withstand injuries and hold onto first place.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\nThe Pistons are taking care of business after the half\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0know what head coach JB Bickerstaff is doing at halftime, but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0working, as the Pistons have enjoyed the best 3rd\u00a0quarter margin in the league since the All-Star break.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They have a +3.7 margin in the 3rd\u00a0quarter\u00a0of\u00a0those 23 games, which would easily be the best in the league over the course of\u00a0a whole\u00a0season.\u00a0After last night, the Pistons are +9.3 in the 3rd\u00a0over their last three games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Pistons are sharing the ball and shooting the lights out in the 3rd\u00a0frame, shooting an eye-opening 54 percent as a team from the field and 42.4 percent from long range.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 3-point percentage in the third quarter has been seven points higher than their overall number since the All-Star break, so the Pistons are coming out of the locker room with energy and the hot hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In these last 23 games, Detroit has 185 assists in the 3rd\u00a0quarter to just 77\u00a0turnovers,\u00a0and they are grabbing\u00a0nearly three\u00a0offensive rebounds per quarter in that span.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 3rd\u00a0quarter\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0even their best\u00a0<\/p>\n
The best part of this recent 3rd\u00a0quarter domination is that\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0not even the team\u2019s best quarter of the game. Detroit\u2019s best quarter this season by far has been the second, where they enjoy a +3.5 margin that is\u00a0tops\u00a0in the NBA.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Pistons are going into the half strong and then using that momentum to carry over to the third quarter, where they are often putting teams away.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It also means that no halftime deficit is too much to overcome for Detroit, as they come out\u00a0swinging\u00a0in the 3rd.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JB Bickerstaff has often been criticized for his lack of adjustments, but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0long past time to give him some credit, as he is making effective changes at halftime that are helping his team take over in the second half.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This should be another number to add to his Coach of the Year case, which should be strong considering how the Pistons have continued to win through myriad injuries and constantly shuffling rotations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit Pistons dominated the third quarter last night against the Raptors, something\u00a0they\u2019ve\u00a0been doing a\u00a0lot of\u00a0since the All-Star…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,296,188,3860,6,297],"class_list":{"0":"post-692070","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-detroitpistons","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-pistons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116330122624719267","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692070","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=692070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}