guys made points in their post game press conferences to mention that he popped too much, Stan Van Gundy saying that they wanted to get Griffin “Moving to the basket more” and Griffin saying that he “needed to do a better job of rolling”, Griffin even admitted that he didn’t realize he had taken so many threes until after the game.

How about Griffin’s defense?

I say once again that I have mostly been impressed by Griffin’s defensive effort.

He is always communicating (something that the Pistons had been severely lacking), he plays with more consistent effort than a lot of stars with such heavy offensive burdens do, he cleans the glass and makes the occasional great play. A problem over the last two games however has been closing out on shooters, he just has been either a step too slow or a step too far away and its a problem. Against the Clippers it was Danilo Gallinari and Tobias Harris, in this game it was Ersan Ilyasova. Whether he got picked off:

Or he is just a step slow recovering from the paint:

To be clear, this isn’t some huge issue. Good shooters get open sometimes, it happens. But it just stood out these last couple of games, hopefully, as he gets more comfortable in the Pistons defense it becomes less of an issue.

Was Ish Smith also very bad?

Yes. He was awful. He usually is one of the most careful ball handlers in the NBA, but he had five turnovers and they were all bad ones like this.

This just isn’t good enough. He comes up and throws a lazy pass to Drummond which is easy pickings. This exact same thing would happen later in the game as well, I don’t want to be too hard on him for this game since he’s been so good at avoiding turnovers most of the time but it just wasn’t good. Probably his worst outing of the season.

Andre Drummond was good at least right?

Yes. He was excellent. First off he was much more aggressive in going to the rim and drew a ton of fouls. Even when he took hook shots they were much better:

Drummond posting up is not often ideal, but when it comes organically like this that’s ok. The biggest thing I don’t want is for him to start away from the hoop and try and just back down for hook shots. It just gets bad results.

When it is a bang-bang play like this though, eat your heart out, even if he misses that is the way it should look. He also hit a couple of nice floaters like this:

This is another example of a time where you are ok with him not just going all the way to the hoop. He gets the ball a little too far out to get there without a dribble, and the defense is set in front of him so if he goes there is a good chance he just commits an offensive foul.

His floater has not always been effective, but when he deploys it like this it is something worth having. A big reason why that play is alright is also that he is still moving towards the hoop when he takes it which gives him a chance at an offensive rebound if he misses.

Also look at his defense, because there was one possession that was absolutely brilliant from Drummond. When you wonder what changed from the last two years to this year that has made him so much better defensively, it is plays like this:

One of Drummond’s biggest defensive flaws has been that he doesn’t read and react to offenses. He would leap all-out for blocks that he can’t ever get to or were not even shots. And then once he was out of position he would not ever be able to get back.

This play though he makes the first read of Schroder coming down the lane to force a kick-out steps over to cut off the second drive, and then see’s the last pass coming and steps right over and blocks the crap out of John Collins.

Before this year he is jumping way out of position on one of those first two drives and someone is getting a layup. He isn’t always this crisp and that is the next step for him, but he is doing this with a lot more regularity. That play is defensive perfection from Drummond. He also is generally getting better at timing his blocks, and I mean, not many guys can do this.

The other thing that Drummond did was get back to his roots for a while. In the second half, the Pistons ran out Drummond with Jameer Nelson and a bunch of shooters.

They didn’t do anything fancy, they just lined up and ran pick and roll and gave a good reminder that a competent point guard+shooters+Drummond is really hard to cover.

Nelson counts as a competent point guard?

Offensively, let me show you what I mean. The problem with the Pistons current point guard situation is that Ish Smith is a good ball handler, but he is such a bad shooter and scorer that no one really bothers to guard him.

Langston Galloway is a good shooter but he is not a good ball handler and struggles to get stuff in the paint, and Dwight Buycks can score but he isn’t a good passer. Nelson, on the other hand, is a really good shooter and can handle the ball well enough to execute stuff beyond the most basic sets. So look at these two plays:

On both of those plays Nelson and Drummond just play pick and roll. You can’t really help off the shooters because they are good, and the defense respects Nelson’s ability to score enough that they actually adjust a bit for it, and then Nelson is able to slip that pocket pass to Drummond. The also keep in mind this play:

The defense goes under the screen to try and snuff out the pick and roll, and Nelson pulls up for a shot and nails it. Unfortunately, his toe was on the line so it was a two but that doesn’t matter for now.

So here is the overall deal. Ish Smith can take the ball into the paint and make that pocket pass, but most of the time teams will duck way under screens so the pick and roll are snuffed out before it really even begins.

Galloway is a good enough shooter to get that initial action going, but he isn’t a good enough ball handler to consistently get into the paint and make that pocket pass, Buycks is a good enough scorer and ball handler to get into the paint and get the pocket pass set up but not a good enough passer to hit that pass consistently.

So you’re saying Nelson should start and/or play more?

Not really. It is awful intriguing to think about because the offense would work so much better with him in. The problem is that I don’t know if he can defend anyone, and he’s also 36 years old so you don’t want to put too much burden on him.

The good news is that the Pistons have an expert pick and roll guy on the roster, and the hope is he will return not long after the break.

Anything else good?

Yeah, I’ve got a couple. Because that game was so miserable that we need some good stuff. First off, James Ennis had a nice showing. Plays like this are exactly what he is in Detroit for:

He plays good defense (although I’m not sure he did much to actually create the turnover initially) hustles after the loose ball and takes it the whole way. Throw in the extra shooting he provides and he should fit right in with a really nice pickup.

Also, if Reggie Bullock keeps hitting shots like this much longer then teams are going to start to be truly terrified of him.

I don’t know if he is as good a shooter as he has been this year, but it sure is fun for now. Bullock is also looking super confident for the first time which results in shots like that.

Lastly, Stanley Johnson is a lightning bolt and this was not a foul:

That’s it for this game though. Ugly game. Onto the Pelicans.