What's Ailing the Detroit Pistons?

It’s now three games into the season and the Pistons are 1-2. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, as the two losses came when the Pistons leading scorer for the past seven seasons, Richard Hamilton, was riding the pine.

It does raise some concerns though, as the Pistons have gotten beaten pretty badly in the post. Keith Langlois’ latest article talks about just how badly Detroit’s big men have done offensively and collecting rebounds.

The things that stand out to me are between six of the front court players, they managed to only put up 30 points in three games. Yes that means Kwame Brown, Ben Wallace, Chris Wilcox, Jonas Jerebko, and Jason Maxiell put up a combined ten points per game. That won’t cut it in the NBA plain and simple.

Another thing that’s going to have to improve is the play of power forward Charlie Villanueva. He is having a very hard time finding his legs with the Pistons. So far he has only managed to average 9 points per game and 4 rebounds. That’s far short of the 17 and 8 they had hoped for him to average this season.

He started to turn things around towards the end of the game against Milwaukee, but he needs to show some consistency for the amount of money he was paid. It hasn’t seemed like he has been botching plays or things like that but rather his shot hasn’t been falling and Detroit as a team has been getting pushed around under the basket, well everyone except Wallace.  

With the bad there is some good. Ben Gordon has been doing well over the first three games, averaging 24 points a game and shooting 48 percent. To go with that him and Rodney Stuckey seem to be playing extremely well together, at least in the first half of games.  

Which brings us back to bad things the Pistons are doing again, thus completing the bad-good-bad sandwich that is Detroit’s season so far. The Pistons have played horribly in the third quarter in their last two games. Combined they have been outscored 30-60 in the third quarter.  

To be honest I can’t explain why the Pistons have come out so poorly after the halftime break the last two games, but it seems similar to the mysterious Sunday curse the Pistons experienced last season. Hopefully Coach Kuester can find a way to keep Detroit warmed up through the break.

One more thing to look forward to is the return of Hamilton. It is a very small sample size but the lone win for Detroit this season was with Hamilton healthy. That game Detroit's offense had good ball movement, and the four guards were able to cover up the deficiencies of their big men. It could be a while, as the latest news has him out for two more games.  

Against Orlando its going to be interesting to see how Brown and Wallace handle Dwight Howard. Unless they can muscle up and keep all the big men that the Magic have, and they have some good ones, they won't stand a chance. The past few years Detroit has been Orlando's Achilles heal, but this a much different team with much younger players.