Despite the fact that they’ve won a pair of games with him in the lineup, the Pistons haven’t quite figured out how to play with Blake Griffin. That’s not all that surprising, Rod Beard of The Detroit News writes, considering that they’ve had so little time to acclimate to the new star.
“Playing with Blake is still new to us. We had an hour and a half, and now we’ve had, what, two days now?” third-year forward Stanley Johnson said on Saturday. “So it’s still not the greatest stuff in the world, but if we can do that every night, regardless with what we have in, it doesn’t matter.”
While the Pistons have, at times, been smoother with Griffin on the sidelines, that’s nothing head coach Stan Van Gundy didn’t expect.
“I have to get figured out offensively. I’m not helping him or us a lot. You can see today in the early fourth quarter, we were actually a lot smoother when he was out because we were just playing,” Van Gundy said after the Pistons took down the Heat. “I’ve got this great player now and we’re just sort of playing to him all the time and the defense is all loaded up.”
When Griffin is on the court he’s a constant penetration threat, which commands attention from defenses and frees up teammates. While the Pistons may not have a set offensive scheme that features him in place already, their success through two games is a testament to the impact that he’s had already.
There’s more out of Detroit:
- Among the Pistons players most impacted by the arrival of Blake Griffin has been small forward Stanley Johnson. The 21-year-old spoke with the media, including The Detroit News, about how much easier his life is with Griffin on board. Johnson has averaged 17.7 points and 6.7 rebounds in just under 37 minutes per game since the trade was announced. “I see a lot more opportunity. Now with Blake involved, he creates so much attention, it’s crazy. It’s easy to turn the corner sometimes, with him. Then with Andre Drummond, you have two guys that are crazy lob threats. It’s kinda pick your poison sometimes,” Johnson said.
- Head coach Stan Van Gundy is intent on finding a better way to feature Blake Griffin in the team’s offense. “I think Blake is naturally a guy who moves the ball and stuff. I think I’ve been running stuff to him and making him play against a loaded up defense,” he told Ansar Khan of MLive and the rest of the media. “We gotta get moving so the defense has to play against movement and not be loaded up against him. We’ll make that correction hopefully fairly quickly.”
- For the Pistons to make the most of the Blake Griffin addition, other players are going to have to accept new roles, Vince Ellis of The Detroit Free Press writes. One such player is Reggie Jackson who, after years behind Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook in Oklahoma City, had embraced being a go-to option for Detroit.
SVG needs to tread lightly with talking about Blake Griffin he was just blindsided by being traded from LA to Detroit and the last thing he needs is to rub him the wrong way because he has a reputation of not being a players coach
Pretty sure he’s only said good things about Blake and pretty much apologized for throwing him into the fire. He’s saying how much better they could be when they are completely acclimated with him being on the court. Pretty much any coach would say the exact same thing.
He has said on multiple occasions that “the offense was much better with Blake on the bench” I don’t know about you but that would piss me off if my brand new coach was saying that about me