The Detroit Pistons were one of the worst shooting teams in the NBA last season and I didn’t think it could get any worse.
I was wrong.
Even after adding sharpshooters like Bojan Bogdanovic and Isaiah Livers to the rotation, the Pistons are still the worst shooting team in the NBA again this season, and are actually worse than last season in several categories.
The Detroit Pistons are 29th in 2-point percentage and 27th in 3-point percentage, hitting just 32 percent as a team, which is actually down slightly from last season when they were dead last in the league.
Their Effective Field Goal percentage is the worst in the NBA at 48.9 percent, the only team not at least at 50 percent, which is terrible. That’s even worse than last season, when Detroit was one of two teams that failed to reach 50 percent.
The Detroit Pistons only have three players shooting above 45 percent overall and only two players (Bogdanovic and Livers) who are shooting above 40 percent from 3-point range.
Nearly everyone else is abysmal, with Cade Cunningham (27%), Saddiq Bey (30%), Jaden Ivey (31%), Isaiah Stewart (29%) and Killian Hayes (19%) shooting like they have on blindfolds.
The worst part is that they are missing a ton of wide-open shots, which means this isn’t a matter of scheme, it’s one of talent.
The Detroit Pistons: Wide-open bricklayers
Coach Dwane Casey’s offense is designed to get wide-open 3-point shots, a strategy I never really understood considering the Detroit Pistons don’t really have the personnel to run it.
But the offense is effective in that regard, as the Pistons get the 5th-most wide-open 3-point shots per game in the NBA. They are getting 16.8 wide-open looks from long range every game, with wide-open being defined as not having a defender within six feet.
The best shooting teams in these situations (Nets, Nuggets, Celtics, Warriors) all hit upwards of 42 percent of these wide-open looks and every team in the top-10 shoots at least 40 percent in these situations. The Pistons hit 36 percent.
If you let most NBA players shoot alone in a gym, they will hit them all night, but you have no such fear when it is the Detroit Pistons doing the shooting.
The Pistons are just 22nd in 3-point percentage on wide-open shots, which is terrible, especially when you consider they play small, don’t have a real center on the floor most of the time and get so many wide-open looks.
This could just be teams letting the Pistons shoot them, as pretty much everyone on the team is terrible from long range.
Something has to change here. Either the Detroit Pistons need to get big improvement from the guys they have, or they need to bring in even more shooters in the offseason, as right now, they are terrible, even when there isn’t a defender in sight.