Turnover NIGHTMARE: Detroit Pistons Collapse as Cade Cunningham STRUGGLES to Secure WIN vs Bucks

Turnover NIGHTMARE: Detroit Pistons Collapse as Cade Cunningham STRUGGLES to Secure WIN vs Bucks

Turnovers killed the Detroit Pistons against the Milwaukee Bucks. If they don’t fix this turnover issue, and one other key issue we’re going to talk about here, this start to the season will be viewed as a fluke run in a few weeks for the Detroit Pistons. You are Locked on Pistons, your daily Detroit Pistons podcast, part of the Locked On Network. Your team every day. What’s the deal? Welcome back to another episode of the Locked On Pistons podcast. Per usual, I am your host, Cookah Hill. You can find me over on Twitter, Cookill. I’ve been covering the Detroit Pistons for the last four years for the Locked On Pistons podcast. Been credential media member over the last three years. And I appreciate all of you guys who make Locked On Pistons your first listen of every single day. We’re free and available on all your podcast platforms. If you haven’t already, head to the YouTube channel, locked on Pistons, hit that subscribe button, or leave us a fivestar review on whatever podcast platform you’re listening to us on. And today’s episode is brought to you by Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, and use code locking NBA for $20 off your first purchase. Later on the podcast, I’ll address, do I think the Pistons need shooting? Do they need to go out and acquire more shooting? And then I’ll talk about later as well, the other key issue that has been at the forefront for a for the last like week and a half, two weeks now for the Detroit Pistons that they have to get in order or this is going to come crashing down. But we’re going to start with obviously the loss itself. The Pistons lose this game to the Milwaukee Bucks 113 to 109. And mind you, Giannis, who it sounds like he avoided catastrophic injury, which thank God, nobody, no basketball fan. No one wants to see Giannis go down with an injury of what it may have looked like it could have been. It it looked bad. I was really concerned for him. So, it doesn’t sound like that’s what it is. So, thankful for Giannis, but Giannis didn’t play in this game. He He was out after the first three minutes. He he didn’t even play in this game. And the Pistons were up 194 to start the game up. like they were just dominating the Milwaukee Bucks. Especially when Giannis went out, they just started dominating them. They were in control. But yet again for the fifth, sixth, seventh, how what game are we at now of of me coming on here and talking about how bad how many turnovers they are committing per game. It finally caught up to them in one of their worst, if not the worst loss of the Detroit Pistons season, if not one of the This might be the worst loss next to the Cleveland loss of the season. They had no business losing this game. And we’ll touch on the other issue that is at the forefront of why the Pistons don’t look as good over the last few weeks, but the turnovers absolutely killed Detroit in this game. You may look at the overall box score and come away saying, “Well, Coo, they only had 15 turnovers. How did they how did the turnovers kill them?” They had 15 total turnovers throughout the game. They had eight in the fourth quarter. They had eight turnovers in one quarter and I believe at least five of them came in the final five minutes of this game. That is a that is I I can’t even put into words how unacceptable that is. Just just careless turnover after careless turnover after careless turnover. Carris Levert had a turnover that was so bad that it it was immediately followed then with Jericho Sims getting offensive rebound, putting the ball back in and then for some reason Jaylen Dur just tapping him on the chest to give him a and one and then the Bucks took the lead for the first time. There’s a two-way sequence of just careless nonchalant basketball. Paul Reed who came into the game and gave some good minutes, g you know did what he, you know, he did his Paul Reed stuff, but he had two turnovers that were just killer. He threw one straight out of bounds or basically out of bounds. Kade and Levert weren’t looking at him coming up the court. He just throws it to him and it just s it just goes straight to the Milwaukee Bucks. Terrible turnover. Cade got ripped up once by Ryan Rollins. Then Cade got the ball poked loose, lost control of the ball, ended up being a backcourt violation. I They They commit so many turnovers. It’s ridiculous over this stretch. And again, they only had 15 throughout this game because in the first three game or first three quarters, they were in control of this game. And then the turnovers reared their ugly head again for now the sixth straight game and it caught up to them. You are not going to be able to win games like this, continuing to play with the turnover gods. It’s not going to happen. Good teams don’t win like this. And this is something the Pistons did such a great job of during their winning streak. And now it’s coming back. All of it over the last week and a half, two weeks. It’s all coming back. And I have a I have one reason or one guess for why that’s happening. We’ll talk about this in the second segment, but the Pistons just have to take better care of the ball if they want to win games. Jay Ivy had a turnover earlier in this game or earlier in the fourth quarter around like the five four minute mark where they had him it was for actually it might have been even earlier than that because K I don’t believe Kade was on the floor but they had Ivy trying to initiate offense. He tried to drive at the top of the key against the zone defense and just ended up turning the ball over. Jane Ivy in this game he had the best game since his comeback. He had 15 points on five of 10 shooting. He hit three or or two threes in this game. This was his best game since he came back. Best game. He looked his best when he was playing with Cade and Assar. Cade and Caris. Caris and Assar. And the reason for that was because throughout the majority of this game, they had him playing off ball. They weren’t asking him to initiate offense and they were minimizing his on ball reps. That is his best stroll. That’s when he looked his best. He was feasting off ball. He was hitting catch and shoot threes. He was driving close outs. He was cutting to the basket. He was hitting TR. Like that’s where he’s at his best. Giving him on ball reps at the end of games is just is not the move. You need to be minimizing the on ball reps as a creator and have him playing off ball. That was a critical turnover that he just couldn’t afford. Kade is getting back to just completely careless in the fourth quarter with turnovers. The last three games. We’re talking six turnovers, eight turnovers, eight turnovers. I mean, it’s it’s it’s unacceptable. Now, I understand the last game against Atlanta, he turn he ended up making it not matter because he came through in the final two minutes, but that’s not a sustainable way of playing basketball. That’s not a sustainable way of winning. You cannot have these random key pivotal turnovers. It’s not going to win you games. It’s just not going to happen. And along with the turnovers, listen, everyone knows how much I love Kade. Kade is the franchise player. I think he’s been playing like a top 10ish player in the league. I think he’s been fantastic, but the Pistons are going to need him to start making some threes. He He’s going to have to start hitting some threes. It’s it’s it’s been deep into the season enough. He’s shooting 29% from three on six and a half attempts a game. Like, that’s just not going to cut it, man. I like it has to get better. It has to get better. And it has to get better because not only do they need obviously K to be more efficient, make threes. Obviously doesn’t take a rocket scientist to think that, but this team doesn’t have a bunch of other volume three-point shooters. They don’t have a bunch of other shooters on the team because they are relying upon Duncan who was out this game. And it absolutely showed the zone defense completely killed the Detroit Pistons because one, without Duncan, they don’t have guys who have quick enough releases to get threes off in the gaps of a zone defense. If you go and rewatch this game and you watch when teams play this zone defense against the Pistons, they were I can point out multiple possessions here. Jay and Ivy had a corner three where him and Tobias kept playing the semi-pro and they just kept passing back and forth to each other. Ivy had about two threes that he could have taken right there, but he doesn’t I guess he doesn’t have a quick enough release or feel confident in his release to get over a contest that’s rotating over. They need him to get those threes up. Tobias earlier in the game, which I ended up liking the fact that Tobias ended up shooting more as the game went on. He to threes and they needed him to, but earlier in the game was hesitant on taking some threes with some guys rotating from the from the side with a side contest. like they they need their guys to take threes when they’re there, especially against a zone defense who can’t be passing up open threes. But the overall point, let me get back to it. Kade has to hit these threes because they don’t have other guys who are going to be hitting threes at a good enough clip. It’s Duncan. It’s Tobias. Now it’s Ivy when he gets back. He’s back now. You expect him to shoot good from three. And it’s Cade. Part of the reason why you believe you can run these type of lineups and part of the reason why you believe you don’t need to have to just have the whole team flooded with shooting because this team’s identity is defense. Their best player will be able to hit threes. You’ll get one movement shooter. You have a shooter at the four and then you’ll make it work. But it’s not going to work with Kade shooting one of seven from deep. Like that’s not going to work. Kade has to hit threes and he’s shooting really bad on wide open catches. Shoot threes. I can get the numbers up right here if it will load before we end the segment. But Kade on open threes this year is having the worst season of his career. Like that’s the turnovers are killing them. But they also need their best player to start hitting some threes. Not even the contestant ones, not even off the dribble ones. Just the open ones. He has to start hitting these. It’s it’s not it’s not acceptable. On unguarded threes, he is in the second percentile on overall catch and shooting. Kate is in the fifth percentile. This is by far the worst of his career. By far. He’s literally at the bottom of the league when it comes to three-point shooting. At the very bottom. They’re not going to win games like this. Turn the ball over and then you also are not hitting threes. Teams are just stacking up zones against you because one, your best player is not hitting threes and the rest of the team around you. You don’t have Duncan. And then the rest of the team around you isn’t getting threes up quick enough against the gaps that are available. It’s it’s a recipe for disaster. And despite all of that, despite all of the three-point shooting concerns, despite them not getting enough threes up against the zone, or actually I thought they actually did earlier in the fourth, Tobias started blooding them out of it. I thought they would end up winning the game, but then the turnovers came around. That’s the point here. At the end of the day, despite all of that, you still would have won the basketball game if you didn’t just have eight turnovers in the fourth quarter. You you still would have won this basketball game despite the three-point shooting. If you just did did not turn the basketball over eight damn times in the fourth quarter against a Milwaukee Bucks team that did not have Giannis Ait Takmpo. A absolutely unacceptable loss. Unacceptable loss. And I spoke about this a week and a half ago. I said the Pistons are, you know, I forget what the record was at the time. 15 and four. I forget what it was. I said the Pistons are 15-4. So, no one should be sitting here saying the sky is falling. They’ve had a great start to the year. But there are habits you starting to see in some of these games that if they continue to go through these habits and don’t break these and start to correct some of these things, it will catch up to them. And now they are what three and three in their last six games. They have been nowhere near as dominant. the pre before these six games. This is what the Piss’s net rating was in the g in the wins. Plus 10.7 plus 9.2 plus 13.7 plus 9.3 plus 9.5 plus 20.8 plus 11.2. They were dominating teams. They were handling business. And now in the six in these last six games, you’re looking at a net rating of plus 5, minus three, minus 1.9, plus three, plus two, minus 5.4. Even the games they’re winning, they’re winning by the skin of their teeth because they’re not playing well. I They have to correct these things. Again, the season’s not falling apart. The sky is not falling. It’s none of that. They still have had a really good start to the season. They still sit at the top of the conference. But you are seeing over the last six games habits develop and clear weaknesses and clear flaws that if they don’t continue, if they don’t wrap this up, if they don’t figure this stuff out, this three and three last six games will turn into a five and five over the 10 game stretch or maybe go into a four and six over the next 10 games. That that’s what ends up happening. You have to correct what you’re seeing in front of you. They cannot keep turning the ball over like this. It’s it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. But coming up, there’s another thing that is just as ridiculous to me that I I I’ve reached my limit with it. I can’t I tried to give it a chance. I I it it can’t keep happening. The Detroit Pistons just need to play their best players. Just play your best players and that would solve a lot. What if sports were traded like markets? Now you can put your sports IQ to work in real time with Robin Hood prediction markets. It’s not you against the house. 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That’s another great way to support the podcast. Listen, man. I I had been saying this for two weeks now. I have been saying this since before what I what date would we say? November 17th, 16th is when I started saying this. The Detroit Pistons are not the Oklahoma City Thunder. They’re just not. I’m sorry to break it to everybody. I’m I’m sorry to break it to anyone who thought they were. They are not the Oklahoma City Thunder. They also are not the 2014 San Antonio Spurs. Again, I don’t know. I’m I’m sorry to break people’s hearts out there that may have thought this way, but they are not those teams. You may be wondering, what do you if some of you guys may be wondering, what do you mean by that? What’s the correlation between those teams? Those teams actually did have players that were so good and had so many good players to where you had to carve out minutes for everyone and keep minutes even across the board and and find a way to play every single person. Those teams actually were good enough. San Antonio in 2013, the Oklahoma City Thunder right now. Like, yes, those teams can. As I’ve been saying for two and a half weeks now, the Detroit Pistons do not have good enough players to where you should be carving out minutes for these players. They are fine end of bench guys. They are fine fill-in guys, but the Pistons, you win basketball games by playing your best players and not playing your best players. So you can then find ways to play your lesser players in key moments of games is how you lose basketball games. And I really I that that’s just a general thought on it to really get specific about it. Over the last six games, what’s changed? What’s changed? I’m waiting. I’m wait I’m waiting for an answer. Like what what I’m like Dora out here. I’m asking to answer the TV. I’m waiting to hear you guys’ response. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So eight games ago. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, no, seven games ago, Jaden Ivy returned. You guys may be, some of you guys may be think I’m going to blame Jay and Ivy. Absolutely not. That’s not what I’m blaming. Jane Ivy came back on November 22nd. Asar Thompson came back on November 18th. What happened right before that stretch? Right before then, we had seen Javvante Green ball out in a few of those games. We saw Dannis Jenkins ball out in a few of those games. We saw Chaz Laneir play some good minutes. We saw Bobby Clintman on the floor. We saw all these guy Paul Reed having Jokic like he was amazing. We saw all of them play. So now once and I get back and Tobias also got back. What did I tell you guys? Literally I think it was November 21st when I recorded a podcast and told you guys we really need to hope that everyone is back 100% when they or the guys that are currently there are 100% when everyone got back. So they had an easy answer to the rotation because trying to fit everybody back while some guys aren’t 100% and you’ve been playing a certain type of way all year. If you then start to change how you’ve been playing because now you’re trying to get other guys incorporated and try to fit to their game style while also trying to get them the right amount of minutes, it’s just going to be too hard to do. And what the Pistons decided to do was to not only do have that issue, they decided to double down on it by then instead of when Ivy got back just taking someone out the rotation to play him. They decide, you know what, these guys played so great during the stretch when they didn’t have anybody. Instead of just cutting the rotation down and making sure everyone’s playing the same way and making sure everyone’s playing the same amount of minutes and we’re still playing the same type of way and we just we bring Ivy on gradually throughout these games. Instead, they said, “You know what? We’re so deep that actually instead of doing that, we’ll just throw Ivy with this. We’ll throw Ivy with this. We’ll throw Assar and Tobias with this and we’ll just play 11 people. We’ll play 11 12 people if we want. Who knows? Let’s go sign somebody. Let’s play 13 people. You know what? You know what the Pistons should try to do? The Pistons should try to go sign two players. Go make a trade. Actually, use this player exception. Go trade for somebody and see if you can become the first team to play 15 players every night. That’s what they should do because that’s basically what they’ve doubled down on. they have doubled down on. We’re just g instead of cutting people’s minutes to play our better players, we’ll just play everybody and we’ll find time for everyone. And what has that contributed to? What that’s contributed to, I think part of why the turnovers are going back up is because it’s not just the fact, I tried saying this before this started happening when everyone was team play everybody, they earned it, play everyone. It’s not just the fact that you’re not playing your best players. It’s the fact that when you are bringing these guys back from injury and you’re also playing these guys that were playing a certain type of way while they were out and then you bring them back at the same time and you’re trying not only to fit minutes for all of them, what’s going to happen is they have to try to learn to play together, which will lead to them playing differently, which will lead to guys trying to play differently, which will lead to guys not feeling as comfortable, which will lead to guys not feeling the same type of chemistry they were before. So now you don’t see their half court offense being executed as good as it was before. You don’t see them swinging the ball as good as they were before. You don’t see them attacking these zone defenses. You don’t see them attacking uh these the the way defenses are guarding them the same same way they were before. You’re seeing these stretches in the second and third quarter when you have lineups that you haven’t seen all other t any other time during the year struggling to figure out how to play together and how to really mesh with each other because they haven’t played together and they shouldn’t be playing together. That’s what all comes together. And then on top of that, the my main thing and which is why it’s named this topic just play your best players. That’s the main thing. Combine all of that, that makes it an issue. And I think that leads to some of the turnovers because guys are just not used to playing with each other. But also, you are not playing your best players. I’m going to go on this rant one more time. Hopefully, I’m going to hope this has to this is the last time I have to do this. Assar Thompson only played 25 minutes in this game. In this game, he was a plus 45 net rating. With him off the floor, he was they were a minus 58. That is an over a hundred on off in one singular game. I am you. I listen man. This goes all the way back to the playoffs last year. I I don’t know how much longer I continue to deal with the Pistons not playing their all defensive guard, their alldefensive wing, who by the way was playing fantastic in this game, was being ultra aggressive, getting to the basket, spin move, finding guys on kickouts. He had 10 10 points, six rebounds, and five assists in just 25 minutes of action. He was incredibly uh uh aggressive on drives. But screw all that. I’m I’m not here to talk about how great of a game Assar had. I’m simply sitting here saying that Assar is a player that has to play 30 minutes. He is one of the best defenders in the entire NBA. And we now have three years, three years, not one, not two, not a playoff series, we have two plus years with a playoff series of data that says you are better when he plays. when he plays you win that like we have two plus years in a playoff series of data to tell us this and again that he only plays 25 minutes in this game they dominate his minutes dominate not close it wasn’t close they dominate his minutes and they get destroyed and in his nine minutes I Assar gets three fouls and then he can’t play no more but but Jaylen Duran can foul out can foul out these other everyone else can foul out Assaar gets three fouls now he can’t play no more I I I it doesn’t I I it it’s driving me crazy. It’s driving me crazy. Now, Assar is the one I’m going to harp on the most because obviously I’m an Assar guy, but two, like I said just a few minutes ago, we have two plus years of data plus playoff minutes of showing us when he’s on the floor, you’re good. When he plays, you win. How about you just play him? Just play him more than 25 minutes. He had almost the same amount of minutes as Dennis Jenkins. He’s a two-way guy. Caris Levert was a minus 24. He shot one of 10 in this game and he played 23 minutes and you closed with him. Why is a sore capped at 25? He is your He is arguably your second best player. You want to go darn fine. He is your third best player. He is one of the best defenders in the NBA. I I I I can’t like this is I I I I’m not going to lie. The reason why I’m so heated about this because it gave me I got PTSD to the playoffs. I’m not going to lie to you. I got PTSD to game six when they subbed him out and they lost. Like I I look I got PTSD. So maybe that’s why I’m ranting. But to move away from just to move away from just these were the minutes the Pistons are playing right now. And again for people out there that were like well you need to rest them. Kate’s not being rested. Playing these many this many guys are is not resting your best player. Kade’s still playing 35 plus. Kade played 35 this game. It’s not like they’re playing this deep this deep rotation so Kade can not have to play as much and take a time off. These are Cade’s minutes the last five games. 36 minutes, 40 minutes, 38, 38, 35. He’s still playing a bleep ton. These are the minutes the Pistons had. Kate at 35, Tobias at 29, Ivy at 19, sorry at 25, Javvante at 16, Paul Reed at eight, Jaylen Dur at 26, Isaiah Stewart at 17, Dennis Jenkins at 24, Ron Holland at 17, Caris Lever at 23. This is not middle school. I’m sorry. You have to make a decision. You just got to. I’m sorry. This is not Everyone cannot play. You can you cannot play everyone. I don’t I’m not see I have an idea who who I would sit. I would stop playing Javvante or Look, I’m not the NBA coach. I’m not going to say who I would sit here, okay? I’d play I’d sit Javvante and one of these other guys would have to sit. I’m not going to say because I’m not going to have everybody coming after me. I I ain’t the NBA coach. You’re not going to come after me. But you cannot continue to play everybody, man. You can’t. You have to play your best players. Just play your best players and you’ll win. You’ll win the games. Keep doing what you were doing before Ivy came back. And again, this isn’t about Ivy. Ivy could have just been inserted. Take someone else out, put Ivy in and you just can play the same way except Iivey’s taking those minutes and now everyone’s playing. You’re flowing the same way. Everyone’s playing the same amount of minutes as they were before. No one has to change anything. It’s just Ivy being brought in and he fits in. I It’s easy as that. Trying to find a way to play everyone and make everyone on the fly learn how to play together and on the fly mesh together is not working. The last six games, the Pistons have been skating by the skin of their teeth and wins and looking the worst they have all season. It’s not a coincidence. It’s not a coincidence. I can’t keep doing it no more. And for the love of God, I’ll say it one more time. For the love of God, please play Assar Thompson. Just play him. Just play him. I don’t care if he shoots 0 of 20 from the field. I don’t care if he punts the ball every offensive possession. I’m being exaggerated a little bit, obviously, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t know how many times we have to go over this. It does not matter because he is such a great defender and brings so much such a different such a different type of impact to your team that you are better when he plays. He shouldn’t be playing the same minutes as Dannis Jenkins. Dan is we love Dannis. He’s had a great run. He’s not better than Assar. Please, I thought we learned this in game six. And for the love of God as well, when he picks up three fouls, can it not mean the end of the game? Can he has three more fouls? Why? Everyone else gets to play through three fouls. If Sar gets three, we don’t see him ever again. Just let him play. Okay. Coming up, does Detroit need to acquire some shooting ahead of the deadline? We’ll talk about it coming up. The World Cup is coming back to North America for the first time since 1994. And with 48 teams for the first time ever, it’s going to be massive. But let’s be honest, getting tickets is usually the hardest part. That’s why the Game Time app is clutch. Finally, giving fans a real advantage when it comes to snagging seats. With Game Time, you can track price drops in real time, get alerts when great seats open, and buy tickets the moment they hit the app. It p it puts the power back in your hands and makes going to the World Cup realistic instead of impossible. Prices include fees upfront, which I love. 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Um, I believe I just uh I think I just Okay, I was going to say I just saw something from Doc Rivers about Giannis’s Achilles injury. I just want to make sure that or non Achilles injury I should say. I just want to make sure I didn’t misspeak earlier and then and then there was a new update. Yeah, it sounds like he didn’t tear his Achilles. We’re all happy about that. No one wants Jiannis to be injured with Achilles. It didn’t look good. So, thank God. Um he says it’s not believed to have suffered an Achilles injury, but he is undergoing imaging. So that’s that’s good news. Um anyways, back to the Pistons. Uh do the Pistons need to acquire shooting? This is the thing. Yes and no. The biggest problem with the Pistons right now is their shooters aren’t making shots. That’s that’s what the problem is. I I know that some people that I already know it’s it’s coming. There’s going to be people that didn’t watch this game that will go in the comments or tweet me or DM me or or comment on the podcast. They are going to say, “Whoa, they’re playing Assar and JD. They don’t have enough shooting. Of course, they’re going to get destroyed by his own one. There’s other ways to beat a zone.” And the Pistons, I feel like actually their best beat of the zone was Assar attacking cuts and kicking out and finding Tobias for threes. That was really that was probably some of their best offense. or Kade getting the ball in the middle of the zone and being able to operate, that was probably those two options were probably their best tonight at beating the zone. But the reason why I bring up that people who are saying that probably didn’t watch the game because JB went to all shooting lineups multiple times in this game to end the second quarter and within the third quarter, they went to all shooting lineups and they still couldn’t beat the zone. They still couldn’t. The offense was clunky. Guys didn’t know where they were supposed to be at. Guys weren’t relocating really well. Guys weren’t willing to shoot. Guys were missing shots. It was all kinds of stuff. It wasn’t just the fact they’re not playing shooters. They were playing shooters. The problem is that the Pistons shooters are not hitting shots. Like Cade is not hitting threes. He’s supposed to be your shooter. So yeah, if Kade’s not going to shoot ever, like if he’s just going to shoot 29% forever, then yeah, you might need to require some shooting. But the Pizzas are baking on Kade being a shooter. Tobias is one of your shooters. Jay and Ivy is supposed to be one of your shooters. Dannis Shenkins when he’s out there is supposed to be one of your shooters. Caris Levert is supposed to be one of your shooters. So, do the Pistons have I guess the question you really should be asking is, do the Pistons shooters, are they good enough? Now, you can argue about that. I think a lot of people probably would say no. But do I think the Pistons need to go in choir shooting? I mean, you’re going to have to give some guys up. You’re going to have to swap some of these guys out for shoot, but then you’ll lose ball handling. You lose defense. I think the better answer here is they just need their shooters to shoot better. They need their shooters that they expect to shoot good to shoot well. I That’s how I look at it. I don’t think they need to go acquire shooting. I think they have guys on the team that can hit shots and were brought here to hit shots that just didn’t hit shots in this game. I mean, guys, Dannis, Ron Holland, and Caris Levert combined to be five of 28 in this game together. Dennis was two of eight, Ron was two of 10, and Caris was one of 10. Like Davis was taking open shots. He’s supposed to be one of your shooters. Caris Levert was taking open shots. He got two wide open threes at the end of the game to give them the lead. He just missed. He wasn’t hidden. He’s supposed to be one of your shooters. And when Duncan’s back in the lineup, this isn’t when Duncan’s back. It’s not noticed nearly as much, but I understand the concern that without Duncan, he what if he gets hurt? You like, you can’t just have it all relied upon with Duncan. I get that. But the Pistons believe these guys are supposed to hit shots. They just need to hit him. I mean, I They got a lot of open shots against the zone. I feel like too, they got a lot of open shots. They just weren’t hitting. And it wasn’t like they were getting open shots to to guys that you don’t want to. It wasn’t like Assar was taking all these corner threes. That’s not what was happening. You got shots for Ivy. You got open threes for Cade over and over and over again. Caris Levert took eight threes. He got open shots over and over. Danis took five threes. He got shots over and over. Like I feel like they honestly generated at times they generated good shots and they just weren’t hitting. So no, I don’t think they need to go and trade for shooting specifically. I think they need to go if they do go and trade, I think they need to trade for a four or a secondary shot creator. But just go and trade for like I don’t know like a Duncan Robinson type of player. there’s another guy that just only shoots. No, I I don’t think they that’s not what they need. That’s not what they need. They have that guy. They need to go get someone who can be a secondary creator. That’s their That’s their That’s their issue or a secondary scorer at the very least if you’re a Lori marketing guy. Um but yeah, this was a bad loss, man. There’s no no there’s no sugar coating it. It was terrible. Terrible turnovers. The zone defense continues to kill them, but again, like Cade was just missing everything he was shooting. All of his jump shots were off. Like even the shots he got in the mid post area when they went to him in the middle of the floor against his own which is supposed to be the way to kill it. He was just missing his shots from there. Again he missed a bunch of open threes and and I again people don’t forget this. The Pistons were in control of this game despite the zone. They were easily going to win this game and turn they turn turned the ball over eight times in one quarter. And that wasn’t that wasn’t because of a zone. They didn’t turn the ball over eight times because of a zone. They turned the ball over because they were just laxidasical and weren’t careful with the ball. Like these these turnovers were coming off of Paul Reed almost throwing it out of bounds. K dribbling off his own or getting ripped up and then dribbling out uh losing the handle at half court and being a back court. Ivy losing the handle and turn the ball over. Caris just throwing a ball right at a Bucks defender for for whatever reason across the floor. Just a pass that a high schooler would make. That’s not zone. That’s not oh they can’t beat a zone. That is they’re just careless with turnovers. They just careless with the ball and they’ve been careless for now for six games. They got to correct it. But let me know what you guys think. Comment section down below or over on Twitter, cuckahill. That’s all I’ve got for you guys today. Thank you guys for making lockdown pistons your first listen every single day. Free to available on all your podcast platforms. Hit that subscribe button to YouTube channel. Leave us a five star review whatever podcast platform you’re listening to this on. I’ll catch you guys later. Stay safe out there and peace out everybody.

Detroit Pistons collapse against the Milwaukee Bucks, surrendering a crucial lead after Giannis Antetokounmpo’s early exit. Can Detroit find a way to steady the ship, or was their hot season start just a fluke?

Ku Khahil breaks down the Pistons’ mounting turnover problem, Cade Cunningham’s shooting woes, and the recurring struggles against zone defenses. Key topics include Jaden Ivey’s off-ball impact, the need to play Ausar Thompson significant minutes, and why expanding the rotation has backfired. Insightful analysis covers the Pistons’ recent net rating drop, lineup mismanagement, and the urgency of correcting bad habits before losses pile up. Is it an urgent trade for shooting the answer, or do the Pistons need their stars to hit shots and play smarter?

SUBSTACK: kukhahil.substack.com

PLAYBACK: playback.tv/watchpistons

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