Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your concerns, remarks and issues through this short reader study. Now, here’s Mike Sykes
Happy Friday, folks! Welcome back to Layup Lines. Thanks so much for signingupwith me today. I hope you’ve had a more interesting week than the trade duedate did. Talk about a nothingburger.
Enough about that, . I desire to take a 2nd to program some love to the Detroit Pistons, male.
It wasn’t that long ago that we were all making enjoyable of this group for, well, to be candidly truthful, being the worst basketball group we’ve ever seen. The Pistons were so bad they even made the Process-Era 76ers appearance good and that group was trying to be bad. It got to the point where we were scraping the schedule to discover wins for Detroit. That’s what 28 straight losses will do for you.
If you watch today’s Pistons, those days feel like centuries back. This is a totally various group. It may…it may even be a great one?
Ok. No. This group is still quite bad. I got captured up in the buzz a bit there. But it’s certainly a much muchbetter outfit than it was inthepast. Detroit is 4-4 in its last 8 videogames with wins over Charlotte, Oklahoma City, Sacramento and Portland. Two of those are playoff groups! In the West!
But wait, there’s more! Detroit has a favorable point differential in its last 8 videogames. It’s simply 0.2, however it’s still favorable! Its offensive ranking in that period is 10th general.
Where’s this bump coming from? Well, some of it is addition by subtraction. Players like Isaiah Livers and Killian Hayes who hurt Detroit offensively haveactually been gottenridof from the rotation bymeansof lineup deals.
But, most of it is this: Jaden Ivey hasactually been incredible. Over his last 8 videogames he’s averaging 20.1 points per videogame while shooting 49 percent from the field and 59.5 percent from 3-point variety (!!!!). Is this going to last? Absolutely not. Those are outrageous shooting divides. But it’s really clear that Ivey is a quite great NBA gamer and it likewise makes you marvel why his coach kept him on the bench for so long.
Cade Cunningham has returned from injury, too, and has continued to play quite well without requiring to be the outright bell-cow on offense for Detroit. You include all that together and you get a pret