Detroit Pistons: Are They Taking Enough Shots?

It seems fair to say that through the first 13 games of the season, the Detroit Pistons haven’t quite got the start they had hoped for. With the appointment of Stan Van Gundy in the dual role of head coach and president of basketball operations, there seemed like genuine cause for optimism, in spite of the team’s dismal play last season.

That hasn’t come close to materializing so far though, and there are a number of potential reasons that could be offered up to explain why that’s been the case.

Detroit have had regular problems with foul trouble, their defense still needs a lot of work, injuries haven’t been kind to them, and it’s clear that neither the players nor the coach are quite sure of what their best rotation is just yet.

For many though, the problem lies purely at the foot of the team’s shooting. It hasn’t been a sudden realization that has led people to proclaim that shooting is a problem for the Pistons either. Last season, the team ranked only 19th in field goal percentage, and a much worse 29th in terms of three-point percentage.

So, seen as they’re a team that have long been inefficient with their shot, arguing that shooting is the cause of Detroit’s problems definitely isn’t unreasonable.

Then there’s Brandon Jennings.

Jennings is adamant that shooting is the Pistons’ problem, but for slightly different reasons. As reported by David Mayo of MLive.com, Jennings doesn’t see his team’s woes from the field as a problem that’s beyond repair, instead the 25-year-old feels that success will come with greater repetition.

Following the Pistons’ 99-89 loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Friday night, Jennings came out with a show-stopping line to surmise the current situation of the team.

"If you ask the question about why we’re not making shots, we don’t shoot.We don’t shoot in practice. We haven’t really had a chance to work on our games or anything. When we do have shootarounds, we’re not able to get up shots like we should."

There are a couple of ways of looking at this statement, and all in all, it may reveal more about the place where the current roster is, than anything else they’ve shown on or off the court in the season’s opening month.

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First of all, the immediate reaction to a player stating in November that he hasn’t had enough time to practice his shooting, has to be to question what exactly he spent his offseason doing.

If Jennings felt it was a an area that required specific focus heading into this year, then why didn’t he make it a point of emphasis for himself during the summer?

In fact, if Jennings wasn’t practicing his shooting when he scored 57 points in the Drew League back in July, then what exactly was he doing?

The other way that we can view this statement is, if Stan Van Gundy isn’t encouraging his players to regularly work on their shooting in practice, is he doing so for a reason?

Van Gundy has always been a coach that has loved his teams to spread the floor with shooting, but with that he would recognize better than most how it’s only beneficial to have some of his players taking on those opportunities, with others better served to focus their attention elsewhere.

If Van Gundy isn’t pushing the shooting agenda in practice, maybe that should be enough of a sign for Jennings to realize that there are currently bigger priorities for his coach.

Either way, with the Detroit Pistons coming off of a lengthy three-day break and plenty of time for practice, it will be interesting to see just how they shoot the ball when they return to the floor against Milwaukee Tuesday.

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