Detroit Pistons: 3 keys to fixing the offense

1. Create more open looks

The Pistons pass the ball a ton, but they aren’t always hitting their shots with great frequency. One thing that will help this is their ability to generate more open looks. With as few shooters as the Pistons have, Casey has to give them the opportunities to be successful. He did a great job of putting his best players in positions to succeed when he was with the Raptors, and he needs to do the same thing here.

In his limited playing time. Kennard has only shot 33.4 percent of his shots with open or better or looks (“open” is defined here as the nearest defender at least four feet away). Meanwhile, Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors is shooting over 50 percent of his shots with these same looks.

Some of this has to do with the additional shooters around him, but Golden State also actively works to get him these looks by setting screens repeatedly until he gets it. The Pistons should do the same with their shooters.

Detroit possesses several big bodies and doing more dribble handoffs with Kennard coming off screens set by Griffin or Andre Drummond would give him plenty of room to fire away from deep. It’s simple science that players are more likely to hit open shots than tightly covered ones, but the Pistons don’t do that for their players. If they did, we could see a serious uptick in their offense with just these slight adjustments.