The Pistons hang their hat on defense and are at their best when they get stops. Coach JB Bickerstaff has been known for implementing strong defensive gameplans and the team has many capable defenders on the roster. Part of stopping modern NBA offenses effectively includes throwing different looks at them and having multiple coverages, which the Pistons flashed last night against the Bucks.
The Pistons could run some zone this season
Early in the game, the Pistons threw some 3-2 zone coverage at the Bucks. Given the Pistons predominantly perimeter-oriented starting lineup in this game (Cunningham, Robinson, Thompson, Holland, Stewart) and the Bucks tendency to shoot threes, this made sense. However, the Bucks were able to pick apart the Pistons zone with precise passing and create open corner threes, which they hit at an incredible rate.
The Pistons zone looked very unpolished, and it’s clearly something that’s still being ironed out. A good zone defense relies on every player giving all-out effort and communication across the team. It also depends on fast closeouts causing the offense to hesitate or make mistakes, which the Bucks did not do in this game. In fact, Bucks shooters were willing and able to take advantage of any slight microsecond of space they had.
But the preseason is meant for ironing out new concepts. These games are ultimately meaningless and this gives the team some idea of how effective their zone can be against another NBA team. Unfortunately, they chose the wrong team/lineup to try this scheme against, but it can still be effective in certain situations.
Any good zone will also depend largely on the length of the defenders. Long arms reaching into potential passing lanes and grabbing rebounds without typical box outs are key to maintaining a good zone possession. Fortunately, the Pistons have size in troves so they have all the physical attributes necessary to make this defense succeed in the future.
Zone defenses can be risky because each zone coverage has some obvious points of exploitation. But they also have high upside and the possibility to create turnovers, leading to fastbreak offense going the other way. If the Pistons refine their zone enough to avoid simple mistakes and cover up for a coverage’s weaknesses, that is a risk they may be willing to take.
While the zone possessions in this second preseason game were not ideal, the Pistons have an exciting new tool to continue improving in practice and potentially bust out as a surprise for teams down the road. Later in the season or in the playoffs, a zone defense could cause confusion and get key stops against a high-powered offense. Offensive lineups with a couple of non-shooters could especially feel the wrath of JB Bickerstaff’s defensive experimentation.