Oct 12, 2014; Washington, DC, USA; Washington Wizards center Kevin Seraphin (13), Detroit Pistons forward Greg Monroe (10), and Pistons center Andre Drummond (0) watch the ball bounce out of bounds in the fourth quarter at Verizon Center. The Wizards won 91-89. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
With the Opening Night just around the corner, Nylon Calculus is previewing the upcoming season by taking you through some of the most important numbers to know, numbers that help tell stories about players, teams and league-wide trends.
When looking at the Eastern Conference, there’s a pretty clear top tier with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Chicago Bulls [1. I’ll state that I think the Toronto Raptors belong pretty clearly in the No. 3 spot. C’mon, they finished last season with a 42-22 record! And continuity is so hot these days]. After that? There’s a whole lot of playoff uncertainty. One of the sleeper teams popular on the interwebs today is Stan Van Gundy’s Detroit Pistons.
Under Van Gundy’s executive decision-making, the Pistons prioritized offense this offseason. They jumped out early, and surprisingly signed sharpshooter Jodie Meeks to a three-year $19 million deal. They added useful scoring assets, Caron Butler and D.J. Augustin. Greg Monroe eventually signed his qualifying offer. Almost everyone is back, sans Rodney Stuckey. Hopes are high for second-year guard, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
So, how in the world was this team a dreadful 29-53 last season in the horrendous East? A quick look at last year’s failed integration of major free agent acquisition Josh Smith will tell the story. Together, Monroe, Smith and core building-block Andre Drummond played 1,361 minutes. Those minutes weren’t good. In fact, Detroit had a 110.5 defensive rating [2. Per NBA.com/stats, because possession counts differ on different sites. The average defensive rating on NBA.com/stats was 104.0. Utah had the worst team mark at 109.1.] with all three on the court, a mark that would’ve ranked last in the NBA.
Listen, I like Josh Smith. I wrote his shooter profile earlier this summer. He’s a proven terrible shooter. And so one would think it’s the spacing – and thus, the offensive rating – that would suffer with those three-big lineups. But Detroit actually posted a 102.5 offensive rating with those three together. That’s not good either. But the defense was proportionally way, way worse.
Opponents shot 38.7% from three against Drummond-Monroe-Smith lineups. This number was especially awful down the stretch, as opponents shot 39.7% from deep from January on. In a league where preventing three-pointers AND defending them well is so important, the Pistons were falling apart with these hyper-big lineups [3. For the record, opponents shot 35.3% against the Pistons in the other 2,595 minutes. Detroit’s offense also only shot 32.1% from three. The league average was 36.0%.].
In Zach Lowe’s Grantland predictions piece, he briefly glanced over these defensive deficiencies. He gave Detroit his vote for sneaking into the playoff via a no-vote for the other middling East teams. His tidbit:
"This trio logged nearly 1,400 miserable minutes last season, a number that would have been unfathomable had Detroit not been tanking down the stretch to keep its own pick — a futile attempt that drew the ire of the basketball gods in the lottery.The all-big look didn’t work on either end, but it was especially damaging on defense. You don’t need to be Van Gundy to realize it’s time to try other things. Van Gundy has already said he’ll cut the all-big minutes, and he has brought one of the three off the bench in every preseason game thus far.”"
Meeks is out for two months with a back injury. That could affect the number of minutes Van Gundy is forced to use the three big men together, even if Monroe continues to come off the bench to start the regular season. But while everyone is focused on SVG’s creative offensive mind and his offseason splurge on shooting, rapid improvement and change is just as necessary on the defensive end for the Pistons.