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NEW YORK -- Coming down the narrow hallway to the visitors locker room at Barclays Center, Ish Smith implied to his teammates and coaches that he was clairvoyant. As soon as Brooklyn Nets center Brook Lopez’s one-footed stepback jumper left his hands, the Detroit Pistons guard knew it was going in.
It was a low-percentage shot. Detroit defended it about as well as it could have. In the locker room, coach Stan Van Gundy asked Smith why he predicted the worst. Smith’s answer, according to Van Gundy: “Because we effed around with the game and it’s basketball karma.”
This was not the first time that the basketball gods have been invoked in Brooklyn this season. The Nets improved to a league-worst 14-56 on Tuesday. Teams that play with purpose almost always beat them. The Pistons entered the game tied for the eighth spot in the Eastern Conference playoff race, so you would think they’d have hair-on-fire intensity. Instead, they surrendered an early lead by putting up just 13 points in the second quarter and fell even further behind in the third. In typical Detroit fashion, the Pistons fought back in the final frame, but it wasn’t enough this time.
“I don’t know if I believe in karma, but we lost the game in the [earlier] part of it,” Van Gundy said. “Look, we didn’t deserve to win tonight.”
A sheepish Smith seemed surprised that Van Gundy had revealed his postgame comments to the media. He admitted he had a “gut feeling” that Lopez’s shot would drop, but elected not to say much about how the Pistons played.
“I might have said some things,” Smith said, “but I’m a Christian man, so I got to repent.”
The Pistons are puzzling because they’re not a typical mediocre team. They won 44 games last season with a fairly young roster. Many writers, this one included, predicted their core of Andre Drummond, Reggie Jackson, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Tobias Harris would improve enough for them to finish the regular-season with homecourt advantage in the Eastern Conference.
Even now, those prognostications don’t seem completely crazy. When they move the ball and push the pace, they are dangerous. More often, though, they are slow, disconnected and disappointing.
“Our ball movement is sporadic at best,” Van Gundy said. “Our offensive energy is not good. Ish plays with some energy, Pope plays with some energy, Aron [Baynes] plays with energy offensively, Tobias plays with some energy. We got a lot of guys who just stand around.”
Detroit didn’t just lose to the worst team in the league. It lost to the worst team in the league at the worst possible time and it was a result of the same things that have plagued the Pistons all year long. They were stagnant for significant stretches, and it looked like they were either pressing because of the urgency or they didn’t feel the urgency. It’s unclear which would be more troubling.
“Everybody in this locker room is frustrated. I mean, that’s a game that, we came in here, we expected to win,” Harris said. He then praised the Nets for a while before getting to the point. “We needed this win. They played like they needed that win more than us.”
Van Gundy lamented that Detroit has been relying on fourth-quarter comebacks too much. Since the All-Star break, it has had a plus-12.5 net rating in the fourth quarter, which ranks second in the league, but it has only won half of those games.
“It’s not going to work every night,” Van Gundy said. “You’re going to have to play more than 18 or 20 minutes in a game. And so here we are, crucial games late in the year, and you know, they played harder, they played with more energy. I don’t know anything else to say. It’s mind-boggling. It’s inexcusable.”
The uninspired performance in Brooklyn was a microcosm of a slog of a season. Drummond had 13 points, 17 rebounds and two blocks but found himself on the bench at the end because the Pistons started their comeback without him. Jackson sat, too, as he was minus-12 in 20 minutes. These two were supposed to be the pillars of the organization, and yet the front office “quietly explored the trade market” for both of them before the trade deadline, according to ESPN’s Zach Lowe. Second-year swingman Stanley Johnson, the No. 8 pick in the 2015 draft, got a DNP-CD because Van Gundy hasn’t liked the way he’s been playing lately.
Chemistry is a funny thing. Going into the season, it looked like Van Gundy, also the president of basketball operations, was building something simple and sustainable. The Jackson-Drummond pick-and-roll was the backbone of their offense, and they were surrounded by shooters -- or at least players Detroit hoped would develop into shooters. The Pistons targeted players with length and defensive versatility. If Drummond could make the leap into being a dominant defender, then there was no telling how good they could be.
It turns out that what they had was much more fragile than anyone knew. Jackson suffered a knee injury in training camp, and while they were able to get by without him, they haven’t found their stride since he returned. Their offensive numbers plummeted when he was trying to play through pain, and with him healthy, he and the team have had major issues with consistency. The offense is no longer completely reliant on pick-and-rolls, and it has been a challenge for Jackson be his aggressive self and keep everybody else happy.
“He’s still struggling,” Van Gundy said. “It’s still up and down. And I think he’s trying to work through it the best he can. He had three great fourth quarters in some really good wins at home, but it’s been up and down. He’s just, you know, some nights it’s there, some nights it’s not.”
The result: Detroit’s future doesn’t seem nearly as sunny as it did last summer, and its present predicament is looking more and more daunting. The Pistons have 11 games left, seven of them on the road, including three more back-to-backs after they play the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday. They are one game behind the eighth-place Miami Heat in the standings.
Knowing all this, you might think that Van Gundy had some words of wisdom for his group after Smith declared that they’d effed around. In fact, he didn’t have much to add.
“I mean, somebody said, ‘I hope this is a wake-up call,” and I almost started laughing,” Van Gundy said. “We’re 71 games in. A wake-up call? Come on.”
