Ground Hog Day: Piston Rally in Rip City Falls Short Like LA

Big rally comes closer this time, but falls short in Portland
Groundhog Day
by Keith Langlois

Same story, different night. If you saw the Pistons lose to the Lakers on Tuesday in Los Angeles, you saw them lose on Wednesday at Portland, although this time the hole wasn’t quite as big and the rally came even closer – to within a point with a minute left from 20 down before losing by six.

They hung tough for much of the first half, hit a bad spurt late in the second quarter and saw a lot of good work unravel into a sudden double-digit deficit that put a shorthanded, schedule-disadvantaged young team into a hole that proved just a little too deep for their resources.

Until these last two games, the Pistons missed Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince mostly for the depth that two players of that caliber provide – players who eat up 35 minutes apiece and give the Pistons 35 points and 10 rebounds and rock-steady defense.

But during these two games, it was hard to shake the feeling that they missed them for more than that, that when momentum started rolling downhill against them against both the Lakers and Blazers – and who’d be surprised if the Western Conference finals was Lakers-Blazers? – the Pistons abandoned their principles and every nuanced lesson John Kuester’s been drilling into them since the start of training camp.

And that two players who’ve been around the block, not to mention places like the Staples Center and the Rose Garden, as many times as Hamilton and Prince could have accomplished more with their body language and projections of poise than all the timeouts Kuester was forced to burn to stem the disintegration, so that maybe those crazy fourth-quarter rallies would have only had to bring them back from 10 down instead of 20.

Losing these games is one thing. Losing these games because they didn’t give themselves a realistic chance to win them is the disheartening thing, especially after the Pistons provided so many heartening moments in their first 10 games played under unexpected adversity.

But a little perspective is in order. While the Pistons were crossing the halfway point of their four-game West Coast trip against four heavy playoff favorites, Toronto was closing out its own four-game trip, one that started with a win against the struggling Los Angeles Clippers. Toronto wound up 1-3, getting slammed Tuesday and Wednesday at Denver and Utah without nearly the asterisk the Pistons can put on their losses for the absences of Prince and Hamilton.

The Pistons don’t have a Clippers game awaiting them, alas, finishing the trip out with another back-to-back against Utah and Phoenix. They get two full days off, much needed, to digest the lessons imparted by two legitimate title contenders. Here’s what I’ll remember from the Portland game.

What I liked:

•The lineup that brought them back – The fight the Pistons showed in what looked like another hopeless situation in the fourth was one thing, the faith Kuester showed in his rookies by mostly letting them finish what they started was something else.

Austin Daye and DaJuan Summers started the quarter and, surprisingly enough, it was their length and ability to cover so much ground defensively with the Pistons in scramble mode that was instrumental in getting the Pistons back in the game. When it looked as if the Pistons actually had a chance to pull off the miracle, Kuester brought Jonas Jerebko back for Summers – but when Jerebko fouled out, instead of going with a veteran, back came Summers.

That fourth-quarter run came without either Ben Gordon or Will Bynum on the floor, Kuester apparently recalling that they were out there in the third quarter when Portland outscored the Pistons 22-12. The rookies brought them back, the rookies stayed in to try to close it out.

And for as often as the Pistons have gone small, mostly of necessity, in the fourth quarter they went big with Rodney Stuckey and the 6-foot-11 Daye in the backcourt and Ben Wallace flanked by Summers, Jerebko and Charlie Villanueva at various times up front.


•Jonas Jerebko’s defense – Even before the comeback, Jerebko had made his mark. He started at small forward guarding one of the best ballhandling shooting guards in the NBA, Brandon Roy, and when foul trouble grounded both Villanueva and Jason Maxiell, Jerebko played much of the second quarter at power forward, often matched against LaMarcus Aldridge. From Roy to Aldridge; if he were a football player, that would be the equivalent of playing wide receiver in the first half and rush linebacker in the second.

I don’t know where Jerebko will top out offensively. I see many elements in his game to make me think he can eventually become a guy who’ll give you 12, 14 points a game and seven or eight rebounds and shoot a decent percentage from the 3-point line. But he’s showing that no matter where his offensive ceiling is, his ability to defend and his willingness to compete is going to earn him a long and healthy NBA career.

What I didn’t like:

•Rodney Stuckey’s first half – I fully understand the predicament in which Stuckey finds himself. Without Hamilton and Prince, he’s a point guard who quite often is no worse than the second-best scoring option on the floor. When Charlie V was limited to five first-half minutes by foul trouble, Kuester was forced to go with some combination of Wallace, Kwame Brown and Maxiell for most of the first half up front. That puts inordinate pressure on the few scorers out there, Stuckey one of them.

But Stuckey took too many forced shots early in the shot clock against Portland and didn’t seem to sense that at some point, when the shots aren’t falling, the best option is to pass the ball and find your scoring chances when somebody passes it back to you.

In contrast, Stuckey was really good down the stretch, finishing with 21 points, six rebounds and five assists. Stuckey made a terrific read late, driving into the lane completely under control, drawing the defense and kicking it to Charlie V in the corner for a bucket that cut the lead to one with 1:29 left. But for a long offensive rebound off a Steve Blake miss on the ensuing possession – it kicked back to Blake, who finished the possession by hitting a triple from the same spot – the Pistons might have come all the way back.

On balance, Stuckey would do well to study a player across the court from him Wednesday, Brandon Roy, who, like Stuckey, grew up playing basketball in the Seattle area.

Roy is mature beyond his years, with an uncanny knack for deferring to his teammates early in games to get them involved – while simultaneously softening up a defense so he can attack as the situation calls for it later in games.


•Jason Maxiell – Maxiell was terrific in Tuesday’s loss to the Lakers, giving the Pistons 13 points, seven boards and two noisy blocks in 21 minutes, easily his best outing of the season. And if he’d never played a game like that, you’d write it off as one of those nights unlikely to be repeated anytime soon. But Maxiell had those games fairly often a few years ago, so it was reasonable to hope he’d found his niche in Kuester’s sytem and would have a similar lively performance, if not necessarily the numbers, against Portland.
No such luck.

Maxiell failed to capitalize on Tuesday’s momentum, playing 19 minutes, going 0-for-4, grabbing just two rebounds and generally not making his presence felt.

On to Utah, where it can’t hurt that the Pistons have eight new faces on the roster with no connection to the dreary recent history against the Jazz – six straight losses in their building, eight straight overall.