Three quick observations from Sunday night’s 87-83 loss to the Brooklyn Nets
SLAM DUNK -The Pistons lamented their loss to the Lakers, but that came at the end of a six-game road trip while they were playing a back to back against a rested team. Losing to the Brooklyn Nets when they had the scheduling advantage and led for the majority of the game stings even more. The loss sends the Pistons under .500 for the first time this season at 8-9. Both teams shot very poorly through three quarters, but the Pistons led by as many as 10 points because they were grabbing more rebounds and committing fewer turnovers. Then the Nets hit 10 of 13 shots to open the fourth quarter while the Pistons went scoreless on their first five possessions. A 7-0 Nets run put them ahead 81-76 with 4:15 to play. The Pistons regained the lead on an Andre Drummond layup with 1:21 to play, but the Nets answered with a Jarret Jack jump shot and three free throws while the Pistons were getting misses from Reggie Jackson with the score tied and a triple from Kentavious Caldwell-Pope with 20 seconds left when they trailed by three. Jackson missed another triple with under five seconds to play. The three Pistons perimeter starters – Jackson (4 of 20), Caldwell-Pope (6 of 17) and Marcus Morris (3 of 10) – combined to shoot 13 of 47. Andre Drummond, coming off a season-low seven rebounds at Oklahoma City, was noticeably more active, finishing with 20 points and 18 rebounds but hit just 2 of 12 free throws.
FREE THROW – Kentavious Caldwell-Pope continues to be assigned to guard the opposition point guard in situations where Reggie Jackson wouldn’t be physically overwhelmed by the shooting guard or be matched with a primary scorer. That was the case again at Brooklyn, where the Nets use 6-foot-7 rookie defensive specialist Rondae Hollis-Jefferson at their starter next to point guard Jarrett Jack. Coming off a superb showing on Friday when he held Russell Westbrook to 14 points and forced 11 turnovers, Caldwell-Pope held Jack to 11 points, two of them when Steve Blake was guarding him and two more on free throws when he was intentionally fouled in the final seconds. Caldwell-Pope also was sent back in the game to guard Wayne Ellington when he scored seven points early in the fourth quarter against Stanley Johnson. In addition to holding Westbrook 14 points under his average, Caldwell-Pope has held Steph Curry 12 points under his 34-point norm and held Bradley Beal and Dwyane Wade to a combined nine points – each 16 under his average – in games last week.
3-POINTER – The game marked the first this season where the Pistons had a scheduling advantage, having been off Saturday while the Nets were losing a tough one to Cleveland on the road. Some of the advantage, though, was mitigated by travel problems the Pistons experienced Friday night getting out of Oklahoma City, where an ice storm descended on the region during the loss to the Thunder. The Pistons sat for two hours getting de-iced before finally being cleared for takeoff at 1:30 a.m. Central time. They landed in Newark, N.J., at about 4:30 a.m. and got to their hotel in lower Manhattan a little after 5 a.m. They had a Saturday practice scheduled for 1 p.m., but eventually canceled it. The team gathered for videotape review at the team hotel on Saturday and then had a 9 a.m. shootaround at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Van Gundy – like most coaches – doesn’t typically hold shootarounds at the arena for 6 p.m. tipoffs.
