After the embarrassing defeat they suffered to the Clippers on Saturday night, there are more questions than answers in this Detroit Pistons team.
The game started with the best basketball we have seen the Detroit Pistons practice in a long time; high percentage shooting, great ball movement, good defense and exciting moments for everyone.
But, everything fell apart in the last 15 minutes of the game.
After this awful loss, you could see the players were angry, disappointed and in complete disbelief. Coach Dwane Casey made it clear that he was devastated and that despite playing as well as they played, they also played in the worst way possible; looking like two different teams.
Pistons All-Star forward Blake Griffin also said: “Bad, bad, bad, probably one of if we have not had this year, just being up by so many points and letting our foot off the pedal. But it happened.”
So, seeing “two different teams”; as coach Casey mentioned, makes me wonder: who is to blame? What is the team missing? And above all, will this kind of inconsistency be good for the Pistons to reach the playoffs? This game is one that shows us the Pistons season in a nutshell and it looks like they are not ready to make the playoffs.
The team have managed to keep themselves at 9th place, two games behind the Miami Heat. But more worrying still, the Washington Wizards are half a game behind them and the Orlando Magic a game behind.
Tom Gores was in the game tonight, and we don’t know if the loss has affected his ego as a team owner and is ready to make changes in his team with the trade deadline approaching.
According to Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press, the owner of the Detroit Pistons said that the front office was working on potential trades and looking to improve the team but they didn’t have any plans yet. So, like most of you; I am also confused and not knowing if any trade will happen before February 7th.
Personally, I think that if the team stays put; they won’t reach the playoffs.
The Detroit Pistons need another offensive weapon that can make them not only play “Blake Ball” because most teams have already realized how to stop that offense and the All Star play of Griffin.
At the start of the game tonight, the ball was moving a lot through the hands of the Reggie’s and everyone was running to make the offense much more difficult to defend, but they ended up playing “Blake ball” in the low post as the game went on.
And Coach Doc Rivers was not going to let Griffin take over the game and beat his team again.
We’ll see what happens in the next few days but for now, I went to bed with anger, disappointment and thinking how to fix this Detroit Pistons team without losing the core.
I guess I’m in for a long night…