Detroit Pistons replay center: Explaining Detroit’s defensive woes
Halfcourt defense
The pick-and-roll
Casey is a fan of the drop coverage. The main benefit of the drop is that the other defenders can stay on their man and you can limit 3-point attempts. You basically guard the pick-and-roll with only two defenders. To be able to do that the drop man has to keep both attackers in front of him.
Drummond has such a defensive presence that he can slow down dribble penetration while his teammate recovers. And even if his man cuts behind him you can rely on him to keep the passing lane closed.
The same can’t be said for the other Pistons big men. No other player has that ability, so committing to the drop becomes much more difficult. Maker, Morris and Wood can’t be possibly relied to kill the pick-and-roll on their own and help defense becomes a necessity.
Given their relative mobility for their size, showing on pick-and-rolls should be a viable option. The big man defending the action, Morris, plays up on the ball handler, cutting off penetration, but allowing his man to roll behind him. The other big man, Maker, acts as a help-side defender if the pass to the roll man is made.
When the roll man gets the ball, help from the corner has to be fast. The Pistons backup big men have the length to contest these kinds of shots. Especially for Maker and Wood, help-side defense is one of their best qualities on defense. This coverage should suite the personnel a lot more.
Morris has good enough positioning to shrink the floor, taking away the roll, and enough mobility to closeout to the corner where much lesser shooters than Lauri Makkanen will be most of the time.
Switching is also an option as all of the Pistons bigs have enough mobility to at least try. In any case, it’s a much better option than dropping. However, the Pistons don’t have switchable big wings, which makes switching much more complex.
Rose finds himself guarding Serge Ibaka in the post and Maker has to double. Pulling this off is complicated and the timing has to be perfect. You can use Maker as a shadow, send Ibaka baseline where he’ll be met with a double team. Kennard has to take away the pass to the corner while Wood drops to the elbow to guard both players on the weak side.
Or you can send a double right away as Maker does below.
When Maker goes to double, Kennard has to take away the pass to the cutting Siakam while Rose recovers on the weak side. None of that happens and Siakam gets an easy bucket. Recognition and timing from all five defenders is necessary to pull this off and even one mistake can break the whole thing down.
The pick-and-pop
The pick-and-pop is a different animal. Dropping against it creates a ton of space for the stretch big and the guard should be ready to switch at all times.
Snell should have been way more moderate with this footwork on this play, knowing that he might need to closeout on Myles Turner. Langston Galloway shows us how it’s done.
The switch leaves the defense at a disadvantage but puts more pressure on the offense to find the opening. Young tries to bully Galloway into the paint but Wood is there to cut him off, leaving Coby White wide open. At this point Rose rotates and leaves Kris Dunn, a much worse shooter open, taking away the advantage the switch created.
Galloway does a much worse job reading this next play and gives up a wide-open three. At this point Kennard should have rotated over to Mike Scott to take away the open shot, trusting that his teammates would rotate until the advantage is lost.
We see that scenario below where Kennard helps on Al Horford and Wood helps the helper and closes out on Shake Milton. However, the positioning of both players is poor and the rotations slow.
Kennard should have stayed at the elbow. The general rule is to keep an equal distance from Horford and Milton. That way you can react to the pass and be there in time to contest regardless of where the ball handler passes the ball. Wood is just slow to react and doesn’t closeout hard enough.
Frazier does a much better job of positioning himself to rotate to Turner and while Kennard is kind of slow to X-out on Malcolm Brogdon, he does well enough to run him off the line and send him towards Drummond.
X-out is a defensive principle where one defender, Frazier in this case, helps the helper and the helper, Kennard, runs behind him forming an “X” on the floor.
Against the Raptors, the Pistons did a horrible job of guarding the pick & pop, especially Drummond. Their bigs were shooting it really well from outside and the Pistons were doing a bad job of rotating, making Drummond much more hesitant to leave his man.
Of course, the first priority is to take away dribble penetration and leaving Frazier alone to guard Kyle Lowry with an open lane is a bad idea. It happened multiple times and Drummond should have been more committed to helping his teammates. It’s necessary that he helps on this play below.
Morris stays with his man because he trusts Drummond to protect the rim. The Pistons center should have committed to Lowry, forcing him to kick it out trusting Morris to closeout to the open man. The Pistons have been struggling to make multiple rotations on the same possession.
But that’s not something we’re going to see all year. They’re certainly capable of playing better defense than they’ve shown so far. It’s a matter of how quickly they build that trust and how hard the coach will get them to play.
The blitz
The Pistons did a better job when they started blitzing the ball-screen, forcing Lowry to give up the ball and Ibaka to roll to the rim. But it was already too late and the game was lost.
Morris is there when Ibaka gets the ball forcing a traveling violation. And notice how well-positioned Kennard is on the weak side, exactly equidistant to the ball and the two shooters.
In the next clip, the Pistons are scrambling. The rotations are not crisp but all defenders make multiple efforts not to allow open shots and Ibaka is called for a three-second violation.
Of course, trapping the pick-and-roll has not always worked for the Pistons. The Hawks killed them when they blitzed Trae young. Snell doesn’t commit to the coverage and lets Young go middle. Forcing the ball handler towards the sideline is priority number one, as it makes passing much more difficult.
Young quickly finds an easy pass to Bruno Fernando and Maker is in no man’s land, which makes it easy for the Hawk to find Jabari Parker under the basket.
Below, they do a better job on Young but still don’t bother him enough. Morris is there to guard Vince Carter but Galloway is late to tag the roll man, which makes him late to get back to his man. Timing is everything and it only takes one defender being out of position to blow the whole thing up.
It doesn’t only take trust between teammates though. Trust in the coaching staff is just as necessary. The Pistons have tried just too many different coverages in a short period of time and that’s very confusing for the players.
Do I drop? Do I show? Do I blitz? Do I switch? When and where do I rotate?
Those are some of the questions players ask themselves all the time and the coaching staff hasn’t provided clear enough answers so far. As time goes on, the players will have a better picture of what they need to do in each different scenario.