The Detroit Pistons continue to roll through the regular season, but there are those who are not yet ready to anoint them as the best team in the Eastern Conference.
In a recent interview in The Athletic (subscription), former VP of Basketball Operations and current senior writer John Hollinger pushed back on the idea these Pistons are ready for playoff success without some kind of addition at the trade deadline, saying:
“We’ve never seen this iteration of the Pistons go through a real playoff gauntlet, and the surest way to learn about what you truly need as a team is to have an opponent pick away at it and expose it over a seven-game series. That’s especially true for a team like this one, whose possession-dependent style with limited shooting historically hasn’t been a great playoff model.”
Hollinger has a point. We’ve seen successful regular season teams flame out in the playoffs for one reason or another, so until the Pistons make a deep run, they still have plenty to prove.
I’d push back on the idea that the Pistons’ style of play hasn’t “been a great playoff model” as we saw the OKC Thunder win a title with a similar make up last season, but there was one huge difference.
The Detroit Pistons have a championship defense, but the offense is another story
OKC somewhat broke the modern mold last season by winning a title without being a prolific 3-point shooting team, but they were still top 10 in the league in 3-point makes per game, so even that is a bit overstated.
History has shown that you need around a top five offense AND defense to be a true title contender, so while OKC was known for their league-best defense last season, they were still third in offensive rating, so It's not like they relied on defense alone.
The Pistons are currently 2nd in defensive rating behind OKC, so they have a championship-caliber defense, but they are just 11th in offensive rating and have been slipping of late.
The Pistons have been 15th in offense since the middle of December, which history tells us is not good enough to succeed in the playoffs.
The Pistons rely heavily on their defense to generate easy buckets, and when things slow down in the half court, they tend to struggle, as they did last night against the Suns. The Pistons were able to do enough to squeak by last night, but will they have enough offense in the playoffs?
The Pistons also rely heavily on Cade Cunningham in the half court, which every team in the league knows, so until further notice, teams are going to sell out to stop Cade and just dare anyone else to beat them, especially in the playoffs, which we saw last season.
The Pistons have to do a ton in fast breaks and generate extra looks with offensive rebounds to balance their lack of shooting, and those things are tougher to come by in the playoffs, when teams are hyper focused on stopping your strengths.
This doesn’t mean the Pistons need to do something drastic, especially this season, as Trajan Langdon wants to see what this group can do in the playoffs before doing anything rash, but at some point, they will need the offense to catch up to the defense to be true title contenders.