When Stan Van Gundy took over the Pistons in 2014, he had a roster beset with problems. Chief among them was his shooting guard situation, where first-year man Kentavious Caldwell-Pope showed some promise but couldn’t shoot, and the other options — out-of-position and over-his-head Kyle Singler and free agent Rodney Stuckey — were not appealing. Van Gundy’s first signing, whom he aggressively pursued at the opening of free agency, was shooting guard Jodie Meeks, a potential starter who could help with the Pistons’ 3-point woes.
That fizzled. Meeks never started a game for Detroit, and he was traded to Orlando after the second of a four-year contract. The following summer, Van Gundy went hard after Spurs shooting guard Danny Green, and got close to bringing him to Detroit, but Green ultimately returned to San Antonio and it was back to Caldwell-Pope — a 3-and-D wing who was not so reliable on the 3s — for the Pistons.
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But last summer, Van Gundy finally got his man: Avery Bradley. A three-year quest to fill the shooting guard spot was ended by the trade that sent Bradley, in a contract year that the Celtics did not want to touch, from Boston to Detroit.
The payoff has been immediate. The Pistons, as a whole, have been far above expectations through their first 10 games, with a 7-3 record that includes wins on the road over the Clippers and Warriors. They’ve done it thanks to an offense that has, finally, clicked the way Van Gundy imagined, with center Andre Drummond clogging up space in the paint, a top pick-and-roll point guard and shooters who can actually make shots on the wings.
When the Pistons acquired Bradley, Van Gundy said, "We started out the offseason saying that we wanted to do three things primarily, add three things to our team. We wanted to add as much character as we possibly could. We wanted to add 3-point shooting. And we wanted to get more people on the floor who could handle the ball and make plays.
"We have been pretty dependent on Reggie Jackson and our point guards to have to make every single play, and we wanted to change that. It’s hard to check all of those boxes with one player, but with Avery, we did that."
Most significant has been the 3-point shooting, especially spot-up shooting. With Caldwell-Pope, Van Gundy could never be sure what he was getting on the perimeter from his shooting guard spot.
In his three years before this one, Van Gundy’s Pistons ranked 17th, 22nd and 28th in 3-point shooting percentage. That stung a guy who was a pioneer in the use of the stretch-4 in the NBA, who had never coached a team that had been outside the top 10 in 3-point shooting.
The Pistons are not top 10 this year (they’re 15th so far at 35.9 percent), but they’ve been significantly better than last year. Tobias Harris is shooting 45.9 percent on 3s, and Bradley has made 42.2 percent.
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More important, the Pistons have been much better as a spot-up shooting team — and they were terrible there last year.
In 2016-17, Detroit ranked 28th in points off spot-up shots, and 29th in efficiency as spot-up shooters (at 0.92 points per possession). This season, that’s flipped. The Pistons are second in the league as spot-up shooters, and they get 1.09 points per possession from those plays. Harris has been the most productive player in the league as a spot-up shooter (7.4 points per game), and Bradley (1.22 points per possession) has been among the most efficient.
That’s helped to create more space for Drummond in the middle and Jackson in the pick-and-roll. Both players are healthy and revived here in the early season.
Bradley first lodged himself into Van Gundy’s consciousness back in 2012, in the game that made Bradley’s reputation as an elite on-ball defender. It was Bradley’s third career start, at the TD Garden in Boston against Orlando. The Celtics held the Magic to 56 points, and it started with Bradley, who hugged Magic point guard Jameer Nelson so hard from end-to-end that, according to Bradley, Nelson asked him to ease up during the game. Bradley scored only six points, but was a plus-21 for the game. Van Gundy never forgot.
But the version of Bradley that Van Gundy has now is not the aggressive defender who couldn’t do much else he was five years ago. Bradley has expanded his game, becoming a credible NBA shooter — just what Van Gundy so desperately needed in Detroit.
The Pistons probably can’t maintain this level, not with a handful of players performing above their stations and the bench rotation still uncertain. But, with the shooting guard spot solved thanks to Bradley, the Pistons have established themselves early as a likely East playoff team with their fast start.