Three takeaways from Detroit Pistons loss to Bucks

The shorthanded Detroit Pistons fell to the Milwaukee Bucks, 125-115, in a game that wasn’t really as close as the final score indicated. Here are the takeaways.

After a knock-down, drag out battle with the Boston Celtics, the Detroit Pistons had to turn around and travel to Milwaukee to play the Bucks the next night. The Pistons played without Blake Griffin (knee load management) and Josh Jackson (ankle injury)

1. Killian Hayes left with an injury

We all knew the Detroit Pistons were going to be bad this year while they started a rebuild. One of those young players that they are rebuilding around is rookie point guard Killian Hayes.

Hayes went down with an apparent hip injury in the first half, after what appeared to be no contact. No official announcement has been made yet about the extent of the injury, but it was a very bad sign. Hayes will have an MRI on Tuesday.

Hayes has struggled mightily to start his career, being wildly inefficient scoring the ball and often looking tentative, but (hopefully) watching his progress was figuring to be one of the main reasons to continue tuning into games this season. Hopefully, it isn’t serious, but it would be a real concern if he missed a large amount of time.

2. Jerami Grant is a true #1 option

Jerami Grant had an off-night. He got into early foul-trouble, couldn’t get a call, and the Bucks defensive scheme forced him into a lot of long jump-shots. And yet, at the end of the game, he still had 24 points on 25 shots and played his usual tough defense all night.

Now, once again, that is an off night. 24 points on 25 shots is poor efficiency, especially compared to what he has been doing so far this season. And yet, one of the reasons he’s been so wildly efficient this season is that he finds ways to get easy buckets. Whether drawing fouls, getting backdoor cuts or dunks in transition. None of those were there on Monday, and yet he still hit the grindstone and worked his way to getting some buckets.

Once again, it needs to be emphasized that this was an off-night. If this were to become a normal occurrence, there will be a problem. But the Pistons were without Blake Griffin and Josh Jackson, the third and fourth most shot attempts per game for Detroit coming into the night, and facing a Bucks team that is very good defensively. Sometimes this happens, but the points need to come from somewhere, and Grant stepped up.

On the other hand, this vision of teams starting to adjust to Grant and keeping him from the easy points, resulting in his efficiency plummeting, is a real possibility. For now we will take the positive route and say that his off-night still not being a total dud is a good sign.

3. Derrick Rose had his best outing of the season

Derrick Rose has been uneven to start the season. It’s been overlooked because Blake Griffin has received most of the fanbase’s anger, but Rose has quietly been very inefficient while taking up a huge number of possessions.

Monday he seemed to pull out of whatever funk he was in by going for 24 points, and taking just 18 shots to get there. He decided at some point in the second half, when the game was on the verge of slipping into blowout territory, to just go score himself. It worked.

He drove to the hoop, drew a couple fouls, hit a couple threes. It was cool to see him cook a bit.

The Pistons have a rematch with the Bucks on Wednesday night. Griffin should be back for that one. We will see about Jackson and Hayes’ status.