3 Takeaways From The Detroit Pistons Victory Over the Knicks

The Detroit Pistons completed their second preseason game, both against the Knicks, with a 99-91 victory in Detroit. Let’s see some quick reactions.

1. Sekou Suddenly found his groove.

After the Detroit Pistons first outing against these same Knicks, it felt like Sekou Doumbouya was invisible and uninvolved. Changing this was largely billed as one of the hopes for tonight and Sekou stepped up.

The young forward played only 18 minutes but scored 23 points on 8-11 shooting and also contributed several excellent defensive plays including blocking a Mitchell Robinson dunk.

Several of Sekou’s buckets were of the “too easy” variety where basic off-ball movement lead to easy baskets against inattentive Knick defenders. But he had several others that were excellent takes to score on. It was really the whole package tonight, hopefully this is a sign of more things to come.

2. Killian Hayes was more comfortable but still erratic.

The French point-guard was visibly overmatched in his first outing on an NBA court but looked considerably settled tonight. Instead of the flurry of bad turnovers last time out he had just 1 turnover in 25 minutes of game-time.

He showed good vision and grasp of the floor out of the pick and roll on his way to 4 assists that really should’ve been more if guys had hit a few more shots. He regularly made the correct reads and the pace of his passes is truly impressive, basically that even though many of the reads are not remarkable, the passes themselves often are.

That said, Hayes was still pretty erratic. His shooting on the night was 2-11 for 6 points and he already seems far too reliant on his step-back to create space. If he doesn’t show some other way to get a shot off defenders will start to key in on it which will result in nothing but issues.

There also remains the concern that he is not showing much ability to take guys off the dribble.

He does use screens effectively, using one on his way to a nice and-1, but one of the biggest knocks on him as a prospect was that scouts doubted his ability to beat defenders consistently and he hasn’t shown much to the contrary.

Assuming his shot comes along he can be a good player without being able to take on guys 1-on-1, but it does put a cap on his potential.

On a good note, he clearly has great defensive instincts and had a couple of very nice possessions on that end of the floor. He still makes rookie mistakes like getting killed on screens and generally ending up in the wrong place, but he rebounds well and his length is going to be a real asset.

3. Jerami Grant. Still worrying.

Grant turned down the same money from Denver to come to Detroit looking for a larger offensive role. Grant hit a couple of spot-up threes tonight and made some impactful defensive plays, but he continued to look like a complete train-wreck whenever he tried to take the ball and create for himself.

He deserves time still here, but there was a ton of skepticism around the league about his ability to be more than a role-player and not only has he not proven them wrong, so far it looks like even the most pessimistic analysis may not have accurately guessed how out of sorts he would look.