Van Gundy puts Pistons to work on defensive habits

It's not just the fact that the Detroit Pistons are yielding a lot of points. It's also that they're yielding those points to teams that shouldn't be dropping more than 110 per game.

In their past 10 games, the Pistons have allowed 118 points to the Orlando Magic, 114 to the Indiana Pacers and 112 to the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Magic is 25th in offensive efficiency, the Pacers are 28th and the Timberwolves are 26th.

And after Sunday's performance in a 112-101 loss to the Timberwolves, Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy decided to call a "corrective" practice Monday when the schedule said the team would just travel to Charlotte for Tuesday night's key match-up.

"We've been trying to save their energy, but we didn't use any last night anyway, so we saved it last night, so we should have been able to go today," Van Gundy said after a short practice today. "We needed to get back into some better habits."

The Pistons' 11-2 stretch right after the Christmas break was fueled by a top-10 defense. But with little practice time and Van Gundy trying to keep the team fresh when practice time was available, there has been major slippage.

"Now over the last 10 games, we're 28th defensively, we're still seventh offensively so we lose (Brandon Jennings to Achilles injury), play 10 games without him, you stay seventh in offensive efficiency, that's pretty good, you should be winning more games, but our defense has dropped off the charts," Van Gundy said. "We got to try to get it back, we haven't had enough practice time. That's my fault. We opted to not do anything at full speed the day before the Minnesota game. It was a mistake. We gotta get back to habits and they gotta take care of their energy."

Andre Drummond's struggles with Nikola Pekovic (29 points) was the headline, but Van Gundy said the defensive breakdowns were all over against the Timberwolves. He added it was the worst defensive game of the season.

"I don't think we put anything into our defense last night, nothing," Van Gundy said. "We didn't have pressure on the ball, they didn't feel us at all, we weren't up on our pick-and-rolls, we let Pekovic catch it deep, our double-teams even when we went to them were late and soft and we let him step through, we didn't play people one-on-one, we didn't help, literally nothing, we did absolutely nothing defensively."

Contact Vince Ellis at vellis@freepress.com . Follow him on Twitter @vincent_ellis56 .

Tuesday: Hornets

Matchup: Pistons (20-32) at Charlotte (22-29).

Tip-off: 7, Time Warner Cable Arena.

TV/radio: Fox Sports Detroit; WMGC-FM (105.1).