Detroit Pistons: Defense will be Dwane Casey’s downfall

Coming into the season, head coach Dwane Casey said having a top-10 defense was one of his goals for the young Detroit Pistons.

Even at the time it sounded a bit ambitious, and now it seems like a pipe dream, as Detroit is one of the worst defensive teams in the NBA.

Casey vented his frustration after last night’s loss in which the Pistons gave up 124 points to the Lakers, something that has become all too common:

"“There are a lot of things you can’t control in a game — they came in shooting 28% on threes and they shot 42% tonight — but we have to get better at the other things…We can control boxing out and understanding rotations — we get caught up in the game and lose our focus.”"

He was especially upset about one of the key plays of the game when the Pistons left Austin Reaves wide-open for a huge 3-point shot:

"“I’m not even sure who it was, but our defender in the strong corner helped into the lane on LeBron,” he said. “You can’t do that. You have to understand the situation. If we give up a basket at the rim, we live with it, but you can’t give up a three at that point.”"

They did give up that 3-point shot and ended up losing their 3rd in a row, once again dropping to the worst record in the NBA.

While the terrible defense is certainly not all on Dwane Casey, when he is evaluated at the end of the season, it might the thing that finally gets Tom Gores and Troy Weaver to pull the plug on the Casey era.

The Detroit Pistons defense just keeps getting worse

The Detroit Pistons are currently 28th in the NBA in points per game allowed, giving up 117 per game on average while only scoring 109.9 per game. In case you are bad at math, this disparity is a problem.

You could handle the inconsistent offense from a young team, but effort on defense is something you can give every night, and it just isn’t there far too often. To put it in perspective, every team in the top-5 in points per game allowed gives up fewer than 110 a game. The 10th-best Nets allow 111 per game, so the Pistons are a long way from being anywhere near the top-10 in defense this season.

Detroit is 29th in defensive efficiency and 29th in scoring margin, playing defense that is not far off some of the worst “Process” 76ers teams.

This isn’t totally unexpected with a young team that doesn’t have any elite individual defenders, but the alarming part is that they just keep getting worse.

In 2020-21, the Detroit Pistons were in the top-10 in defense, allowing just 111 points per game, but last year this dropped to 112.5, which put them at 22nd and they just kept falling this year to their current 28th-place ranking in points per game allowed, giving up 117 per game.

They are letting opponents shoot nearly 50 percent overall, numbers that make you wonder if it would even matter if they were in the gym some nights defensively.

As I said, this certainly isn’t all Casey’s fault, as he has not been given much to work with. Isaiah Stewart is the probably team’s best defender, but after that? Killian Hayes is pretty good. Cade Cunningham is good but he’s hurt and there is no telling when he’ll be back.

Detroit is terrible on the wing and after Stewart and Hayes, probably have rookies Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren as their next best individual defenders. It’s clear that the Pistons need a big upgrade of defensive talent before they will make a leap as a team.

Casey doesn’t have the personnel, but in the end, he’s the one whose head is going to roll at the end of the season if we don’t see some improvement. Like Casey said, “there are things you can’t control…” but defensive effort and schemes are not among them. I lost track of how many back cuts the Pistons gave up last night. How many layups on blown assignments.

When Dwane Casey is being evaluated at the end of the season, there are going to be questions about why this team is so bad on defense, why they are still making the same mistakes and why they are headed in the wrong direction.

In the end, it will be defense that gets coach Casey fired.