For starters, this is the NBA. There isn’t college football. The NBA is a talent driven league and the best teams are the teams with the best talent and a coach who adjusts to make the most of that talent. No matter how good or successful the scheme is, trying to put round pegs into square holes is never a good idea in the NBA. This is especially true when you are the Pistons, who do not have anywhere near the talent to simply overcome a scheme that doesn’t take advantage of their talent. No team wins in the NBA by taking established players and trying to fit them into a coaches scheme, teams win by making schemes to maximize their players. That is the case today, has been the case in the past, and will be the case in the future

The Thunder are long, athletic, brutish, and poor shooters. So they built a scheme that focuses that brutishness across the entire team and lets Russell Westbrook and Paul George grind out points on the offensive end. The Warriors have two of the greatest shooters ever, so they run those two off of endless screens and actions to get them any space. LeBron’s teams have LeBron, so they give the ball to LeBron and try to have everyone else do their best to get out of the way and hit the open shots that come. The Spurs have swapped from the most boring, plodding, posting up teams in the NBA, to the most beautiful whirring machine generating 3s, back to boring mid-range chucking.

And Casey isn’t just not adjusting his scheme to maximize the roster, looking at the numbers you would think he was hired to be a stealth tank commander here to actively sabotage the Pistons in an attempt to lose as many games as possible.







Wait a minute. Earlier you said the Pistons were better the last four years. Four years ago was SVG’s first season, the one with Josh Smith where they started 5-23.

Not a typo. Their winning % still enjoys an edge over the 2014-2015 team, but the Pistons currently have the 23rd net rating in the NBA at -2.9. The 2014-2015 team had the 19th net rating at -1.1. This year’s iteration may win a few more games courtesy of some Blake Griffin heroics, but they certainly are not better.







Actively sabotaging the team is a bit over the top don’t you think?

Let’s start with Reggie Jackson.

Dwane Casey clearly doesn’t think highly of Reggie Jackson, neither do many of you. Which is fair, Jackson is a flawed player, however, think of what his flaws are and have been since arriving in Detroit. Flaw #1 is that he’s not a good shooter, flaw #2 is that he’s not a very good defender, lastly is his tendency to dominate the ball too much but he largely exercised that from his game last season so we will let that slide for now.

So when Dwane Casey arrived, he decided that the best way to use his bad-shooting, bad-defending point guard was to make him a 3 and D player. Jackson is taking 47% of his shots from deep, his usage % is down about four points to 23%, and the spread pick and roll has been almost totally excised from the offense.

To put that usage percentage into perspective, here are guys who use more of their teams possessions while they are on the floor than Reggie Jackson: Trey Lyles, Kris Dunn, and Serge Ibaka. This, on its own, is not that outlandish. Jackson’s usage rate is not too far out of line for other second-fiddles playing with a ball-dominant player. For instance, Kris Middleton is not that far ahead of Jackson. Though it is important to remember that shooters will have inflated usage rates compared to passers, since a missed shot will go on the shooters usage but not the passer, and once again, Jackson is very much a shooter in this offense.

Here’s a few point guards who takes a lower percentage of their shots from deep: Damian Lillard, Kemba Walker, and Kyrie Irving. All of those guys are far better shooters who can pull from anywhere, Klay Thompson has taken less of his shots from deep this season.

Here’s the issue, if you take the ball out of Jackson’s hands, it is going into someone’s and Griffin is already at a incredibly high usage. Jackson’s usage has dropped by just about 4 points, most of those have gone to Andre Drummond, who’s usage is up a little over 3 points from last season. And guess what, his raise in usage isn’t from getting extra lobs to finish, or even more of the juicy passing from last season. It’s because he has raised his number of post-ups from about 3 to just over 5 per game, a huge increase, and that doesn’t even take into account how regularly he faces up instead of posting up, but keep that in the back of your mind for a bit.

The biggest number to show Jackson’s misuse is his assisting. Last season Jackson assisted on 33% of teammates makes while he was on the floor, season before that 30%, and before that 36%. This season he is down to 24%, a 9 point drop from the previous season. Jackson’s facilitation remains underrated, when Jackson passes to a three-point shooter they hit 36.3% of the time, when Griffin passes: 30.2%, Ish Smith: 31%. But put that number in your back pocket for a second.

This season, per synergy, the number of possessions that involve a Jackson pick and roll are down nearly 20%, and that doesn’t even take into account that a huge number of his pick and rolls are with Blake Griffin with the only goal of getting Griffin a mis-match, also the possession only needs one pick and roll to qualify. In past seasons, Jackson would regularly run multiple sets in a row until they found something they liked. This season he pretty much gets one and then they move on to other stuff.

But why take the ball out of Blake’s hands to give Jackson more time in the pick and roll? You don’t get to run it into the ground with a guy of Blake’s capabilities around.

Let’s be clear about something, I am not asking for a total shift in the offense, Blake Griffin should be the fulcrum and then some. No matter what, Jackson is having the ball less here.

That said, there isn’t some rule that says you can’t have a few extra possessions where Blake Griffin spots up around an old-school 1-5 pick and roll of Jackson and Drummond.