Three quick observations from Monday night’s 105-100 win over the Brooklyn Nets…
SLAM DUNK – Reggie Jackson wasn’t having a great night for 46 minutes, but he was really great in the final two – well, the final 2:04, to be precise. That’s how much time was left when his triple tied the game. On the next two Pistons possessions, he slipped inside the defense to feed Andre Drummond for a dunk and knock down a mid-range jump shot to give them a four-point lead with 51 seconds to play. After Shane Larkin’s layup pulled Brooklyn within two, Jackson scored a driving floater with 14.9 seconds left and the Pistons got the one stop they needed after that to get a big win that snapped a two-game losing streak. Jackson was 5 of 17 before hitting those three clutch shots and he and the Pistons looked every bit a tired team most of the night. A half-step away from too many loose balls and a shade late in defensive coverages all night, they mustered about eight minutes of the kind of defense Stan Van Gundy wants to see before stiffening again in the home stretch. It came to open the third quarter and that allowed them to turn a three-point halftime deficit into a 10-point lead. But it was down to three entering the fourth quarter and the Nets got back on the same offensive roll that carried them through their 57-point first half. Shane Larkin was a handful in the pick and roll, amassing 14 assists in 22 minutes, a bunch of them to 7-footer Andrea Bargnani, who finished with 18 points. Drummond finished with 21 points and 18 rebounds, helping the Pistons to a 28-7 edge in second-chance points. He scored on three put-backs in the first five minutes of the third quarter when the Pistons were launching a 17-2 run. Brook Lopez hit 13 of 19 shots to lead all scorers with 27.
FREE THROW – Jodie Meeks’ 12- to 16-week timetable for returning from the broken foot suffered in the Oct. 29 home opener is now in danger of passing without him back in uniform. Meeks returned to practice on a limited basis for the first time on Jan. 24 in Salt Lake City, but then couldn’t go when the Pistons next practiced, Thursday, reporting right foot soreness where he suffered a broken fifth metatarsal. The Pistons initially plugged in Reggie Bullock for Meeks with the second unit, but Stan Van Gundy took Bullock out of the rotation after he and the unit got off to a poor start. He’s used Darrun Hilliard as the 10th man more recently – and Hilliard played five first-half minutes Monday – but the standard rotation pattern has called for nine players with Stanley Johnson backing up at both small forward behind Marcus Morris and shooting guard behind Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Meeks saw the surgeon who operated on his foot, Dr. Martin O’Malley, while the team was in New York on Monday. O’Malley repaired Brandon Jennings’ ruptured Achilles tendon last January and performed procedures similar to Meeks’ on both Kevin Durant and Dallas Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant.
3-POINTER – For a team that loses three times for every win, the Nets have a pretty impressive string of wins on their resume. Of their dozen wins, nine have come against teams with .500 or better records. Among their victims: Oklahoma City, Boston and Houston twice each, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta and, yup, the Pistons. But it’s tough to be bullish on Brooklyn’s future. The only player under 30 with real long-term value is Brook Lopez, who turns 28 before the season ends and has an injury history that doesn’t augur well for a lengthy career. More damning is the ill-conceived trade the Nets made to acquire aging Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, 36 and 37 when the 2013-14 season started after the July 2013 dea, that cost Brooklyn three No. 1 picks (2014, ’16, ’18) and also gave Boston the right to swap first-rounders in 2017. That means zero lottery picks likely for the next three seasons. And the cap money the Nets figure to have this July after years of a bloated cap sheet isn’t going to do them much good when virtually every team will be awash in money and nearly all of them will have a more appealing case to make to free agents.
