AUBURN HILLS – It’s troubling to Stan Van Gundy that 43 games into the season the Pistons still don’t have a discernible identity. “Not at all,” he said. It’s also a reason for optimism.

Part of the reason you’d struggle to find a label for the Pistons is the log of their game-by-game injury report. It would be easier to tick off the list of players who haven’t missed a game – or several – for one reason or another.

“I think I’ve always had (a team) at full strength for a good part of it, so it’s been a little bit harder,” Van Gundy said after Tuesday’s practice. “But we’ve been at enough strength to know that we should be better than we are. But I still think there’s enough there that we’ve got a chance to make a run at this. I really do.”

The Pistons remain on the fringe of the playoff picture, meaning a hot week thrusts them right into the middle of it. They’re 2½ games out of the eighth playoff spot and just 3½ out of the fifth spot. But as Yogi Berra said, it’s getting late awfully early. They know they can’t afford to run in place forever.

The schedule gives them an opening to start making up ground. They have just 17 road games left of their final 39 games. This week would be a good place to plant their flag with two teams ahead of them in the standings, Atlanta and Washington, visiting The Palace over the next four days.

“Find a way to get some wins – that’s what we’re going to try to do,” Reggie Jackson said. “Protect home court, string some wins together and just find a way to stay in this hunt. See where we’re at when the season comes to an end.”

It would help if everybody showed up in uniform Wednesday against the Hawks. Three players missed Tuesday’s practice, though Jon Leuer – out the past four games with a right knee bone bruise – was back at it. Sidelined were Andre Drummond (sprained right knee), Aron Baynes (sore left knee, tweaked while working out before practice) and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who’s missed the past two games with a left shoulder injury.

Whether it’s been the constant lineup shuffling necessitated by injury or deeper issues, the defensive chemistry Van Gundy expected to become this team’s backbone simply hasn’t materialized.

“We need to hang our hat on the defensive end of the floor and I don’t think, at this point, you can say that we’re there for sure,” he said. “We’ve got a long way to go to get there and we’ve got to get there. Hopefully, in the next few weeks, start establishing that as something we can count on and go from there.”

After a 15-game stretch where opponents shot an astounding 45 percent against the Pistons from the 3-point line, their win Sunday at Staples Center came when the Lakers shot just 6 of 26 (23 percent) from the arc. There’s a school of thought among the analytics mavens that opposition 3-point shooting is largely random with little a defense can do to affect accuracy. Attempts, perhaps, but not accuracy.

Jackson isn’t inclined to wait for regression to the mean to ride to the rescue for the Pistons.

“People are consistently shooting around 40-plus percent on us,” he said. “I think the NBA has some great shooters, but I think we have to be better on defense and cause guys to miss.”

Van Gundy still believes in the roster he and general manager Jeff Bower cobbled together with one sound move after another. But he’s waiting for the results to come in line with the vision. They might not have the luxury of waiting for everyone to be healthy at once to ratchet up the level of urgency, either.

“We’ve just got to be more committed at the defensive end of the floor and we’ve got to play better together at the offensive end of the floor,” he said. “We can certainly still have a really good season and do everything we set out to do. And that’s been my message to them. But we can’t do it playing the way we’ve been playing.”