Why the Detroit Pistons’ offense is so ridiculously easy to stop

Detroit Pistons: Inside and out

The New Orleans Pelicans and Boston Celtics are two of the league’s highest scoring teams, but they are doing it in very different ways.

The Pelicans dominate the paint and shoot few threes, relying on post plays and attacking the rim for most of their points.

The Celtics score few in the paint, but easily lead the league in points from 3-point shots, showing that you can get it done either way as long as you are efficient in one of these two areas.

The league has progressively drifted more towards dunks and 3-point shots as the most efficient means of scoring, which is bad news for the Detroit Pistons, as they are horrible at both.

The Pistons are 27th in points in the paint per game and dead last in field goal percentage on shots closer than five feet. In other words, they are not getting many easy shots or making the ones they do get. The top teams shoot closer to 70 percent on shots at the rim while the Pistons are making just 55 percent of theirs.

This is due to their total lack of a post game, and not having any dunkers other than Jalen Duren who can finish the easy ones or catch a lob.

Detroit is 26th on shots between 5-9 feet and in the bottom half of the league on all shots outside of 14 feet.

The Pistons are 14th in shots between 10-14 feet, the only position on the floor where they rank in the top half of the league and that’s barely and mostly because of Cade Cunningham.

If you don’t score inside, then you need to make 3-point shots and right now the Detroit Pistons aren’t doing either.