The Charlotte Hornets put on a clinic for the offense Dwane Casey aspires to for the Pistons. It wasn’t just the 141 points they amassed but the ways they got to that unsightly total: at the rim, from the foul line, beyond the 3-point arc.
But Casey has a blueprint for defense, too, and essentially it boils down to taking away those things and forcing the opposition to hoist as many contested 2-point shots as possible – the ones the analytics say you can’t shoot well enough to win consistently.
And Friday night was more an abject failure at that mission than a chance to admire Charlotte’s analytic precision.
“We’ve got to make sure we have the right matchups because they’re great athletes,” Casey said. “They’re scorers. We scored 119. That should be enough. You go into the game thinking you’re going to guard ’em, go tit for tat, it’s not going to happen. You’ve got to take care of the ball and have a defensive mentality. We didn’t start out with that even though it was the first thing on the board today.”
Charlotte scored 64 points before getting two from anywhere other than the paint, at the foul line or from three. Terry Rozier, who finished with a 25/10/11 triple-double, hit a 13-foot jump shot with a little less than five minutes left in the first half. They would be the first, last and only points for the Hornets all night from anywhere other than the paint, the line or the arc. Yup, 139 of 141 points – 70 in the paint, 54 from three and another 15 at the line.
How did the Pistons fail to force Charlotte into taking the shots they try to avoid?
“I think maybe just our physicality and picking up the ball, wanting to guard our man,” Cade Cunningham said. “Making it tough on them. I think we were a little too loose, allow them to flow a little bit too much and get in rhythm.”
Cunningham returned from a five-game injury absence and that leads off the good news for the Pistons from the 141-119 loss – one that snapped Charlotte’s six-game skid and extended Detroit’s to seven. Cunningham was limited to 22 minutes on the advice of Pistons medical staffers, finishing with 12 points, five rebounds and two assists.
“It’s more sudden movements cause (discomfort) more than anything – and pain,” the rookie said. “Trying to work through it and get it back right and get better.”
The Pistons have the weekend off, then play road games at Washington and Boston next week before getting a week off for the All-Star break. They got further banged up against Charlotte as Frank Jackson played just nine first-half minutes before exiting with back spasms and Cory Joseph suffered a cut near the eye.
Killian Hayes used all of those circumstances to make the most of 28 minutes, finishing with 11 points and a career-high 12 assists one night after fouling out in 13 minutes. He hit 5 of 9 shots and committed only one of Detroit’s 18 turnovers.
“I thought Killian lit up a little bit,” Casey said. “Offensively, kind of got his feel for the game going.”
Hayes’ two sophomore classmates, Saddiq Bey and Isaiah Stewart, also made dents in the scoresheet – Bey 25 points on 16 shots and Stewart with 15 points, 12 rebounds and two blocked shots.
But all of that paled next to Charlotte’s overwhelming numbers. The Hornets shot 56 percent and hit 18 of 42 from the 3-point arc to cap a week in which Pistons opponents hit 48 percent from the arc over three games, averaging 51 points a game from three. Charlotte’s 71 first-half points set a franchise record and were the most the Pistons have given up in a half this season. The 141 points came up three shy of the 144 San Antonio scored on Dec. 26 when the Pistons were fortified by eight players on emergency 10-day contracts due to a COVID outbreak.
“That’s not a lot of defense,” Casey said. “That’s what we’ve got to get back to is playing some semblance of defense.”
“We’ve just got to be better at plugging gaps,” Bey said. “Playing team defense as much as possible but also guarding our man. We’ve got to do a better job of executing.”