Comments on: Rodney Stuckey shows a couple Billups-esque flashes in Pistons win over Milwaukee

By: Laser

Laser — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 08:52:43 +0000

@josh: plenty of people act like reactionary bozos when stuckey has a good game. it’s not hard to spot. he had one good game out of the last four. 7 assists against the bucks, 6 in the other three out of the last four combined. SIX! COMBINED! what more is there to say? i’m not going to take away credit for a good game (and “good” is what it was. for the way he’s been treated as a piston and for all the jabbering we hear about his “physical advantage” over smaller (but let’s face it: better) PGs, 7 assists should be a baseline expectation), but i’m not going to go crazy when he plays to the organization’s expectations once in a blue moon.

and as for the tp%, i’ll admit i misused the term. i was confused. looking it up, it sounds pretty complicated. once you said hollinger, i knew something was fishy. what i was trying to say is that he scored more points per shot attempted than stuckey. i just took shot attempts and divided them by total points. i’m not a stats guy, but “how much did he shoot/how much did he score” is useful. shows efficiency, decision making. more useful than saying, “well stuckey scored more points!” and more useful than +/-, which can be highly misleading because of all the outside factors involved. all i was doing there was pointing out that the guy, who’s been killing bynum (a bit player in this rotation) after all these losses bynum had nothing to do with, picked a bad time to get all excited about one performance by stuckey. if bynum didn’t step in there and run the offense, the story of the game very well could have been: “stuckey’s foul trouble costs pistons an easy win.” that’s all. i haven’t been overly supportive of bynum this season, because he hasn’t been particularly great thus far, but he’s so drastically marginalized in this system, it’s hard for him to have any sort of effect on a game. don’t forget i’ve nominated him multiple times to be cut out of the rotation to make room for daye. but i guess it’s more fun to pretend i’m irrationally enamored with the guy.

@nuetes: the bucks played perhaps the worst game in NBA history. it was the first time i’ve seen them play this season, and they were without their best player and two of their top three or four scoring options. i love their team on paper when healthy, but they played so bad it made my head spin. if they normally play like this, it’s a wonder they have any wins at all. they didn’t do a single thing “the right way.” i was astonished at how bad they played. one problem is that they just don’t have good players. they have players that SHOULD be good but aren’t. in theory i like salmons, maggette, ilyasova, and even gooden sometimes. but these guys should be bit players, not brandon jennings’s ENTIRE support system. they all played bad and took bad shots, and these are the 2-5 best players on the team as long as bogut and delfino are out.

imagine a healthy bogut on the pistons. we’re suddenly probably a perfectly average team in the east. sixth seed or something, even with the worst point play in the league. so when you take him away from a team that’s (much?) worse than we are without him, what more do you need to know? but it’s a mystery to me how they could be quite as bad as they were against the stones.

i definitely think fundamentals, things you can count on night-in and night-out are key to sustained success. and that’s what i’m focused on too: sustained success. which is why i don’t root for the pistons. i want them to play well; i could care less if they win. wins are meaningless, because this team can’t truly succeed in the big picture. they need to work on things like defense, rebounding, things good teams hang their hat on, before they can have real success. anyone can hit all their shots on a given night, but it doesn’t mean they’re any good. it’s the NBA, people can shoot. but i’d feel better about a team that’s getting quality looks and missing than happening to hit tough looks left and right. that said, i do think the possession battle is a lost cause with this particular team. but it’s a nice thought.

By: nuetes

nuetes — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 16:25:36 +0000

How many wins can a team accumulate by only beating teams under .500? And the Bucks have no excuses for being under .500. They do everything right. They play the right way. They led the league in possessions created last season, but shot 43%. This season they lead the league by a mile in possessions created, but they are shooting even worse – 41%. They are 3rd in d-rating, allowing the 2nd fewest ppg, they are top 5 in rebounding, they create turnovers, don’t turn it over, block shots, and even more importantly they defend without fouling, which prevents easy points for the opposition. The Bucks are perfect in almost every phase of the game but putting the ball through that little hoop.

I stress that possessions lead to points. You can’t score without possession of the ball, and you give yourself a better chance of winning game in game out by winning the possession battle, but man the Bucks are so sorry on offense. It wasn’t much better last season, but it’s downright pathetic this season. I’ve never seen a worse offense. Their o-rating is 30th in the league, last in ppg. They are bad. If they were just average on offense they could be one of the best teams in the NBA. Watching their offense is painful. They don’t seem to run any sets. They just watch Jennings dribble or pass it around until someone ends up jacking up a contested shot. They can’t get anybody open. Nobody can hit a shot. It’s just ugly. The Bucks are killing my theory.

@laser – thanks i guess. the possession thing is sort of my agenda. if the Pistons start winning the possession battles i’d start feeling a lot more comfortable, but if you lose that battle on a routine basis your not giving yourself a good chance of winning outside of having a hot shooting night, or holding the opposition to a bad shooting night, but it doesn’t take much to force the Bucks to shoot badly. The Pistons are currently holding their opponents to a 46.4 FG% so losing the possession battle is not something the Pistons can afford to do and still win very many games, which is why they won’t win very many games.

By: JoshB

JoshB — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:59:16 +0000

@ laser
I don’t think anybody is being a “reactionary bozo”, but the guy had a good game. The fact is that right now this has not been a good team, so when they actually take advantage of another teams terrible play it’s still a good thing. Had the pistons lost with the way the bucks played you would be harping about how terrible they are because of losing to such a bad team. Yes they shot the lights out, but a lot of those shots were easy shots too. Aren’t they supposed to take advantage of what the defense gives them? Of course I don’t expect them to shoot like this every night, and no you cannot hang your hat on shooting, but I was personally more satisfied with seeing good spacing and ball/player movement. Lack of movement has been a problem that has plagued this team for years, and it has only gotten worse, so I appreciate when I see that they are capable of fixing it. I also find it funny to say somebody has on kneepads for stuckey, and then back that opinion up by pulling out Hollinger stats like ts%. It would be just as easy to pull out +/- for stuckey and bynum to make the opposite case. One doesn’t need to fail to recognize the other played well.

By: Laser

Laser — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 09:53:26 +0000

@nuetes: no real surprise on the rip thing. i mean, he’s been struggling this year, yet we haven’t touched taking him out of the starting lineup. and he’s a shooting guard (“shooting” being the operative word) who’s used to being the #1 option on offense, so he’s going to take his shots. add to that the fact that he’s best when coming off a screen to catch and shoot, and that’s all you need to know. if he’s hitting his shots, you can bet the ball is moving and bodies are moving. if he’s missing his shots, you can bet he’s spending a lot of time creating his own shot, something he sucks at. and since he’s a born shooter, no matter how much he misses he’s going to keep shooting it. other guys will try to affect the game in different ways when their shot’s not falling, but the guy’s primarily a shooter, so if his shots aren’t falling, it’s going to be bad, bad news for us.

as for your “second thoughts” on trading him, you at least must acknowledge that one of our shooting guards absolutely must go, right? on a night where stuckey played just 28 minutes, rip played even fewer than that, and t-mac only 6, ben gordon still managed just 23.5 and took FIVE shots. five. our best shooter. this situation is untenable. so yeah, maybe rip doesn’t absolutely need to be the one we trade, but one of these guys has got to go. we’ll never EVER get consistent production out of a backcourt that includes stuckey, rip and gordon. rip’s been averaging 4 shots below his career average, which has been crazy steady at around 15. gordon has been averaging about ten shots as a piston (a number inflated by his starts when rip was injured), after averaging 15-16 his previous four years in chicago. these guys are shooters. that’s what they’re here for. their respective minutes are WAY down from their usual numbers, and they’re two of our top three highest paid players. something has to give. i don’t care if rip shows glimmers of his old self or if they both go off on the same night once in a blue moon (has it even happened since last year’s opener??).

fun fact: in games where gordon didn’t start, he’s gotten up fewer than ten shots 8/13 times. in four of the remaining five he got up exactly 10 or 11. only once did he reach his career average. in the one game where gordon started and rip came off the bench, rip only managed 27 minutes and 7 shots, almost identical to the norm for gordon as piston (in a game where stuckey did not play, no less). and god knows we didn’t sign gordon for his defense/passing/good looks. we brought him in to shoot. so obviously something’s got to give.

@hayes: i don’t think the pistons played bad defense, but i didn’t feel like the bucks’ shot selection was really much of a reflection on how good the defense was. i think it had more to do with the bucks being the worst offensive team in the league by a mile. and that’s with bogut and delfino, arguably their #2 and #3 options. it’s a wonder they scored any points at all. after jennings, who are their offensive options? salmons, maggette, ilyasova, gooden? slim pickens, there. maggette and gooden laid serious eggs, and nobody looked particularly good. they were just running around randomly, moving the ball to and fro, settling for bad shot after bad shot. matter of fact, they looked eerily like the pistons have for most of the season, which is probably why it dawned on me how similarly bad these teams are.

@nuetes again: you’re totally right about hot shooting. i mean, the shots just sometimes fall and sometimes they don’t. it’s not dependable, and that observation makes me think you’re probably very astute (not that i ever thought otherwise). i’m very impressed with the observation. it’s an advanced perspective on basketball, something sorely lacking on forums like this. sometimes guys just have it, sometimes they don’t. tonight tayshaun had it, rip had it, charlie too. shot after shot. there have been plenty of nights where we got similar looks and they didn’t fall. you just can’t depend on hitting 53% of your shots to win. but there are so many intangibles, and i can tell you get it. shooting isn’t something you hang your hat on, and it’s just about all we have. you don’t have a good formula when it all comes down to: make most of your shots and you just might win, shoot a normal percentage and you don’t stand a chance.

By: Laser

Laser — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 09:04:28 +0000

@pcb: so the guy had a good game after two consecutive playmaking abortions, and he actually took advantage of his physical mismatch for once… 15 games into the season. and let’s not forget that the guy collected his fifth foul halfway through the third quarter, and plenty of credit for this win goes to your favorite piston will bynum for stepping in and keeping things going (you picked a hell of a night to put on your kneepads for stuckey, considering that bynum had a better true shooting percentage, got to the line more, made all his free throws, made the one three he took, and had a better assist-turnover ratio). i’m not some reactionary bozo who’s going to look at one game and either throw a party or jump off a cliff. i’ve been watching this guy for hundreds of games. stuckey needs to be held to a higher standard than anyone else on the team, and one (1) good game against one of the absolute worst team performances i’ve seen in my entire life means nothing. let’s see him string together a few similar performances before we throw a parade…

and i’ve got a similar feeling towards the game. i mean, sure, they should feel better about it than, say, losing to the bucks. but god how far we’ve fallen. was this game really something to feel good about?? i’ll admit it was the first game all season that i think the team actually played well, but it’s pathetic that we’re reduced to having to celebrate the ability to compete against the worst teams in the league. take away a mediocre team’s best player, and the pistons have a chance! and besides just missing bogut and delfino, this was just the single worst team performance i can remember off the top of my head. the bucks played so bad it hurt me to watch; i was genuinely embarrassed for them.

i don’t want to take too much away from the pistons, who played a good game for the first time all season and earned their first decisive win of the season. they moved the ball, moved well without the ball, they played well for once. but it’s not like they were doing anything particularly right on defense; the bucks’ offense was just a disaster. they took a lot of terrible shots, and that kept them from being able to set up their defense. and we were just plain hitting our shots, which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not reliable. tay was taking jumpers and couldn’t miss, rip was hitting all his j’s, and dishing assists like stuckey is supposed to. we did get an unusual number of easy baskets, something i’ve grown unaccustomed to, but we were hitting all our jumpers. shots that aren’t going to fall like that most nights.

i had an interesting observation watching the game: these bucks felt like a bizarro version of our pistons. they had the point guard who didn’t seem to have any interest in getting his teammates involved and was just trying to get his own shots for the most part (jennings to our stuckey), the stretch four (ilyasova to our villanueva) no real inside presence whatsoever, and most notably a bunch of wing guys who didn’t seem to make much sense on the floor (only theirs were guys like salmons, mbah-a-moute and corey maggette instead of hamilton, gordon and prince). so they were like a worse version of us. it was weird. gooden could and should have been a factor if he was aggressive; i don’t know that we would have had an answer for him if he was on, but he just took bad long jumpers all night. delfino would have been a problem too, the way he’s been playing for them. but aside from being the worse team, they played some awfully terrible ball.

i know i’m only going to bolster my reputation around here as a negative nancy, but the way the bucks played tonight, there isn’t a team in the league that they could have beaten. not the kaman/davis-less clippers, not the three-win sixers, nobody. if i’ve ever seen a worse game by an NBA team, i can’t remember it. and that includes our beloved “Goin’ to Sleep” pistons (“time-to-go-to-sleep!”). but the bottom line is a win against this bucks team is absolutely meaningless. the only thing that matters at all is how we play against good teams. we still haven’t beaten one that had a winning record. if you’re the type to celebrate a win like this, i’m sure a dose of reality won’t stop you, but the only standard by which this was a “good” win is that it was one the bucks certainly did not deserve. but the simple fact that anyone could get genuinely excited about this win is depressing.

By: Rodman4Life

Rodman4Life — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 21:01:47 +0000

I just hope last night’s good feeling for the Pistons doesn’t cause them to lose focus or let their guard down against the Knicks on Sunday.

By: nuetes

nuetes — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 17:52:28 +0000

The Pistons defense didn’t force Milwaukee into anything. The Bucks are just horrible offensively. I mean bad, really bad. They couldn’t get a good shot off against the Knicks. That’s how pathetic they are. They are by far and away the worst shooting team in the NBA. And that is partly also why they are in the top 5 in both offensive rebounds and total rebounds – because there are so many misses in games they play. I don’t necessarily equate having a hot shooting night with putting on a beat down. Shooting comes and goes, but like the Bucks creating possessions, defending, and rebounding are something you can bring every night. Unfortunately for the Bucks a hot night shooting is anything over 43%.

I’m just saying if you want to win consistently you have to win the possession battle. It doesn’t guarantee you wins, but over the course of 82 games if you win the possession battle you will win more games than not. A hot shooting night like last night isn’t going to happen as often. It’s more fluky, as is losing when you gain about 20 more possessions like the Bucks did last night.

By: JoshB

JoshB — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 17:37:03 +0000

Good article, especially the part about spacing. I really think that fact gets lost sometimes when we’re worrying about the deficiencies of this team. There are times where it appears that players would like to make a pass, but everybody is so poorly spaced that either they can’t make the pass, or it’s way to easy for the defender to recover.

By: Patrick Hayes

Patrick Hayes — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 15:08:06 +0000

@nuetes:
Yeah, they did. The Pistons get killed on the boards pretty much any game, win or lose, and Milwaukee is fourth in the league in rebounding, so win or lose, there was a good chance the Pistons would get out-rebounded.
As for the shots, yeah, you’re right, the Bucks got more shots up. But seriously, did you think they were getting good shots? Gooden and Maggette had pretty atrocious shot selection. Jennings needed 22 shots to get his 25 points. It’s not like Milwaukee was just getting great looks and missing them. The Pistons defense forced them into taking really poor shots all night. They got offensive rebounds and second chances because that’s what the Bucks do. But Detroit took it to a really good defensive team last night.

By: nuetes

nuetes — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 13:41:51 +0000

“..so the Pistons took it to a team that was depleted..”

Did they? I mean the Pistons got smoked on the glass, especially the offensive glass. Gave up so many second chance points it got comical. They turned it over 15 times. They committed 22 fouls. The Bucks took 15 more shots and 9 more free throws. If both these teams shot an identical percentage the Pistons would have been blown out.

The difference was the Pistons were hitting shots left and right. It was amazing. The Bucks couldn’t buy a bucket. In fact the Bucks have such bad credit they can’t even take out a loan to buy a bucket. That is the most pathetic offense I’ve ever witnessed. Nobody knew what to do with the ball. Whoever took the shot was going to miss it. They weren’t getting to the hoop and it was all jump shots. What is Gooden doing taking those jumpers? And Illyasova took some of the most jacked shots I’ve seen. They have some issues.

How about Rip Hamilton? He was coming off screens and hitting his shots. His favorite pass was wide open all night for him. It’s great seeing some vintage Rip. Games like that cause me to rethink trading him. I’d love to keep Rip if he would play well, but those games seem to be so rare these days. The team seems to feed off of Rip as well. He’s had 4 Ripesque (shot well) games this year and the Pistons are 3-1 in those games, with the lone loss being a 1 pointer to OKC. The Pistons might be better when Rip plays well than any other player on the team. Good news against the Bucks though, everybody played well, on offense, which caused all the other facets of the game they lost to go unnoticed.