Lottery Game of the Week: Los Angeles Lakers win on the road against the Detroit Pistons 106-96

Lead by a team high 22 points from Jordan Hill, the Lakers picked up a road win over the struggling Detroit Pistons.

Welcome to the Lottery Game of the Week! Two teams enter, two teams leave. One team will be a little closer to that coveted No. 1 pick in the upcoming NBA draft, the other will drift ever closer to the ether between the playoffs and irrelevance.

Pregame:

Our contestants this week are the Detroit Pistons (3-14) who are hosting the Los Angeles Lakers (4-13). To this point in the season, the Detroit Pistons have been an abject failure. Greg Monroe has fallen to the role of a bench player, Stan Van Gundy has not choked the life out of Josh Smith after an ill-advised three, and the Pistons are looking up the leaderboard at everybody, including the Bucks and Pacers who were supposed to be borderline disasters before the season began. Their opponents, the Lakers, have been nothing short of the most entertaining, destined-for-failure circus in the league. The dark cloud over their season is the loss of two key pieces in Steve Nash (nerve damage) and prized lottery pick Julius Randle (broken fibia). Both players are done for the season, Nash calling it a career. Meanwhile, Kobe has completed the psychological transformation into full Black Mamba mode. He has cranked up the shot attempts and just this week recorded his 20th career triple-double den route to becoming the first player in league history with 20,000 points and 6,000 assists. You have to wonder what was going through his mind, ten years removed from the NBA Finals against the Pistons, now both teams fighting to show any signs of life.

The season hasn’t gone well for either team up to this point, but it would seem that the Pistons have the easier road to recovery at this point. Stan Van Gundy is one of the best coaches in the world, they have a cadre of players with high ceilings and offensive potential and they play in the weakened Eastern Conference. Winning this game could do much to help get them rolling in the right direction, which really doesn’t take much in a conference where 30-35 wins probably might get you a playoff spot this year.

Two Up – Two Down

Pistons Up

1. DJ Augustin/Andre Drummond Screen-and-Oop. Only saw this play a few times, but Drummond rolling and elevating yielded some flashy finishing on the highest percentage shot available. Finishing was an issue throughout the game for the Pistons, especially Drummond, so it was good to see this play roll so smoothly.
2. DJ Augustin. There has been a lot of talk lately about the magic of Tom Thibodeau working magic on point guards that go to other teams and don’t produce the same results. The same is true of Augustin so far this season. Tonight, he put in a quietly consistent performance. In 24 minutes he managed 13 points, 5 assists, no turnovers and a team-high +9. It’s just a start, but if Augustin continues to put in solid performances, the Pistons should be able to claw back into the playoff race in a meager East.

Pistons Down

1. Defense. It happens to every team from time to time, but the Pistons looked hapless for a majority of the game. Even when Kobe isn’t in video game mode, there were a lot of open looks. At one point Jordan Hill blew a wide open layup and had enough to time to grab his own offensive rebound and put it back in before any defender even got near him. Jennings was -19, Josh Smith -16 on the night. Not a good thing against a Lakers team that really features just Kobe and whoever you leave open in the corner/under the rim.
2. Finishing. Between Josh Smith shooting 7-17 on a lot of uncontested long two-point shots and Bandon Jennings shooting 2-10 they were already off to a bad start, but Drummond (3-9) also missed several layups that should have been executed. The Pistons need to win games against other bottom of the league teams if they want to have a shot at the playoffs and dropping games at home against other last place teams is not how you get it done. A good place for them to start would be shooting better than 36.7 percent from the floor.

Lakers Up

1. Carlos Boozer. Of all people, it was Carlos Boozer. Clearly he misses playing in the Central Division of the Eastern Conference. Boozer scored the Lakers first 6 points which forced the Pistons to use what little defensive effort they had to move out on him. He shot just over 50 percent from the field on the night, finished with 14 points, 7 rebounds, and a game high +16. I know, I had to double-check that. Vintage Boozer.
2. Jordan Hill. Hill ate up the Pistons interior. A game-high 22 points on 10-15 shooting night to go with 13 rebounds and only one turnover. Player of the Game right here.

Lakers Down

1. Kobe. Kobe managed 12 points on 4-11 shooting, but he never looked energized. Maybe that has something to do with being 36 years old, who knows. He managed 13 assists, but had a staggering 10 turnovers, only four less than the entire Pistons team. The puzzling part of that statistic is that he still finished +15 (second highest) for the game. Some of those Josh Smith misses helped that out…
2. Bob Sacre. Am I being too hard on the big guy? Maybe. But 17 minutes, 1-8 shooting, and only one rebound qualifies as a “down” for me tonight. His plus/minus was appropriate tonight: zero.

Player of the game

Jordan Hill came up big tonight, working primarily against a Drummond/Monroe tandem that should have made life difficult. Instead, he posted a game high 22 points and a double-double. The big man made all the difference tonight.

Play of the game

http://youtu.be/cOgO2HHWI1Q

Wesley Johnson pump-fake to monster one-handed slam and the foul.