New hope dampened by old demons for the Detroit Pistons

The Detroit Pistons are off to a 7-10 start, a record most fans would have taken before the season started. 

Most of the losses have been close ones, and if a few things bounce right, Detroit could easily have won a few more, including last night. Losses are losses but the Pistons have been competitive, which is what we wanted. 

All positive disclaimers aside, this has been a frustrating team at times, as they are still making the same mistakes and have many of the same issues. 

Some of these have been partially masked by the mediocre (at best) Eastern Conference, where every team outside of the top three or four has major flaws. 

But they are still costing the Pistons games, and until these issues are cleaned up, Detroit will never be anything more than the frisky loser. 

Pistons stats: Turnovers...again 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but the Detroit Pistons are once again once of the worst in the NBA at turning over the ball. Detroit is currently 22nd in the NBA, coughing it up 16.2 times per game, which is even worse than last season’s 15.2 turnovers per game, which was 28th in the league.

You’d have to go all the way back to 2018-19 to find a season in which the Pistons finished in the top half of the league in turnovers, as they’ve been 24th or worse in the last six seasons since. 

This starts with the guards, Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey, who are averaging nearly eight combined per game. 

Cunningham is in the top-4 in assists per game and has a lot on his plate, so you can live with some amount of turnovers, as all high-usage guys commit them, but it’s the careless, unforced errors that have to go. 

That’s true of the whole team, as the Pistons committed three consecutive turnovers last night with Cade on the bench, so this isn’t all about him, even though he does have to improve. 

The Pistons simply aren’t good enough to give away possessions, especially when they often lead to easy looks on the other end. The margin of error is razor thin when your roster isn’t the most talented in the NBA, so every possession has to be valued. 

Until the Pistons clean up an issue that has plagued them for over half a decade, they are going to be on the wrong side of the kinds of close games they’ve lost this season. 

Pistons stats: The elusive 3-point shot 

The NBA has increasingly become about the 3-point shot, both making them and defending against them and the Pistons haven’t been good at either. 

The Pistons are once again shooting and defending the 3-point shot at below league average, which showed up again last night. 

The Pistons are just 24th in opponent’s 3-point percentage this season after finishing 20th, 18th and 24th in the previous three seasons, and in all of them the Pistons have allowed higher than league average from behind the arc, including this season, when they are allowing opponents to shoot 37.5 percent, well above the 35.5 percent league average. 

Some of this is scheme (the Pistons switch everything without much resistance) and some of it is effort, as Detroit hasn’t closed out on shooters or done enough to fight over screens and NBA players will make open ones all day long. 

There is plenty of blame to go around, as well as plenty of reasons to be excited. The Detroit Pistons have a new feel that has been dampened by some old demons.