Game Recap/Notes: Game #13. Pistons 107 - Kings 129. (3-10)
This was hot garbage. The only reason I’m not skipping it entirely is because I am going to miss some recaps next week when the Pistons are on the west-coast trip.
Killian Hayes:
Showed both sides of what I’ve been saying about him. Still made a couple of standout defensive plays, but was terrible offensively and failed to score. He was at least one of like 4 dudes who seemed to actually want to get back in the game.
Cade Cunningham:
Actually pretty good! 25 points on 20 shots and 11 assists. He was often part of a comical defensive effort on the night but he also joins the list of guys who seemed to actually have some desire to make stuff happen to get back into the game. Overall one of the few saving graces here is that this was comfortably his best offensive outing, even if much of the damage came in garbage time.
There was one play in particular where he passed it to Bey for a backdoor cut and layup which was just absurd.
Saddiq Bey:
The other positive on the night. 28 points on 20 shot equivalents, including 4-9 from deep. He obviously isn’t putting up 28 every night but overall this looked a lot more like the guy we saw last season and expected to see this season. He let fly from deep without any second thought every time he got a seam. This is pretty much the end of the positives.
Jerami Grant:
Terrible.
Isaiah Stewart:
Got a lot of rebounds courtesy of the high pace and many missed shots, was still pretty poor overall. The real issue is that Richaun Holmes is another good example of the issue with Stew. Stewart, for all his tenacity and effort, is still undersized for an NBA big and he isn’t a great athlete by that measure either. We saw it the other night in Cleveland and again tonight, Holmes was simply too big and too athletic for Stewart to effectively contend with on a possession by possession basis on his way to 19 points on 9-10 shooting from the field.
To be clear, this isn’t a shot at Stewart, it isn’t his fault he isn’t taller. But it is appearing as an issue with Stewart as a potential starter and there isn’t anything to really be done for it. I really like Stewart and if he could find the jumper that he showed a flash of last season he could still become a really good player, but there are real questions about his viability as a starter.
Trey Lyles:
Terrible.
Cory Joseph:
*fart noise*
Frank Jackson:
Actually ok and hit a few shots nice to see.
Other guys:
Josh Jackson sucked. Luka Garza got in, did a couple decent offensive things, looked totally out of place on defense. Diallo finally got in and actually scored a few points. Saben Lee got in garbage timebut didn’t do anything. McGruder appeared as well.
General:
Terrible performance. People mostly know that I hold a pretty high disdain for Dwane Casey, and while obviously it’d be nice if the players could hit a few shots, there are two issues at hand here.
Casey is not a new coach here. The issues of a stagnant offense where people struggle to find a comfort zone that can only really work off the back of riding gifted isolation scorers into the ground has been the case going back like a decade. Through all the Raptors and Pistons teams, there is one constant.
The one thing Casey brings that even haters like me admit is that he typically keeps the “give a shit level” to a point where these types of games don’t happen. This is like the 5th time the Pistons have gotten utterly blown out of the water this season. And it isn’t just the offense, the defense has looked totally out of sorts for much of the season as well. So if Casey is not even able to bring out the “This team won’t quit and will make anyone work for it” stuff then what is he doing here?
The answer is he’s doing nothing here. His track record as a development coach is totally fraudulent, he runs an offensive style that doesn’t work, and he clearly has lost a certain pulse of the team with how badly they’ve been embarrassed multiple times this season. It is time to move on from Casey and get in a coach who will actually run an NBA offense and hopefully get the ears of the players back. Every day that passes that Dwane Casey remains the coach is a mistake, although that has been true from the day they hired him.
Programming note: In case you didn’t catch that at the start. When the Pistons make the west-coast trip there will be minimal recaps. I should still manage to keep up on previews, but I get up for work about 4:00am EST so there ain’t no way I’m staying up to watch those games.