Detroit Pistons: Discouraging loss shows biggest problems

The Detroit Pistons’ sliver of road momentum disappeared last night as they were handily eviscerated by the Portland Trail Blazers.

After some positive signs emerged in Minnesota, the Pistons were right back to playing no defense, allowing the Trail Blazers to score 135 points on 57 percent shooting overall. It was another game where the opposition might have shot a similar percentage if they were alone in the gym

The 2022-23 Pistons currently have the worst defense in team history and it’s not even close at this point. Even in this golden era of offense, the Pistons defense is just flat-out terrible, and something is going to have to change in terms of roster/scheme if this mess is going to be fixed.

I definitely don’t put this all on Dwane Casey, but without a major turnaround on defense, it’s time for a new voice in the huddle.

Aside from the overall defense, there were some issues on display last night which really represent where this team is at right now and where they need to improve.

Detroit Pistons: Defense on the wing

Was there any?

Former Piston Jerami Grant scored 36 points basically unopposed by the wing “defenders” Detroit threw at him. But it wasn’t just Grant, the Trail Blazers’ starting perimeter players shot a combined 61 percent from the floor last night.

That included a combined 50 percent from 3-point range, so like I said, not much different than if the Pistons hadn’t come out of the locker room.

Individual defensive rating is an imperfect measure, but the two Pistons’ starting forwards last night, Saddiq Bey and Bojan Bogdanovic, have 119.4 and 121.5 defensive ratings this season, respectively.

To put in perspective how bad that is, the team has a 118.5 defensive rating overall, which is second worst in the league and both their wing players are worse than that.

It’s pretty clear what the number one priority of the offseason has to be, and that is to get some players who are lockdown defenders on the wing.