The Detroit Pistons might have had one of their worst offensive showings of the season against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday afternoon. Lucky for them, their elite defense showed up and allowed the Pistons to coast to a 109-87 win. It was the sixth time Detroit has held an opponent to 90 or fewer points this season. They are the only team in the league to hit that mark six times.<\/p>\n
They also held the Timberwolves to just 31% shooting from the floor, the Pistons\u2019 second-lowest mark of the season against any opponent.<\/p>\n
Both teams were shorthanded, including their superstars. The Pistons played without Cade Cunningham and Isaiah Stewart. The Wolves played without Anthony Edwards, Jaden McDaniels, and Ayo Dosunmu. Both teams have been winning without their stars, however, because other players have been able to step up. That wasn\u2019t the case for either team in what was mostly a defensive slugfest on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Jalen Duren was limited to just 10 points and 13 rebounds in 29 minutes, attempting only seven shots. He had trouble dealing with Rudy Gobert\u2019s length, and Minnesota, like most teams lately, has it in their game plan to limit passes to Duren in the post whenever possible. Daniss Jenkins, meanwhile, who has been on a bit of a hot streak since stepping into the starting lineup for Cunningham, was mostly awful against the Timberwolves.<\/p>\n
Up until about the five-minute mark of the fourth quarter, when the game was pretty well decided, Jenkins was shooting 2-of-12 with as many assists as turnovers (three). He was sloppy with his handle, making ill-advised passes into non-existent windows, missing clear passing lanes, and giving up a lot of penetration on defense. In garbage time, he was able to hit four pretty easy looks, which allowed him to escape with a respectable 12 points on the night.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the first time Jenkins has had a stinker like that; he\u2019s a second-year player, after all, but it might be the first time the Pistons have won a Daniss no-show in a while. They did it because so many other role players did just enough on offense \u2014 Detroit had seven players in double-figures, with Tobias Harris\u2019 18 leading the way \u2014 and because Detroit\u2019s elite defense made everything difficult for an underpowered Minnesota attack.<\/p>\n
To shout out just a couple specific guys \u2014 every Ron Holland three is a blessing, and we got two of them tonight to go with his stellar defense. Also, Kevin Huerter is looking more and more like a rotation mainstay, but I don\u2019t know how it will happen when both Cunningham and Stewart return. Huerter had 11 points and made several smart reads as a cutter and a ball handler. He\u2019s reminding me more and more of the rotation impact Dennis Schr\u00f6der had on Detroit last year. A steadying presence who isn\u2019t giving away anything on either side of the floor, and someone you trust to make the right decision if he has the ball in his hands.<\/p>\n
Wolves\u2019 role players not named Donte DiVincenzo couldn\u2019t get anything going against Detroit\u2019s stifling defense. Julius Randle, Naz Reid, Bones Hyland, and Mike Conley combined to shoot 8-for-38 from the floor. That\u2019s 21% from the field. Only DiVencenzo was able to ride some hot 3-point streak shooting into a respectable night. He scored a game-high 22 and hit five threes. But he had 14 attempts, and was just 7-of-18 from the floor overall.<\/p>\n
Even as Detroit was trying to give the game away with its patented rash of mind-boggling turnovers, Minnesota could do nothing with them. Detroit committed 19 turnovers on the night, and Minnesota was only able to turn those 19 extra possessions into seven points.<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, Ausar Thompson and Holland get the lion\u2019s share of the credit with their ability to hound players on the perimeter. Thompson had four steals and Holland two, as just one way to quantify their impact. But, really, it was a team effort. Caris LeVert had a couple of big blocks inside, Huerter continues to move and switch very well on defense, and Harris and Paul Reed were locked in and giving Detroit everything they had.<\/p>\n
Detroit is now one win away from clinching the Central Division title, improved Detroit\u2019s NBA Draft position courtesy of a pending swap with the Timberwolves, and they now sit 4.5 games up on the Boston Celtics for the first seed in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit Pistons might have had one of their worst offensive showings of the season against the Minnesota…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,296,188,52275,3860,6,297,52331],"class_list":{"0":"post-685514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-pistons","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-pistons","11":"tag-detroit-pistons-game-day","12":"tag-detroitpistons","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-pistons","15":"tag-pistons-scores"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116310922379006370","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}