The Pistons came back to earth in a big way against the Celtics. After starting off 4-1, they got slaughtered by the Boston Celtics in Detroit by a score of 109 - 89 and it was worse than that for most of the night.





What on earth happened to Blake Griffin in this game?

Yeah it was by far his worst game of the season, which was going to happen at some point and it makes sense to happen against such a good defensive team as the Celtics. Part of it was simple regression to the mean, Griffin missed all 4 of his deep shots after shooting over 60% from deep in the first 4 games (he is still over 50% on the season lol) and that was going to come down regardless of defense.

That said, the Celtics smothered him with defense and the Pistons had no answers.

There’s a few things to point out here that Griffin is facing that he didn’t really in the first 4 games. First off, the Celtics sent extra guys at him all night. Other than the Cavaliers, who are so bad defensively that their double-teams were very hit and miss, Griffin has not faced a ton of double-teams or even shades toward him.

This isn’t a huge surprise, post-ups, even from elite players, are usually very ineffective. One of the best ways for them to be effective is if you toss double-teams at them and allow a good passer to pass out of them to open shooters. As such, teams were willing to let Griffin go at people one on one and hope for the best.

The Celtics didn’t do anything revolutionary, but it was well-thought and highly effective. We’ve got 3 clips to show it (and could’ve had plenty more.)