The mantra of the season for fans of the Detroit Pistons has been “When these shots start falling…”
The Pistons are making history nearly every night with their poor shooting and we just keep waiting for the breakout or at least a return to the norm.
Detroit’s shooting was bad last season, but it has taken a substantial dip that is starting to get very worrying after 19 games of futility.
Aside from Wayne Ellington and Mason Plumlee, this is essentially the same team the Pistons finished with last season, so what is going on? How did they get so much worse?
Who is to blame for the Detroit Pistons’ terrible shooting?
Fans on social media are quick to blame the coaches for the Pistons’ poor shooting because this is what fans do.
I see a lot of people complaining about “schemes” and “plays” when the truth is this team simply can’t make open shots, which is not the fault of the coach. The Pistons might be better off with coach Casey launching threes himself, as they are just 29.3 percent as a team, worst in the NBA and the only team under 30 percent.
It gets worse.
Although the Pistons take the 3rd-most wide-open 3-pointers in the NBA, they are only 13th in makes and 29th in percentage.
In other words, coach Casey’s offense is doing precisely what it is designed to do, which is create wide-open 3-point shots. The team just isn’t making them.
You could argue that he should adjust, and have his team launch fewer from long range, but the Pistons are just 27th in percentage on wide-open twos, so they can’t make those either.
I’m not saying Casey deserves no blame for how his team is playing but in the end, there is no scheme that can overcome missing wide-open shots. These are NBA players and it’s time they took the heat for their atrocious shooting.
My current favorite conspiracy theory is that John Beilein is somehow to blame. This is just silly. Can you name a single other Player Development Advisor in the NBA? Didn’t think so.
This notion that Beilein came in and changed all 15 of the Pistons’ shots for the worse is just tinfoil hat stuff. His Michigan teams produced a few of the NBA’s best shooters, so I guess he just forgot how to coach shooting or is actively trying to destroy he Pistons from within.
Just because you happen to know his name does not mean it’s his fault. Let’s move on and put the blame where it belongs, on the guys who are throwing up all of the bricks.
The Detroit Pistons’ bench shooting
It’s inexplicable that just about every guy on the team is cold at the same time but here we are.
Other than Kelly Olynyk (who is currently out with injury), the entire bench is shooting worse than they did last season. The numbers on the left are the player’s field goal percentage and 3-point percentage from last season, and the ones are the right are from this season:
- Cory Joseph 50/36–45/29
- Frank Jackson 45/40–40/30
- Josh Jackson 41/30–41/28
- Trey Lyles 47/35–41/27
- Hamidou Diallo 46/39–52/23
- Luka Garza 55/44–44/35
- Saben Lee 47/34–34/16
Literally every guy is worse.
And the rest of the NBA knows it too. We saw it last night, when the Clippers were sagging so far off the Pistons’ shooters, just daring them to take 3-point shots. Detroit obliged and launched 33 of them, hitting only 24 percent.
This is why it looked like Jerami Grant was running into a wall every time he drove the ball. The Clippers were just packing the lane and hoping the Pistons would shoot from just about anywhere other than the restricted area or the free-throw line.
When your collective shooting is so bad that other teams don’t defend the 3-point line, that is not a good sign.
The Detroit Pistons’ starters have been almost as bad
It’s not just the bench that collectively went cold, as the Pistons’ starters can’t shoot either.
Here are their splits from last year compared to this one:
- Cade Cunningham 43/40–33/23
- Jerami Grant 42/35–39/31
- Saddiq Bey 40/38–36/30
- Killian Hayes 35/27–31/38
- Isaiah Stewart 55/33–53/10
Only Killian Hayes has shown any improvement. I joked last night that Hayes might really be Detroit’s best 3-point shooter and it is starting to look like less of a joke, as the offense has been even worse without him.
Cunningham is really struggling at the moment and last night was the first time it appeared to get to him, as he was hanging his head a bit in the first half. I did like that Casey left him in there to battle and he did make some plays down the stretch that will hopefully get him going.
I agree with fans who say Cade needs to drive more, but until he and his teammates start hitting shots, defenses are going to continue to sag and make dribble penetration difficult.
Jerami Grant is pressing. Saddiq Bey looks lost. Beef Stew went from a guy who looked like a mid-range or even 3-point threat to a guy who can’t finish a dump off at the rim. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team go this cold all at once.
The easy answer is to blame the coaches but it’s time to start blaming the guys who are missing the wide open shots. At this point the Pistons might be better off if John Beilein was the one out there shooting them instead of taking shots from the fans, as he couldn’t be much worse.