Three quick observations from Wednesday night’s 110-97 win over the Philadelphia 76ers
SLAM DUNK – The Pistons are putting together several candidates for “worst defensive quarter of the season,” but put an asterisk next to the 35-point third quarter Philadelphia amassed against them in Wednesday’s comeback win. That asterisk would denote that the 76ers came into the game ranked dead last in offensive efficiency and by a good margin. They opened the quarter by hitting 13 of 17 shots before missing twice in the final minute. The Pistons survived their lowest-scoring first quarter of the season – 12 points – and took the lead early in the third quarter before their defense didn’t give their offense the chance to sustain it. But they disrupted Philly just enough in the fourth quarter, forcing eight turnovers, and were very good offensively in scoring 36 points to pull away down the stretch. Andre Drummond finished with 25 points and 18 rebounds – his two free throws when Philadelphia intentionally fouled him with a little more than two minutes left were big ones with the Pistons ahead by five at the time – and Reggie Jackson scored 10 of his 27 in the fourth quarter for the Pistons. Stanley Johnson logged 18 points, two off his season high.
FREE THROW – Interesting matchup at shooting guard to start the game: the No. 8 pick from the 2013 draft (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope) vs. the No. 8 pick from the 2014 draft (Nik Stauskas). Both went scoreless in the first half, though Caldwell-Pope rebounded with 12 points in the second half, while Stauskas finished with four. The 76ers acquired Stauskas over the summer in a deal that was motivated by Sacramento’s desire to create cap space. The Kings took Stauskas with the pick that would have belonged to the Pistons if Cleveland hadn’t come from behind to improbably win the No. 1 pick for the second straight year – the pick they used to draft Andrew Wiggins and eventually use him as the bait to add Kevin Love in trade. The Pistons were bumped from No. 8 to No. 9 in the lottery and thus had to cede their pick to Charlotte. Had the Pistons stayed at No. 8, all signs point to them looking first at Stauskas. Remember, Stan Van Gundy was new to his job at the time and Caldwell-Pope, though he’d shown flashes as a rookie, was a long way from a proven commodity and certainly wasn’t the consistent 3-point threat that Van Gundy came to the job knowing the Pistons needed in a big way. Stauskas was widely viewed as the best 3-point shooter in the draft. The Kings, like the Pistons, had also taken a shooting guard in the previous lottery, Kansas’ Ben McLemore, with the pick one ahead of where the Pistons grabbed Caldwell-Pope.
3-POINTER – Ersan Ilyasova has become a critical part of getting the Pistons off to fast starts. And, you guessed it, he had a start in keeping with the team’s early sputtering. Ilyasova went 0 of 3 in the first quarter, though he did grab five rebounds. He also came out of the game with more than three minutes remaining – unusual for Stan Van Gundy, who usually plays Ilyasova the entire first quarter and then brings Anthony Tolliver on to start the second quarter. Ilyasova’s quick starts, Wednesday notwithstanding, isn’t so much by design, perhaps, as it is the natural result of what happens when defenses pack the paint early in games to achieve the No. 1 objective of any team that plays the Pistons – stopping the Reggie Jackson-Andre Drummond pick and roll. That leaves Ilyasova open, defenses willing to see if he’s got it going. And lately, he certainly has. Coming into Wednesday’s game, Ilyasova in January was averaging well more than half his points in the first quarter – 7.2 of his 12.6 points per game in a dozen January games have come in the first quarter, as well as 3.6 of his 7.5 rebounds a game. That’s brought Ilyasova’s season averages up to 11.3 points and 5.6 rebounds a game. It’ll take a hit with his three-point, eight-rebound performance against Philly. He and Anthony Tolliver, his backup at power forward, have provided an efficient 1-2 punch of late, but they combined for just Ilyaosva’s three points and missed all five of their 3-point tries.
