If you looked at the score from last night’s Detroit Pistons vs. Cleveland Cavaliers game you might have thought you were looking at a piece of ancient history.
The Pistons managed just 78 points against the Cavs, failing to score even 20 points in two of the four quarters.
People want to blame Dwane Casey for the anemic offense, but the truth is that these guys just aren’t knocking down open shots. You can argue about Casey’s rotations or how he allocates minutes, but he’s not the one throwing up all of these bricks.
The Pistons’ numbers on open shots are mind boggling, and pretty much the entire team has been hit with this bug.
I wrote that the Detroit Pistons are taking offense back to 2004, but the truth is it’s much worse than that. The Pistons offensive numbers have been plain offensive.
Detroit Pistons: Historic shooting struggles
The Detroit Pistons are quickly shooting themselves into the record books and not in a good way:
The Pistons are shooting 39.6% this season, the worst by any team since 1960.
— StatMuse (@statmuse) November 13, 2021
That’s more than SIXTY years ago. The Lakers were still in Minneapolis then.
They are also shooting 28.6% from three, the worst by any team in the last 20 seasons. pic.twitter.com/mTUWV2Cvln
So the bad news is that the Pistons can’t shoot, but the good news is that they are the “best” worst shooters in 60 years!
Isaiah Stewart is the only Piston shooting over 50 percent and Detroit only has four other regulars shooting over 40 percent.
Cade Cunningham is shooting 30 percent, Killian Hayes just 29.6 percent and “sharpshooter” Saddiq Bey is hitting just 36 percent of his field goals overall.
Frank Jackson, who was re-signed as a shooter off the bench, is shooting 36 percent overall and just 23 percent from long range.
While the Pistons have had a top-5 defense in points allowed, their offense is not only the worst in the NBA this season but for pretty much any season.
It’s been frustrating to watch to say the least, and last night’s shooting woes were compounded by the fact that the Pistons couldn’t take care of the ball, coughing it up for 23 turnovers that led to 27 Cavaliers points.
At some point something has to change. Either the Detroit Pistons have to start making shots, or they need to switch things up. Saben Lee has now had two 40 point games in the G-League and may be overdue for some minutes, but his addition alone is not going to change much.
There is no savior waiting in the wings. The Pistons are going to have to get more out of the team you see or they are going to end up in the history books as one of the worst offenses of all time.