FAST BREAKDOWN
Three quick observations from Monday night’s 115-89 win over the Orlando Magic…
SLAM DUNK – It wasn’t the full 48 minutes Stan Van Gundy goes into every game hoping to get, but it was plenty against an Orlando team playing its third game in four nights and coming in with a defense – very good most of the season – that had suddenly sprung leaks. Maybe the best part of it was that Van Gundy got his wish to have strong performances from both his starters and his bench. The bench expanded leads to start both the second and fourth quarters, while the starters – except for a lethargic stretch defensively to start the third quarter – dominated their matchups, for the most part. Andre Drummond (17 points, 12 boards) and Reggie Jackson (14 points, seven assists) were a dynamic pick-and-roll force early in the game and as Orlando adjusted to that, scoring chances opened up for others. The Pistons saw a 10-point halftime lead sliced to two, but blew the game open by outscoring Orlando 19-2 over the first six-plus minutes of the fourth quarter. Van Gundy got to rest his starters, allowing Reggie Bullock, Darrun Hilliard, Steve Blake and Joel Anthony to finish the game out. The Pistons dominated the glass 54-30 and won the battle of second-chance points 22-5
FREE THROW – Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has had better games and surely has taken on more challenging defensive assignments, but his case for the All-Defensive team was certainly advanced by the blanket job he pulled on Orlando’s Evan Fournier. Fournier is Orlando’s second-leading scorer and a dangerous streak shooter who averages 14.3 points a game and attempts more than five 3-pointers a game. Caldwell-Pope often guards the opposition point guard, but Stan Van Gundy likely didn’t want to put Reggie Jackson on a shooter with Fournier’s size – he’s 6-foot-7 – and ability to run off of screens. Caldwell-Pope hit two early 3-pointers to get the Pistons off and running offensively and he finished with 21 points – he hit 5 of 8 triples – but the job he did shackling Fournier was at least as instrumental to the win.
3-POINTER – The return of Brandon Jennings has gone as well as Stan Van Gundy could have reasonably hoped – on at least two levels. One, Jennings is showing encouraging signs that his best traits won’t be significantly diminished by the Achilles tendon rupture he suffered last January. Two – and more meaningful in the moment for Van Gundy – is that the decision to move Jennings into the rotation and remove Steve Blake as the second unit’s point guard hasn’t disrupted the unit’s momentum. In both last week’s win over Minnesota and loss to Indiana, the bench produced all positive plus/minus numbers for its members. Jennings looked all the way back in playing 18-plus minutes and scoring 17 points, hitting 3 of 4 3-pointers and getting into the paint a handful of times to create havoc, dishing out six assists with no turnovers. He hit Stanley Johnson and Anthony Tolliver with crisp passes for triples on consecutive possessions in the second quarter and closed the third quarter with a big triple at the buzzer to open up a 14-point lead. He scored nine points in the fourth quarter when the Pistons blew the game open.
