The Detroit Pistons — unlike the Utah Jazz — made the NBA playoffs and gained the chance to learn about postseason basketball at the hands of the No. 1 seed in their conference.
Teams in need of a rebuild — whether old or poorly constructed, or somewhere in between those two flavors of inadequacy — benefit more from making the lottery. They need to start over. They need a longer offseason. They need time to revise their approach. They need more time to formulate moves which reset the organization for the season to come.
For the Pistons and the Jazz, however, that general situation did not exist. Detroit and Utah both stood to benefit from a playoff appearance, though almost certain to be a short-lived one, because they’re both young and well-constructed. The rosters they have are going to be the rosters they’ll depend on in the next few years. They might make an acquisition or two to fill a need here or address a weakness there, but they have their core groups. Those young players need to taste what it’s like to go to battle in the postseason.
The Jazz fell short in this pursuit, but the Pistons got in the door. Sunday in Cleveland, Stan Van Gundy’s team got baptized in the waters of the playoffs against the Cavaliers and the man who has won five straight Eastern Conference championships, LeBron James. The Pistons would surely love to engineer one of the all-time great upsets in NBA playoff history, but they’re levelheaded enough to know that they’re not championship contenders. Their main mission is to grow.
In Game 1, Detroit gave Cleveland a stern test. The sense of optimism pervading the Pistons organization should definitely increase after this game, even though the team lost. This was a classic youth-versus-experience game. The veteran team struggled for much of the day but put together its best ball in the fourth quarter, after trailing by an 83-76 margin. The young team hesitated and lost focus at crunch time. Poorer possessions and shakier shots — plus one or two defensive sequences in which frontcourt players failed to box out the Cavs — caused Detroit’s downfall.
Responsibility for the loss was certainly shared.
Marcus Morris didn’t hit a second-half field goal after torching Cleveland for 19 first-half points. Morris and Tobias Harris both struggled when trying to defend LeBron James at the 4 position. LeBron regularly got to the paint and either finished shots or initiated kickout and ball-movement sequences in which the Cavaliers gained open threes. The Pistons definitely re-learned in this game what they already knew going in: They need a much more muscular power forward to play defense next season.
Detroit also lost because Andre Drummond — who played a strong second half — needed two quarters to show up. An 8 seed can’t get half-games from its starting lineup and expect to beat a 1 seed on the road. Drummond learned a lesson about playing 48 complete minutes on Sunday.
Yet, what detail knits together Morris, Harris and Drummond? They lack extensive playoff experience.
One of the few core Pistons who has ample playoff experience? Reggie Jackson.
This was the player who wanted out of Oklahoma City, who wanted to make it on his own, who wanted to be the big-money, ball-dominant leader of an NBA team.
If anyone should have stood taller for the young Pistons in the first playoff game of the Stan Van Gundy era, it should have been Jackson.
Yet, late in the game, with Detroit trailing by a small margin, Jackson did this:
Pistons' Reggie Jackson gets technical foul after losing composure over no-call pic.twitter.com/uZEytEb89j
— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) April 17, 2016
No, this didn’t cost Detroit the game. A collection of things did… and not just what the Pistons failed to do.
LeBron James, Kevin Love, and Kyrie Irving are kinda sorta good. They combined for 81, 24 and 18 — points, rebounds and assists. That’s an average — shared among the trio — of 27, 8 and 6. Pretty tolerable, to say the least. Getting quality performances from the Big Three erased a lot of other inadequacies, at least for one day. Detroit doesn’t have players who are that polished or proven just yet.
The 1 seed showed why it was a 1 seed, and the 8 seed showed why it was an 8… for reasons which went far beyond the Reggie Jackson technical.
Yet, on a team in need of floor leadership — a team given a great deal of guidance by Van Gundy from the bench — Jackson has to be a rock in terms of the style and the substance he gives to teammates on the court. If he loses his composure, who else on the Detroit roster is going to provide a sea of calm at crunch time?
Jackson’s technical didn’t decide the game, but it was and is symbolic of a deeper void on the Pistons. It was particularly evident in Drummond’s performance that these young players — with bright futures — weren’t entirely sure how to act. Steve Blake can offer some help from the bench, but Sunday’s poor showing from the veteran backup reminded SVG and anyone watching that he can’t play too many minutes. In terms of a player who must remain on the floor for Detroit, Jackson is simply the man who has to lead by example.
Sunday, he didn’t.
That’s a concern not just in the context of this series, but for the Pistons’ future.
All those young guys who couldn’t stitch together complete games — excelling in one half but not the other — have plenty to learn after their introduction to the playoffs.
Reggie Jackson should have to learn about how to better counter Cleveland’s traps and double-teams — when he attempts the pick-and-roll with Drummond, or on a general basis.
However, Jackson shouldn’t have to learn how to control his temper. That kind of deficit sets back the whole operation. The Pistons have enough concerns to handle with a young team just beginning to understand what it takes to win at this time of year.
Reggie Jackson’s composure was not supposed to have been an issue.
It cannot be in the future — not next week, and not in 2017 — if this organization is going to go where it feels it can… and where its talent suggests it soon might.
