Detroit Counterpoint

Jan 7, 2015; Dallas, TX, USA; Detroit Pistons head coach Stan Van Gundy and the Pistons celebrate the win over the Dallas Mavericks at the American Airlines Center. The Pistons defeated the Mavericks 108-95. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Seven in a row.  Blowouts. Comeback wins against the defending champs. New energy and purpose. Togetherness. That’s the story in Detroit, culminating in some ways with Tuesday’s absurd win in San Antonio[1. The Spurs hit 4 of 10 free throws in the closing stages and almost literally handed the Pistons the ball off of what should have been a game ending inbounds pass to set up Jennings game winner.].

As the resident skeptic, I’m not buying, at least not completely. Yes Josh Smith has been bad this season, but he alone was not on pace to cost the Pistons double digit wins. The “smart” teams, not to mention (cheap shot alert) Sacramento would not have been lining up to sign him immediately after his release if he was that disastrous. Yes Jodie Meeks being back in the lineup adds a very much needed knock-down shooter to the equation. But really, this sort of turnaround is ridiculous.

So what gives?

Yesterday, Nathan argued this version of Detroit is actually quite good, while Bryan Toperek posited better ball movement and shot selection as major reasons why, citing improved assist totals and more attractive shot charts. It’s certainly true that the Pistons are shooting the hell out of the ball. In the first six games of their winning streak[1. the SportVU data used for much of this analysis does not update until overnight so the impressive performance against Dallas on Wednesday isn’t included. However, D.J. Augustin dominated the 4th quarter, which to some extent is of a piece with the larger analysis that this makes no damn sense, scientifically speaking] the Pistons are sporting a 55.4% Effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%). This would be the best mark in the league by a wide margin, and is a far cry from the 45.8% in games played before Smith’s departure. The improvement shown is larger than the gap between Philly’s league-worst 45.7% and Golden State’s top mark of 54.1%.

Some of this improvement is natural. Smith is, to put it mildly, not a good shooter. However, he was only taking 16.5% of Detroits shots. Replacing his shots with league average attempts would have been good enough to raise their overall eFG to just under 49% — still not good, but no longer putrescent. Meeks’ dead eye shooting might have been worth another point or two as well, pushing them to slightly above average, still not enough to explain this tectonic shift in performance. The team’s shot selection has improved, but only a little. For the entire season, their Expected Effective Field Goal % (XeFG%), a measure of the team’s mix of shots based on location and defensive pressure of each attempt, is 50.6%, which actually ranked 10th in the league. Since Smith’s dismissal, this has risen to 51.5%, again not nearly enough to explain the much larger improvement.

And in fact, by the numbers, Detroit’s offense hasn’t been appreciably better and generating looks. Before the move, just under 49% of the Pistons’ field goal attempts were potentially assisted (shots resulting from potential assists are much more efficient, leaguewide), during the first 6 games of the streak, this number actually dropped to 47%. All told, it’s hard to say the team is creating significantly better looks on the aggregate, and while distributing Smith’s shots elsewhere and funneling more jumpers to Meeks helped, the biggest factor going on is the team is just making a ton of shots. Easy shots (43.5% of their wide open threes, up from 35.8% while connecting on an astonishing 78% on open midrange shots), hard shots (54.9% on tightly contested shots at the rim from 47.3%) and everything in between.

Perhaps nobody embodies this supernova of shot making better than Brandon Jennings. The mercurial point guard has always had a penchant for the pull up jumper, even if maybe he shouldn’t, in 2013-14, Jennings shot 34.7% on these attempts. However, during his streak he is hitting pullups wtih a 69.2% eFG including 48.6% from three on nearly 6 attempts per game, leading to such jokes as

All this is a longwinded way of saying, that if what Detroit was doing was “real,” I’d totally buy Nathan’s analysis. But they aren’t this good. They can’t be. Or maybe…

Hold on, be right back.