Three quick observations from Tuesday night’s 94-82 loss to the Indiana Pacers
SLAM DUNK – It was all going so well through three games and one quarter for the Pistons, who had their three-game winning streak to start the season snapped by the 0-3 Indiana Pacers. The Pistons led 30-24 after one quarter, but the Pacers opened the second quarter on a 20-0 run that took less than five minutes to accomplish. Indiana scored on its first two possessions, missed on its third, then scored on seven straight, capping it with back-to-back triples from George Hill. The assault came almost entirely against a five-man second unit of Steve Blake, Aron Baynes, Anthony Tolliver, Stanley Johnson and Reggie Bullock. It didn’t take Van Gundy long to tinker. Spencer Dinwiddie was the first player off the bench in the third quarter, getting a shot to win backup minutes at point guard over Blake. Van Gundy skipped Bullock, tightening the wing rotation to Marcus Morris, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Johnson, and also rode Andre Drummond for all 24 second-half minutes, bypassing Baynes. Drummond responded with a monstrous performance: 25 points and a career-best 29 rebounds on 12 of 17 shooting in 43 minutes.
FREE THROW – The bench’s lack of production will dominate Pistons storylines until they dispel doubts, but there was another glaring problem in Tuesday’s loss: turnovers. The Pistons committed 23 turnovers, 20 in the first three quarters good for 29 Indiana points. And the turnovers weren’t on the bench – at least not disproportionately. Reggie Jackson committed six, Andre Drummond and Marcus Morris four apiece. Indiana’s defense stresses forcing turnovers and the Pacers came into the game fifth in the league in doing so, averaging 17 opponent turnovers forced per game. They might come out of the night No. 1 in the league after forcing the Pistons into nine more turnovers than their three-game average of 14.
3-POINTER – One of the many areas that Stan Van Gundy will explore as the season unfolds is how to respond when teams guard the Pistons the way the Indiana Pacers did to start each half – guard Marcus Morris with their power forward and Ersan Ilyasova with their small forward. It’s a ploy to use greater size against Morris, for whom the Pistons call plays in isolation and in the post, and take their chances with Ilyasova being guarded by a smaller player. The Pistons made Indiana pay in the first quarter when they shot 59 percent and scored 30 points. Ilyasova scored 10 points, hitting 4 of 6 shots, and knifed inside for two offensive rebounds. The Pacers’ countering argument would be that Morris, coming off a 26-point game in which he hit 10 of 15 shots by shooting over smaller defenders, was held to two points and without a basket, missing both of his shots. Morris finished with 11 points on 3 off 11 shooting and Ilyasova with 12 on 5 of 13 shooting, going 1 of 7 after the first quarter.
