Pistons Need to Regroup

The Pistons were mostly manhandled in Los Angeles last night by the Lakers. They came out flat, gave inconsistent effort, and appeared to be out of sync for most of the game. Honestly, it seemed like many of their players were ready to give a half-hearted effort in a game they fully expected to lose. While that obviously should irritate you, it’s not absurd. NBA teams play 82 games in about 170 days and some nights the effort just isn’t going to be there. Better to give bad effort and lose in when the odds are stacked against you rather than give a bad effort in lose when you’re the favored team.

The Lakers game was the first of a tough four-game west coast trip, which will be followed by a home game against the Cavaliers. The Pistons take on the Trail Blazers tonight. To date, the Pistons are 0-3 in the second part of back-to-backs this season. The odds are against them again as they face one of the top defenses in the league. The Trail Blazers are allowing only 88.1 points per game while holding their opponents to just 41.2 percent shooting. Both of those marks are best in the league.

The good news heading into tonight’s game is that the Trail Blazers backcourt is no bigger than the Pistons, so the guards won’t be routinely abused on the post as they were against the Lakers last night. Coach Nate McMillan has had success starting both Andre Miller and Steve Blake in the same backcourt, while starting Brandon Roy at the three (the team is 6-1 with this starting unit compared to 2-3 with a different grouping). This actually suits the Pistons very well. Rookie Jonas Jerebko will hound Roy all night, and while it is a daunting task, I think he can somewhat limit Roy’s impact due to his significant size advantage. At the guard spots, I like the Pistons trio (Stuckey-Gordon-Bynum) to make a much bigger impact than the Trail Blazers mix.

The problem for the Pistons on Wednesday will be the frontcourt. They were outrebounded 44-32 against the Lakers and now face the third best rebounding team in the league. The Trail Blazers have a lot of length starting with seven-footer Greg Oden and 6-foot-11 LaMarcus Aldridge. Joel Przybilla (7-foot-1) is one of the better backup centers in the game, and all this size will be the biggest obstacle in tonight’s game.

While Ben Wallace is an impressive rebounder and defender, he’s only 6-foot-9. Charlie Villanueva is taller, but mostly avoids the post and is only averaging 5.6 rebounds this season (the second most on the Pistons). The Pistons may want to get Kwame Brown some more minutes tonight, simultaneously with Wallace and Villanueva, to counter the Blazers edge on the boards. The same goes for Jason Maxiell. Both Max and Brown are averaging just 16 minutes per game this season.

Injury Updates

Tayshaun Prince traveled with the team to the to the west coast and reported making significant progress with his back. He remains out indefinitely, but cited that he felt it was more important to travel with the team’s trainer to continue treatment as opposed to staying home and getting rest.

Richard Hamilton, who was injured in the team’s first game of the season, will not play on the team’s current road trip, but has not ruled out returning next Wednesday against the Cavaliers.

Given the Pistons relative success against a tough schedule without their two holdovers from the glory days, the likelihood of one or both of the players getting traded at some point this season increases. There’s no question that the current roster is lopsided with a loaded backcourt and shallow frontcourt.

Another motive for a trade aside from adding another big man would be to clear some cap space. Rip will be the highest paid Piston next season, bringing in 12.65 million. Tay will be the second-highest paid player at 11.15 million. Bringing in an expiring contract would allow the Pistons to seriously compete for one of the many impressive free agents next summer. Trading Hamilton will be the most difficult task, as he is signed into 2013.

Tags: Lakers beat Pistons, Pistons blog, Pistons vs. Trail Blazers, Richard Hamilton injury, Tayshaun Prince injury