Jan 2, 2015; New York, NY, USA; Detroit Pistons guard Brandon Jennings (7) gestures after scoring a three point basket during the third quarter against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. Detroit Pistons won 97-81. Mandatory Credit: Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY Sports
The Detroit Pistons are molten lava hot. According to NBA.com, they’ve been outscoring the opposition by an average of 22.0 points per 100 possessions over their last five games. Most stunning on this run has been their offensive performance—113.7 points per 100 possessions from a squad that was averaging 97.6 in the 28 games prior to that. The most obvious turning point was the release of Josh Smith, but for all his horrible shooting, addition by subtraction simply doesn’t explain all of the fireballs now shooting from the Pistons’ fingertips.
There are myriad explanations for the Pistons’ offensive turnaround, some sustainable, some not. Some are fairly obvious.
The first is that the Pistons have hit a defensive soft-patch in their schedule. The five teams they’ve beaten on their recent win streak—Indiana, Cleveland, Orlando, New York, Sacramento—rank 9th, 23rd, 20th, 28th and 25th this season in points allowed per 100 possessions. In fact, if we look at the Pistons’ schedule as a rolling five-game average of their opponents’ defensive efficiency, we would expect this be one of their best scoring stretches all season.
Playing against a soft defensive schedule is also paying dividends for individual players. Over his last five games Brandon Jennings is averaging 21.6 points per game, shooting 55.8 percent from the field. That’s up from 12.6 points on 36.8 percent shooting across the rest of the season. Jennings is a notoriously streaky (read: mostly bad) shooter and this is an enormous jump. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if we look at a rolling five-game average of Jennings’ shooting percentage across his entire career, this is his best five game stretch ever.
I’m sure removing Josh Smith from the Pistons has created some measure of psychological and emotional freedom for these players. Having him not shooting the ball is a boon for offensive efficiency as well. But before we get too excited about the rebirth of this once proud franchise, it seems worth acknowledging that they are doing it against one of the easiest stretches they are likely to see in their schedule, and on the back of a wildly inconsistent scorer who is, literally, shooting the ball better than he ever has at any point in his career.
Then again, there is a not insignificant part of me that wishes the Indiana Pacers could have signed and then waived Smith, and maybe have caught a little of this lightning in a bottle.