Game 67: Pistons (18-48) @ Celtics (40-27) Mar. 11 7:30 PM EST

[bstein14]

Bagley with 20 and 11 on 9-15 shooting, BUT 4 turnovers and poor defense. Not sure if he was a positive overall or not. He was by far our best offensive player with a bunch of dunks and layups.

[tmorgan]

When you use Pickett to play nine guys, it’s an availability loss. No biggie.

[breezypeezy]

Celts ratcheted up another level of D to shut us down for the 4th.
Still a good loss where we played them even for 3 quarters.

[bstein14]

Cade need 27 shots to get 27 points which isn't good at all. He for sure forced some shots and even Greg mentioned part of our 4th quarter problem was our shot selection right after a Cade step back 3 miss.

[zeebneeb]

Bagley with 20 and 11 on 9-15 shooting, BUT 4 turnovers and poor defense. Not sure if he was a positive overall or not. He was by far our best offensive player with a bunch of dunks and layups.

C'mon man, this is a stretch and you know it. Bagley played within himself, and played well.

[Cowology]

Bagley with 20 and 11 on 9-15 shooting, BUT 4 turnovers and poor defense. Not sure if he was a positive overall or not. He was by far our best offensive player with a bunch of dunks and layups.

Not gonna lie, this kinda irks me; the ENTIRE team sucks at defense but people keep singling out Bagley. How was Grants defense tonight? What about Bey or CoJo? Did Olynyk do any better when he came in?

I'm not disagreeing that his defense was lackluster, but I'm tired of people constantly singling him out. He's not even playing his natural position due to injury.

[ComboGuardCity]

Teams are starting to exploit our constant switching. I don’t think you can pinpoint it on one guy

[Cowology]

Teams are starting to exploit our constant switching. I don’t think you can pinpoint it on one guy

They've been exploiting it for a long time. For a while teams were targetting CoJo on virtually every possession; they'd get a big switched on him then just abuse him down low. One of the reasons we've had so many problems with dribble penetration all season has been our bigs getting caught outside on smaller guards. It's not a Bagley problem. It's a team problem. Stew is obviously a bit better defensively, but it's not like we weren't bottom of the league in defense prior to the Bagley trade.

Our guards can't even keep guards in front of them and our rotations and help def are atrocious. What's been winning games for us is our offensive execution, and that kept us in this one for 3Q before we ran outa gas on the road.

But I said before the game started, we needed Bey to get going and he's still passing on shots like he's scared of the ball. Grant is back to iso ball with very little movement. Everytime we hit a slump this game it was settling for 3's instead of attacking the basket.

[LewisnotMiller]

Teams are starting to exploit our constant switching. I don’t think you can pinpoint it on one guy

Celts fan, just checking in. We were similar early in the year, switching literally everything. Looking back at that now, it kinda made sense to do it, and then introduce some wrinkles to it, so hopefully that's what your coaching staff is doing. Otherwise teams just play 'hunt the mismatch' all game long, and it can make that player look at pretty bad (even though much of the issue is scheme).

Really just dropped in to say Cade looks legit to me. Our defence has been giving everyone issues, and he really took it to us for three quarters. You guys always play us tough, and we're not thinking its gonna get easier. Bright future for the Pistons.

[Cowology]

Teams are starting to exploit our constant switching. I don’t think you can pinpoint it on one guy

Celts fan, just checking in. We were similar early in the year, switching literally everything. Looking back at that now, it kinda made sense to do it, and then introduce some wrinkles to it, so hopefully that's what your coaching staff is doing. Otherwise teams just play 'hunt the mismatch' all game long, and it can make that player look at pretty bad (even though much of the issue is scheme).

Really just dropped in to say Cade looks legit to me. Our defence has been giving everyone issues, and he really took it to us for three quarters. You guys always play us tough, and we're not thinking its gonna get easier. Bright future for the Pistons.

Appreciate it. Congrats on the W.

[whitehops]

Really just dropped in to say Cade looks legit to me. Our defence has been giving everyone issues, and he really took it to us for three quarters. You guys always play us tough, and we're not thinking its gonna get easier. Bright future for the Pistons.

thanks for the kind words, good luck to you guys in the playoffs. the east is pretty wide open so your defense + tatum could carry you to the finals.

[kierkegaard]

Cade was amazing but, as already stated, he ran out of gas. As also pointed out, the fact that we went cold once Cade fizzled exposes our lack of other facilitators. That has to change via coaching and player acquisition--hopefully acquisition via the draft vs via free agency. (I understand that we were short handed tonight and really missed high energy guys like Hami.)

Cade was was also clearly hurt at the end and should have been taken out. There was nothing to gain or prove at that point. It's well established that fatigue increase chances of injury. Sure, if you're in a dogfight for a championship you play through injuries. But tonight there was nothing at all to be gained by having Cade "tough it out". He only risked further injury, turning his little tweak or pull into something bigger. Casey should have pulled him at the 7 minute mark or whenever it was that he hurt himself.

Where I'm coming from is this. These little tweaks tend not to go away. They are highly likely to stay there in the muscle tissue and lead to more little tweaks which lead to more little tweaks which eventually erupt into something bigger. My guess is that this has happened to Frank Jackson, for example, who for his size can jump through the roof and thus already has probably put his anatomy through a lot of stress. And it takes much more than stretching to get rid of these little tweaks/pulls. So with respect to our future franchise player, Cade, you don't want to start piling up all the natural little tweaks that come with the sport in relatively meaningless minutes/games.

I think the sports world tends not to understand how body tissue works. It takes experience with alternative modalities such as cranial sacral therapy and myofascial release to appreciate and better manage these things.

[MotownMadness]

Smart knows how good Cade is gonna be

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[whitehops]

cade had a lot of nice moves tonight but i LOVE this one. it's so subtle at the top of his dropback but tatum and brown clearly bite that he's going right and even scalabrine on the mic goes "oh".

it's crazy how advanced some of his dribble moves are, especially considering his dribble was one of his draft weaknesses.

[kierkegaard]

cade had a lot of nice moves tonight but i LOVE this one. it's so subtle at the top of his dropback but tatum and brown clearly bite that he's going right and even scalabrine on the mic goes "oh".

it's crazy how advanced some of his dribble moves are, especially considering his dribble was one of his draft weaknesses.

From my playing days I remember 2 guys in particular who weren't super athletic yet had an uncanny ability to control, let's say, a 2 foot circle around them no matter where they were going and no matter how fast they were going there. It was as though they had a shield around them and you couldn't break through the shield no matter what. Of course I exaggerate using terms like "couldn't" and "no matter what". But Cade has a little of this to his game.

[Manocad]

Ok, send Lee back to the G-League. That's embarrassing.

Its a mental block, Lee just can't handle the pressure. Its all upstairs with him.

He was great as a rookie. Not sure what has happened. I would have thought dominating in the G League would have had him ready to go when being brought up but that's not the case tonight for sure. You can tell he's lacking confidence he just hesitated on that 3 the same way I've seen Hayes hesitate to take a shot when super wide open. Not what you want to see from your point guard.

That's twice now. Maybe one more stint in the G-league will fix everything.

[Mr Peanut]

Cade need 27 shots to get 27 points which isn't good at all. He for sure forced some shots and even Greg mentioned part of our 4th quarter problem was our shot selection right after a Cade step back 3 miss.

I'm not sure that's how I'd look at it. He already had his 27 points after 21 or 22 FGA, but missed his last 5 or 6 shots because he was playing big minutes and ran out of steam. The 4Q shots were the only ones that looked forced or out of rhythm, but for the rest of the game he looked in complete control and was going toe to toe with Tatum. Not sure you can ask for much more from a 20y/o rookie.

[Manocad]

Ok, send Lee back to the G-League. That's embarrassing.

Its a mental block, Lee just can't handle the pressure. Its all upstairs with him.

Which is strange because he has so much more potential than Hayes, especially scoring. It's odd to see a guy who's such a great scorer not be able to score. Like, ever.

[breezypeezy]

Regards them turnovers:
LeBron 3.5 career
Magic Johnson 3.9 career
Jordan 3.0 through his first 9 sesons.
Cade 3.5 currently.

I'm not that worried about Cades rookie turnover rate. High usage guys will have turnovers, doesn't mean they can't win championships, it means they are counted on to do a lot of facilitating and naturally have the ball a large percent of the time.

[whitehops]

Smart knows how good Cade is gonna be

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they are also both from texas and both went to oklahoma state so they might know each other too, but still cool to see.