Oof.

It happens. But lets see if we can pinpoint a few reasons it happened.

Firstly, Duren and Joe were still out due to injury. Ausar was back tonight. But lets look at the story of the game.

The Pistons took a lead in the 2nd, lost it before the half, and then really lost it (and made a soft run with 3 mins left but it wasn't enough). The questions we need to ask are "why" and "how".

Well we shot 9-37 from 3, and they only shot 12-36. So that difference is negligable.

Freethrows, we went 14-24, they went 23-28. That's a 9 point edge to NY.

You could argue that those two things (3 more 3s and 9 more FTs) were the game. And they were. But we gotta look deeper.

With 7:30 in the 2nd Quarter (an arbitrary point in the game, but it's when we started losing our lead) a couple things happened. Start at the bottom of this next image.

Cade comes out. Drummond had a put back, DEF REB, Reed foul, Drummond TO, Reed TO, Tolu Smith in.

Cade comes back in at 5:15 (again, look bottom up at this PbP graph.)

It feels like the first step towards losing our lead was getting out rebounded by Drummond (that's ironic).

Being down Duren, Reed being in Foul Trouble, and Tolu Smith with a -113.6 Net Rating doesn't help anything. By far the worst of the Pistons tonight.

The ORTG with him on the floor was 17.6.

If there is 1 flaw with this team it is the depth of our Bigs. Tolu played for 6:01. He played from Q2 6:24 - 4:22 (2 min 2s) and Q3 3:59 - 0:00 (3m 59s)

I am not heaping blame on anyone. It is just a note that Reed played 25 min, had 5 fouls, and he sat for a while at the end of Q3. Foul trouble caused the early problems.

This team might struggle against teams with good Center play. Between KAT and Andre, we struggled. Andre was +55 in NRTG.

But the bench played pretty similar.

Our Starters 3PT

Our Starters just didn't seem to get into a rhythm. Overall, foul trouble, a cold night from 3, and Duren being out against the Champs, made it tough sledding. It happens. Hopefully few and far between.

The Pistons went 9-37 from 3 (24.3%)
The Knicks went 12-36 from 3 (33.3%)

I'm not noticing a trend yet from our perimeter defense. Ausar fouled out tonight. Brunson seems like hes in his head.

Here are some general stats of the 4 games so far.

We are top 5 in the following categories:
REB, AST, BLK, OFF RTG, NET RTG, Opp EFG%. 3rd easiest remaing schedule (that means nothing).

Here are our most used Lineups so far:

All the -NRTG is most likely just from tonight. This does tell you a few things. Chiefly, compare it to NYK Most Used Lineups.

The starters of the Knicks have played 60 court minutes together. The Pistons? 20.

Overall, don't be worried. We're trending in the right direction. I would chalk this up to the Knicks were 0-3 before tonight, it was a primetime game, MSG probably had some weird energy. It's always a tough place to play. The refs (seemingly) made a lot of ticky tack calls.

It's a long season. We play them 3 more times. Plus probably in the playoffs again. Hopefully next time we have Duren ad can get a good measuring stick game.

Go to bed. They play again tomorrow against the Hornets!

Anyone know if they sell the grey Detroit sweater that JB and the rest of the coaches have on tonight? Those bad boys go harrrd

Pistons lose by 14. Isaac Jones time?

Before the season, Duren said during an interview that he plans on shooting more threes this year. Paul Reed and John Collins have already shown that JB plans on running a lot of plays where the five will be open for a corner three. How much faith do you have in Duren following through on that? It seems like he will get plenty of open opportunities with the plays the Pistons are running.

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If Duncan Robinson keep playing this way and The Pistons remain the #1 seed, I think he'll get voted into the all star game this year

I had intended to post about this before the season but I believe that John Collins' abillity to credibly space the floor at the 5 will probably be the single most important development for the team for this season as compared to last - particularly come playoffs time.

Obviously, we're a long way from April & beyond but the line-ups where he slides to the 5 gives us legitimate 4 and sometimes 5 out line-ups that the Pistons obviously haven't seen with the Ausar/Duren combo and really looks to add another gear to the Pistons offence. And the fact that he seems to be able to hang well enough as a rebounder/defender in this role is absolutely awesome to see.

Hate to see JD go down so early in the season but if there's a silver lining to this, it's that JB has been forced to have Collins spending more time at Center that he maybe otherwise would, so hopefully these early reps will end up bearing fruit at the back end of the season.

Just thought it was funny. He's been banged up every time we've faced the Knicks since last year, and tomorrow's game keeps that streak going. I'm very curious how he matches up against them with this new lineup.

He's my favorite Piston OAT and I love him and all but what happened after halftime against NY? Hard to watch tbh glad we have a back to back, hoping for a masterclass and tbh the Hornets wont be easy so we may need a big game from him again. Brandon Miller has been shot chucking his way to a couple 30+ point games so we can feel good about beating them if that even happens lol