Deep down, basketball is a simple game.
If you make open shots and take care of the ball, you’ll win more often than you’ll lose. If you turn the ball over and miss those open shots, well, you’ll be the Detroit Pistons.
We’re a week into the regular season and the Pistons are winless at 0-4. They’ve battled playoff teams and shown flashes. They’ve had some impressive individual games as well.
But in the end, they’ve done enough to play good teams close and not enough to win.
I think Detroit’s issues are interconnected.
Their inadaquacies on offense are tied to their struggles on the defensive end. The Pistons aren’t making enough out of the solid looks they’re getting in games, and they’re giving away wayyyy too many possessions due to incredulous ball security.
“I got to be sharper with that,” Cade Cunningham told reporters after Monday’s loss. “I got to be sharper with the ball. The team trusts me with the ball. To have as many turnovers as I’ve had to start this year, it’s hard to win games like that. I put a lot of that on me, setting my team up, taking care of the ball, and making the most out of my responsibility.”
For all the great moments Cunningham has during games, the turnover problem he’s dealt with for three years is impossible to ignore. He’s currently averaging 5.8 per game, third worst in the NBA behind James Harden (6.7) and Trae Young (6.5).
I’ve always loved assist-to-turnover ratio because it kind of shows the efficiency of your offense via makes created by good ball movement versus possessions lost by miscues.
Detroit’s assist-to-turnover ratio as a team is 1.29, which ranks 26th in the NBA. Additionally, just over 17% of their possessions end in a turnover, and boy, that sure does match the eye test. What was shocking to me is that it’s not even worst mark in the NBA.
The Toronto Raptors’ turnover percentage sits at 19.4 and there are five others teams between Detroit and Toronto in the standings. The Pistons are only giving up 20 points per game off those turnovers, which actually feels low.
This team plays with effort on the defensive end, but the roster just doesn’t have good enough defensive personnel right now. Turning it over as much as they do is just textbook self-harm. They’re stacking the deck against themselves.
Turnovers are a deflator. They kill momentum. They kill confidence. Giving up a bucket off a bad pass on one end often leads to younger players pressing or doing too much the next time down to try to make up for it. The Pistons aren’t good enough to win that way.
They’re playing really slow, too, with the fifth-slowest pace in the league. That puts pressure on your half court offense to execute. It’s also a byproduct of shoddy defense and ball security, because you need to get stops in order to have transition opportunities.
If you can’t get stops, you can’t get out and run.
All of the Pistons issues aren’t going to be solved overnight, but I’m optimistic because the big ones — turnovers and missed shots — are a correctable issue. You can take better care of the basketball. You can make open shots. Those are variables you control as a player.
And, hey, maybe fewer turnovers and seeing a few more shots go in helps to energize and focus Detroit on the defensive end. It certainly can’t hurt.
If they can aim for marginal improvement across the board, I think we’ll see a team that’s much less volatile. They won’t need 20 points from Cade in the third. They won’t trail by 10 at half every night because the end of the second quarter is a disaster. And they won’t be the worst fourth-quarter offense in the NBA.
Just play smart and make shots. It’s not asking much, is it?