What’s the reason for the Pistons starting off so slow? They had higher expectations coming into this season with Cade coming back, but they seem to have gone back to their old ways.
What’s the reason for the Pistons starting off so slow? They had higher expectations coming into this season with Cade coming back, but they seem to have gone back to their old ways.
Ok, I don’t blame anyone for not watching Detroit, but here’s the honest take:
I need to emphasize this: Duren, who was looking like their best player, rolled his ankle. He has been in and out of the lineup, but he’s been a shadow of himself when playing.
The lack of Duren hits Cade hard. Cade has always played much better when he has an athletic roll/lob big to play off of in p&r. Duren made defenses have to respect the roll and it opened things up for Cade. Without that, and with Hayes and Ausar on the wings, Cade has no room to breathe.
Cade has played poorly. He’s made dumb decisions. He’s also trying to do everything and Monty is playing him essentially all game.
Monty has inexplicably not only benched Ivey, but moved him to fourth guard and - until today’s second half - has relegated him to fifth option on offense. For context: Ivey’s per 36 and efficiency numbers are very good, except for turnovers. He’s arguably their best player so far, on a per 36 basis. But he’s getting jerked around in minutes and role. It’s fucked up.
All of the vets who were supposed to support the youngsters have missed some or all of the season. Bojan, Monte Morris, Burks, Livers. These are all rotation guys and/or starters. Only Burks has played, and he’s missed time too.
They’ve been getting CRUSHED in ft disparity. I haven’t checked recently but I think they were literally around 50% of their opponents’ ft attempts a while back. Part of this is that they do foul a bit more. A bigger part is that they don’t have a single foul merchant on the team - Cade has a comically bad whistle. Burks can merchant a bit, but he’s a backup.
All in all: they’re not a good team but if they had the injured half of their team playing, they wouldn’t be nearly this bad. I’d put a LOT of money on the narrative around Cade being a lot different if he had Duren and Bojan to pass to instead of Wiseman (third string) and Stanley Umude (no offense to him).