Three quick observations from Monday night’s 104-88 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder
SLAM DUNK – The sprained right ankle that caused Andre Drummond to miss only his second game due to injury since his rookie season was incurred during the first half of Saturday’s win at Denver. The All-Star center underwent an MRI on Monday morning that showed no structural damage and Stan Van Gundy says the Pistons are “hopeful” Drummond will play Wednesday at New York and it’s “beyond probable” that he’ll play Friday at Cleveland if he doesn’t return against the Knicks. In Drummond’s absence, Aron Baynes started and went 34 minutes, giving the Pistons 20 points and eight rebounds while anchoring the middle of a defense that held Oklahoma City to 37.5 percent shooting and 88 points, nearly 17 below its average. He left with two minutes to lay after taking a shot to his broken hose. Boban Marjanovic played 12 minutes and contributed four points and four rebounds. Against the No. 6 rebounding team in the NBA, the Pistons held their own on the glass, finishing down four at 51-47. Drummond missed 20 games in 2012-13, his rookie season, with a stress fracture of the lower back. He missed one game in his second season, also with a sprained ankle. He played all 82 games in 2014-15 and all but the regular-season finale last year when Van Gundy sat all five Pistons starters against Cleveland, which also rested its starters in advance of the first-round playoff series between those teams. The Pistons remained the only NBA team undefeated at home this season, running their record at The Palace to 5-0.
FREE THROW – Stan Van Gundy used his last chunk of cap space for the foreseeable future to bolster his bench last summer. They won’t really be able to fully judge it until Reggie Jackson returns to put Ish Smith back in the role for which he was signed to a three-year contract. But with two of the players Van Gundy expected to be bench staples – Smith and Aron Baynes – in his starting lineup against Oklahoma City, two players who’ll presumably be out of the rotation once Jackson and Drummond return, Beno Udrih and Boban Marjanovic, helped the Pistons to a 13-0 second-quarter run that put the Pistons in great position to win. They were among a group with Jon Leuer and Stanley Johnson with the fifth spot alternating between Tobias Harris and Marcus Morris. Udrih has played better than the Pistons could have hoped when they claimed him off waivers from Miami about 50 hours before the Oct. 26 season opener. He held averaged of 7.4 points and 3.5 assists in 18 minutes a game coming into Monday, when he played his customary 18 minutes and finished with 10 points, four rebounds, four assists and just one turnover.
3-POINTER – Two shooting guards from the draft class of 2013 lined up at Monday’s tipoff, but not against each other. That’s because Stan Van Gundy, as is his custom, put Kentavious Caldwell-Pope on the opposition’s greatest backcourt scoring threat. For Oklahoma City, that’s clearly Russell Westbrook and not Victor Oladipo. But Oladipo is a potent scorer – in fact, he’s second to Westbrook in Thunder scoring at 15.8 per game. But the Pistons had to guard the 6-foot-4, athletic Oladipo with Ish Smith. Van Gundy kept Caldwell-Pope on the floor as much as possible to match up with Westbrook, but took him with 2:05 left in the second quarter when he picked up his second foul; Westbrook scored eight points in that 32:05 and got to the half with 25. A big reason the Pistons were able to win by double digits was the ineffective night logged by Oladipo, who managed just nine points on 4 of 17 shooting. Caldwell-Pope battled Westbrook tough in the half-court offense while scoring himself. His three-point play on a tough flip over his head with 3:04 to play put the Pistons ahead by 13 and iced the win. Westbrook was devastating in transition, which translated into virtually every Pistons possession that didn’t end in a made basket. Westbrook finished with 33 points, 15 rebounds and eight assists.
